REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on the City's Response to the 2018-2019 Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury Report: "City of Santa Clara Public Records Access: The Paper Chase"
Report
BACKGROUND
Based on a resident complaint, the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury ("Grand Jury") initiated an investigation of the City's and Santa Clara Stadium Authority's contracting procedures (Attachment1). It is important to note that the Complainant Form asks the complainant to "Please describe any previous attempts to resolve this complaint, including the agencies you contacted, and the action taken by the agencies. You may attach additional pages as necessary" (Attachment 2). Unfortunately, the Complainant made no attempt to resolve the serious allegations against the City of Santa Clara, nor did he seek any information about public sector procurement requirements from professional staff, which are complex in nature. City staff learned about the complaint from the media articles.
Although the Grand Jury did not find any wrong doing with the contracts that were the subject of the complaint, the investigating Grand Jurors began a review of the City's procurement processes in general. The Grand Jury stated that in the course of its investigation, they changed the focus of the investigation to the City's handling of requests for records under the California Public Records Act (CPRA). Given the Complainant's inflammatory communications with media about the City's handling of public records, this report will contain a full discussion of the City's practices and how they comply with the law.
On June 18, 2019, the Grand Jury published a report entitled "City of Santa Clara Public Records Access: The Paper Chase" (Attachment 3). The report contained four Findings and six Recommendations that require City response by September 16, 2019. Specifically, California Penal Code ? 933(c) requires that a governing body of the public agency, or department which has been the ...
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