Hhmm. What wild goose chase shall I send city staff on today?

Hhmm. What wild goose chase shall I send city staff on today?

Since the beginning of August of this year, local gadfly Jason Young has been plastering the Anaheim City Clerk’s office with public record act requests. As of December 13, 2012, Young had submitted 22 requests between August 1 and November 30.

Of course, it is the public’s right to request public documents, and I’m not suggesting Mr. Young is doing anything wrong. But his public record requests do provide something of a window into his mind.

Jason Young’s blizzard of requests are generally wide-ranging fishing expeditions involving the half-dozen hobgoblins who populate his cramped, distorted political universe. Many are just redundant. He even submitted one about me. You really get a feel for Mr. Young’s uber-conspiratorial view of Anaheim politics and government.

Here is one of my favorites, submitted by Mr. Young on September 19, 2012 (I removed a couple of names of people who aren’t public figures):

“I’d like copies of any correspondence between Jordan Brandman and Curt Pringle, Larry Lake, Bill O’Connell, Anna Piercy, _______, Lucy Dunn, Reed Royalty, _____ and anyone associated with the unions that support the GardenWalk Hotel development.”

“..anyone associated with the unions…”? Would you like some fries with that indiscriminate dragnet, Mr. Young? Does he think incoming correspondence is checked against a matrix of known union associates and tagged “union supporter”?

Judging from the neurotic content of Mr. Young’s blog, about the only thing he has accomplished with this blizzard of PRA request is to waste the city’s time and money chasing ghosts for him. Perhaps Mr. Young can submit a PRA request for total staff time (and the equivalent cost) consumed by his PRA requests — that would actually be something worth finding out.