K.J. sues SN&R over controversial emails
by Cosmo Garvin
Kevin Johnson is suing SN&R and the city of Sacramento to block the release of emails between his office and lawyers involved in Johnson’s legal troubles with the National Conference of Black Mayors.
The litigation is meant to force SN&R to agree that the city should not disclose certain emails even though the city attorney has determined them to be public records. Failing that, Johnson’s attorney wants a Sacramento Superior Court judge to prohibit the city from releasing emails, which he believes are protected by attorney-client privilege.
Johnson’s attorney, David Pittinsky, with the Philadelphia-based law firm Ballard Spahr, threatened the legal action last week.
“We’re not suing you as a bad person,” he said during a phone call. “But we need to protect ourselves.”
Let’s back up. Regular readers may remember that SN&R filed a public-records request in March in order to better understand how and why the mayor’s staff uses a network of private Gmail accounts to do city business (read the story, “Special Delivery,” printed on April 23: http://tinyurl.com/KJsecretemail.)
You may also recall that Johnson has used city staff for many of his non-city projects. One of those was a takeover of the leadership of the National Conference of Black Mayors, which was described in a PowerPoint presentation to city staff as a “coup” (read my recent column, from June 11, titled “KJ Inc. strikes again”: http://tinyurl.com/KJincStrikesAgain.)
The NCBM takeover resulted in a nasty legal fight involving Johnson and aggrieved NCBM officials. Each of these separate threads—the parallel email accounts for the mayor’s staff, and the NCBM coup—show the remarkable extent to which Johnson uses city resources for non-city business.
In the course of reviewing documents for SN&R’s records request, deputy city attorney Michael Benner identified several emails between the mayor’s staff and Ballard Spahr—that’s the firm representing the mayor and the K.J. sues SN&R over controversial emails - Page Burner - July 1, 2015 - Blogs - Sacramento News & Review:
