QUESTION on ‘Ask a Question,’ ‘Burnett for Carmel, Carmel-by-the-Sea COMMUNITY CONVERSATION with Jason Burnett’ Website

ABSTRACT: On the “Burnett for Carmel, Carmel-by-the-Sea COMMUNITY CONVERSATION with Jason Burnett” website, Ask A Question page, L.A. Paterson submitted today the QUESTION: Why do the citizens of Carmel-by-the-Sea have a self proclaimed “open and transparent government” mayor, but a city administrator who by word and deed has disdain for a fundamental right of the people, namely the peoples’ right to access government public records? The Description and Question is reproduced. For the posting of the Question and Answer to the Question, click on Questions and Answers.

The report includes a request I made for “access to and copies of documents sufficient to identify by date, payee and amount all attorney’s fees and related charges paid during the past ten years by the city … for litigation relating to the Flanders Mansion.”

In the end, and nearly two months after my request, I received not a single record I had requested, but only a computer printout of the payments to attorneys.

Source: City’s tab for handling PRA requests doesn’t add up COMMENTARY by NEIL SHAPIRO, January 24, 2014, The Carmel Pine Cone, 25A

QUESTION:  Why do the citizens of Carmel-by-the-Sea have a self proclaimed “open and transparent government” mayor, but a city administrator who by word and deed has disdain for a fundamental right of the people, namely the peoples’ right to access government public records? 

P.S. “Mr. Stilwell in preparing his lengthy missives to me in which, among other things, he acknowledged that the city took well more than the 10 days the law allows — “the delay encountered with respect to this matter is an anomaly and is not a representation of the city’s commitment to conduct the people’s business in the most responsible, professional and transparent manner possible.” This so-called “anomaly” has occurred multiple times with other requestors.