A San Francisco law firm and a free speech advocacy group are demanding San Jose City Hall release emails from the mayor’s private account after San José Spotlight reported on his attempt to skirt public records law last month. Prominent San Francisco media attorney Karl Olson and the First Amendment Coalition separately have filed two public records...
San Jose mayor uses private email to skirt public records law
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo appears to have skirted public records laws by directing a resident to contact him on his private Gmail and deleting their correspondence from his public government account. The email thread, obtained by San José Spotlight, shows the mayor promising to delete the conversation from his official email. None of the messages in question—which...
San Jose’s low-income schools see large share of police calls
In the last five years, police logged at least 9,200 calls for service to schools in San Jose. A disproportionate amount came from high schools with high populations of minority students or students living in poverty, a data analysis by San José Spotlight found. Seven of the 10 schools with the most police service calls to...
San Jose mayor’s advocacy group linked to consulting firm
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo’s secretive advocacy organization has hired a PR firm linked to a racist ad that toppled a business group’s political action committee. Liccardo’s group—Solutions San Jose—is working with Storefront Political Media, a San Francisco PR firm linked to a racist ad in a local City Council race last fall, San José...
UPDATE: San Jose to conduct another search, release a log of emails on mayor’s advocacy group
In response to an appeal from San José Spotlight over a denial of public records, San Jose will conduct a more thorough search for Mayor Sam Liccardo’s emails related to an advocacy group and produce a log explaining why certain communications are being withheld. The decision came Wednesday after the Rules and Open Government Committee...
How San Jose mayor’s ally helped Bloom Energy skirt a natural gas ban
Two weeks before San Jose passed a landmark ban on natural gas for new commercial buildings, city officials introduced an exemption that benefited a local energy company, Bloom Energy, whose vice president is a personal friend to the mayor. And the way they did it shows the stark difference in access granted to political insiders...
Behind closed doors: These are San Jose’s top 10 lobbyists
In the heart of Silicon Valley, local policies and laws, especially on land use and the economy, shape our way of life. But key policy discussions don’t always happen in public. Despite a global pandemic shuttering in-person meetings for more than a year, a data analysis by San José Spotlight found lobbying remains to be...