SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Tom Ruppel strongly believes that names of some California state parks and monuments should be reexamined. So why did he sue the California State Parks for how they chose which parks to rename?

Four years ago, California State Parks set out to reexamine its parks and monuments as nationwide protests in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police led to an urgent call to denounce a long history of systemic racism in the United States.

State parks officials wanted to know if names of parks and monuments were derogatory or inadequately contextualized history. In doing this, the state parks department pledged “public engagement and full transparency” in its process to provide an accurate and inclusive history at its parks and monuments, according to an August 2023 article written by Leslie Hartzell, cultural resources division chief for California State Parks.

Ruppel was initially astonished — and later angered — when he says California State Parks “stonewalled” him as he tried to obtain information the department gathered in a survey of 280 state park units.

There are 21 administrative districts across the parks system’s 1.6 million acres. The system’s legal office asked for California parks managers to provide information about “potentially contentious sites” in the system that might be subject to protest, according to Hartzell’s article published in The Public Historian.

Ruppel, a 75-year-old retiree from Solano County, simply wanted to know what information state parks officials gathered in their survey. He could’ve just let it go and went on with his life. Instead, he hired an attorney and sued California State Parks.

“Somebody’s got to do it. I’m willing to suffer for this,” Ruppel said about his lawsuit. “They treated our state parks like it was their personal property.”

Last month, the court ruled in Ruppel’s favor and ordered state parks officials to release documents he sought under the California Public Records Act. Attorneys on both sides are still negotiating when that information will be released.

State parks officials declined to comment on the court’s ruling.

“California State Parks does not comment on pending litigation,” Jorge Moreno, a communication manager for state parks, told The Sacramento Bee.

Lawsuit versus state parks

In June 2023, Ruppel submitted a California Public Records Act request wanting to see what information was gathered in the state parks survey. State parks officials responded with letters and emails that claimed they needed more time to fulfill his request for public records.

A few months later, he hired the Bay Area law firm of Cannata, O’toole and Olson to legally represent him in what Ruppel called a “paperfight” against state parks officials withholding public records. Ruppel said he still doesn’t understand why state officials were willing to waste money on fighting him in court; money that could be better spent on a park ranger’s salary.

Karl Olson and Zachary Colbeth, attorneys specializes in Public Records Act litigation, represented Ruppel in court. Olson has represented The Bee in public records and First Amendment lawsuits.

Three months after he submitted his request, state parks officials sent Ruppel a letter saying they found 24 records, but some records were deliberately withheld.

“They weren’t telling me anything,” Ruppel said about responses from state parks officials. “It was coming out in dribs and drabs.”

In the lawsuit filed Dec. 21 in San Francisco Superior Court, Ruppel’s attorneys argued that the records state parks officials gave to Ruppel failed to fully comply with the Public Records Act. The descriptions in a provided state parks spreadsheet regarding the survey were improperly redacted in their entirety, according to Ruppel’s lawsuit.

Redacted state parks spreadsheet

The California Attorney General’s Office, which represented the state parks department in court, argued Ruppel was provided with redacted information that contained opinions, unvetted statements and assertions by staff that were intended to be a starting point for further research, fact-checking and discussions with state parks policymakers, according to filed court documents.

Ruppel said he wants to know if state parks officials are meeting the goals of their initiative.

“I want to hold them accountable,” Ruppel said about the state parks initiative. “I’m completely on board with that. I want to make sure they don’t drop the ball on this.”

Effort started in Nevada County

Ruppel, a Dixon resident, has been retired for the past 10 years after working for the IRS as an analyst in its taxpayer advocate service division. He worked for 25 years at an IRS office near Watt Avenue and Interstate 80 in Sacramento. Before then, he spent eight years as a general assignment reporter from 1977 through 1985, for various newspapers in California.

His deep dive into the names of parks and and monuments began a few years ago when he petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to replace the name “McGlashan Point” with “China Wall Overlook” on federal land in Nevada County. McGlashan Point near Donner Summit is named after Charles Fayette McGlashan known as “Truckee’s patriarch.”

But McGlashan also was known in the late 19th century as an “effective anti-Chinese legislator in the California State Assembly,” according to a Feb. 12 historical article written by Mark McLaughlin and published in the Tahoe Guide.

In a March 27 letter to the National Council on Public History, Ruppel said he discovered the exhibit had no mention of “how McGlashan orchestrated (Chinese) ethnic cleansing from Truckee in 1885-86 during a period of anti-Chinese hysteria.”

Ruppel’s federal petition is still under review, but he’s optimistic McGlashan Point will be renamed. But as he gathered research for his federal petition, Ruppel stumbled onto the California State Parks effort called “Reexaming Our Past Initiative.”

The initiative is “looking specifically at contested place names, monuments and interpretation” in the state parks system, according to the initiative’s web page. Among the sites listed on the web page, state parks officials are still seeking input on the renaming the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area day use area once known as “Negro Bar.” The site in Sacramento County was temporarily renamed Black Miners Bar in July 2022.

State parks officials said information collected in a brief June 2020 survey of park units made it clear the department must act to further identify and remove derogatory names, inappropriate honorifics associated with the historical legacy of some historic figures. The initiative pledges to work to identify inadequate interpretive programs or exhibits that fall short in fully contextualizing California’s history in parks.

The Solano County man believed state parks officials would certainly be receptive to his efforts.

Ruppel initially sought help from state parks officials on changing the Donner Memorial State Park exhibit to include a paragraph about the anti-Chinese “Truckee Method” economic boycott. In 1885, Truckee’s white citizens approved a resolution to boycott all Chinese-owned businesses as well as any company that employed Chinese workers, according to a June 2019 article written by Alicia Barber of KUNR Public Radio.

In his letter to the National Council on History, Ruppel said state parks officials told him in an email that the exhibit doesn’t call out McGlashan specifically. He said they also told him it’s impossible to include every person, date and event in one exhibit, and that decisions were made to tell the broadest history in the most complete way.

San Francisco Superior Court ruling

On Aug. 30, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East ruled in Ruppel’s favor and ordered California State Parks to release 13 documents he had sought; 12 are handwritten notes by Hartzell and the other was the spreadsheet that was significantly redacted.

State parks officials apparently believed the notes and spreadsheet would cause confusion, because the notes are merely the impressions of one person and the spreadsheet was not factually vetted, according to the judge’s ruling.

“The survey was disseminated to identify ‘problematic names’ and nothing indicates that it was confidential or in anticipation of litigation,” the judge wrote in the filed court ruling. “Indeed, the survey was sent to the Strategic Planning and Recreation Services Division, which undercuts a claim of confidentiality.”

Ruppel’s attorneys said the court ruling orders state parks officials to provide an unredacted version of its survey spreadsheet where the public will be able to see what exact issues were identified as problematic, along with contemporaneous notes of “Reexamining Our Past” committee meetings taken by Hartzell, that state parks cultural resources division chief.

Colbeth, one of Ruppel’s attorneys, said the court’s ruling correctly recognized Ruppel and the broader public have a right to access these public records.

“Mr. Ruppel made his Public Records Act request back in June of 2023, and the records should have been released over a year ago,” Colbeth told The Bee, “particularly given the department’s promise in a September 2020 press release of “transparency” regarding the initiative.”

Having prevailed in this lawsuit, Ruppel is entitled to recover his attorney’s fees and costs. The Court hasn’t addressed that issue yet, but his attorneys hope to come to an agreement with the Attorney General’s Office on the fee issue without having to file a motion in court.

Olson, Ruppel’s other attorney, said this was basic public information that should’ve been released from the beginning, and the public has the right to know what state parks officials did or didn’t do.

“They should’ve produced this over a year ago when Tom requested it,” Olson told The Bee. “It wasn’t the secret of the atomic bomb or the secret recipe for Coke.”

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