CLEVELAND, Ohio — A City Hall employee’s downloads of thousands of public records sparked a bitter clash between Mayor Justin Bibb and Council President Blaine Griffin. So, what was in those files?
Perhaps the better question is, what wasn’t? A newly released list shows that council aide Steven Rys downloaded a slew of different public records, including emails, contracts, police reports, subpoenas and requests sent to media outlets.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer obtained, through a records request, a list of more than 1,900 file names that Rys had downloaded since 2021. But the list does not describe each document, and some were downloaded multiple times.
City Hall has since hired Littler Mendelson to review the issue and determine if Rys did anything improper, Bibb spokesperson Sarah Johnson said. The firm will be paid $520 per hour, though a final contract is still in the approval process.
Bibb’s administration has accused Rys of abusing his access to the city’s public records system. Officials say he downloaded more than 2,200 files from the database, including records that contained confidential information like Social Security numbers or the names of crime victims.
Griffin, however, has defended Rys, arguing the aide was simply doing his job by accessing records to keep council informed about city business and legislation.
The dispute quickly devolved into an all-out battle between the mayor’s cabinet and the city’s legislative branch over whether the staffer acted knowingly or whether the real failure lies with the law department’s lack of oversight.
It isn’t clear, based on the file names, whether Rys accessed any sensitive information.
A cleveland.com analysis found just one file labeled “needs redaction,” though it was downloaded four times. There are also many files marked “redacted.” Many others were labeled “.pst” or “.msg,” denoting them as emails or text messages.
Some file names leave no clues, such as “OneDrive_1_11-29-2023.zip.”
Rys appears to have used the public records database to find information about a wide range of topics. Highlights include:
• Proposals from internet providers to expand broadband across Cleveland. Council had reservations about Bibb’s pick, Digital C, who received a a $20 million contract to create a citywide internet service.
• Applications from people seeking to join the Community Police Commission.
• Emails sent by some of the mayor’s top staffers
• Records relating to Phillip McHugh, a senior safety advisor who resigned amid controversy
• Requests made by media outlets, like Ideastream, Fox8, Reuters and cleveland.com. Rys appears to have downloaded records that were supplied to reporters who made requests.
Griffin, asked by a reporter Monday, said he wasn’t given as extensive a list as cleveland.com. But he said the list he was given showed Rys downloaded a “garden variety of things.”
He said that he and the mayor met and had a candid conversation on Friday. While Griffin said he wouldn’t go into detail about the private talk, he said “his people know that they need to be more respectful” of City Council.
Last Tuesday Griffin released a letter accusing members of Bibb’s administration of trying to strong-arm council into firing Rys. That letter dragged a private dispute into public view and led both council and the mayor’s office to hold press conferences.
Bibb and Griffin hadn’t spoken before that letter went out. Bibb was in New York City for Climate Week NYC.
Rys, like many employees, has access to a program called GovQA, a system Cleveland uses to manage public records requests from reporters, lawyers and other members of the public.
When a request comes in, city officials are notified, and the keepers of those documents upload them into the system. Then attorneys review the uploaded documents. They may redact sensitive information, like an employee’s address or the name of a victim in a police report. They might also mark a record as exempt from disclosure.
Because of this system, there is an entire pool of documents in GovQA that are not necessarily public records or are unredacted versions of them.
According to a presentation given to reporters, city officials first discovered in May 2024 (council contends it was 2025) that Rys had downloaded what was described as confidential emails.
What followed, according to the mayor’s office, was a cat-and-mouse game. The law department started to lock files that contained confidential emails. But several weeks later, Rys found a way to download emails before they were locked. The city’s IT team changed the system again so that files with confidential emails were locked as soon as they were uploaded.
Then in early September 2025, the law department discovered again that Rys was downloading other confidential documents, not just emails. City officials audited the system and realized that Rys had downloaded 2,252 files since early 2022.
Rys, as well as several other City Hall employees, has since had their access to the public records database taken away.