Thumbnail photo: Roger Gitlin, editor of the Del Norte Triplicate, comments at a June 2 Crescent City Council meeting. | Screenshot Annie Nehmer Editor's note: The author of this article worked for the Del Norte Triplicate from 2012 to 2019. Her employment with the Triplicate ended when Country Media became the newspaper's owners. Paul Nicholas Boylan says his job is to make sure his client, Crescent City Harbor Commissioner Annie Nehmer, gets a fair shake in the local press and, up until last week, the Davis-based attorney thought that would be achieved. Those hopes were dashed, however, after Del Norte Triplicate editor Roger Gitlin published an article July 9 under the headline “Harbor Commissioner Sues Herself.” The article came after Boylan raised concerns about the appearance of bias in Gitlin’s questions to his client. Boylan says he had also received assurances from Joe Warren, chief executive of Country Media Inc., which owns the Triplicate, that Gitlin would submit questions to Nehmer, providing her with a chance to comment before publishing further pieces. This never happened, the attorney said. Paul Nicholas Boylan “He did not ask for comment about any of this,” Boylan said Monday. In an email Boylan sent to Warren following the publication of Gitlin’s article on July 9, Boylan said the piece contained “a number of false statements of fact without a fair opportunity for Ms. Nehmer to provide comment.” Allowing Nehmer to weigh in would have provided a chance for her to correct Gitlin’s “factual and legal misunderstandings” before publishing, according to Boylan. “Ms. Nehmer will be demanding that the Triplicate publicly retract and/or correct these statements,” the attorney told Warren. Nehmer, who was elected to the Crescent City Harbor Board in November 2024, hired Boylan in June in response to emails Gitlin sent her on June 28 questioning her about legal action she had taken against the Harbor District. The harbor commissioner was alarmed by Gitlin’s aggressive and confrontational tone, she said in a June 30 press release and felt she “needed some help with this.” “It is widely perceived that Mr. Gitlin has close ties to the current harbormaster,” Nehmer states. “When I received Mr. Gitlin’s emails with demands that I drop everything on a busy weekend and respond to what I felt were questions that demonstrated Mr. Gitlin’s bias in favor of the harbormaster, and when Mr. Gitlin refused to talk to me in person, and wouldn’t give me a little more time to respond, I felt I needed some help with this.” Boylan specializes in government transparency issues and has received awards for his work with investigative journalists throughout California. His work includes defending the Rio Dell Times against complaints of libel, slander and harassment in September 2022. Boylan has also represented the North Coast Journal in that publication’s efforts to obtain dash camera footage from a Eureka Police Department patrol car that had captured the December 2012 arrest of a 14-year-old subject — an arrest that led to excessive force allegations. In February 2023, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter honored Boylan with the Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement award, commending his “track record of getting his clients access to hard-fought, revelatory government records…” 063025 Press ReleaseDownload In a July 2, 2025 conversation with Redwood Voice, Boylan said he feels he’s helping to uphold the canons of responsible ethical journalism when he represents a news outlet in court. When he represents an individual against a news outlet, he said, he does so because he believes they’re violating those standards. Boylan said he wasn’t accusing Gitlin of wrongdoing, but an email the editor sent to Nehmer made him question whether he would be objective in his reporting. On June 28, after listening to a recording of a six-hour Harbor District meeting, Gitlin asked Nehmer why she was suing the agency. He asked her to submit her response in writing and told her he was going to press Monday, June 30. “With Linda Sutter (sic) separate lawsuit, do you believe yet another costly legal matter will aggravate the tenuous revenue challenges affecting the CCHD,” Gitlin wrote. “Please share your motives and unhappiness with Harbormaster Rademacker (sic).” In her response that evening, Nehmer said she felt “unfairly rushed.” She said she didn’t have time to write a thoughtful, accurate response to Gitlin’s questions by June 30 and asked for another week. “A short delay won’t change the story you intend to publish, but it will give me a fair opportunity to provide the context your readers deserve,” she said. “Also, the Commission has recently filed something called a demurrer — which I understand is a motion to dismiss — and I am actively re-evaluating my legal filings. I would like to include my decisions in the comments you’ve asked for.” Nehmer promised to provide a full and detailed response to Gitlin if he could wait a week before writing his article. If he decided otherwise, she said she would respond, but the answers wouldn’t reflect the full picture. In his response to Nehmer about three hours later, Gitlin declined to wait a week before moving forward with his article, saying in a terse email, “cannot adjust this timely story.” “I respectfully disagree on your position on contemplative news. News waits for no one,” he wrote. “How you feel a rushed extension will change what you feel is fair or unfair makes no sense to me. The time is offered to you and I’d suggest you take advantage of the offer.” On July 1, after Boylan announced that he was representing Nehmer in response to Gitlin’s email, the attorney emailed Warren, telling the Country Media chief executive that he felt that Gitlin was biased against Nehmer in favor of Rademaker. Email btw Annie_Gitlin_PNB_Joe WarrenDownload “As Mr. Gitlin’s questions to my client notes, my client is currently involved in litigation with the Harbor Commission,” Boylan told Warren. “This is a public matter and is, of course, newsworthy. But one of the accepted strictures of reporting on ongoing litigation is the parties habitually do not comment on litigation while it is progressing through the courts.” Gitlin, Boylan told Redwood Voice, was pressuring his client for a comment on those lawsuits. In his press release, Boylan said Gitlin’s question to Nehmer about whether “yet another costly legal matter will aggravate the tenuous revenue challenges affecting the CCHD” was a loaded question. “… such a loaded question could indicate a reporter’s bias in favor of the agency and officials being criticized,” the attorney stated. “An effort to protect the public from potential wrongdoing is always worth the costs to enforce that protection. If not, then no one could ever sue a public agency because the agency might incur costs.” Gitlin’s questions to Nehmer come after the Harbor District Board on June 25 discussed two petitions she submitted to cure and correct actions taken that she said violated the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meetings law. Those actions involved approving Rademaker’s employment contract and an agreement with Mitchell Law Firm to provide legal counsel — both of which were done in closed session without allowing the public to comment. On June 25, the Board rescinded one of the votes they took in closed session — the contract with the Mitchell Law Firm. They voted again to approve the Mitchell Law Firm agreement. However, while the Board read out from their minutes that they approved Rademaker’s five-year employment agreement — which included a $20,000 raise — in closed session, they did not rescind that vote and vote on it again in open session, Boylan said Tuesday. Boylan referred to a lawsuit Del Norte County resident Linda Sutter filed recently accusing the Harbor District of violating the Brown Act, which prohibits governing agencies from voting on employment contracts for executive officers in closed session. Boylan said he had spoken with the Harbor District’s counsel asking for proof that the Board of Commissioners cure and corrected their closed-session vote on Rademaker’s contract. “The only thing they can tell me is that … when you read the minutes contextually it’s showing that negotiations were continuing and when they eventually approved the contract, that means they rescinded the old stuff they did and approved [Rademaker’s employment agreement],” Boylan told Redwood Voice. “They did not cure and correct, and that’s the basis of Linda’s lawsuit. And I’m negotiating to resolve that problem.” In his article on July 9, Gitlin called Nehmer’s complaint of Brown Act violations on the part of the Harbor District “a failed attempt to reverse the 4-1 vote” to approve Rademaker’s employment contract. “Her request was expediently denied by the Del Norte County Superior Court due to a fundamental procedural error: Nehmer did not wait the required 30 days after sending a ‘cure and correct’ notice BEFORE (stet) filing the lawsuit, rendering her position invalid,” Gitlin wrote. On Monday, Boylan told Redwood Voice that Gitlin is misunderstanding the law. For one thing, the headline is incorrect. Nehmer didn’t sue herself or her individual colleagues, the attorney said, she’s trying to enforce a duty by the Harbor District — compliance with the Brown Act. The Brown Act protects the public by preventing agencies from making some decisions in closed session, outside of the public eye and without public input, Boylan said. The Harbor District did this on April 23 when the Board first approved Rademaker’s contract, the attorney said. Secondly, while there is a portion in the Brown Act that states that in order to correct a violation one must submit a cure and correct petition within 30 days of the agency’s action, an individual can petition for injunctive relief to prevent further violations or threatened violations of the Brown Act without demanding the agency cure and correct anything, Boylan said. Finally, the attorney said, contrary to what Gitlin reported, no judge has yet weighed in on Nehmer’s cases, including ordering their dismissal. “The judge never opined on any of this,” Boylan said. According to the Del Norte County Superior Court’s online case logs, Nehmer requested the dismissal on Friday. “What she was arguing is that the decision [the Harbor District Board] made in closed session, to give [Rademaker] a $20,000 raise and to give him a five-year term violated the notice of requirements of the Brown Act, and she’s right. She’s absolutely correct,” Boylan said. “You’re not allowed to make decisions on an executive officer’s employment in closed session. You can discuss it, but you can’t vote to do it in closed session, which is what they did.” According to Boylan, if the Harbor District hadn’t cured and corrected their closed-session decision regarding Rademaker’s contract and their agreement with Mitchell Law Firm, the agency could have been sued to enforce the Brown Act. In addition to her petition to seek injunctive relief regarding the Harbor District’s Brown Act violations, Nehmer has also filed legal complaints against the agency regarding other matters, which she has voluntarily dismissed, Boylan told Redwood Voice. Boylan told Redwood Voice on July 9 that he’s working with Nehmer to get her concerns with the Harbor District addressed. “Prior to Gitlin’s article, Annie had agreed to dismiss her complaints as a sign of good faith and with the expectation that her concerns would be effectively addressed,” he said. “That’s what she did, and for that reason. But I am concerned that her voluntary good-faith actions will reinforce the thought — even if wrong — that it was Gitlin’s article that prompted the dismissal. That perception would be unfortunate.” Before he was hired as the editor of the Del Norte Triplicate in February 2023, Gitlin wrote a weekly column “Eye on Del Norte,” which he also operates as a Facebook page. Gitlin also represented Del Norte County District 1 on the Board of Supervisors from 2012 to 2020. Country Media bought the Del Norte Triplicate from Western Communications in 2019. Gitlin and Warren have not returned requests for comment as of Tuesday.