The Guild is joining other organizations and individuals in urging San Francisco officials to leave the city’s open-government watchdog panel, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, off the chopping block list that an ad hoc panel is compiling, purportedly to make the city more operationally and fiscally efficient.

Called the Commission Streamlining Task Force, the special panel is due on Oct. 17 to publish its recommendation on whether to modify, eliminate or retain the SOTF, or to consolidate with another policy body, and is scheduled to discuss that recommendation at a public meeting on Nov. 5.

The CSTF is born of a ballot measure (Proposition E) that San Francisco voters approved last November. The panel’s job is to recommend to the mayor and the Board of Supervisors the fate of each of the city’s more than 100 boards and commissions.

More than a few people in City Hall dislike the SOTF because it is the only entity willing to hold sunshine scofflaws to account, even when it ruffles the feathers of those in power, and government-transparency advocates worry that, regardless of the CSTF’s recommendation, some current and former officials will try to effect the SOTF’s demise.

The SOTF serves as a people’s court, hearing, without charge, complaints that city agencies or officials are withholding requested, publicly disclosable documents, or have prevented attendance at public-body meetings. Thanks to the SOTF, complainants don’t have to sue the city for redress. Moreover,  that saves the city potentially millions of dollars a year in legal expense.

For those and other reasons, the Guild has signed onto a letter by the citizens’ group San Franciscans for Sunshine urging the CSTF to recommend retaining the SOTF as a stand-alone body. (Disclosure: This writer is on San Franciscans for Sunshine’s steering committee.) Other co-signatories include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the League of Women Voters of San Francisco, the Media Alliance and Thomas R. Burke, a sunshine and First Amendment attorney who co-authored the 1999 voter-passed ballot measure (Proposition G) strengthening the Sunshine Ordinance (City Administrative Code Chapter 67), which among other things establishes the SOTF. And the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter has sent its own letter supporting the SOTF’s retention.

The Guild encourages its members to join the call to save the SOTF, to the extent professional ethics permits. Comments can go to the CSTF at CommissionStreamlining@sfgov.org.

Richard Knee

Guild Legislative and Political Committee Chair