Jerry Dearinger said it best, “Our goal is to save as much of the public record from destruction as possible.”  GRAMA requests result in a permanent record that the City cannot destroy.  It is city policy to destroy most public records after 12 months.  With modern electronic storage growing smaller and cheaper each year, CHCRG believes the city policy should be eliminated, so the public record can be saved.

The GRAMA request by the Daily Herald, 27 members of Cedar Hills Citizens for Responsible Government, and radio talk show hosts Sam Bushman & Tim Alders filed three separate GRAMA Requests for communications / emails / texts etc. between city officials.  The process began in October of 2013, and was dragged out by city officials under the influence of the city attorney Eric Johnson taking over a year before the documents were finally provided under questionable circumstances.

For example, there are 39 pages in the “Redaction Log” which average 40 listings per page.  From this total of approximately 1520 items, approximately 123 were listed as “attorney client privileged” and hence withheld from the public.  CHCRG members who endured the delays and group emails for weeks back and forth with the City, became highly suspicious of the final GRAMA report,  believing that embarrassing and potentially illegal activities where hidden within documents magically protected by this clever strategy of CC-ing the attorney.

It’s not what they gave us that we want, it’s what they didn’t give us that we’re most interested in.  (This can be likened to of the Obama White House redacting and withholding records from Congress in Fast & Furious, IRS records which “disappeared”, etc.  What Congress wants most, of course, is what the White House and the AG withheld, or “lost”, or “accidentally destroyed”.)

The city attorney Johnson provided questionable counsel to the City Council Feb of 2014 wherein he instructed them that by simply CC-ing any email to him “attorney client privilege” would be established and withhold them from the public or GRAMA request.  This attempted blanket protection strategy is not backed up by law, and court cases have proven it illegal.

Attorney Eric Johnson – February 18, 2014 – City Council Work Session

Unlawful strategy to establish blanket “attorney client privilege” protection of public records by simple CC to city attorney

click here…  Attny Johnson -Council Work Session 18Feb2014.15.00

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Sam Bushman and his reasonable approach and persistent questioning, he clearly demonstrated a City determined to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours to discourage citizens attempting to access the public record for their friends and neighbors.   Through the arduous process of meetings, officious emails, delay, obfuscation and otherwise lack of responsiveness by the City, CHCRG members are convinced that Mayor Gary Gygi, the City attorney Eric Johnson, Council member Jenney Rees and other officials’ claim of “open, honest and transparent” government has been proven to them a hollow claim.

It was often said by those seeking the records, “For people who claim they have nothing to hide, these city officials sure work hard to try to discourage our getting the public record.”

In the end, the Daily Herald, CHCRG members and Sam Bushman prevailed in preserving a portion of the public record available by city policy on the city website at http://www.cedarhills.org/node/3258 , thanks to our combined efforts.

Thanks go out to Sam Bushman & Daily Herald for looking out for Cedar Hills residents!

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