The removal of a decade’s worth of Chico campaign finance disclosures has sparked a kerfuffle.
The documents are still available, just not electronically. Interested parties must now request them in person at city hall and pay for photocopies.
Writing on social media earlier this week, Chico Councilman Randall Stone noted the disappearance and described it as inexcusable.
Stone, who has become a lightning rod on the council’s liberal minority since crossing swords with the Chico Police Officer’s Association, intimated that a political motive might be behind the data’s disappearance.
Chico City Clerk Deborah Presson, who also serves as the city’s election official, released a statement that said City of Chico has no official policy on uploading and hosting such documents and that her actions comply with state law. She did not provide a reason or timeline for the decision.
In her release, Presson said the move wasn’t taken unilaterally, though no other party is identified.
The data has not been entirely scrubbed from the web. The Internet Archive maintains historic snapshots of some of the pages taken down