For months, county lawyers spun arguments to keep employee misconduct records Voice of San Diego requested from its behavioral health department from becoming public.
It all started after Voice made a March 2025 public records request seeking reports of misconduct in the county’s Behavioral Health Services Department that investigators found to have merit.
First, county officials claimed they didn’t have records to disclose. Then their lawyer incorrectly claimed that two county facilities weren’t part of the department we sought records from and later said they accidentally failed to include them in their search for records.
The county also maintained for more than a year that complaints couldn’t be released under a state law about whistleblower hotlines – and that releasing them could have a chilling effect.
It wasn’t until a judge forced the county to release those records that we learned about significant culture issues at the Edgemoor facility that serves medically fragile adults, sexual harassment at the county’s psychiatric hospital and an instance where an administrative analyst who worked elsewhere in the department made a racist comment during an online diversity training. County officials promoted the analyst months after the investigation.
The records spurred an uproar and the firing of the county’s behavioral health director, who has said she’s now considering her legal options.
The county says it’s making changes to address the issues that came up in the investigations, but it’s also defending its moves to keep the records confidential.
In a statement, county spokesperson Tammy Glenn wrote that the records case spurred “an extremely nuanced balancing test that weighed the benefits of release against the harms.”
“The county very seriously considered whether release would cause a chilling effect on future complaints or potentially lead to retaliation,” Glenn wrote. “These are no small interests when it comes to ethics complaints. The county appreciates the court’s guidance, and the county has complied.”
Elected county supervisors say they think the county should release records documenting substantiated misconduct going forward.
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Voice filed its public records request for employee misconduct records in late March 2025, soon after former behavioral health services director Luke Bergmann announced he was leaving that job.
Three weeks later, the county denied release of the records, citing multiple state laws and arguing that disclosing such records could lead to harassment and retaliation for employees who reported misconduct.
The response did not acknowledge that the county, like other local governments, generally redacts the names of whistleblowers and other employees involved in such investigations.
“The public interest served by not disclosing requested records clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the records,” the county wrote on its NextRequest public records website.Amanda Johnston, senior deputy county counsel, stuck to that argument when Voice’s attorney, Felix Tinkov, disputed the county’s arguments in a May 2025 letter.
Days later, Tinkov emailed Johnston to let her know Voice had filed suit to force the release of the records. The two attorneys then exchanged multiple emails.
Johnston was adamant that there was nothing for Voice to see here – and suggested it didn’t have a case.
“As we have now informed you multiple times that the county has no records responsive to the Voice’s request, continued pursuit of litigation against the county is clearly frivolous,” Johnston wrote on May 27. “If the Voice does not dismiss its writ, we intend to seek attorneys’ fees and costs.”
Voice pressed on.
A month later, David Stotland of the County Counsel’s Office took on the case.
In a June 17 email, Tinkov told Stotland that Voice was eager and willing to resolve the case if the county handed over records. He also noted Stotland’s comments in a June 11 call that the Edgemoor and county psychiatric hospital weren’t considered part of Voice’s request because he didn’t consider them to be part of the county’s Behavioral Health Services Department.
Both facilities have long been overseen by that department – and it would later turn out that nearly all the substantiated misconduct cases from March 2023 through March 2025 came from these two facilities.
After a lack of progress in talks with the county, Voice sought more information about the records through the court process.
In an Oct. 6 filing, Stotland acknowledged that Edgemoor and the county psychiatric hospital are overseen by the county’s Behavioral Health Services Department.After Voice pressed for a log that would offer more details on the records that the county was withholding, Stotland said he didn’t think the two parties could come to an agreement.
In a filing ahead of an early November discovery hearing where Voice sought the high-level details on the complaints, Tinkov flagged what he viewed as delay tactics.
“The [county’s] refusal to produce responses to basic discovery questions should be seen for what it is – an illegitimate effort to delay this litigation and to remain opaque in the face of two different statutes requiring transparency, the (California Public Records Act) and the Civil Discovery Act,” Tinkov wrote.
On Nov. 6, Judge Matthew C. Braner denied Voice’s request for a detailed log of complaints but ordered the county to share the number of complaints made by behavioral health employees and how many were deemed well-founded, among other details.
Stotland and Tinkov later tangled over email about whether Braner had ordered the county to provide details beyond the number of complaints.
By April, Tinkov wrote in a filing that the county had “flip-flopped as to the existence of responsive records in its possession” and now said it was withholding at least 24 complaints. Tinkov said it was also his understanding that those records didn’t include county employees working at the psychiatric hospital or Edgemoor because the county had not searched for them.
Stotland didn’t address the latter issue in a brief June 3 filing.
At a June 30 hearing, Judge Braner declared after reviewing the records himself that the county should release records of substantiated misconduct by behavioral health department employees to Voice. The plan was to have the county propose redactions that Braner would then approve.
A month later, Braner held another hearing.
Stotland had something new to say about the Edgemoor and psychiatric hospital records: “One of the points I mentioned in my – in my brief is that a key problem here was that a county database treated Edgemoor and the psychiatric hospital as separate entities from…”
Braner cut in.
“And when you found out, you promptly told Voice of San Diego?”
“I did,” Stotland said. “In fact, I believe Voice has known that for at this point almost a year.”
Stotland had not, in fact, noted this in his brief or otherwise to Voice.
Twenty-five days later, the county simultaneously released eight misconduct investigations to Voice and announced it was making changes. Its behavioral health director was out – and she later confirmed she had been fired.
At that same time, Stotland emailed Tinkov. He wrote that the county had decided not to appeal Judge Braner’s ruling.
Glenn, the county spokesperson, said the county realized it made a mistake in its initial search for records.“The county inadvertently did not initially include Edgemoor Distinct Park Skilled Nursing Facility and the Psychiatric Hospital records,” Glenn wrote in an email. “After further clarification, all responsive records related to those facilities were provided.”
Most county supervisors now say they think the county should be releasing misconduct records when wrongdoing is found – and that they expect the county to take that approach from here out.
“My view is straightforward; I agree with the court that public should be able to see records of substantiated misconduct,” Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said in a statement. “The court has ruled, the county is not appealing, and I expect that standard – disclosure of substantiated findings, with redactions that protect whistleblowers who report – to govern going forward.”
Supervisors Monica Montgomery Steppe, Jim Desmond and Terra Lawson-Remer made similar points. Supervisor Joel Anderson’s office declined to comment on the litigation but said he “has always believed that his constituents deserve to know what their government is doing.”
Lawson-Remer’s office also noted that the county decided on its strategy for the case under former county counsel Claudia Silva, who abruptly left county government last summer.
“The county’s approach to this current matter was set under prior county counsel,” Lawson-Remer’s office wrote.
Yet the county continued to fight the release of the records under current County Counsel Damon Brown and David Smith, who served as acting county counsel until Brown’s January appointment.
On Aug. 27, Voice made a new records request for “all complaints of substantiated misconduct” involving the county’s Behavioral Health Services Department since its initial request.
This time, county officials had a different response.
“The County of San Diego has determined that your request seeks disclosable public records,” county staff wrote on the county’s NextRequest site this Tuesday. “To that end, the county is in the process of gathering, reviewing, evaluating, and redacting documents for production consistent with the recent Voice of San Diego case.”
