Following Bee story, Sacramento will start posting legal settlement agreements online

Theresa Clift
·3 min read

The city of Sacramento will begin posting legal settlement agreements to its website as soon as they are finalized, Mayor Darrell Steinberg announced Tuesday.

The announcement follows a Sacramento Bee story that revealed the city had paid an $11 million settlement last year without announcing it publicly during a council meeting. The City Council discussed the settlement amount in a closed session meeting on Jan. 28, 2020 and the agreement was finalized in February 2020 when it was signed by the plaintiffs and city officials.

The Bee reported on the settlement last week.

A city spokesman told The Bee about the settlement last week in response to a reporter’s question about a different settlement. The city had initially provided the settlement to The Bee in June 2020 in response to a California Public Records Act request. One ethics expert told The Bee that the City Council should publicly announce settlements, even when it is not legally required to do so.

“There’s been some allegation that the city has hid the ball in not reporting settlements,” Steinberg said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “I just want to say that’s not the case. There has been a process by which the city has responded to regularized Public Records Act requests, as I understand it, and upon those requests, the city turns over all of the settlements that we have agreed to, so I don’t think there has been any intent in any way to hide from the public.

“However, looking at the policy, as I sort of really looked at it all, I think there might be a better way. And that is that we should simply report proactively any settlement that we make as a city, whether it involves the expenditure of public money or not.”

City Clerk Mindy Cuppy said the city will start proactively posting settlement agreements online.

Several times a year, The Bee files Public Records Act requests with the city for settlement agreements. However, the city has not always responded promptly.

It took the city six months to provide settlement agreements for a request from 2019. The city took five months to provide the agreements for another request submitted the same year. The Bee’s attorneys contacted the City Attorney’s Office about the delays, and the city now responds to the requests more quickly.

The change will mean settlements will be posted on a city website as soon cases are settled, Steinberg said.

The $11 million settlement, finalized in February 2020, was paid to a family after an elderly woman and her grandson were hit by a car in 2018 on Freeport Boulevard while using a crosswalk where the city had allegedly removed paint but left indentations. QuiChang Zhu, 72, died, and her grandson Jian Hao Kuang, 6, was seriously injured with catastrophic and permanent brain damage.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that The Bee first learned of the settlement with the Kuang family through a city spokesman, not a Public Records Act request.

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect when the City Council discussed a settlement with the Kuang family and when the settlement was finalized.

Updated Oct 21, 2021

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