City’s Website in Violation of California Campaign Law
Failure to Post All Bauters Campaign Documents
Election campaign forms for Emeryville City Council candidates are supposed to be kept on file for public viewing but campaign documents regarding former Council candidate John Bauters are entirely missing from the City’s website, a violation of state law. The City is required to make all of these documents available to the public on its website but Emeryville is in violation because at least two are not viewable at all the Tattler has learned.
The FPPC Forms 460s, filed with the state of California as well as the City, detail how much money a candidate has received and from whom. As it stands now, Mr Bauters’ campaign for re-election for City Council, abandoned by him last summer, is missing half of his required documents. An attempt to download the missing documents at the City’s website is stopped and the site brings up a notice that the connection is not secure when an attempt is made. Other documents are working, just not two of the Forms 460s.
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| From the City of Emeryville's website: Half of Bauter's Forms 460 are not viewable on the site: a violation of state law. |
The Tattler alerted the City of the problem via email but the City Clerk, April Richardson, said she never received the email. A check of her email address revealed it was correct. After giving up getting the documents from the City’s website or through email, ultimately, the Tattler conducted an official Public Records Request for the missing public documents, a request the state grants a municipality ten days for compliance.
Hearing about the document disclosure problem in person, Ms Richardson volunteered that the Tattler should not try to get any information from the City of Emeryville via email in the future, an interesting if unusual request. After 15 years of information gathering from City Hall, this is the first time a department head has told the Tattler to not use email.
Mr Bauters abandoned his run for Council in favor of a run for Alameda County D5 Supervisor, a race he lost last November. Bauters is currently not in elective public office.
The City Council majority has stated that it is very important that the public be able to view every candidate for Council’s Forms 460s so it is assumed this problem will be fixed soon.
The Tattler will report on how this violation gets fixed. Stay tuned.
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| A click on Mr Bauters' Forms 460 is disallowed and this warning comes up. |
UPDATE: The City of Emeryville corrected this as of January 16.
