An ad hoc advisory body is recommending revamping the system of appointing members to San Francisco’s open-government watchdog panel, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, in a way that would make it easier for the Board of Supervisors to pack it with people who have little or no knowledge of open-meeting and public-record laws, thus paving the way to more backroom deal-making in City Hall.
The advisory panel, the Commission Streamlining Task Force, proposes keeping the 11-member Sunshine Ordinance Task Force as a stand-alone, policy-level body, rather than eliminating it or merging with another body such as the Ethics Commission.
But the streamlining panel suggests as well that the Society of Professional Journalists and the League of Women Voters lose their nominating role for certain Sunshine Ordinance Task Force seats, that qualifications to serve on the SOTF be lowered to “desirable” from mandatory status and that the qualifications be changed to body-wide from seat-specific.
Currently, SPJ’s Northern California chapter has nominating authority for SOTF seats 1 (attorney), 2 (journalist) and 4 (minority-community journalist), and the League of Women Voters of San Francisco has the authority for seat 5 (a person with experience or demonstrated interest in local government participation). The other SOTF members are picked directly by the Board of Supervisors.
The streamlining panel is born of a ballot measure (Proposition E) that San Francisco voters approved last November. Its 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.
Government-transparency advocates worry that some current and former city officials will embrace the streamlining panel’s appointment-system suggestions or will even try to effect the SOTF’s demise.
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.
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. And as the city budget and legislative analyst noted several years ago, that saves the city an untold amount of money in legal expense.
For those and other reasons, the Guild signed onto a letter by the citizens’ group San Franciscans for Sunshine urging the streamlining panel to recommend retaining the SOTF as a stand-alone, policy-level body. (Disclosure: This writer is on San Franciscans for Sunshine’s steering committee and served on the SOTF from 2002 to 2014.) Other co-signers included 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 SPJ’s Northern California Chapter sent its own letter supporting the SOTF’s retention.
The Guild encourages its members to join the call to save the SOTF as a stand-alone, policy-level body and keep its current appointments system in place, to the extent professional ethics permits. Comments can go to the streamlining panel at CommissionStreamlining@sfgov.org and to the Board of Supervisors at Board.of.Supervisors@sfgov.org.
Richard Knee
Guild Legislative and Political Committee Chair
