BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
The city of Palo Alto paid a law firm to investigate a complaint from a tow yard owner who said that Planning and Transportation Commissioner Forest Olaf Peterson asked for special treatment after his daughter’s car was towed from a city parking garage.
Now, the city is refusing to release the lawyer’s report — a report that, you, the taxpayer paid for — saying it’s confidential due to attorney-client privilege.
The “client” in this case is the city council. The report cost up to $50,000.
One council member, Mayor Vicki Veenker, may have already waived the city’s rights to keep the report confidential by discussing it with our reporter in a story published Saturday.
But it seems to me that the client, the council, has the ability to decide whether the report should be public.
Peterson shouldn’t have any objections to its release. He said the report’s “scope was limited to determining whether the alleged conduct occurred, and the report reached no conclusions of law or policy. On April 13, after receiving the investigator’s report, council reappointed me to the Planning and Transportation Commission. I consider the matter resolved.”
Veenker and three other members of council — Greer Stone, George Lu and Julie Lythcott-Haims — felt that whatever was in the report wasn’t as incriminating enough to keep Peterson from being reappointed to the planning commission.
So I’ve got to wonder — what’s the problem with releasing this report? We paid for the report. Why can’t we see it? What does council have to hide?
Thanks to Dave Price and the Daily again!
I couldn’t agree more. The city has no reason to keep this a secret and making it public has nothing at all to do with attorney client privilege.