Oakmont News reporters quit as political fallout widens after pickleball dispute

In another blow to the convulsing retirement community of Oakmont, four retired journalists have quit the all-volunteer staff of the village’s newsletter after a new officer of the homeowners’ association board demanded that stories be submitted to the board for review prior to publication.

“That amounts to the board censoring the news,” objected Oakmont resident Marty Thompson, a retired Associated Press executive and bureau chief who served as an editor of the Oakmont News.

The shakeup follows several months of turmoil sparked partly by a dispute over proposed pickleball courts in the Santa Rosa community and an April election that installed a new board majority on the Oakmont Village Association. That majority dropped the pickleball project this spring.

The twice-monthly Oakmont News is not a general circulation newspaper but a printed and online communications publication of the village association, the dues-funded nonprofit that manages the community of more than 4,000 seniors.

The publication’s declared purpose is to “report on current and planned activities in and around Oakmont or of general interest to the Oakmont community, disseminate information on upcoming planned social, recreational and arts and crafts events by our approved clubs and organizations, provide our residents a platform to express their views, and include Board and Association communiques.”

Thompson and the other retired journalists had for more than four years bolstered the newsletter’s content with front page, professional-quality news stories and features.

“I kind of invented news coverage in the Oakmont news,” said Thompson, 78. He was joined on the Oakmont News staff by Jim Brewer, who retired from the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009 after more than 40 years as a reporter and editor; former Knight Ridder newspapers journalist and television reporter Jackie Ryan, and Al Haggerty, whose career included work as a reporter in New York City.

Thompson said directors of the Oakmont board voiced no complaints about their coverage until they posted a story on July 14 that was a bombshell in Oakmont. It reported the resignation of village association manager Cassie Turner and quoted her as saying she had no choice but to resign because some board members were shutting her out from involvement in the management of the association.

“We thought it was news,” Thompson and his fellow reporters wrote in a statement presented to the village board at its meeting Tuesday. “The (OVA) website had 800 hits that day.”

The Press Democrat also published a story on Turner’s resignation on July 14.

The Oakmont News story ran into trouble because it conflicted with the position of OVA President Ellen Leznik and Vice President Ken Heyman, which was that the organization could not address Turner’s resignation publicly because it is a personnel issue.

When asked for comment by The Press Democrat and Oakmont News, Leznik responded that she could not talk about it. In its story, the Oakmont News cited a written statement in which Leznik said, “We do not believe it is appropriate or wise to discuss a private personnel issue in public forums and so we have no comment.”

Heyman, the board vice president and its liaison to the Communications Committee - whose members included the volunteer reporters - read the Oakmont News story and responded with a forcible email to the writers.

Thompson said that in the email Heyman called the posting of the article “one of the most destructive actions the Communications Committee had ever made.”

Thompson said Heyman declared that from that point on, the Oakmont News reporters - whom Heyman referred to as members of the Communications Committee - would be required to submit to the board all stories prior to their publication, and also the list of proposed future stories.

Heyman said in emails to The Press Democrat that he requested only that the Communications Committee grant the board review and approval of “any articles regarding personnel or legal issues, to see if there was anything that needed to go through our attorney.”

In regards to the Oakmont News story on the Turner resignation, Heyman wrote, “I believe that the OVA Communications Committee published information about an employee matter without seeking proper input from the Officers, which may have exposed the Corporation.

“I was simply acting to protect the Association and its members,” he wrote.

Heyman was elected to the seven-seat Oakmont board in April and became part of a new majority opposed to the previously approved and hotly contested project to build pickleball courts alongside the central Berger Center. Three months after the election, Oakmont remains in tumult: Manager Turner and also the OVA’s longtime attorney resigned, some Oakmont residents have called for the board to remove Reznik as president, and board member Carolyn Bettencourt has proposed that the pickleball issue be put to a vote of all Oakmont homeowners.

Former AP editor Thompson said he and the other retired journalists understand that the Oakmont board has control over the Oakmont News, but they will not continue to write under the conditions Heyman outlined.

“The terms imposed by Ken Heyman were unacceptable,” Thompson wrote in an email. “We were not comfortable with having the board approve our story list or with having stories approved before publication.”

Oakmont News will continue to publish without them, though it is unclear whether it will contain news and feature stories like the ones they wrote.

Agnes Reznikov, the newsletter’s publisher, is hopeful the current conflict can be resolved and the writers will return, a hope Thompson said he shared.

The Oakmont Communications Committee is set to meet Monday morning.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.