Times continues the city on the deleted text messages from the mayor of Bass

The Los Angeles Times filed a legal action Thursday against the city of the, accusing those responsible for retaining and illegally deleting the text messages from the mayor and other public archives of Firestorm in January.

The city has already given numerous exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials sought by Times journalists. But officials argued that they are not forced to do so under the laws on the public files of the State.

Times did not agree. The empowerment of civil servants to rub their files or to decide which are subject to the law establishes a dangerous precedent, explained the trial on Thursday.

“It’s bigger than these text messages,” said Kelly Aviles, external lawyer for Times. “The city seems to believe that they can destroy what they want when they wish and that they do not have the duty towards the public to keep the public archives.”

Policy journalist Julia Wick and investigative journalist Matt Hamilton joined the action as residents of Los Angeles, aimed at preventing city officials from destroying protected equipment.

Bass was in Ghana when the fires broke out on January 7. She joined a delegation from the Biden administration by waving the new president of the country, despite the warnings concerning the explosive potential of the incoming winds of Santa Ana.

This choice may well decide on his political future. The exchanges published by Times this week gave the first clear image of the first actions of the mayor while the city caught fire and burned.

However, these exchanges with its staff and senior officials could have stayed secret, because Bass messages had been depressed automatically after 30 days – much shorter than the two -year retention period described in the city’s administrative code.

The officials initially told Wick that these texts did not exist, then said they had been deleted. After months of back and forth with the newspaper, the mayor’s office finally declared that he had been able to recover the deleted texts, and last week provided approximately 125 messages, noting that an unpertified number of others were “expurgated and / or hidden” according to the exemptions from the law.

“The mayor’s office responded to hundreds of requests from public files since she was elected and we will continue to do so,” said David Michaelson, lawyer for the mayor. “The mayor’s office published reactive texts to a PRA request from Times last week and the office will continue to respond to requests for public files.”

However, Michaelson told Wick that the texts were out of reach of California Public Records Act.

The mayor’s texts were “ephemeral”, said Michaelson to Wick in an email on March 7, and therefore protected against public control. He quoted a decision of the 1981 Supreme Court which launched “ephemeral thoughts and random information” as exempt from requests for files.

But this decision does not apply to text messages of officials and other electronic communications, said lawyers. In a time of life or death decisions taken on 6 -inch screens, the pursuit of the newspaper argues that what politicians hit with two inches are as durable as what they write by hand. Under the Californian law, any writing on public affairs, whatever the format, is covered by the law of files and must be returned.

“The apparent position of the city according to which an official can delete text communication at any time as” ephemeral “until a request for public files would destroy the presumption of access to public archives,” said the Times trial. “All that a civil servant should do to avoid a public examination is to destroy the texts immediately after having created them.”

The mayor’s texts are not the only records that the town hall seems to have destroyed, alleged the trial. Nor are they the only ones that journalists from the newspaper are still looking for their current fire investigation.

On January 9, investigative journalist Alene Tchekmedyian asked for “emails, text messages, reports, planning documents and service notes – on fire planning and predependent resources” of the head of the firefighters, Kristin Crowley and his subordinates.

On February 19, the journalist of the Town Hall, David Zahnisc, asked for “copies of correspondence concerning emergency preparations, violent winds, forest conditions and the National Weather Service” involving the president of the municipal council Marquece Harris-Dawson while he was interim mayor in the absence of Bass.

Zahnische received recordings, but not the SMS he had requested. Tchekmedyian’s request was closed without any communication provided.

Questions about how American leaders communicate and what happens to these exchanges has acquired a new emergency this week after senior White House officials revealed that they had wrongly added a journalist to their group cat cat while planning an air raid in Yemen.

Thursday, the judge of the American district James E. Boasberg ordered the participants of this cat to save the exchange in its entirety and to put their files.

The shade of these documents of the laws on public files on the argument that they are ephemeral and without consequences defies reality, said the lawyer for the Times.

“What you need to keep and what you have to return is based on the content of the communication, not the form or the way of the communication you choose to use,” said Aviles.

The costume aims to ensure that important files “are not only destroyed according to the city”.