Copyright, The Sun 2008

Letters detail data request

By Lauren McSherry
4/26/2008

In response to a public records request by The Sun, San Bernardino County spent nearly $3,000 this month to send certified letters to the 530 property owners whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the October fires notifying them of the request.

The letters were sent after The Sun asked for a list of people indicating who had enrolled and who had refused to enroll in the county's debris-removal program, which was implemented to clean up the remains of houses destroyed in the San Bernardino Mountains.

"The county felt an obligation to these disaster victims that the county was legally compelled to release the information," said county spokesman David Wert. "People are understandably cautious about the release of their personal information, and these people have already been traumatized."

Peter Scheer, executive director of California First Amendment Coalition, said the letter by the county could be perceived as a courtesy but that there could be other motives.

"They may be pursuing some type of strategy to discourage the release of the information or put obstacles in the way of a media organization pursuing a legitimate story," he said.

Wert said the county wanted people to know they were not obligated to talk with the media as a condition for receiving disaster assistance.

"Oftentimes, people who aren't used to dealing with the news media feel they are obligated to do so," he said. "We wanted to make it clear thecounty wasn't working in conjunction with the newspaper."

Some residents who contacted The Sun were upset to receive the letter, and some felt their privacy had been invaded.

Others were angry that they had not been notified that private contractors had obtained their contact information.

"The county hasn't given this information to anyone other than The Sun," Wert said. "If they're being contacted by other parties, it's not from information they were provided by the county."

Some residents said they had been disappointed to learn that the debris-removal program was not free and that, if they enrolled, the county would collect their homeowners' insurance.

They declined to sign up for the program as a result.

The database provided by the Solid Waste Management Division does not include numbers indicating how much money the county collected in homeowners' insurance.

Information similar to what The Sun requested in February from the solid-waste management department was provided last October by the county Assessor's Office, which released a list of the addresses that burned or were damaged.

Newspapers in the Inland Empire published those lists on their Web sites so that evacuated property owners could check that the status of their houses.

Newspapers across the United States have made similar public information requests following disasters to track how taxpayer money is spent.

In 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporters discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had doled out millions of dollars in claims to people who didn't live in the storm path of Hurricane Frances.