Open Government in Mission Viejo – Part 1
by Dale Tyler

Open, Honest, Thrifty, Safe. Those are the words most of us would expect to describe our government. Unfortunately, government at all levels has failed to live up to these principles. The federal government, despite promises from the White House, is going trillions in debt, refuses to open the government to inspection by private citizens and hires new “czars” on an almost daily basis. Our state government is a financial train wreck, run by public employee unions for their own benefit with secrecy as their watchword. Even the Governor cannot see fit to release the reports filed by public workers about the massive waste in government. Mission Viejo follows the lead of the others and fails miserably on three of the four counts.

Last week I wrote an article on “Fiscal Responsibility.” It outlined how the city of Mission Viejo, led by three spendthrift members of the City Council, the City Manager and a number of department heads, is in the process of undermining the financial future of the city. However, that's not the only damage these people are doing. They have installed a culture of secrecy in city government, so that simple requests for information are stonewalled and delayed at every turn.

Over the years, I and others have made requests for documents that should have been easily obtainable in electronic form. Yet, in most cases, the city claimed that it would be difficult to search all of the appropriate files to satisfy the request. It seems ludicrous, given the millions of dollars we have spent on Information Technology, including fiber optic communications throughout the city, backup systems, imaging systems, file servers too numerous to count and a dedicated staff at least twice as large as a similar sized private organization would have, to be unable to produce emails, scans of memos and communications from other agencies. Yet, requests for “all documents, including internal emails” routinely produce only a handful of documents. One such request, for information of the electronic sign board, produces less than a handful of emails, even though this was a “pet project” of city staff and was frequently discussed in staff meetings.

Other requests are met with phony claims of “privilege” and various exemptions. Few, if any, of these would hold up if challenged in court, but city staff members know that citizens only have a certain amount of money and can't fight for every document. However, the point is that the citizens should not have to battle the bureaucrats of Mission Viejo for information that should be freely available.

In another case, a recording of a public meeting was requested to be made available at the city library. The staff refused, saying instead that they would only make the tape available in a room in City Hall and that anyone who wished to hear the tape would have to remain at City Hall for the entire four-hour duration of the recording instead of listening to the tape at home. Or, one could pay $40 to buy the public information. Why was the staff so opposed to the public hearing what went on at that meeting? Perhaps it was because there was pressure from certain council members whose friends were being given a $7M boondoggle.

The city does a few things right when it comes to public disclosure. It does put all of the backup agenda material online for the City Council meetings and recordings of those meetings for public viewing. However, it does not provide any recordings online for any of the subsidiary commissions, including the Planning Commission, the Investment Advisory Commission or the Community Services Commission. As stated above, if one wants to hear the details of any of these meetings, one must either pay an exorbitant fee or cool one's heels at city hall for hours.

Despite the bright spots in the city staff's handling of public disclosure, the usual pattern is to limit access whenever it would be embarrassing to city officials or the City Council. In many cases, the City Clerk's office is simply following orders given by our somewhat secretive City Attorney not to disclose documents that would put him or other management in poor light. In other cases, there is a campaign of deliberate carelessness undertaken by departments such as the Public Services department under Keith Rattay to hide information that the public wants to know. The Clerk's office can only provide what it is given by other departments, which is why so many requests have inadequate responses.

I'd like to see the Clerk's office be given the power to force disclosures on behalf of citizens, to be able to cause disciplinary actions up to and including termination for any member of the city staff who failed to keep good records and to be free of any interference by the City Attorney. I would also like the presumption be that documents are to be disclosed unless there is clear evidence that disclosure would violate a very small list of exemptions. One can dream, can't one?