Council Divided Over Open Records Requests
christmas./ the city council again called petty and dysfunctional. this week, the bickering was about open records requests. abc-7’s maria garcia live with details: it’s pretty unheard of for city reps to file open records requests. because they have access to city information. yet city rep lily limon has submitted six open records requests and michiel noe three. critics of the council have said filing open records requests to get information on each other, shows the dysfunction of city council. . city rep emma acosta proposed today that anytime a city rep submits an open records request to the city: that the public know about it. she wants those requests to be posted on council’s meeting agendas. along with information on how much it cost to respond to the request and how much the city rep. paid for the information. she said that since the city reps have access to city information, something must be wrong if they’re submitting open records requests and the public should know about it. limon said she’s had to file open records requests because information has not been provided to her when she’s asked for it: lily limon: “there was colleague referencing an email between that colleague and the former city manager and i asked for that twice in two different formats and there was no responsive documents. so that says one thing either they weren’t produced or someone wasn’t telling the truth” emma acosta: “this is not intended to point fingers at anyone or indicate that anyone is doing anything improperly i think it’s only for transparency and for purposes of letting the public know what our concerns are. the public has a right to know what we’re concerned about and why that information is not forthcoming to us.” in one of her requests, limon had asked for acosta’s office budget for the last ten years – saying she’s concerned it’s gone over budget. acosta and the city’s budget director have provided documents to abc-7 showing it’s not over budget. you can read more about that in my story on kvia.com right now. acosta’s motion passed with reps. romero, niland and noe voting with her. limon opposed it. and reps. ordaz and svarzbein abstained. svarzbein said the city had more important things to focus on. more issues with the re-design of downtown el paso’s san jacinto plaza … today, a
