Pilot puts officials to test

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Sunshine Week” is an annual event that advocates for more open government. To mark the occasion, we asked various public officials for information as a sort of test to see how accessible and transparent they are. Terry Francke, an expert with the open government advocacy group Californians Aware, helped us assess how the agencies responded.

SCHOOL DISTRICT, UC Irvine

I made two requests for information from local agencies. The first was from the Newport-Mesa School District Nutrition Services Department. I asked how much it cost to dispose of the beef the district received from Westland Meat Company, which made headlines when the company’s inhumane treatment of cattle resulted in the biggest meat recall in U.S. history. I asked Richard Greene, director of nutrition services, for the proper paperwork over the phone. He responded with a few questions before saying he would get right on it.

“I have never had anyone ask me for the trash bill before,” he said.

A few days later, Greene called to tell me it would take some time to produce the invoice bill. The bill was being processed for the district.

Terry Francke said Greene’s response seemed reasonable.

The second request I made concerned salaries at UC Irvine. I went to the human resources department to ask whether I could view salaries for the 14 deans and Chancellor Michael Drake. They informed me the school’s records office was in charge of that. So I called that office and was informed all salary information was available in the school’s library for the 2006-2007 school year.

I went to the library and found the computer area where I could view the records. The room usually requires a UCI ID to use, but my driver’s license sufficed. I wasn’t allowed to make copies or print the list, but could copy information by hand.

Francke said that if Californians Aware conducted the audit, UCI would have lost points if it “left the impression that the public’s only option was to copy public records by hand.” He added I was entitled to a copy of the printed list.

— Dan Tedford

COSTA MESA POLICE

I’m working on an article about two Costa Mesa men suing Washington Mutual, and a woman with whom they worked, for multiple counts of what they call fraud and identity theft. They filed a complaint with Costa Mesa police in April 2006, and I requested the report from department’s front desk.

Because I wasn’t a party to the complaint, I had to identify the reason I was requesting the copy. Although I knew they had the report, the officer at the front desk said they had no record of the names I listed on the form.

Sgt. Bryan Glass came out and told me that when an outside party requests a police report, it has to be submitted to the higher-ups for review; from there, it’s up to the discretion of the department whether to release it. That can take one to 10 days. He said there are lots of rules governing what’s considered a “public record” and that the police department never releases a report if it’s a pending investigation or if it involves a minor; and even with this one, officers can delete information from it if they want to before they release it.

“Overall, what you’ve described is a textbook example of the atrocious state of knowledge and compliance of police departments across the state that we detected in our audit last year of more than 200 police, sheriffs and CHP agencies,” Francke said. “The basic information in a complaint that amounts to a crime report is public and should be produced without hesitation.”

All of that is explained very clearly in the Public Records Act, but the response I got shows that the department either doesn’t know the law or the officers think we don’t know it and they are arrogant in assuming we, the public, wouldn’t press for the information, Francke said. He also said they aren’t supposed to ask what the information is for.

If his agency had gotten that response from the Costa Mesa Police Department, Francke said the department would have been given a failing grade.

I also requested the Performing Arts budget from OCC, and spokesman Doug Bennett said he would get right on it. Francke said the fact that the school is not arguing that the information is confidential is good, and that so far, my request has been handled pretty well.

— Sue Thoensen

I contacted Sgt. Bryan Glass and asked him whether he could give me the police chief’s salary. He explained that it was online, and then walked me through the city’s website and where I could find it. The whole process took fewer than five minutes.

Later, I contacted the department’s front desk and asked for information on how many suspects have been interviewed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. I was transferred to the jail and Sgt. Mark Manley answered the phone.

I asked him when the jail reopened after renovations and how many people arrested had been interviewed or detained by the ICE agent. Manley gave me some numbers off the top of his head, and offered to e-mail statistics the following day on the number of people arrested over the last three months, how many were interviewed by ICE, and how many were detained. The statistics included the nature of the crimes.

Also of note, the arrest logs and types of calls officers responded to the day before were readily available at the front desk on a clipboard for anyone to peruse. The records go back nearly two weeks.

— Joseph Serna

NEWPORT BEACH POLICE

I contacted Sgt. Evan Sailor, the department’s spokesman, and asked him for the police chief’s salary. Within a couple of hours, Sailor had e-mailed me a link to the city’s website that lists not only the chief’s salary, but all city employees’.

“That’s the type of response we would rate as excellent,” Francke said.

Tuesday, I stopped by the police station and asked to see a log of recent arrests. The department keeps them bound on a clipboard and the officer at the front immediately, and happily, handed them over. The folder had every type of arrest, who was arrested, and where they were from. Perhaps of some concern, every arrest log also lists the suspect’s Social Security number.

Another time, I asked Sailor what the latest emergency calls were to police. He pointed me to the website and where the police station keeps an up-to-the-hour listing of every type of call officers are responding to.

“I think both of those practices are very good and would lead to a good grade on those aspects,” Francke said.

MESA-CONSOLIDATED WATER

I requested the salaries of all department heads and elected officials at the Mesa-Consolidated Water District, hoping that the relative simplicity of the request would give officials ample time to comply with it.

At first, I was a bit nervous — “good luck with that,” one secretary told me when I made the request — but to my subsequent surprise, the district complied.

The data was compiled, sent and received within 24 hours of my initial request. In fact, secretary Colleen Monteleone was kind enough to expedite the request by transmitting the documents via e-mail, a response Francke characterized as “the model” other agencies should follow.

“A lot of agencies take their good old time in getting information to you, even though there is no dispute that it’s public…they answered it very promptly,” he said. “It’s a very good response.”

And the salaries? General Manager Lee Pearl makes $195,000 annually, District Engineer Bob McVicker earns $149,832, and Financial Services Manager Victoria Beatley takes home $129,204.

The board of directors receive a $189-a-day stipend for meetings or other appearances, but may be compensated for only 10 such days a month.

— Chris Caesar

TRAVEL AND GASOLINE

The funniest story about public records I have ever read came from a friend who once worked for a small newspaper in Indiana. One week, he obtained a copy of his local city council’s travel records and found that a pair of councilmen had spent a week in Texas staying at an upscale hotel, taking taxis and spending hundreds of taxpayer dollars on beer and restaurant meals. The occasion? A seminar called “Guarding the Public Checkbook,” designed to train city officials to keep expenses down.

So when Sunshine Week reared its head, I couldn’t resist calling the city clerks of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa and requesting their council travel records. That said, I’m happy to report that our local elected officials are far more responsible than the ones my friend encountered — and that the cities were friendly and efficient in getting the records to me.

Dave Kiff, assistant city manager of Newport Beach, sent me a spreadsheet of the $375.85 the City Council had spent since Jan. 1. The list was broken down by council member but not itemized, so I asked him to elaborate. Three of the four items were regular dinner costs for League of Cities meetings, he said, while the fourth was when Kiff and Councilman Michael Henn traveled to Sacramento to testify before the Senate Health Committee.

“We didn’t eat, we didn’t stay anywhere, and we hitched a ride in someone else’s cab [plus Sen. Tom Harman rode us back to the airport in his car] so it was pretty cheap,” Kiff wrote in an e-mail.

As for Costa Mesa, City Clerk Julie Folcik told me she had checked her records and found no travel expenses at all for the council this year.

I also asked the cities to provide monthly breakdowns for gasoline expenses since September, since gas prices have hit record levels more than once since the new year. Folcik and Mike Pisani, Newport Beach’s deputy director of general services, both sent me spreadsheets. Neither chart showed much of an increase in expenses, but Folcik said the numbers may not reflect costs at the pump, since the city often orders gas long before using it and buys more gas in some months than others.

In short, the gas charts didn’t quite make a riveting story — and Sunshine Week or not, that’s sometimes the case with public records.

— Michael Miller  

CITY OF NEWPORT BEACH

I began my quest for public records with an informal request over the phone for some information from Newport Beach City Atty. Robin Clauson.

I wanted to get a tally of how much the city has spent on outside legal services relating to issues surrounding drug and alcohol rehabilitation homes in Newport Beach. The city passed a new ordinance in January to regulate the homes, and I wanted to find out how much money the city has spent dealing with the issue.

Sometimes simply asking for information is the fastest way to get it, so I asked Clauson to give me a tally of how much the city has spent on the services of its special legal counsel on the group homes issue.

During the course of our phone conversation, Clauson said she didn’t have the information immediately on hand, and she would get back to me at a later date.

I waited a week or two and never heard back from Clauson.

Although my request was only a verbal one, a city official should have responded in a timely manner, Francke said.

“Any request is entitled to a response within 10 days — at least a determination to whether the records are going to made available,” Francke said. “That really should not happen again.”

For my second attempt, I sent a written request for the information in an e-mail to both Clauson and Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff.

When it comes to public records, persistence is key.

This time, I got an e-mail from Kiff almost immediately stating I would be able to get the information I needed within a week. Clauson followed up within five business days of my request with an e-mail containing information I had asked for.

I plan to write an upcoming story for the Pilot based on the public records I have obtained.

— Brianna Bailey