Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – After three years of litigation, the Alameda County Taxpayers’ Association and Oakland attorney Marleen Sacks obtained a favorable ruling from the Alameda County Superior Court last month requiring the City of Oakland to turn over more than 400 Measure AA public records that the City had been hiding for six years.
The ruling required the City of Oakland to turn over the documents, which related to the highly contested Measure AA from 2018, within 30 days. The documents were finally turned over on March 14, 2024. The documents contain evidence of multiple acts of wrongdoing by City officials, including former Mayor Libby Schaaf.
Under the California Constitution, public agencies are required to provide copies of public records in a prompt manner. Sacks had originally requested the documents in the spring of 2019, after the City Council certified Measure AA, a $198.00 parcel tax, as “passing,” even though it did not receive the advertised 2/3 approval from the voters.
After much delay, the City of Oakland provided a paltry number of documents, but then refused to mediate with Sacks regarding documents that appeared to be missing. (Mediation was required by the City’s own ordinance.) A lawsuit seeking disclosure of the withheld documents was filed in the fall of 2020. The contents of those documents now make clear why the City and Schaaf, who was sued in her personal as well as her official capacity, didn’t want the public to see them. The documents reveal the following:
1. Then Mayor Libby Schaaf was behind the decision to use the “Oakland Fund” for Measure AA campaign donations. The Oakland Ethics Commission has been investigating the misuse of this fund and serious violations of campaign finance rules, and recently recommended a fine against an Oakland Fund board member. https://oaklandside.org/2024/03/08/oakland-serious-violations-by-leaders-of-2018-childrens-initiative/
2. Multiple Oakland officials, including Schaaf, were using City resources to actively campaign and fundraise for Measure AA, in violation of existing law. This included use of City time, City email addresses, and City Hall space.
3. City employees would alternate between their work email addresses and personal email addresses, and between work hours and non-work hours for Measure AA activities. Schaaf used only a personal email address for all business, including City business, and fundraising and campaigning activities.
4. After Measure AA failed to garner the required 2/3 approval, Schaaf was actively trying to get supporters to convince the City Council to certify the measure as having passed anyway.
“It is appalling that it requires three years of litigation to force the City to turn over documents that should have been turned over five years ago,” said Sacks, in response to the recent court decision. “After finally getting to see the documents, it appears that the City and Schaaf were deliberately trying to hide the documents for questionable reasons. Schaaf probably knew the documents incriminated her in the pending ethics investigation. And the City didn’t want taxpayers to know the full extent to which Schaaf and others in City Hall were engaging in illegal campaigning using taxpayer funded resources.
They are sending emails on City computers in the middle of their workday trying to get donations so that they can pass another tax. This is not allowed, and citizens are entitled to know when public servants are violating the law. The City routinely and continually violates our Constitutional right to access public records; this problem was not limited to the Schaaf administration. Additional court intervention is required in order to protect that right,” Sacks said.
A further court hearing regarding ACTA’s request for court intervention on public records access is scheduled for March 19, 2024 in Alameda County Superior Court.
Post based on press release from Marleen L. Sacks.