Three months after Stockton’s Office of Public Transparency, Information and Communication was first unveiled in an Instagram video, basic questions about the group remain unanswered.
Chief among them is why Stockton’s approach to public information was effectively overhauled while the city was being led by a temporary city manager, former interim Steve Colangelo — and why Colangelo didn’t include his plans to create the new OPTIC office in the yearly city budget presented to City Council in June.
OPTIC chief Tony Mannor, Stockton’s main spokesperson, first revealed the office’s existence in an Instagram video from earlier this year that has since been deleted.
“Think of it as the anti-propaganda department. My job is literally to tell you everything — and I mean everything,” he said in the video. “Are you sure you’re ready for this level of transparency?”
After multiple requests by phone, email and in-person, Mannor did not agree to an interview about OPTIC.
Stocktonia’s attempts to ask city about OPTIC
On Sept. 19, Stocktonia requested an interview about OPTIC via email. OPTIC chief and Stockton’s lead spokesperson Tony Mannor responded that he needed permission from acting City Manager Will Crew.
On Sept. 23, Stocktonia made interview requests to Mannor and Crew in-person. Crew said he’d respond later, but didn’t. Mannor asked Stocktonia to email him a list of interview questions.
On Sept. 26, Stocktonia emailed Mannor and Crew a description of possible questions and, again, requested an interview. Neither official responded.
On Oct. 9, Stocktonia emailed Mannor and Crew a list of questions. The next day, Crew said via email that the city could respond by Oct. 15. Stocktonia ultimately received no response.
Throughout, Stocktonia also placed multiple calls to Mannor and the City Manager’s Office seeking an update on the interview request.
While it’s unclear when exactly OPTIC started — neither Mannor nor Crew responded to Stocktonia’s request for an exact date — the office promptly ran into scrutiny.
In August, District 2 Councilmember Mario Enríquez and Vice Mayor Jason Lee announced plans to report Colangelo to the California attorney general for allegedly purposely obscuring OPTIC’s existence in the city’s budget. The council’s Audit Committee, which includes Enríquez and Lee, launched a city investigation into OPTIC the same month.
At a September meeting, councilmembers expressed disappointment over the little apparent change to the city’s communications since the office started up.
“I would just see some change,” District 1 Councilmember Michele Padilla said. “And I really haven’t seen that yet.”
‘Hello, government transparency’
In the Instagram video, Mannor touted the creation of OPTIC as part of a radical new approach to government transparency led by Mayor Christina Fugazi and former interim City Manager Colangelo.
“After the election, Mayor Fugazi and … Colangelo were handed a grand jury report that basically said, ‘Hey Stockton, you suck at public transparency. Do something about it’,” Mannor said.
Last year, a San Joaquin County Civil Grand Jury found that the 209 Times — a controversial social media page run by a Stockton political consultant — “consistently attempted to undermine the local democratic process.”
The grand jury urged Stockton City Council to make 11 policy changes aimed at fixing the problems it identified, including new transparency measures for campaign consultants, candidates’ economic disclosures and city investigations into open meetings law violations.
Creating an office like OPTIC wasn’t among the grand jury’s recommendations. But Mannor said that in response to the report, Colangelo and Fugazi “worked together to create an entire department opening the doors and windows of City Hall, turning on the lights and letting everybody see what’s going on in here.”
“Goodbye gatekeepers, goodbye secret deal-makers, hello government transparency,” Mannor said in the Instagram video.
The council still has yet to implement two fixes the grand jury did recommend. One was to stop “enabling” the 209 Times “through their continued association and/or support of individuals associated with” the group. The other was to pass new transparency rules for political consultants.
Meanwhile, Fugazi has appeared in photos with the 209 Times’ founder and praised him publicly since being elected as mayor. She didn’t respond to questions about whether she agrees with the grand jury’s request that councilmembers stop supporting the group, and about why the City Council hasn’t addressed the recommendation.
In the spring, the city published a job opening for a public information officer that would work in the mayor’s office but “(provide) support to … OPTIC.” Under Stockton’s charter, the mayor’s staff must report to the mayor, while citywide staff, including the city’s spokespeople, must only report to the city manager. The mayor’s office is currently interviewing candidates for the job, she said in an email Tuesday.
Tech-savvy
Mannor has also billed OPTIC as a technology-savvy office that represents “the solution to … effective government communication.” The office also plans to put accessibility for the visually impaired front and center, Mannor told City Council in September.
Previously, Stockton’s public relations fell to 20-year veteran spokesperson Connie Cochran, who retired in May.
Mannor sent no response to questions about what OPTIC believes wasn’t working about Stockton’s previous approach to communications or how OPTIC plans to address it.
For his part, the new spokesman formerly worked for the San Joaquin County Office of Education’s CodeStack department, according to his Linkedin. He also owned Finnegan’s Irish Pub on Pacific Avenue in Stockton for 15 years and worked at marketing firm Andermahr & Company for 12 years, including as vice president, his Linkedin shows.
The three new employees hired for OPTIC have backgrounds in coding, web and graphic design, video production, marketing and similar areas, Mannor told the City Council last month.
He sent no response to Stocktonia’s emailed questions about why the new communications team specializes so heavily in tech.
It’s not a surprising choice, given how communications tools have evolved, according to David Vossbrink, a former spokesperson of more than five decades for various public entities, including the city of San Jose, the San Jose International Airport and the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
“If you come to (the job) from a tech background, that could be a good foundation,” he said. “But you need to add to it other aspects of the communications toolkit.”
Mannor sent no response to a question about whether OPTIC staff are members of a professional group such as the California Association of Public Information Officers, which provides training and ethics standards for government spokespeople.
He also sent no response to a question about whether OPTIC adheres to industry-standard ethics rules, such as the CAPIO Code of Ethics.
In September, Lee pressed Mannor about whether he held an Accreditation in Public Relations. Awarded by a board of communications experts, it’s considered the “gold standard” in credentials for government spokespeople, with a strong focus on ethics, according to CAPIO.
“No,” Mannor shot back. “I just have 20 years of experience.” Mannor has 18 years of private and public communications experience, he said in his presentation at City Council.
How should a city government communicate?
Government spokespeople don’t need a specific background to serve the public well, Vossbrink said.
But they do need “really strong communications chops — and that’s a very broad definition,” he said. “Writing, being able to absorb information and then apply it in a variety of ways and means, a good listener, a good questioner, someone who’s flexible, someone who’s creative, can see around corners and look at trends.”
In Stockton, the public information officer job is governed by its City Charter, which requires the PIO to report to the city manager as opposed to the mayor.
Neither Mannor nor Crew responded to Stocktonia’s questions about how OPTIC is ensuring its staff follow this rule.
What does OPTIC do?
In September, Mannor told councilmembers that one of OPTIC’s core purposes is to make Stockton’s website more accessible to visually-impaired people, who may use screen-reading technologies. Stockton is racing against the clock to meet an April 2026 deadline for new federal government rules on web accessibility, Mannor told councilmembers.
But the spokesman didn’t respond when Stocktonia asked for an explanation on how the website doesn’t already meet those standards.
What’s more, OPTIC’s overall communication strategy for the city remains unclear.
Mannor faced questioning on this point by councilmembers in September. During questioning by Lee, he informed councilmembers that OPTIC was at step five of a six-part process of designing a strategy.
Mannor sent no response to questions about who within OPTIC is responsible for creating the plan or what it will include.
One of OPTIC’s core commitments to the public is timely responses to information, Mannor told councilmembers in September. But the spokesman sent no response to a question by Stocktonia about how OPTIC plans to ensure it provides information in a timely manner.
Starting Sept. 19, Stocktonia requested an interview about OPTIC via email, in-person and by phone. An email, sent to both Mannor and Crew Oct. 9, included a list of questions. Crew indicated he’d respond at a later date. Stocktonia has not received a response.
“If we can’t communicate with news media, we do have some challenges here,” Vossbrink said. Media is important to our toolkit.”
Returning one’s calls — both literally and metaphorically, in the sense of showing up — is one of several principles Vossbrink said he’s learned over the years.
The first and most important rule? “Tell the truth,” he said. “That’s really kind of the bedrock for people in our business.”
‘Trust and transparency’
Perhaps the biggest question hanging over OPTIC is why there was no sign of it in the yearly budget the City Council passed in June. The section of the 2025-2026 budget dedicated to the city manager’s office, where OPTIC is housed, contains no hint of the new office.
Neither Mannor nor Crew answered Stocktonia’s question about why the office wasn’t included in the budget. Colangelo sent no response to the same question by deadline.
Last month, Mannor told Stocktonia that OPTIC was created by recasting an existing team in the city manager’s office — the Office of Performance and Data Analytics.
“OPDA was not dissolved. This was an expansion and rebranding, not a dissolution,” he previously told Stocktonia. “The City Manager has legal authority to reorganize and rebrand existing offices without Council approval or notification when using existing staff and budget.”
Three of OPDA’s five staffers were moved to the IT department, Mannor said. Other OPDA positions were “vacated” and the salaries used for OPTIC staffers, he said. Mannor didn’t say if those OPDA employees were fired or resigned.
While Colangelo may have had the legal authority to create OPTIC behind closed doors, in Vossbrink’s experience, “bad process can trump good policy,” he said. “You may be doing the right thing, but if you haven’t checked all the boxes, you may have given yourself some obstacles to success.”
“If you’re representing transparency and trust, ideally you would start off emulating those values,” he added.