09/01/2026
I would title this fiasco The Lurie Slurry: Lies and Agendas Hidden in a Suspension of Disbelief
"In one case, The Standard obtained an email from a city department about the decision to scrap a proposed homeless shelter that had received funding through Breaking the Cycle, Lurie’s $49 million public-private partnership. The email was from one of the mayor’s policy chiefs, who revealed that he made the call to scrap the project even though several hundred thousand dollars in nonprofit funds had already been spent on the site. The mayor’s office said it had no record of the email.
In another matter, one of the mayor’s policy chiefs started a group text related to Pacific Gas & Electric during the December 2025 citywide blackout. The mayor’s office again said it had no record of the chat, even though The Standard retrieved it through a public records request to a separate city department.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said “it raises a serious red flag” when the same public records requests sent to different parts of the city produce varying sets of documents. “One possibility is that the records exist in the mayor’s office, and they were just sloppy in failing to produce them,” he said. “Another is that the mayor’s office is deleting those records as soon as they’re generated.”
The pattern of missing records undermines Lurie’s campaign promise to uphold a level of transparency at City Hall, and a pledge early in his tenure related to text messages. In April 2025, The Standard reported that a resident had requested text messages between the mayor and the Public Works Department: The department provided the records, while the mayor’s office said there were no documents to provide. Weeks later, Lurie’s office committed to voluntarily handing over his text messages if a public records request was made."
This is what "tough on crime" means: Out of sight, people who have been convicted of nothing suffer violence and fear on a regular basis
