The city of Richmond has dropped a lawsuit it filed against its own mayor — after spending nearly six months and hundreds of thousands of dollars in court trying to muzzle him from blasting out confidential city emails and related secrets on his personal blog.
Mayor Tom Butt’s e-Forum blog, in which he shares all city doings that he thinks the public deserves to know, has rankled city officials and a majority of City Council members who have felt the sting of his acerbic barbs and believe he blabs too much about what goes on behind closed doors.
On Tuesday, Butt voted against paying the law firm that sued him and ridiculed fellow council members for authorizing the suit in the first place.
“That’s $400,000 of taxpayer money that the City Council has spent trying to find some way to get to me, and they’ve come up with nothing,” Butt said about the lawsuit and an investigation of an employee’s complaints against him. “I don’t really care what you guys do — if you want to litigate this thing for the next 10 years, go for it. Come on. If you want to cut your losses and put your tail between your legs and walk off, then that’s fine, too.”
Butt revealed on his Nov. 5 blog that four council members known as the Richmond Progressive Alliance unsuccessfully tried to sway the city attorney to support a lawsuit that claimed the city never should have approved a controversial mixed-use development at Point Molate.
The plaintiffs — a coalition of community and environmental groups — alleged that the development was illegally negotiated behind closed doors by a previous City Council. The Richmond Progressive Alliance council members also oppose the planned Point Molate project.
Butt, who has served more than two decades on the council, claimed the council members’ efforts to block the project risked “bankrupting the city” by breaching contracts already approved with the developers.
And on Nov. 16, the mayor published previously classified findings of a nearly two-year investigation that exonerated him after a city employee accused him of discrimination, retaliation, corrupt conduct and abuse of power related to the development of a visitor center in Richmond.
For ignoring the former city attorney’s letters ordering him to cease and desist from publishing confidential information on his blog, Butt was censured by the council Nov. 23 on grounds that he was “breaching his duty as mayor.”
But Butt’s unwavering refusal to delete his old blog posts or refrain from divulging more information led the city’s new attorney to recommend that the council just drop the case.
The council agreed and voted 4-2 Tuesday to spend about $290,000 from the city’s general fund to pay the Oakland-based law firm Meyers Nave for its legal services. Butt said the city paid an additional $100,000 to investigate the city employee’s complaint against him.
He and Councilmember Nathaniel Bates voted against paying the law firm, and Councilmember Melvin Willis was absent.
Bates said he voted no because the case was “about the most idiotic thing I’ve heard and seen in my career. This was a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, simple as that.”
However, several Richmond city officials and the four council members who launched the suit argue that Butt doesn’t have the right to waive attorney-client privilege on behalf of the city — a breach they say irreparably threatens their ability to govern openly and candidly.
Butt’s critics contend the turmoil caused by his blog revelations and his public dressing-down of city employees who have tried to resolve the fallout have contributed to high staff turnover and low morale in Richmond City Hall, including the departures of former city attorney Teresa Stricker and former city manager Laura Snideman.
“The example that the mayor is setting is that everybody can do whatever they want, break whatever (rules they want) and it’s fine as long as you are a white male that has money to pay these (legal) fees,” Councilmember Claudia Jimenez said at the meeting.
Butt counters that although the Brown Act open meetings law generally prohibits public disclosure of confidential information acquired in closed sessions, it allows elected officials to go straight to the public about any issues they deem detrimental or illegal.
Butt said he has refused to quash the posts because they’re part of his constitutionally protected speech, even if they ruffle the city’s feathers.
After numerous fruitless attempts to craft a solution, City Attorney Dave Aleshire said at Tuesday’s meeting that fighting over a blog wasn’t a wise use of limited financial resources, especially as the city faces other lawsuits and challenges such as a looming budget deficit, staff vacancies and salary raises.
Vice Mayor Eduardo Martinez, who is campaigning to become mayor next year, asserted that all of the drama stemmed from Butt’s disregard for anything other than his own desires.
“It is really unfortunate and dishonest to color one’s obstinance – one’s pigheadedness – as the fault of someone else,” Martinez said. “This would have been over a long time ago if the mayor had just accepted the judgment, which was that he was in the wrong. I think we’ve done the best that we can, and whatever the mayor does after this just shows the kind of person he is.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com