Cote's Chronicle Communications (and more) - Immediate Disclosure Request

Dennis Herrera, John Cote, and Office of City Attorney:

Pursuant to the California Public Records Act and Sunshine Ordinance, I hereby request the following records:

- all communications of any form between anyone in your office and anyone at the SF Chronicle or SF Examiner on govt or personal property since Jan 1 2020 to present, EXCLUDING emails sent by your office simultaneously to at least 5 different media outlets (I don't need your mass-mailed press release distributions), EXCLUDING publicly visible (but not private/restricted) social media posts, and EXCLUDING emails received by your office from the Chronicle or Examiner automatically (such as their news alerts or daily releases). Text/group/chat/instant/private/direct messages may be provided as a single entire thread since Jan 1 2020 or as individual messages -- as long as you provide at least the names of participants, dates and time stamps, texts, images, audio, video, and attachments (in their own original electronic format). Each individual email record must be provided (and not only the final message in a thread, which does not constitue an exact copy of each prior email in such thread; see SOTF 19121 where SOTF ruled providing a copy of a forward of an email does not constitue a copy of the original forward-ed email) as an exact PDF copy showing the To/From/Cc/Bcc, email addresses, attachments (which must be provided in their own original electronic form as an exact copy, which is possible if you simply preserve the attachment embeddings), images, formatting, hyperlinks, and date/time stamps for that email. Other email headers are not presently requested. Since you provided this information outside of the City you cannot withhold any of the information from me, including any native format attachments. Do not merge, rename, compress, combine, disassociate, or flatten any records - which erases or, worse, alters some of the metadata and does not constitute an exact copy of the original record. Search all Recycle Bin / deleted / trash folders or archives.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

Provide rolling response. You cannot wait until you have the entire set of records ready for production.

Preserve the ORIGINAL records pending the completion of all appeals.

If you fail to distinguish between specific exemptions, such as Evid Code 1040(b)(1) vs 1040(b)(2) - a complaint will be filed no matter what else happens. Be specific and don't wait to take a position until after a complaint is filed. Not all "official information" as defined in Evid Code 1040(a) is in fact exempt.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 calendar days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,
🦌

My purposes are (a) to prevent you from destroying interesting records (which you cannot do when responsive to a request) and (b) to determine how close your office, Dennis Herrera, and John Cote, are, personally and professionally, with the reporters that cover you and how often you selectively give the Chronicle inside info (the Examiner being the next closest competitor), (c) to determine how often you request that the press keep information from the rest of the public (embargo), (d) to determine how often and in what way you criticize reporters for their stories.

Two options, and you may wish to do both:

Option 1: If there is some broad chunk of communications that you believe wouldn't help determine (b) (c) or (d), and you can describe that portion clearly, I may be able to willing to add it to my original request's list of exclusions as well (similar to the exclusions of the generic mass emails).

Option 2: If and only if your office agrees, in writing, to preserve all responsive records to my original request, you may first provide in rolling fashion the following narrowing:
1) emails containing any of the words "embargo" "embarogoed" "sensitive" "confidential" "draft" "secret" "secure" "privilege" "privileged" (and all of their attachments)
2) all of the non-govt-email communications requested (i.e. all texts/chats/etc. and personal email) (and all of their attachments)
After that, I may decide that I do not need the remainder of the request.

Nothing you have provided the Chronicle/Examiner should be secret (or can still be secret per CPRA waiver of privilege rules), so you really shouldn't have to redact much, if anything.

CORRECTION, I had a typo:

My purposes are (a) to prevent you from destroying interesting records (which you cannot do when responsive to a request) and (b) to determine how close your office, Dennis Herrera, and John Cote, are, personally and professionally, with the reporters that cover you and how often you selectively give the Chronicle inside info (the Examiner being the next closest competitor), (c) to determine how often you request that the press keep information from the rest of the public (embargo), (d) to determine how often and in what way you criticize reporters for their stories.

Two options, and you may wish to do both:

Option 1: If there is some broad chunk of communications that you believe wouldn't help determine (b) (c) or (d), and you can describe that portion clearly, I may be able to willing to add it to my original request's list of exclusions as well (similar to the exclusions of the generic mass emails).

Option 2: If and only if your office agrees, in writing, to preserve all responsive records to my original request, you may first provide in rolling fashion the following narrowing:
1) govt emails containing any of the words "embargo" "embargoed" "sensitive" "confidential" "draft" "secret" "secure" "privilege" "privileged" (and all of their attachments)
2) all of the non-govt-email communications requested (i.e. all texts/chats/etc. and personal email) (and all of their attachments)
After that, I may decide that I do not need the remainder of the request.

Nothing you have provided the Chronicle/Examiner should be secret (or can still be secret per CPRA waiver of privilege rules), so you really shouldn't have to redact much, if anything.

Are you using either of the options above or just going to give everything?

This is a 67.21(d) petition to determine in writing that the records requested in the attachment are public and order them disclosed.
No records have been produced in 6 months.