Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 67
President Wilshire
Yes, we could do that Alderman Lopez. Thank you.
O-20-032
Endorser: Alderman-at-Large Brandon Laws
Alderman Tom Lopez
Alderman Jan Schmidt
Alderman Skip Cleaver
Alderwoman-at-Large Shoshanna Kelly
Alderwoman Elizabeth Lu
REDUCING THE FINE FOR OVERNIGHT PARKING VIOLATIONS
Given its first reading; assigned to the PERSONNEL/ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS COMMITTEE by
President Wilshire
PERIOD FOR GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT
President Wilshire
Ms. Ortolano, please?
Laurie Ortolano Hi, | wanted to just provide a little clarification to some comments made regarding the Right
to Know position. | think the City and the Legal Office in particular have created a very expensive process
for wnat’s happened here. Any general request, certainly from me, that isn’t even a Right to Know was
sent to Legal and for quite some time they were responding to general inquiries with denials because they
didn’t constitute Right to Know questions, which | was aware of. | wrote a number of Memos, really
frustrated to stop the lunacy, and asked them to stop doing thatbecause | didn’t know. If | asked fora
phone number and | gave you that example, it went up to Legal to be responded to. | just found that
ludicrous. | can tell you | e-mailed the newspapers and | asked them wnat their process is. | gota
response back from a reporter who told me in 10 years they’ve only had to file like 5 Right to Knows. They
go right to the City Division and ask for anything they want and they use Carrie Miller if they need direction
through the Mayor's Office on where to go. And that is works beautifully, requires no written
communications or instructions. And if the press can get information that easily, so should the public.
| also think the City has practiced very aggressively, the Legal Office, malicious compliance. Unlike any
other Government Group I’ve seen, they will not communicate with the public to clarify a request. So Ms.
Colquhoun and got on and told you howshe asked for open permits. Apparently, they couldn’t search for
just open that would have been like compiling but they didn’t communicate that to her and they sent her
31,000 records, which she would not have taken. But there was no option to say no and somebody worked
on that. Just to let you know, I’ve sent you all the letters from Attorney Lehmann regarding the transcript.
We never asked for the transcript, he asked for the audio/video recordings, period. We got a response
back within 6 days from Celia Leonard saying that they were going to transcribe them. And that was fine,
that was on June 8". We really believed that within a month we’d have those. It’s almost four months now
and we still don’t have that information. If | knew it was going to take them that long or be too expensive, |
would have paid for it and found the transcriber. It has taken the City almost 3 months to find a transcriber.
| am not certain why it took so long. But! can tell you my husband through his business, accesses these
people like nothing. And they are not expensive services anymore. So | would have moved that along to
help but the option wasn’t there for us.
Also, | think the biggest problem happened when you promoted somebody into the Assessing Office as the
Manager who had no understanding of Right to Knowor what public information was down there. Thatis
probably your biggestissue here and what caused all the problems.
As far as all of the pages requested, | can tell you that the City produced for discovery, 15,000 documents
that | have requested since they have been collecting them and they sent to my attorney and |. And | went
