Opinion: A Citizens Right to Know

Updated: April 12, 2012
Through a Public Information Act request, I received and have updated the total the costs for March and April of 2012 from the City of Alamo Heights regarding the legal costs in the Chase Bank/ West property and Huddleston vs. City of Alamo Heights lawsuit.

The Civil Court Docket (Cause No. 2011-CI-18180) shows this timeline of the case:
14 Nov 2011 – Case filed by Glenn Huddleston
21 Nov 2011 – Answer for suit filed by the City of Alamo Heights
6 Mar 2012 – (Custodian) Affidavit of Jennifer Reyna, City Secretary

No other action has been formally taken in this case. While the increase of billings in February should indicate the City was mounting some type of defense, the lack of billings in March and lack of pleadings filed shows the City has not really responded to the initial case.

It is fair to ask just how much longer will the City let Dr. and Mrs. West and Chase bank swing in the wind and just how much more taxpayer money will be wasted on this case? From the beginning, my one fear about this case is that the City would do nothing and hope that Chase bank gives up and walk away, rendering the lawsuit moot. It seems that is exactly the strategy the City has adopted.

Updated: March 5, 2012
I have received a response to my PIA request of 10 February 2012 seeking additional invoices from the City of Alamo Heights on regarding the legal costs in the Chase Bank/ West property and Huddleston vs. City of Alamo Heights lawsuit. To expedite matters, I only requested the first and last pages of each statement, enabling the City to meet my request without involving the Attorney General again and delaying the release of information.  
The summary of all charges through January 31, 2012 is below:

February 16, 2012
A Citizens Right to Know
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot sums up the PIA process aptly in the introduction to the Public Information 2012 Handbook.
“James Madison once wrote, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” The best way for the people to arm themselves with that knowledge is for government to maintain openness in its dealings. Texas places a high priority on government openness, and the Public Information Act (PIA) is the primary law that requires it.”

As a voter seeking to make informed decisions, I follow all the legal requirements to obtain information from the City of Alamo Heights for public information.  Information sought and received directly from the city is more reliable than a website without attribution or word of mouth. Voters must be weary of their sources of information The August 2011 Advocate believed there should be limits to PIA requests and to what it deemed “a few people’s obsessions”. I do not believe that a desire to be informed is an “obsession” on anyone’s part. It is our right under the law.

Subsequent issues of the Advocate printed what we were led to believe to be all the PIA requests to the City on the dates listed, with the exception of Mr. Joseph’s own PIA requests, which he said were edited  “to save space”. But here the voter must question the Advocate as a reliable source.

I submitted a PIA request to the City of Alamo Heights on 28 October 2011 relating to the Chase Bank/ West case. I was seeking the amount of taxpayer funds spent to defend the decision of the Board of Adjustments in the Glenn Huddleston/Chase Bank litigation. I was also interested in seeing that the City was not dragging its feet and is vigorously defending our City ordinances. If the City had adopted a passive approach in hopes that Chase Bank would abandon its plans and render the lawsuit moot, we, the taxpayer, could be on the hook for far more serious and expensive litigation from the injured parties, Dr. and Mrs. West.

But, my October 28th PIA does not appear in the January Advocate, which covered PIA requests from October 25th through December 20th. When I made a PIA request for the same time period, my October 28th submission was included. It seems that editing is more widely used than the Advocate editor has disclosed. My October 28th  request was appealed to the Texas Attorney General by Alamo Heights City Attorney Michael Brenan on the 10th of November 2011 and on the 17th of January 2012 the Attorney General ruled that the information I sought had to be disclosed, with very limited redactions.

The result of my request is that I now know that the City spent a total of $35,450.50 on this case through September 16, 2011. The invoices were $28,611.00 in August 2011 and $6,890.50 in September 2011. These amounts cover the case through the TRO process but do not include legal charges related to the civil lawsuit filed in District Court on the 14th of November 2011 by Mr. Huddleston against the City of Alamo Heights.

It is important for taxpayers to be able to judge the fiscal impact of the actions of our elected officials and the ordinances they sponsored and passed. It is important for voters to understand on whose behalf Council members are working.  In the interest of helping others to stay aware of the PIA requests, I am attaching every request (see pdf) as given me by the City from October 25th through January 31, 2012, unedited and without commentary.

And I have submitted yet another PIA requesting the costs of the legal fees on Huddleston versus the City of Alamo Heights from October through January 31, 2012. We will see if this gets edited out by the Advocate. ..because this is about truth, transparency and a citizen’s right to know.