Judge criticizes Newport Beach for hindering resident’s effort to get documents

An Orange County judge recently chastised the city of Newport Beach for making it unreasonably difficult for a resident to get documents he was seeking about a city-sponsored nonprofit.

According to his lawyer, Kent Moore spent years of his time and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to track down records related to the Newport Beach Sister City Assn.

“It should not have been this difficult,” Judge Linda S. Marks said during a Jan. 29 hearing, according to court transcripts.

Instead of working with Moore to hand over appropriate documents quickly and efficiently, “I have a governmental agency that says, ‘We’re going to produce everything we have, except we’re going to make it really difficult in how you go about getting that information,’” Marks said.

Moore, a former Sister City Assn. board member, filed a lawsuit in February 2015.

According to Moore, he had concerns about how children were chaperoned and how the group spent money during a 2010 trip to Antibes, France.

Moore claims expenses weren’t tracked and raised concerns that a teenager was able to buy a beer.

To investigate, Moore requested a wide range of documents — 21 separate categories spanning the years 2008 to 2014.

Moore’s lawyer, Melinda Luthin, said the city responded to Moore’s September 2014 request with 130 pages of documents.

But most of them, she said, were duplicates. It was also plainly apparent there were more documents that should’ve been turned over because the city omitted clearly critical paperwork such as grand applications the sister city’s organization uses to get funding from Newport Beach, Luthin said.

In February last year, Moore sued, and the city began producing more documents — more than 1,200 pages, according to Luthin.

Luthin said the city repeatedly said documents Moore wanted were destroyed or lost while the city moved offices.

“These are not your grandmother’s china,” Luthin said, dismissing the idea. “These are public records”

At one point, Luthin said, the city turned over a 50,000-page trove of records she had to comb through only to find that hardly any of the records pertained to sister cities.

City Attorney Aaron Harp said staff tried to work in good faith with Moore and handed over any records they found when they found them.

“It was challenging to find all the documents,” he said.

The records Moore asked for were relatively old, and other factors made them hard to gather.

“We moved city hall locations,” Harp said. “We’ve had turnover in employees.”

When Moore insisted there were more records, the city again tried to comply, according to Harp

“We put a ton of effort and a lot of city resources into finding these additional documents,” he said.

Moore disagrees, saying someone without the means to take Newport Beach to court would’ve been denied their right to see city records.

“For the city to use their deep pockets to fight and make us go through these many, many hoops all these months is unconscionable,” Moore said.

Marks’ ruling last month means Newport will have to turn over a final, relatively small batch of documents.

Instead of referencing documents the city says are already available on its website, Newport Beach will have to provide actual copies to Moore.

Newport Beach will also have to provide a copy of a city-authored report on the Antibes trip it claims to no longer have.

Moore discovered the report when he and Luthin subpoenaed the sister cities organization. Now that the city has a copy as well, it has to provide one to Moore.

Other than those two categories, Marks said the city has at this point fulfilled its responsibility to search for the sought-after public records.

Before adjourning, however, Marks told the lawyer representing Newport Beach to relay a message.

“You need to take back to the city the importance of providing the information that they may have in a manner that is transparent and that is a good use for taxpayer dollars,” Marks said, according to transcripts.