Paso Robles city manager condemns new Cal Coast News allegations, hot tub photo
Paso Robles city manager Ty Lewis is fending off new allegations from Cal Coast News after reporter Karen Velie published the third installment of her “Eye on Ty” series, which she claimed scrutinizes Lewis’ $2.2 million claim against the city and featured a photo of Lewis in a hot tub with what was labeled a “topless” woman.
Lewis immediately fired back, condemning what he said were several “lascivious” and “defamatory” claims in the series’ final installment.
In the story, Velie introduced the photo after revisiting the 2012 scandal involving ousted Paso Robles Police Chief Lisa Solomon, who was accused of sexually harassing a former officer in a hot tub.
Despite the hot tub theme, the photo published this week has no relation to Solomon’s case. It was actually taken around 2020, and the woman and Lewis were dating at the time, she told The Tribune, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Velie also appeared to claim that Lewis’ involvement with the woman in the photo resulted in charges being dropped in a theft case involving her son.
The woman said Cal Coast News’ characterization of the photo and her son’s theft “kind of infuriated me — that there’s people out there that just want to do defamation of character and portray Ty to be this terrible person when he’s really not.”
And for the record, the woman added, she wasn’t topless. She was wearing a strapless swimsuit.
The Tribune investigated latest Velie’s claims as part of its Reality Check series, which aims to hold local leaders and community figures accountable and answer residents’ questions.
Woman in hot tub photo says image is mischaracterized
In Wednesday’s story, Cal Coast News targeted Lewis’ past by citing a former city employee who reported that dispatchers regularly displayed pictures of naked employees on computers at the Police Department.
In an email Velie sent to Lewis, she said the employee claimed the photos would appear after Police Department parties “where people took their clothes off.”
“While Cal Coast News does not have copies of the alleged photos, a woman shared a photo of Lewis in a hot tub with a topless woman,” the article read.
In a quizzical sequence, the article then connected the hot tub photo with the alleged theft charge, which was later dropped.
“Roughly four years ago, a teenager was arrested on a vehicle theft charge. Soon after, the teen’s mother was alleged to have asked Lewis to help her son. The mother and Lewis eventually wound up in a hot tub. A family member snapped a picture of the topless woman leaning against Lewis,” the article read.
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The woman pictured in the hot tub with Lewis told The Tribune that Velie’s allegations were inaccurate and baseless. She said she and Lewis had a romantic “fling” for a few months in the summer of 2020.
She told The Tribune she did not know who shared the photo with Cal Coast News and reiterated that the photo had been mischaracterized.
She said the photo was taken in May or June, toward the end of their relationship, during a get-together of about 10 people in the backyard of a close mutual friend.
After she stopped seeing Lewis, the woman told The Tribune that toward the end of July 2020, her son and his friend went to a party in Santa Margarita and bought two dirt bikes.
Then about a week later, the woman said, she learned the dirt bikes were stolen property.
The owner of the dirt bikes filed a report with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office, which had jurisdiction over the crime since it occurred in Santa Margarita, the woman said.
The woman then took her son and his friend to a meeting with a sheriff’s deputy so that the boys could explain what happened.
“It boiled down to, the boys could return the dirt bikes and not get charged with trespassing or taking property that doesn’t belong to them,” the boy’s mother said.
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At that point the boys had already re-painted the bikes and removed a placard, so the woman agreed to pay for repairs. The repairs cost was split between her family and the family of her son’s friend, the woman said.
Text messages and emails the woman shared with The Tribune corroborate her story and show she did reimburse the owner.
The woman said she wasn’t sure if she even told Lewis about the incident, as they were no longer dating at that point, but if she did, it would have been only to get general advice.
Lewis was Paso Robles police chief at the time, and his department did not have any jurisdiction over the incident.
“This is ridiculous, and this is something that had happened four years ago. The dirt bikes had nothing to do with Ty. Why would it haunt us?” she told The Tribune.
Fact-checking Cal Coast News reporter’s claims
Wednesday’s article also fell short of Velie’s previous promises for the third installment of the series.
On Dec. 19, she said on Dave Congalton’s Hometown Radio show on KVEC that the third story would be released by Christmas Day.
The crux of the story, she said at the time, was a claim by former Paso Robles police Officer Brennan Lux, who she said told her Lewis had retaliated against him after he reported then-police Chief Solomon had sexually harassed him.
In an email to Lewis on Dec. 20, Velie wrote, “Lux reports you then retaliated against him when he reported the alleged sexual assault. Please respond.”
When The Tribune reached out to Lux on Christmas Eve, however, he rejected Velie’s account and said she did not ask him about what happened with Solomon.
Then he went a step further.
“Ty Lewis did not retaliate against me,” Lux said, adding that Lewis was in charge of the investigation into misconduct. “I think he did his job.”
Following The Tribune’s fact-checking of her claim, Velie did not include Lux in the article published Wednesday.
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Velie also used the article to address the question of whether “meetings” occurred among those accused of conspiring against Lewis.
She wrote that a Paso Robles couple, who said Velie wanted them to help her “make up bad things about the city” and “bring down Lewis,” claimed she and Bausch organized meetings with Lewis critics to force him from office.
But in publicly recorded documents and in interviews with The Tribune, neither the couple nor Lewis ever accused Velie or the others of holding or attending meetings.
Velie’s article also claimed recordings of her KPRL show “Sound Off” dispute Lewis’ allegations against her and the alleged co-conspirators. But The Tribune was unable to check that because the recordings are no longer available online.
In October, The Tribune reached out to KPRL asking to listen to archived recordings of “Sound Off” in an attempt to fact-check both Lewis’ and Velie’s claims.
KPRL told The Tribune in an email that its servers automatically delete audio files every 60 days.
Recent recordings of Velie’s show did show she changed her story multiple times regarding the way she obtained and reported on a recording of a cafe meeting among Lewis, Bausch and Paso Robles City Mayor John Hamon in March.
Velie also posted two different versions of the “full recording” on Jan. 10.
That recording is currently at the center of an ongoing fight for public records at City Hall, in which Bausch has refused until recently to cooperate with Public Records Act requests for the recording and other documents from his personal devices.
The Tribune has filed multiple demands for the records, and Bausch finally agreed — on the honor system — to search his devices for applicable materials.
He was expected to finish that process by Jan. 22, and the city will then determine which records can can be released.
Paso Robles city manager calls allegations ‘defamatory’
In a statement posted on Facebook on Wednesday, Lewis labeled the claims in Velie’s article as “lascivious” and “designed to defame.”
“This has been an ongoing pattern and practice by Velie, not just against me, but against anyone she sets in her sites (sic). It is apparent to me that Velie’s use of defamatory reporting is her stock and trade,” Lewis wrote.
Lewis continued: “With that said, I would like to point out the obvious; that everything within her article is without merit and proof. She provides no sources, citations or evidence to support any of her defamatory allegations. Just a picture of me, with a former woman I dated, in a jacuzzi.”
Lewis also denied that he ever swam with a naked Solomon and said he had no knowledge of dispatchers posting inappropriate material on their computers.
“I would not have allowed this,” Lewis said.
Lewis also said the Paso Robles Police Department had no participation in the Sheriff’s Office’s investigation into the vehicle theft case, to his knowledge.
“I certainly did not,” he added.