Krokoff explains the email he tried to pull back, and why the city won't release it

On Oct. 19, resident Sarah Moen told the City Council that a land-use question she sent City Hall in August brought back “an accidental reply all email from the City Manager directed to the City Attorney,” followed by “five frantic recall messages,” requests to take the email back. We asked the city about it that night, and reported her account in our Oct. 20 issue.

Moen had asked the Council to consider a moratorium at its Aug. 17 meeting, a temporary freeze on approving big developments on land zoned for agriculture. The email called her request “largely an effort to get ahead of an absurd fabricated narrative that Council has somehow given a ‘head nod’” to Restoration Church’s plans, as we reported Thursday.

City Manager Steven Krokoff answered at 5:08 p.m. Thursday, after Thursday’s issue had gone out. His answer, in full:

“I sent an email to the City Attorney seeking legal advice on a constituent’s question. When I realized I had inadvertently included the constituent, I attempted to recall it because it was intended as a privileged communication with our attorney. My purpose was to get legal guidance so we could provide an accurate, helpful response.

“My reference to an ‘absurd fabricated narrative’ concerned the suggestion that Council had already given a ‘head nod’ to the development. I was not accusing the constituent of fabricating anything. My assumption was, in fact, the opposite: that she had heard that same suggestion and was seeking a moratorium in response. That is why I described her request as an effort to ‘get ahead of’ the narrative.

“The attorney-client communications exemption is O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(41).

“The City Clerk’s Office will follow up with an estimated timeline for producing the records responsive to her narrowed request.”

Attorney-client privilege keeps a client’s requests for legal advice confidential, and that section of the state’s open-records law lets the city withhold them.

The records. When Moen asked for that email under the state’s open-records law, the city held back its text, along with a second email he sent four minutes later to the same people, without her. On Friday we asked whether the city still treats the first one as privileged even though Moen has a copy, and whether the second was a re-send.

Krokoff answered that afternoon: “My initial email was intended for the City Attorney and was inadvertently sent to a constituent. The City maintains that this mistake did not waive the attorney-client privilege protecting that communication.”

The second email, he wrote, “was also directed to the City Attorney and contained privileged communications. Both emails are therefore exempt from disclosure” under the open-records exemption for legal advice. He did not say whether the second email was a re-send.

The city is withholding both emails from her records request, though Moen already has the first.