Former Councilman LaBonge's Files Pulled from Shredder for Your Viewing Pleasure

Several dozen boxes of files from former Councilman Tom LaBonge’s office that were intended for destruction will instead be made available for public perusal tomorrow in the Fourth Council District office at City Hall.

The current councilman for the district, David Ryu, is making the 35 boxes, which contain documents about planning, sister cities and other topics, available from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 425.

After tomorrow, the files will be kept in the Fourth District offices for another few weeks, then sent to be archived for two years, according to Ryu aide Estevan Montemayor.

The boxes were among 113 that LaBonge’s staff sent to be destroyed before the former councilman left office last June 30.

They were the only ones recovered when the City Attorney’s Office, which needed to locate some files from LaBonge’s office, tracked them down at Piper Tech Center, where they had been sent to be destroyed, Montemayor said.

Ryu has questioned the lack of a protocol for maintaining files during a transition from from one elected officeholder to the next. He introduced a motion in December calling for the city to set up a process to for deciding how long files should be kept before they are destroyed.

Montemayor said cities like San Diego and Santa Barbara have stricter file destruction protocols.

City News Service