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Los Angeles Times (The Times) is demanding the city by Mayor Karen Bass supposedly eliminating the texts in the midst of the response to Forest Fire in California.
The management of local officials of the crisis has been widely condemned as a California government accusationEspecially with the bass on a trip to Africa for the swear of Ghana’s president when the Palisades fire broke out on January 7. The mayor did not return to Los Angeles until January 8.
The Times sued the city of Los Angeles on Thursday, accusing the officials of violating the law by retaining and eliminating the text messages of the mayor and other records during forest fires.
In a news article about the newspaper’s own demand, Times Sonja Sharp staff writer reported“The city has already delivered many of the exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials sought by Times reporters. But officials have argued that they are not obliged to do so under the laws of state public records.”
“The Times did not agree,” Sharp wrote. “Empowering public officials to scrub their records or decide which are subject to the law establishes a dangerous precedent, argued Thursday’s demand.”
The Los Angeles government, Karen Bass, is now being sued by La Times. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
“It’s bigger than these text messages,” said the external lawyer of Times, Kelly Aviles. “The city seems to believe that they can destroy what they want whenever they want, and that they have no duty that the public retains public records.”
The Times reported that the mayor’s office, after saying initially, the texts were eliminated, “finally said he was able to recover the eliminated texts, and last week he provided around 125 messages, pointing out that an unspecified number of others was written and/or retained” based on exemptions to the law. “
The mayor’s lawyer, David Michaelson, told The Times, Julia Wick, that these so -called “ephemeral” texts were out of the reach of the Public Registries Law of California, and “cited a decision of the 1981 Supreme Court that issued ‘fleeting thoughts and random fragments of information’ as exempt from the requests for records.”
But Times argued that this does not apply to texts and other electronic communications.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, recently admitted that she regrets having been in Ghana while forest fires exploded in her city. (AP/Getty)
“The apparent position of the city that an official can eliminate text communication at any time as ‘ephemeral’ until a request for public records will be received would destroy the presumption of access to public records,” said the demand of the Times. “Everything that a public official would have to do to avoid public scrutiny is to destroy the texts immediately after creating them.”
The Times also reported that these are not the only records that have been destroyed, nor are they the only ones who are still active journalists.
It was said that the research reporter Alene Tchekmedyian had looked for “emails, text messages, reports, planning documents and notes, on fire planning and the resources to predict” the fire of the. Chief Kristin Crowley and their subordinates.
Similarly, the City Council reporter, David Zahniser, requested “correspondence copies with respect to emergency preparations, strong winds, forest fire conditions and the National Meteorological Service.”
The Times said: “Zahniser received some records, but not the text messages he had asked for. Tchekmedyian’s request was closed without the communications provided.”
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has been criticized for the city’s response to forest fires. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images | Photo by Alberto Rodríguez/Variety through Getty Images)
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Michaelson told him Fox News Digital In an email that “the mayor’s office has responded to hundreds of requests for public records since he was elected and we will continue to do so.
Fox News Digital also contacted to comment on the Times and the city’s lawyer, but did not receive an immediate response.
Stephen Soreace of Fox News contributed to this report.
