Who is Glen Huntley? Sanitary district disavows online ‘fictitious person’ in settlement with Mesa Water

Somewhat lost amid last week’s announcement of a ceasefire in the conflict between the Costa Mesa Sanitary and Mesa Water districts over the idea of a merger was a seemingly simple question: Who is Glen Huntley?

And why does a joint statement the agencies released mention the name so prominently?

“Glen Huntley is a fictitious person,” the statement reads. “The Costa Mesa Sanitary District disavows, and does not endorse or support, any of the statements attributed to Glen Huntley in the OC Daily relating to Mesa Water District.”

Huntley is the byline on a handful of stories concerning Mesa Water that appeared last year on OC Daily, a website containing articles and commentary about politics and government in Orange County. The Huntley posts carried headlines such as “Mesa Water District spends millions on PR, pennies on transparency” and “Mesa Water District hiking rates again — time to cut the fat!”

The latter piece is illustrated with a drawing of a man appearing to punch the Mesa Water logo.

When the articles began appearing, Mesa Water officials “tried to contact Mr. Huntley and [were] unable to do so, which is kind of rare,” according to district General Manager Paul Shoenberger.

“It became fairly apparent that he was a fictitious person,” Shoenberger said in an interview.

Matthew Cunningham, editor of OC Daily, confirmed that “Glen Huntley is the pseudonym of a contributor who has written about topics like Mesa Water and the O.C. grand jury.”

“OC Daily will publish articles from pseudonymous contributors but does not compromise their identities,” Cunningham wrote in an email.

“It speaks volumes that the joint statement does not claim Glen Huntley’s [stories] are factually wrong,” Cunningham wrote. “Those articles reported on Mesa Water District’s own public records. Those facts speak for themselves.”

Shoenberger, however, said in his interview that “there were a lot of inaccuracies” in the pieces.

If Huntley isn’t the name of the person who wrote the articles, what is?

In a letter dated April 24, Mesa Water pointed a finger at the sanitary district, stating “Mesa Water strongly believes that the ‘Glen Huntley’ alias was used by the public relations consultants employed by CMSD” for “the sole purpose of writing misleading, negative and denigrating articles.”

However, sanitary district General Manager Scott Carroll denied that any district consultants used the byline.

“We didn’t have any say in the writing of the stories,” Carroll wrote in an email. “Mesa Water wanted us to admit the stories in OC Daily are not true, but we would not agree to that. However, as it says in the statement, we agreed to disavow the stories, which means we do not support them.”

Regardless of who wrote the pieces, Shoenberger said Mesa Water is “good with the settlement agreement” and ready to move on.

The most recent OC Daily story attributed to Huntley — headlined “City of San Clemente sues itself — they win and taxpayers lose” — was posted March 12.

luke.money@latimes.com

Twitter @LukeMMoney