In defense of the city law director

In an earlier comment to “Rhonda4thWard’s page” blog entry entitled “When a lie breaks the law,” I suggested that the Advocate should be interested in “the rationale of the city law director in defining this (letter of resignation by Judith Carr) as outside the realm of public records.”

Law Director Doug Sassen responded to that comment to me directly by e-mail but, because of the word limit on Advocate comments, I have to make this a separate blog entry. This is what he said regarding that matter:

“...I should clarify for you that I have never defined Ms. Carr’s resignation letter as being “outside the realm of public records.” If, in fact, the letter was written and if, in fact, the Mayor received the letter, at that point the letter became a public record. As such, it should not be destroyed unless such destruction was in conformity with an approved RC-3 Retention Schedule.

“I have never seen such a letter. I do not know if the Mayor ever received such a letter. Nor do I know if the letter still exists. Knowing these facts is critical to determining what, if any, violations may have occurred.

“If the Mayor has made conflicting statements to people about the resignation or anything else, that is for him to justify. Rest assured, however, I will not “spin” the facts in any direction. At the same time, I will not jump to conclusions until the facts are known. And simply stating something to be a fact does not, in and of itself, make it so.

“I tell you this only because I think we have developed an understanding on such issues and I respect your opinion and would not want any mis-information to influence that understanding.”

Law Director Sassen also mentioned to me that he released to Council and to the Advocate the final paragraph of the Crites Report to Council on the city Building Code Department (reported by the Advocate on 6/19/09). This is what it says:

“For the reasons set forth above in the Law and Application section, the conflict of interest allegations involving Greg Keeler should be referred to the Ohio Ethics Commission for their review and consideration.”

The reason Mr. Sassen held it back was “...until such time as the Administration decided upon a response to the report both internally and pursuant to paragraph six, I felt it was inappropriate to release this paragraph pursuant to the on-going investigation exemption to public records disclosure.”