Paso Robles councilman turns over 5,000 public records after court order
Councilmember Chris Bausch has turned over more than 5,000 emails and text messages to the city of Paso Robles, fulfilling a court order issued amid The Tribune's public records lawsuit against both parties.
The next step is for the city to review the documents and determine if anything should be withheld from its perspective, before releasing the bulk to The Tribune.
The Tribune filed its lawsuit after multiple requests for public records stored on Bausch's personal devices went unfulfilled — and after city attorney Elizabeth Hull told The Tribune in February that the councilman had 'explicitly refused' to follow public records law without a court order.
But now, after the order was issued by Judge Michael Kelley on May 9, Bausch appears to have turned over the sum of his responsive public records to the city.
Robert Egger, the attorney representing the city, confirmed during a court hearing Thursday that Bausch produced documents on May 16 — the day after the court's official deadline. The delay was caused by technological issues related to the file sizes, Egger said.
The Tribune has yet to see any of Bausch's records — but it should soon.
Kelley ordered the city to deliver an initial production of documents by June 6, with the remainder to be delivered by June 16.
Egger's statements during court were consistent with comments provided by Bausch during Tuesday night's Paso Robles City Council meeting, where he delineated exactly how many records were turned over.
'I think everybody will be pleased to know that I have finally delivered all relevant and nonprivileged documents requested ... aka the PRA requests as submitted by the SLO Tribune and all others,' Bausch began.
'When all was said and done, I have reviewed nearly 60,000 emails, many of them multiple times due to the redundancy of the SLO Tribune's searches,' he continued. 'I have labeled the responsive documents according to their respective PRA requests, again, often irrespective of the redundancy of the request. I have submitted over 2,000 emails that, when combined, clocked in at over 1.5 gigabytes.'
Bausch added that when he attempted to upload the documents to the city server, the system requested that he compress the files. He began that process on May 15, the court's deadline, but did not finish the process until May 16, he said.
'As to the text messages, I reviewed over 26,863 text messages, extracting 3,763 responsive conversations that, when printed out, take up 743 pages,' Bausch reported. 'All of these have been submitted to BBK for their review.'
BBK is Best Best & Krieger, the city's law firm.
According to Egger, Bausch's text messages were delivered to the city in PDF format, which could make the process of reviewing and redacting them more complicated.
Egger also added during court that some of the email files were duplicates. After extracting those, the city was left with around 1,000 nonduplicative emails, he said.
It was unclear from Bausch's comments during City Council whether or not he withheld any documents due to privilege exemptions that he determined himself — a point Egger also brought up during court.
If Bausch did make his own privilege determinations, Kelley said he would be required to provide a privilege log — a document that typically outlines what records were withheld and what exemptions they fell under.
Kelley also asked Bausch to file a signed declaration attesting to the thoroughness of his search to the court by May 30. The declaration should affirm that Bausch turned over all responsive and nonprivileged documents, Kelley said.
Bausch was represented Thursday by his new attorney, Craig Robson. The councilman had previously been representing himself in the case after the city elected not to do so. Robson said during court that he believed the city should have been representing Bausch 'from day one.'
Robson was amenable to the court's requests that Bausch submit a declaration as well as a privilege log if the situation requires.
The next court hearing in The Tribune's case was set for June 27.
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