E-mail alias causes ire

Jenny Marder

Residents are calling for the resignation of the second Planning

Commission chairman in eight months.

Former Chairman Randy Kokal was forced to resign in September

after he failed to follow protocol when appointing a vice chair for

the group. Now, an active group of residents want to oust Ron Davis

from the position for joining their chat group under a false name.

City Hall gadfly Mark Bixby thought it strange when a man he’d

never heard of, with an intimate knowledge of the city, began posting

e-mails on a local message board.

A member of the message group noticed that the style of Stuart

Welch’s letters was similar to that of Planning Commission Chairman

Ron Davis. Like Davis, Welch started e-mails with a name and a colon

and like Davis, he referred to people formally, with surnames.

Who is this Stuart Welch, Bixby wondered, and why is he so intent

on defending Davis and the commission?

Bixby, a computer whiz, soon discovered, by comparing the I.P.

address of Welch’s e-mails with that of Davis’, that the e-mails were

originating from the same computer.

When confronted Davis admitted to penning the e-mails under the

name of Stuart Welch.

Davis said he created the user name to respond to contentions that

he had violated the Brown Act by allowing commissioners to attend a

series of closed meetings with staff members that were neither open

to the public nor placed on the city agenda. City officials said that

informational meetings between staff members and commissioners are

frequent and permissible by law.

“I was using a disguise to get [people] to elaborate on what their

reasoning was,” Davis said.

Activists say that using a false e-mail identity on the popular

group message board is grounds to call for his resignation.

“Everybody has the freedom of speech to say what they want to

say,” Bixby said. “[But] when you get into an area of pretending to

be something you’re not and telling lies to pull off disguise, it

becomes a problem especially for officials in City Hall.”

By deceiving people, Davis has sent himself on a slippery slope,

Bixby added, referring to comments Welch made about having made a

phone call to Ron Davis.

“What he wrote included the telling of lies in order to bolster

the fake Stuart disguise,” Bixby said. Huntington Beach resident Tim

Geddes agreed that the action warrants Davis’s resignation.

“It’s a very serious ethical problem,” Geddes said. “Basically,

what you had Ron Davis doing is creating a fictitious alleged persona

to blunt criticism of himself or to represent points of view that Ron

Davis would be representing. If he admits that he did this, it needs

to have an explanation.”

Davis, a local attorney, admits to creating the false user name,

but denies that any of his actions were illegal or unethical. He

created the name, he said, to get a candid response to false

accusations that were circulating about him. He wanted to get his

message out and didn’t feel that people would take him seriously as

himself.

“What’s unethical?” Davis asks. “User names are utilized all the

time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all. It’s a

technique utilized in law enforcement and everything else.”

Davis said he feared that Bixby’s investigation would deter others

from joining group message boards or speaking out in public.

“What prompted the investigation was that people didn’t like what

[Stuart Welch] was saying,” Davis said. “As a consequence of saying

something in public to someone, [they decided] we’re going to

investigate you. How many people are going to be willing to speak in

public now?”Bixby, who was already manning an environmental message

board, created H.B. Talk in January 2004 to give people a chance to

discuss city-related issues in an online format. The message board

has about 80 subscribers.

The real problem is the message board itself, not Davis’s actions,

said Councilwoman Debbie Cook, who appointed Davis to the commission.

“I think what’s unethical is that activists have created a website

where people can spread gossip and rumors unchecked,” Cook said.

“It’s such childishness. I think they did something wrong. They’ve

created an atmosphere where people feel they can’t talk “

“I think that the ethical issues would arise if he had written

something with lies. But if he wrote something as factual, I don’t

understand where the ethical argument would come in.”

Cook adds that the group often focuses more on personalities than

real city issues.

“They need to elevate the dialogue,” Cook said.

But Bixby is rally the troupes for what he sees as a city battle:

A group of people plan to call for Davis’s resignation at the City

Council meeting Monday.

“Ron’s a smart guy and I think really it would have been best if

these discussions could have been held as Ron Davis,” Bixby said. “I

don’t think it was necessary to adopt a disguise. Once you get into

deception, it generally always makes anything worse.”

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at jenny.marder@latimes. com.