District 1 Supervisor Ally Miller’s office has submitted three additional public records requests to the county, adding to what several officials said was already the “largest” public records request in county history.
The requests, copies of which were provided to the Star by the county, are similar to the seven her office filed in mid-July. Clerk of the Board Robin Brigode said that more than 130,000 emails were responsive to the first round of requests, though Deputy Clerk of the Board Julie Castañeda did not have an estimate of how many more emails and other materials were responsive to the new round.
The latest requests seeks the emails, social media messages, call logs, text messages and other materials sent or received between July 13 and Sept. 30 by District 3 Supervisor Sharon Bronson and all of her staff members, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and all members of his staff, and employees of the county’s communications department. The date range for the previous round was May 1 through July 13.
Castañeda said her office hopes to work through the original request by the end of October, but added that there was no certainty they would be able to do so. She also said the newest request would get worked into responding to other outstanding requests.
“It will be in our workflow,” she said.
Brigode previously told the Star the requests were “using up a lot of our resources” and Huckelberry previously estimated that the costs of responding to the first request would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“It’s a huge fishing expedition for no purpose, other than political, at the expense of the taxpayer,” Huckelberry told the Star Friday.
Miller did not respond to requests for comment.
Her office’s first request came amid a controversy involving Miller and her staff’s use of private email to conduct public business and reluctance to turn over materials responsive to records requests made by several local media outlets, including the Star.
Emails provided to the Star and others show Miller regularly corresponding with staff members since 2013 via personal email and social media accounts, one of several measures she wrote were necessary to avoid the “prying eyes” of the county. She denied conducting county business with her personal email in a June 20 email to Brigode.
