By Scott Alonso, Public Information Officer, Contra Costa County Office of the District Attorney
Cynthia Battenberg Moraga Town Manager. From Town of Moraga website.
Recently, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office became aware of a website allegedly run by “Citizens for a Fair East Bay” with false and misleading information regarding town officials in the Town of Moraga and our Office’s involvement with these officials.
Moreover, this anonymous website proclaims a complaint was filed regarding the Town Manager of Moraga. This statement is misleading – our Office has not filed any criminal or civil actions against the Town Manager. Further, the use of our Office logo and website was not authorized by our Office in this manner.
In September, our Office’s public corruption unit received a confidential request to investigative a potential crime. A thorough investigation was conducted, and no further enforcement action was deemed warranted. The matter was closed – no action is being taken by our Office regarding the Town Manager of Moraga.
Asked who handled the investigation and what it entailed, Alonso responded, “DDA Steve Bolen is the attorney who handles these types of cases. We do not comment about the specifics of an investigation like this.”
Further questions were sent to Alonso asking if after an investigation has been completed the DA’s office can’t share how they determined that the claims are baseless and if the evidence isn’t public. He responded, “it will depend on the investigation but generally for these types of investigations we do not comment. Given the website contained false information we felt we had to issue some sort of public statement.”
Allen Payton contributed to this report.
Your headline: DA’s Office: anonymous Moraga political website gives false information on Corruption Unit investigation of town manager, dated OCTOBER 9, 2020, is in itself FALSE and MISLEADING.
The website is not a Moraga website. It was a website apparently from San Leandro by a neighbor of C. Battenberg who has a longstanding and ongoing dispute with Moraga’s town manager.
Your headline says the website comes from some person in Moraga — NOT TRUE.
JR Morgan,
Thank you for reading the Herald and taking the time to comment.
However, the headline is accurate because it describes that the website is about Moraga politics and the Moraga Town Manager.
It does not state whomever created the website is located in Moraga. You’re reading into that.
If a city, say like Lafayette, hires a webmaster from outside of that city, say like in San Francisco, is the website a San Francisco website
or a Lafayette website?
You’re being over technical about this.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to move the word Moraga next to the words “town manager” for greater accuracy.
Allen Payton
Publisher & Editor