Former K.J. special assistant reveals email and elections wrongdoing inside mayor's office
R.E. Graswich is more than just Hawaiian-print shirts and local sports takes. For instance, after the former Sacramento Bee columnist left the hive, he did a stint under Mayor Kevin Johnson at City Hall.
From 2009 through 2012, Graswich was part of K.J.'s inner circle, a senior adviser. He also briefly worked at Johnson’s nonprofit, Think Big, in 2013, where he focused on Kings arena matters.
Perhaps as much as anyone inside the mayor’s world, Graswich understands its ebb-and-flow. He reached out to SN&R last week to discuss K.J.'s email problem—the mayor’s blurring of private and public business (and even elections work) inside his office.
Graswich says that, just days after he joined the mayor as “special assistant,” former Chief of Staff Kunal Merchant (who now is a vice president with the Sacramento Kings) set him up with a private Gmail account.
Graswich says Gmail was his “main form of communiation” with fellow K.J. staff.
The mayor’s spokespeople have repeatedly stated that Johnson and staff use CityOfSacramento.org emails for public business, and then Gmail accounts (with the OMKJ label for Office of Mayor Kevin Johnson) for private work. They insist that there is a separation, that the lines don’t get blurred, and they they follow all state, city and Fair Political Practices Commission rules.
Graswich, however, painted a dissenting portrait of operations inside K.J.'s City Hall.
He told SN&R, for instance, that the mayor and staff used Gmail for everything. He says he did “more than 80 percent” of his communications via Gmail.
“Gmail was our bullet-proof method of communication beyond the reach of the city and the public,” Graswich told SN&R via phone.
Why Gmail? He says that the mayor and senior staff had “a real paranoia”about keeping their conversations away from others at City Hall, especially fellow council members. “We really wanted to separate ourselves from the bureaucracy, from the apparatus. Nobody trusted the CityofSacramento.org.”
The mayor did not have a city-provided computer in his office, nor did he carry a city cell phone (he had two of his own personal phones), according to Graswich. “He would not use any city equipment whatsoever.”
The former adviser says they never discussed using Gmail to avoid public-records inquiries. “It was an underlying motive, but it was never explicitly stated.”
He claims that mayoral adviser, attorney Jeffrey Dorso, advised that Team K.J. should “be careful” using Gmail, and that they shouldn’t assume their messages would remain private for ever. “’Don’t do stupid things,'” Graswich says Dorso advised.
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