Keeping the city accountable

Redwood City’s Veterans Memorial Senior Center Phase 1 came in 34 months late at significant public cost. I filed a Public Records Act request, got documents back in batches, and have been turning them into a structural root-cause analysis. The goal at the end is a publication-ready piece plus a journalist who’ll take the story further. AI is the analyst; I’m the editor and the one whose name goes on it.

Three different pitches, three different reporters

Tailored outreach to three local journalists, each angled to their actual beat.

200 PDFs at the door

Three LLMs as parallel analysts on a CPRA document dump. Honest forensics on 200 PDFs in a week.

The CPRA

Filed the original Public Records Act request. Two productions in. Schedule data changed everything.