Not talking about Fort Ross

JULY 23, 2010

Normally a rundown of the people who won’t comment for a story isn’t all that interesting to read. But in this case – another installment in the quest to find out who knew what in the matter of the state handing off Fort Ross State Historic Park to a giant Russian company – the refusals to comment are actually rather telling.

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get someone – anyone – at the state parks department to explain to me how much background research state officials did on Renova Group, the Russian firm that will take over financing Fort Ross. A few months ago the Swiss government fined Renova 40 million Swiss francs for violating disclosure laws; the company faces even steeper fines in a similar, ongoing case (click here for my original story on Fort Ross and here for my earlier attempts to get elected officials to comment on the matter).

I would very much like to know if state officials at the parks department knew of these criminal cases before they put a Memorandum of Understanding between California and Renova in front of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed the deal on June 22. To find out, on July 6 I submitted a request under the California Public Records Act to the parks department for copies of “any and all correspondence between state parks department officials and any officials with Renova Group concerning Fort Ross State Park from Jan. 1, 2009 to the date of this request.”

On July 16 (the Act mandates some sort of response within 10 days of a request), Jennifer C. Comilang, the parks department’s Staff Counsel, wrote me a letter saying that the department “has located 29 pages of records” responsive to my request. But there was a hitch: “Of those pages, CSP [California State Parks] is withholding 23 pages as they constitute communications with the Governor’s Office and are exempt from disclosure under Government Code 6254(l).”

I found that fascinating since I had never requested copies of communications from the Governor’s Office. Though the Act specifically points out that it’s illegal to dump records in the Governor’s Office to protect them from public disclosure, I had a feeling that maybe the parks officials e-mails I’d requested had been copied over to Schwarzenegger’s office as a way of doing exactly that.

Though there was no phone number on the letter, I called Comilang’s office on July 21 and left her a message. She didn’t call me back, but an hour later parks department spokesman Roy Stearns did.

Stearns was less than helpful, all but rereading Comilang’s letter to me when I asked if it was possible to simply segregate out any exempt Governor’s Office material from the 23 pages of withheld documents and send them to me. He also refused to allow me to speak to Comilang, despite the fact that she had written a letter to me. And he refused to tell me what sorts of documents (letters, e-mails, etc.) were being withheld.

By this point, I was getting angry. Stearns had already ignored an e-mail I wrote to him on July 7 after he put me in touch with a low-level parks official who kept answering my questions with some variant of “I don’t know,” so I threw that back at him.

“Who at the department can I talk to about how the Fort Ross MOU came about?” I asked Stearns.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Will you please ask and find out for me?” I asked.

Though Stearns said he would, I haven’t heard from him since.

Down but not out, I went back to the six pages of records Comilang did send me. Two pages were just a photocopy of a Fort Ross brochure, but the other four were e-mails. They were completely innocuous messages concerning an April visit by Renova officials to Fort Ross itself, but they did include the names of various state parks officials: Russian River District Superintendent Liz Burko (who Stearns originally told me he’d put me in touch with but then never did), supervising park ranger Jeremy Stinson, Fort Ross Interpretative Association President Sarah Sweedler and Robin Joy, a Park Interpretative Specialist I.

So I e-mailed all of them on July 21, asking if I could speak to them about how the Fort Ross/Renova MOU came about. Of the four, Joy – the one with the least status and power – replied immediately.

“Thank you so much for this interest in Fort Ross,” Joy wrote. “I am deferring your questions to my supervisors. They will be able to answer your questions.”

Burko and Stinson never replied. Sweedler, however, did.

Sweedler had actually written to me before, way back on July 9: “I read your piece on the Renova MOU and would like to clarify a few things,” she e-mailed me then. “If you are interested in more information perhaps we could talk on the phone next week.”

Though I promptly replied to Sweedler that yes, absolutely, I wanted to talk to her, she never called me. Then in response to my July 21 e-mail, she finally responded, saying she’d call me on July 22.

She never did. Though at this point, I’m not at all surprised.

-Anthony Pignataro