Activist turns up heat in legal battle over ballpark emails

A local lawyer wanted to see emails about city council’s decision to bring a new baseball park to El Paso. When the Texas Attorney General ordered the city to release the emails, the city filed suit to block the order. But the lawyer who started it all says the city had no authority to sue.

It’s been a heated debated for months and it could still be going on even after ground is broken for the city’s new ballpark.

“I wanted to let the El Paso citizens know after much deliberation,I decided to go ahead and file an intervention,” said Stehpanie Allala, local attorney and political activist.

Allala is asking for a judge to allow a new open records request to see how and under what authority the city filed its lawsuit against the state, because she says, the council failed to follow state law.

“I can find no public record where the City of El Paso deliberated and took a vote to actually file suit against the attorney general,” said Allala.

Allala claims such a lawsuit should have been discussed in a open meeting and gone to a vote by the city council.

“I’m asking the city to show that they had legal authority to file this lawsuit,” said Allala.

She tells ABC-7some council members say the city attorney has a broad authority to protect the city.

“That’s not good enough.Thats not what Texas law says,” said Allala.

The city’s lawsuit against the Texas Attorney General stemmed from Allala’s original request for emails having to do with the city’s planned ballpark.

Allala tells ABC-7, “AllI asked for was all communication by and among the city council reps and the city manager and the mayor on their personal as well as their professional emails.”

But some city council members didn’t want disclose personal emails.

“They claim they are on personal accounts and contain embarrassing information. And what the attorney general said (was) if the information is embarrassing, you shouldn’t have included it in a email discussion about city business,” said Allala.

City representative Steve Ortega disagrees with the request.

“The whole justification for the email open request was allegations of dirty dealings with the baseball,” said Ortega.

Ortega claims those accusations of dirty dealings don’t hold up.

“That has not come to fruition, andI think that’s a big chunk of the story;these baseless allegations. There’s nothing there,” Ortega says. “This was done right; above board. At the end of the day, the community is going to win because were going to have a triple-a baseball team here in El Paso in 2014.”

Allala tellsABC-7 that the emails she has requested should be in her handswithin a few weeks.