Jean Quan's Private Attorney Conducts City Business

(Letter obtained through a public records request to the city attorney by Max Allstadt)

 
Above is a letter from private lawyer Dan Siegel telling the Oakland city attorney to get lost. Siegel announces that he and his client Jean Quan, not the city attorney, will decide what the legal requirements are for responding to citizen requests for public records.

Siegel, speaking for Quan, refused a freedom of information request from the Oakland Tribune. The newspaper condemns "the mayor's ill-advised decision to use her own personal attorney to conduct the public's business. Siegel has not been retained to represent the city in legal matters. Therefore, he has no authority to rule on our public records request or any other city legal matters." (Tribune, April 15)

The use of a private attorney for City business is yet another example of Quan's apparent conception that she is an empress, not an elected mayor. For years when she was a councilmember, Quan and her staff gathered the contact information, including email address, of constituents in district four.

After Libby Schaaf was elected to the district four council seat, her office asked Quan for the contact list so that Schaaf could continue to distribute the councilmember newsletter to interested constituents. According to Schaaf, Quan's office refused.

Thousands of residents at neighborhood meetings thought they were signing up to stay in touch with their councilmember. The events were usually City-sponsored affairs, like neighborhood crime prevention council meetings. Quan would appear as councilmember. She identified her employees as staff of the council office. But now Quan denies the next elected councilmember access to office records.

Quan's empress mentality ranges wide. She uses Chabot Observatory for fundraising, supposedly for her office fund but never with public accounting. Does the City treasurer handle the money? No one knows. Renting Chabot facilities for an event can cost thousands of dollars. Does Quan pay? Quan simultaneously holds a seat on the Chabot board of directors. In 2008 when the City's budget crunch could not longer be ignored, Quan protected Chabot from the first round of cuts. While park maintenance jobs disappeared, Chabot lost not one dollar of $600,000 in City grants.

For a start on clean government, mayor Quan should restrict Dan Siegel to strictly private business like drawing up the papers she needed to give her daughter a house; turn over the district four contact list to councilmember Schaaf; and publish the accounts for her office fund and events at Chabot Observatory.