The City of Santa Clara this week, starting March 17th is putting on Fix A Leak week which focuses on all the potential ways to seek out water leaks in your home. However, for the City of Santa Clara leaking pipes of water is not their only concern with “leaks”.  The consistent leaky pipes of information has found its way out of City Hall and into headlines quite often within the last decade.  

Leaks though have easy fixes and it reminds all of us to sleuth around our City Hall and the City Council to fix them as they are found, no matter how rich and how powerful they may be.  Find them. Prosecute them. Convict them. As Mayor Gillmor has said in the past, “No one is above the law”.  

Authorities should focus on the many leaks at Santa Clara City Hall that could protect residents from long-time corrupted officials. In a 2022 letter to District Attorney Jeff Rosen, following the release of the grand jury report, former Police Chief and Gillmor ally Pat Nikolai stated that “only the District Attorney’s office” has the “investigative power” to “prove and conduct whether council broke the law” and that he would provide Santa Clara Police “department resources.”

The irony of former Chief Nikolai’s statements poses the question: where is that same language when investigating his political allies whom he knows have done something wrong? Furthermore, based on his comments, it raises the other question of the old saying, “Who watches the Watchmen,” which is a philosophical question questioning who holds power over those tasked with maintaining order, security, or morality. Originating from the Roman poet Juvenal, it highlights the danger of corruption or abuse when authority figures (police, leaders, district attorneys) operate without accountability.

In other words, I guess you can say that holding those in authority accountable is challenging when they share the same feather—or the same interests—as those they are meant to hold accountable.

Here are some examples of some significant leaks over the years.  

• In 2015 and 2016 a personnel report concerning then City Manager Julio Fuentes was leaked to San Jose Inside (spin master Jude Barry was close to the paper) and Mercury News thanks to “a source familiar with the report’s details, delivered in closed session”.
• 2016 Grand Jury report on Measure J released and Mayor Gillmor is first to comment with serious questions and concerns over loss of money to general fund and how taxpayer dollars were used to pay for stadium operations as if she knew what to expect. 
• 2017 Measure J audit leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.svvoice.com/call-a-plumber-for-the-leaks-and-faulty-pipes-behind-santa-clara/ 
• In 2020, leak of Patty Mahan’s resignation from City Council for sickness. 
• 2021 Leak of Councilmember Kevin Park’s information on domestic incidents police reports at his home. The police public records then asked the requester for it to be destroyed. Since then blogger Robert Haugh has spun this as a cover-up when in fact it was most likely intentional to look like a cover up. 
• Leak of closed session discussion regarding labor issues (just recently mentioned at Council meeting’s public comments)
• The 2022 Grand Jury report leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and Santa Clara POA made a political website before the report was public. 
• April 2023, an April Fool’s joke on a Robert Haugh’s blog that the entire city Council was being indicted days before the District Attorney actually indicted former Councilmember now convicted felon Anthony Becker. 
• 2024 FIFA information to the San Francisco Chronicle (In the SF Chronicle article is states “according to the source, who asked not to be identified given the sensitive nature of the information” 
• August 2025, 49ers-Fanatics Contract information leaked (In Robert Haugh’s blog, he wrote, “This information [49ers-Fanatics Contract] was shared with Santa Clara News Online by a reliable source who has viewed the contract”.
• 2025 Robert Haugh reports, Santa Clara Police department investigating Councilmember Kevin Park for violation of court order. 
• April 2023, an April Fool’s joke on a Robert Haugh’s blog that the entire city Council was being indicted days before the District Attorney actually indicted former Councilmember now convicted felon Anthony Becker. 

Common culprits include

• Mayor Lisa Gillmor (search history for contempt of court, ceiling of a misdemeanor). 
• Former Councilmember Kathy Watanabe (Admitted in court she leaked a grand jury report and shared it to her husband and was never charged for willfully violating her elected duty). 
• Former Councilmember Anthony Becker (Convicted for felony perjury and a misdemeanor court leak for violating his elected duty, his case is currently on an appeal)  
• Former City Attorney Brian Doyle 
• Former City Manager Deanna Santana 

However, when you look at the bigger picture—not just what happened nearly four years ago or what is currently under scrutiny, but the pattern across the entire decade—the situation becomes much clearer. It doesn’t take a former convicted Councilmember to tell us the obvious. At that point, it becomes a process of elimination among the usual culprits. Doyle and Santana could be possibilities, but their tenure only ran from 2017 until late 2021 and early 2022. Meanwhile, convicted felon and former Councilmember Anthony Becker served on the council from 2020 to 2024.

The simplest questions must be asked: who has been on the City Council that long? Who has held power that long when compared to the list of leak examples? There is one common denominator among all of them—the person who has been accused the most and has been there the longest: Mayor Lisa Gillmor. Better call the plumbers and the District Attorney, we think we found the source of the leaks. 

Whether it was 2026, 2025, 2022, 2017—or any year in the past decade—the pattern has remained the same. For example, in 2017 Mayor Lisa Gillmor held a private meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board and then appeared afterward on a Facebook Live chat claiming a forthcoming report would reveal violations of Measure J. Thirteen days later, the Chronicle reported that it had obtained and “detailed the confidential 169-page report.” The Chronicle’s reporting and the surrounding circumstances led many to suspect that someone with limited access had leaked the document to the newspaper.The language used by the Chronicle in describing the 2022 leaked grand jury report was strikingly similar: “The 60-page report, a copy of which was reviewed by the Chronicle.”

To this day, no one has publicly identified who leaked the 2022 Grand Jury report to the San Francisco Chronicle, which was also the first outlet to publish Gillmor’s response. Her written statement to the paper claimed the report “clearly documents violations of the law,” warned of the “potential for corruption,” and called it “a wake-up call that says we need to clean up our city,” while simultaneously presenting a conveniently timed six-point “anti-corruption” reform plan. Once again, the response appeared prepared in advance, raising questions about timing and intent. Yet the irony of her comments is hypocritical. This paper the Silicon Valley Voice once quoted from Hamlet, Act III, Scene II: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Or, in simpler terms: those who shout the loudest accusations often deserve the closest scrutiny—and Gillmor has a lengthy record of crying wolf while making the loudest accusations.

If only it were as simple as the City of Santa Clara’s Fix-A-Leak Week—just tossing in a few detection dye tablets to show us exactly where the leaks are coming from. Common sense and basic wisdom already tell us what we all know. Yet law enforcement, city personnel, and certain media outlets seem to struggle with comprehending the situation or enforcing the rules when it comes to these individuals. In this case, you don’t need detection dye—just common sense.

So where is the District Attorney? Where is the Grand Jury? Is anyone going to prosecute Kathy Watanabe for her own willful violation of the law?

And lastly, the purpose of all this: what about the City of Santa Clara? Are you going to fix your leak problem? 

Roger Kint