Milpitas ordered to pay $92,000 in legal fees

‘It’s money that we didn’t have to spend,’ Milpitas Councilman Bob Nuñez said.

The city of Milpitas must fork over $92,000 in legal fees to lawyers who filed a public records lawsuit surrounding former city manager Tom Williams, a judge ordered this month.

Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Sunil Kulkarni on Oct. 4 ordered Milpitas to pay the San Rafaelbased First Amendment Coalition’s lawyers $90,800 in attorneys fees and roughly $1,200 in court costs. Kulkarni also ruled that Williams must pay the organization’s attorneys $7,750 in attorneys fees and costs.

The order comes nearly five months after Kulkarni ruled the city must release records it had withheld for more than a year regarding allegations of misconduct by Williams while he was city manager.

“This puts the final touch on litigation that shows Milpitas, and I think all cities and other government agencies in California, that they need to follow the California Public Records Act,” David Snyder, the coalition’s executive director, said Tuesday in an interview.

Under state law, government agencies that refuse to release records but later are forced to do so due to a lawsuit must pay “reasonable attorneys fees” of the organization or person who sued for the records, according to the coalition.

“The cost of failing to comply with the law is that cities like Milpitas may be on the hook for a substantial amount of attorneys fees. And the city should know this,” Snyder said.

The First Amendment Coalition sued in June 2017 to force Milpitas to turn over documents about Williams after multiple news agencies, including this one, had requested similar records from the city.

The city withheld the records in part because Williams filed a restraining order in April 2017 to stop their release.

The city released some records in October 2017, but not all.

The documents that were eventually released earlier this year under the court ruling showed Williams violated multiple city policies when he paid his personal attorney’s fees with a cityissued credit card.

He also ignored a council directive to stay away from the city’s finance department, intimidated employees, and lied to an investigator looking into his actions, according to the documents.

Milpitas Mayor Rich Tran said while he recognizes “the judge’s ruling is not a good thing for our city expenses,” he’s glad the records were eventually released and agreed with the court decision.

“I strongly stand for the First Amendment,” Tran said. “I was all for the documents being released from the very beginning.”

Snyder said the ruling from earlier this year is important because it shows Milpitas residents that there are people in city hall who are not complying with the state’s records law.

“Transparency in government is at the absolute core of our ability as voters to evaluate our leaders and to hold those leaders accountable, if we think that they’re not doing what they should be doing,” Snyder said.

In the latest order, Kulkarni noted there are “significant public interests in understanding whether high-ranking city officials were acting improperly, and in understanding the City’s response to such alleged misconduct.”

Councilman Bob Nuñez said Tuesday he was upset because he felt the whole situation could have been avoided.

“It’s money that we didn’t have to spend,” he said.

Nuñez said he has made some suggestions to city staff about how the city should be more open.

“Once there’s a request, we need to be much more transparent and just move those things forward,” he said.

City Attorney Christopher Diaz, the Milpitas and City Manager Julie Edmonds-Mares, Milpitas could not be immediately reached for comment.