CLEVELAND — The distrust between the Cleveland City Council and the Bibb administration boiled over publicly on Tuesday as both sides engaged in a war of words — and threats of legal action — over a council employee accessing public records.
Cleveland Council President Blaine A. Griffin sent a letter to his colleagues on city council Tuesday morning laying out his concerns that Mayor Justin Bibb's administration has issued an ultimatum regarding Steve Rys, an employee who serves as special assistant to council: fire him, or the mayor's office will "go public" with allegations that Rys downloaded "confidential" files from the city's public records request database and from GovQA.
"They also threatened to explore prosecuting (the employee) in Federal Court, even though they admitted such an action was likely to fail. Further, they accused Council of attempting to weaponize the information (the employee) accessed against the administration," Griffin wrote in the letter.
According to the council president, the employee has done nothing wrong.
"I also believe this accusation has very little to do with Steve. It’s an attempt to embarrass and undermine our ability to do our job by going after one of our employees," Griffin said in the letter.
Griffin called the attack on the employee an attack on the entire city council, with the aim of "trying to divide us from each other."
The council president stated that the accused helps council members stay informed about the mayor's administration's activities and utilizes the public records request database to obtain information on city operations.
"This is often necessary because getting information out of the Bibb administration is so hard. We’ve all experienced this. Responses to public record requests are often incomplete or slowly compiled," Griffin said in the letter.
Griffin doesn't deny that Rys accessed files and downloaded them; he wrote in the letter that it is part of his job, and everyone with access to GovQA can view the same files and download them as Rys did.
"Blaming Steve for accessing files that were available to him is like giving someone a library card and accusing them of wrongdoing for looking at the books the librarians put on the shelves. It’s unfair and baseless," Griffin said in the letter. "It’s a contrived attempt to distract attention from the Bibb administration’s failure to sufficiently manage the public records request database. Far more people in the administration have access to it than those working for City Council. Why single out Steve when many members of the administration may have done the same thing?
"The Bibb administration has repeatedly demonstrated its disdain for City Council and failed to treat us as a co-equal partner in governing the city. Using accusations against Steve to disparage Council is more of the same."
The administration responds
At a press briefing late Tuesday morning, Bibb's spokesperson, Tyler Sinclair, pushed back, saying that Rys accessing the files was concerning, considering the contents of some of the documents.
Rys was given access to the systems under Frank Jackson's previous administration in 2017 and only accessed a few files before Bibb took office. Since Bibb became mayor, the employee had accessed around 2,200 files and around 950 year-to-date.
The files in question contain unredacted and confidential information, including Social Security numbers, health records, and criminal justice information related to active police investigations, among other sensitive details.
Said Sinclair, "There are designated personnel across every department that handle records requests, and what I mean by handle records requests is that when a file is uploaded in it's raw form, and when I mean uploaded in it's raw form, it's unredacted, there are designated personnel who go through training to review documents, whether those be police reports, whether those be contracts negotiations, and they are trained to review what needs to be redacted before it is released.
"He was not one of those authorized personnel. We took action after every time we noticed that he was using his authorization to usurp and circumvent the process, and when he was doing that, we took action, and unfortunately, he manipulated the system."
Sinclair said it's unknown if Rys shared any of the downloaded documents with anyone else, and it's something that outside counsel is investigating to determine if legal measures should be taken against the individual.
The administration has been aware of the Rys's actions for some time and guardrails were put in place last year so he could no longer access unredacted information that was previously uploaded, but when new requests came in from the media or through attorneys' emails, Rys was able to obtain access to confidential information through other documents and found ways to get around security measures, according to Sinclair.
"He was finding additional ways to get around the security tags and those types of initial guardrails," Sinclair said.
The administration has since paused his entire access to the systems. Sinclair said they are overhauling the authorization levels for everyone with access.
The administration is bringing in a third-party counsel to investigate the matter.
"It's just unfortunate that we have someone here that took advantage of his authorization, for whatever reason — I won't speculate, but he used it in improper ways," Sinclair said.
According to Sinclair, the administration looked at individuals who had access, and no one came close to accessing the amount of data that Rys did.
Sinclair also disputed Griffin's claim that the city wasn't trying to resolve the issue amicably with council.
"No other person, after spot-checking random employees, had even come close to accessing more than 2,200 files," said Sinclair. "So, these allegations that we are not working hand-in-hand with council — we wouldn't have reached out to them ahead of time, expressed these concerns, tried to resolve it in house before making a big public spectacle out of it, but they left us know choice, and they are the ones that put this letter out to the media before we have done anything. So, we want the public to know the truth."
The adminstration also denied making any threats about Rys.
