Claremont Follies

City Attorney Action

We got to thinking about the Claremont City Attorney Sonia Carvalho's use of attorney-client privilege as a rationale for her refusal to release a copy of her complaint to Google about our "Labor Day" post. Carvalho's refusal came after
reporter Will Bigham at the Daily Bulletin requested the complaint.

A question for the lawyers among us: Can Carvalho assert a privilege of confidentiality for a third-party communication, one not between herself and her client (the city of Claremont)?


Daily Bulletin, Freedom Friday

The Daily Bulletin continued its coverage of the issue today with a front page, above-the-fold article skewering Carvalho's confidentiality argument. The Bulletin's graphic consisted a small stack of the pay stubs in questions with the names redacted.

The article, again by Bigham, is part of the Bulletin's ongoing Freedom Friday series. In the piece, Carvalho continues her revolving door reasons for withholding the information, having moved from the pay stubs are confidential to the stubs are copyrighted and, today, to asserting the privacy rights of city employees:

City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said the pay stubs contained private, personal information such as references to survivor benefits, use of vacation and sick time, and information on life-insurance benefits.

"Details as to how that employee directs his or her money - be it to a retirement plan, or to a union for dues, or for reimbursement for a holiday party - should not be released to the public for inspection and discussion," Carvalho said.

Public records experts interviewed by Bigham disputed Carvalho's contentions about the stubs:

But according to public- records experts who considered, item by item, the information included on city pay stubs, the documents are a public record that the city would be required to release upon request - with fewer redactions than Carvalho indicates should be made.

The pay stubs include a "grouping of little factoids about various little entitlements that (employees) have from the city, which says nothing about them as human beings or as city employees," said Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware.

The article pointed out as an example that the pay stub for City Manager Jeff Parker, one of two that we posted, contained no personal identifying information (Social Security numbers, dates of birth, etc....). It did quote Peter Scheer, executive director for the California First Amendment Coalition, as saying that bank routing numbers for the city's bank account might have to be redacted.


The Blogosphere Reacts

The story seemed to gain some traction in the Blogosphere and with journalists, two groups with huge stakes in the matter.

The USC Annenberg School of Journalism weighed in yesterday with a piece by Robert Niles questioning the city's copyright claim.

And the Foothill Cities blog has a great piece on the troubling way in which Google caved in to the city of Claremont and pulled the plug on the pay stubs without looking into the substance of the city's complaint. (Still no response from Google to our inquires into the exact text of Claremont's complaint.)

There's also a lively discussion on the FC post.

We've also received a lot of email, which we hope to get to this weekend.


Claremont PD Readies for Action

Meanwhile, we haven't been able to confirm if the Claremont Police Department has decided to activate it's vaunted CodeRed system in an effort to deal with Paystubgate.