The fallout from Karen Bass’ handling of the January wildfires continues with no end in sight. On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times filed a lawsuit against the City of L.A., accusing officials of deleting text messages sent to and from Mayor Bass during the crisis.
“The city has already turned over many of the exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials sought by Times reporters. But officials have argued they are not compelled to do so under state public records laws,” the publication said.
“The Times disagreed. Empowering public officials to scrub their records or to decide which are subject to the law sets a dangerous precedent, Thursday’s suit argued.”
According to Kelly Aviles, who is representing the Times, officials appear to believe they have the right to destroy “whatever they want whenever they want, and that they don’t have a duty to the public to retain public records.”
David Michaelson, counsel to the mayor, countered that the text messages were “ephemeral” in nature and fell outside the scope of the Public Records Act. Still, “the Mayor’s office released responsive texts to a PRA request from the Times last week and the Office will continue to respond to public record requests,” he added.
Read more about the lawsuit here.