We Want to Sue 3 Government Officials Refusing to Disclose Public Records; and We Need Your Help to Sue Them

Editorial by Troy Torres, Kandit News & Views

We need your help, especially if you are wealthy, or you otherwise live with comfortable disposable income. Corruption and criminal wrongdoing involving your tax money and your public trust oftentimes is snuffed out by ordinary people looking through public records. This is why, in 1999, journalists and the late Speaker Mark Forbes improved the Sunshine Act of 1986 into the Guam Sunshine Reform Act of 1999, granting to any person in or outside of Guam the right to inspect public records on demand, and to receive copies of them within four business days. There are exceptions and extensions built into the law, commonly called the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

For decades, lawyers, reporters, federal law enforcement officers, and everyday people have used FOIA to access public records. Occasionally an agency director or someone else in that agency will miss a deadline, neglect to check their email where the request was sent, or fail to disclose all the public information. On fewer occasions, government employees have withheld information they mistakenly considered to be non-public information. And on rare occasions, government employees have wilfully withheld public records.

I remember twice when this happened, and both instances led to citizen lawsuits against the government employees who failed to furnish the public records timely. In the first case, the late Bob Klitzkie sued the former director of land management to release land records related to ex-archbishop Anthony Apuron and the scandals involving the Archdiocese of Agana at the time. The second case is more recent; Tom Fisher sued Telo Taitague after she failed to disclose WhatsApp text messages exchanged with the attorney general related to government business on her private phone.

Both Klitzkie and Fisher won their cases, though further proceedings are pending in the Fisher v. Taitague case to determine whether Ms. Taitague acted capriciously. If the court determines that she purposely, and with malicious intent deprived Mr. Fisher of his right to public records, she can be charged with a crime. In Mr. Klitzkie’s case, the court awarded the relief the late senator asked for, and fined the former land management director $1,000 out of his personal pocket. All of this is authorized in the updated FOIA, thanks to a series of legislatures that codified the public’s right to public records.

These are the consequences to public employees who deprive anyone of their right under Guam law to have public records: court-ordered disclosure, civil penalties and fines, payment of attorneys fees, and even jail time. The impediment to all this is the process to get there: due process. If a government employee refuses to disclose public records, you have to take that employee to court.

Here’s the thing; both Mr. Klitzkie and Mr. Fisher were and are lawyers. I’m not. But there are public records I asked from three people weeks ago that these three government officials are refusing to furnish.

I have thought long and hard about this predicament. I am not a confrontational person. I don’t want to spend money on a lawyer to take these cases to court, and I certainly don’t want to cause these three government officials to have to spend money on lawyers for themselves. I wish they would simply disclose the records I asked for weeks ago, because it is my and anyone else’s right to these records.

Alas, they refuse. And if they face no consequences for their seeming abuse of power, then what more will be hidden? And how many others will be emboldened to break the FOIA with complete impunity?

“Pat,” “Tyler,” the Tenorios, and the Public Records Being Withheld

In late March, two witnesses to an alleged conspiracy of a slew of federal crimes agreed to be voice recorded with their voices modulated beyond identification. The two witnesses, who we named “Pat” and “Tyler,” accused Lieutenant Governor Joshua Tenorio’s sister, Charissa Tenorio, and his boyfriend Matthew Topasna, of a number of financial crimes and corruption involving local and federal funds, and the intimidation of witnesses and victims.

Naturally, Kandit began a campaign to research their claims.

Port Authority of Guam:

Pat mentioned two names of employees at the Port Authority of Guam who she said were allegedly involved with Ms. Tenorio in unethical and even illegal activities.

On March 22, 2025, and then on March 28, I sent the following email to two people at the Port Authority of Guam whose names match the ones given by Pat: