In the first City Council meeting of the New Year and in comments on this blog, Irvine City Council member Christina Shea cited a letter from the Irvine City Attorney clearing her to do government relations work on behalf of her clients including KIA Motors. Last week, TheLiberalOC filed a Public Records request with the city asking for a copy of the document to see exactly what it said. The City contacted TheLiberalOC today to say “there are non-privileged documents responsive to your request.” So if a document does exist, the public can’t see it because it falls under attorney-client privilege.
Shea wrote in the comment to our post last week: “You failed to state our City Attorney provided me with an extensive response to my request to look into thiese (sic) recent accusations. They wrote a determination that stated I did not violate any local laws or ethics rules or policies.”
Hard to state something like that without seeing it Ms. Transparency.
Given Ms. Shea’s documented history of getting details wrong (saying she voted for the 2006 ethics ordinance when published reports indicate otherwise) and inflating facts to suit her agenda, we’re calling on her to waive her privilege and release the letter to us and the public to show us exactly what the city attorney has cleared her and how they don’t violate laws, ethics rules or policies.
If Shea won’t release the document herself, the City Council can release the memo to the public with a simple majority vote.
Put up or shut up.
“there are non-privileged documents responsive to your request.”
Huh?
Doesn’t that mean that there ARE documents which are NOT privileged – and therefore SHOULD be available to the public ???
That is what it sounds like to me. If the documents are non-privileged then the public should be able to view them.
kind of hard for Shea to say “the city attorney cleared me” and the public can’t see what was cleared. Pretty simple: she can release the document. I’ll venture to guess, it clears her of some things and warns her about other activity
If the City says “non-privileged” wouldn’t that mean that they are NOT attorney-client privileged?
The statement from the City as to whom the docs are “non-privileged” to.