The Sacramento Bee asked for officials’ texts. Why cities couldn’t find the records

Two first amendment attorneys said Rancho Cordova may have violated the law when city staff failed to turn over text messages that revealed the internal deliberations of officials sitting on an embattled Sacramento County agency.

The Sacramento Bee filed a request under the California Public Records Act to seek text messages from September 2025 until December 2025 between Rancho Cordova Mayor Garrett Gatewood, Sacramento City Councilmember Caity Maple’s former chief of staff, Ryan Brown, and Sacramento County employee Shawn Ayala. The trio was associated last year with the Sacramento Metropolitan Television Cable Commission, a Sacramento County agency tasked with steering money to public media organizations and composed of representatives from local cities and the Board of Supervisors.

The cable commission has been under scrutiny after public media organizations raised concerns over what they called a lack of communication by county officials and how the cable commission abruptly ended a December meeting, leaving local organizations uncertain over how much money they would receive as they tried to plan their 2026 budget. Ayala, the cable commission’s executive director, predicted a steep drop in revenues and proposed deep cuts for organizations such as Access Sacramento and the Sacramento Education Cable Consortium. Both public media organizations have disagreed with the county’s revenues forecast for cable funds.

The Bee filed a public records request Jan. 5 to Sacramento County, the city of Sacramento and the city of Rancho Cordova to seek text messages between Ayala, the executive director of the cable commission; Brown, the former chair of the cable commission; and Gatewood, who presided over the commission’s December meeting.

The city of Rancho Cordova said it did not have any email or text messages exchanged between Gatewood, Brown and Ayala.

“Mayor Gatewood has confirmed that he has not sent or received any direct text messages to/from the requested individuals. Your public records request is now complete,” city employees wrote in response to the inquiry.

Sacramento County, however, turned over a chain of messages sent on Dec. 4 by Brown to both Gatewood and Ayala.

A Rancho Cordova spokesperson provided the text messages sent by Gatewood after being informed by The Bee that Gatewood appeared in a text chain that the county produced. When Gatewood initially searched for those texts, “no texts appeared when he searched,” wrote Maria Kniestedt, the city spokesperson.

“When he searched again this morning for any texts, he found a single text exchange,” Kniestedt wrote Monday, while later adding “Mayor Gatewood sincerely apologizes for the oversight.”

Brown, in the messages, apologized for not being able to attend a December cable commission meeting after catching an illness and added “thankfully today’s meeting is more of an update from our licensees on consolidation.” The licensees did not have an opportunity to give a presentation in December after Gatewood unexpectedly gaveled the meeting to a close.

Gatewood responds “Feel better I got u.” Ayala then sent the duo a link to a Bee story about the cable commission which outlined how Sacramento’s public media organizations were concerned over a lack of communication by Ayala, according to the text messages.

A Sacramento city spokesperson said the city did not provide the text messages Brown sent because they did not have access to his device once he left the city. Brown’s last day of employment was in October 2025.

An issue of records retention

There’s an inconsistency across the state over how long and how public bodies should retain public records, experts said. Rancho Cordova’s failure to turn over records raises serious questions about the adequacy of its searching methods, wrote Karl Olson, an attorney who specializes in the California Public Records Act and who often represents the Bee.

The Legislature has not created a standard for how long records should be kept, and the California Public Records Act also does not define this standard, said David Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition.

Loy said he does not assume records were withheld in bad faith but also cannot rule it out. He added best practices would ensure that all official communications go through official channels with appropriate retention processes.

“That’s why it’s best to have systems and backstops because any system that depends on a person not making a mistake is a system doomed to fail,” Loy said.

This story was originally published January 27, 2026 at 10:00 AM.