One City Clerk officer released a Case 23-009185 Lovato email under one request, then eight days later closed a request as having no responsive records.
When you ask a city for its records, it is supposed to hand over everything it has and, if it has nothing, say so honestly. Here the city’s clerk office told the owner’s representative it had already given “all responsive records” for the inspector’s case emails. R.25-3549 Weeks later, the same office handed over one more email — an email from the inspector about this very property — that a clerk had just printed from her own work inbox; E.3 the city’s own name for that file even tagged it to the earlier request that was supposed to have caught it. E.3 Then, eight days after producing that email, the same clerk answered a follow-up request by saying the city had no records at all — closing it just twenty-two minutes after it arrived. R.26-39 So the same office said it gave everything, then gave more, then said it had nothing, all within about two months. The follow-up request that drew the “no records” answer was asking the city to confirm whether that produced email was actually sent to the representative, because the city’s own case log claims the inspector “replied back” to him M036 while the produced email shows he was never even a recipient. E.3 The contradiction only became visible because the representative kept filing records requests and lining up the dates side by side. R.25-4711
Bottom line: the city’s clerk office released an inspector’s case email under one request and, eight days later, closed another request as having no such records — a contradiction on its own paperwork that only surfaced because someone forced the records out and compared the dates.On 12/29/2025 an officer of the Office of the City Clerk printed a 09/02/2025 Paul Lovato Case 23-009185 email from her own Outlook mailbox E.3 and that same afternoon released it under one CPRA request R.25-4711 — the City’s own filename labeling it a record of a different, earlier request. E.3 R.25-3549 Eight days later the same officer closed a separate request R.26-39 with “the City does not have any records that are responsive to your request,” twenty-two minutes after it was filed. R.26-39 The earlier request sought all Lovato Code Enforcement records for 01/01/2020–09/19/2025, and another City Clerk officer had already closed it “All responsive records have been provided” on 11/07/2025 — R.25-3549 yet the email surfaced only weeks later under the second request. The City Clerk’s office said it gave everything, then gave more, then said it had nothing. The universal anchor is Card 47. Card 47
A city employee’s writing about the public’s business is a public record regardless of the account it is stored in. City of San Jose v. Superior Court The email itself: From Paul Lovato, Tue 9/2/2025 2:43 PM, To Bo Cosley, Douglas Pierson, kowensfoley@gmail.com, and baritelljm@gmail.com, subject “Re: 4880 T Street Jackie’s House” — E.3 internal Code Enforcement correspondence about Case 23-009185, not personal email. The page header “12/29/25, 3:25 PM … Jena R. Swafford - Outlook” establishes the print provenance from an individual staff mailbox. E.3
The City must produce disclosable records, Govt Code §7922.530 issue a written determination within ten days, Govt Code §7922.535 and, when it denies, identify the responsible official and basis. Govt Code §7922.540 A city employee’s writing about the public’s business is a public record regardless of the account it is stored in. City of San Jose v. Superior Court
The City closed the records request — express scope “all Code Enforcement records involving Inspector Paul Lovato from January 1, 2020 through September 19, 2025,” including “emails … he wrote or received” — with “All responsive records have been provided.” R.25-3549 The 09/02/2025 Lovato email falls squarely within that date range, author, and subject scope.
The officer prints the email from her own Outlook at 3:25 PM, E.3 releases it at 4:22 PM, and closes the second request at 4:23 PM: “All responsive records associated with this public records request have been released.” R.25-4711 The City’s filename — Re_ 4880 T Street Jackie’s House - 25-3549.pdf — labels it a record of the earlier request. E.3 R.25-3549
On a third request — asking, specifically, for proof that the produced email was sent to the requester or written confirmation that the 09/11/2025 case-log statement is inaccurate M036 — the same officer closes “the City does not have any records that are responsive to your request,” twenty-two minutes after filing: received 12:08 PM, closed 12:30 PM. R.26-39 The case-log statement the third request was filed to verify: “I replied back to the email stating: Chris, Thank you for reaching out…” M036 — against a produced email whose recipient list does not include the requester. E.3
Three requests filed 05/17/2026 each name communications/correspondence within scope. One for per-entry CitizenServe metadata including attached communications R.26-1963 and one for the case-level audit trail and related communications R.26-1964 were both closed 05/18/2026 by back-reference — “all records were provided under” R.26-1549 — and a third, for a native searchable export, R.26-1965 was closed 05/22/2026 with another flattened PDF. Each path lands back in Card 47. Card 47
The City Clerk’s office did three incompatible things on its own record in sixty days: closed the records request “all responsive records have been provided” R.25-3549 on 11/07/2025; produced, under a second request, R.25-4711 a Lovato Case 23-009185 email that the prior closure should have caught, printed from one officer’s Outlook on 12/29/2025; E.3 and then, through that same officer, closed a request as having no responsive record on 01/06/2026 R.26-39 — eight days after producing the contradicting record, in a twenty-two-minute turnaround. A CPRA denial is the account of a search; this one collides with the City’s own production two weeks earlier.
The strongest City response is that the second request had a narrower scope than the first, so the email was produced when it became responsive to the narrower request; alternatively, the email was discovered after 11/07/2025 through a search prompted by the second request — an ordinary supplemental production, not a contradiction. The scoping argument is met by the City’s own filename — Re_ 4880 T Street Jackie’s House - 25-3549.pdf identifies the document as a record of the earlier request. E.3 The supplemental-production argument is met by the denial eight days later: R.26-39 if the 12/29/2025 release reflected an improved search, that improved search should have informed the 01/06/2026 determination instead of being immediately contradicted by it. The email is a public record wherever it was stored. City of San Jose v. Superior Court An inadequate or contradictory CPRA response is enforceable. Govt Code §7923.000 Card 47