Staff Report
Two weeks ago, Hews Media Group-Community News submitted a public records request asking for phone records between June and July 2016 related to Central Basin Director Leticia Vasquez’ defamation case against HMG-CN.
Ten days later CB responded by email saying “those records do not exist.”
In an answer to HMG-CN’s Freedom of Information Act request CB wrote, “This letter responds to your California Public Records Act request submitted to the Central Basin Municipal Water District on July 21, 2017 [asking] for all CB phone records between June 1, 2016 and July 1, 2016. A thorough review of our records indicates there are no documents related to your request. If you have any further questions, please contact Joseph Legaspi, Director of External Affairs, by phone (323) 201-5542 or email [email protected].”
HMG-CN researched CB accounting records online and found payments to Telepacific Communication in 2016 from between $3,500 and $4,000 each month.
Searching Telepacific, now known as TPX, found the company is a subsidiary of U. S. TelePacific Holdings, Inc. “The company provides local, long-distance, data, and internet services to small-to-medium sized businesses in California and Nevada. U.S. TelePacific Holdings Corp. was incorporated in 1999 and is based in Los Angeles.”
Researching their site reveals a Customer Login page that states a company can “create a call detail report.”
The login page stated, “welcome to OneCentral, your online account manager. This is the fastest way to manage your account at your convenience. View your billing information, create call detail reports, pay your bill online and much more!
HMG-CN informed CB of the Telepacific payments and their website access.
CB General Manager Kevin Hunt later responded in a voicemail to HMG-CN Publisher Brian Hews saying, “We don’t have specific records, only the amount of the bill and the minutes used.”
HMG-CN did not request specific phone records or extensions, yet Hunt said in the voicemail, “it is a summary, so it does not have my (Hunt’s) extension in it.”
“I asked Central Basin for phone records, I mentioned nothing about extensions,” said Hews, “it is very telling Hunt’s comment about his extension, it is well known what I am looking for as related to the defamation case.”
Hews was able to go back to his own Verizon cell phone records and gather June 2016 documents that showed individual calls to Cook Hills’ Newport Beach office and Kevin Hunt’s cellphone.
HMG-CN then called Telepacific asking if inbound and outbound calls can be tracked and the representative said, “yes of course we can do that. You can pull the lists at any time. The tracking is automatically set up and sits in the background for when you need it.”
“What kind of organization does not track incoming and outgoing phone calls in this day and age,” said one CB ratepayer who wished to remain anonymous, “ employees could be making calls talking to their friends all day and their supervisors would not know that, that’s bad management.”