Local government transparency in San Francisco is under attack from within.

The city has the nation’s oldest and arguably strongest local government transparency law, the Sunshine Ordinance, created by The Board of Supervisors in 1993. Voters overwhelmingly strengthened it in1999.

Journalists, advocates and others use it to help probe City Hall and the local bureaucracy in order to hold public officials and employees accountable. 

Not only is the ordinance tougher than California’s open-meeting and public-records laws, it establishes an 11-member public body, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, to encourage and monitor city officials’ and agencies’ compliance (or lack thereof) with the law. The panel receives upward of 100 complaints yearly alleging ordinance violations. Functioning as a kind of people’s court, it rules on access disputes, providing guidance and often negating the need for requesters to sue. 

But supervisors have shut down the task force since June, refusing to take up the applications of several incumbents seeking reappointment to continue their service. With nine of 11 seats vacant, the panel isn’t close to mustering a quorum. This has occurred after its members twice found Mayor Daniel Lurie violated the ordinance by concealing details of communications with President Trump and The Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

The shutdown’s causing a growing backlog of sunshine-related complaints and delaying decisions on pending disputes. (Full disclosure: The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, this letter’s primary author, is required by the ordinance to nominate two journalists and a lawyer to the task force). 

Board President Rafael Mandelman told The San Francisco Standard that hearings on appointments have been delayed while supervisors seek applicants with “pragmatic” views toward transparency-law compliance and enforcement. It’s expected Mandelman, a member of the Rules Committee, which screens task force nominees, could present candidates as soon as next week. It’s unclear if a newly seated task force would drop either or both cases against Lurie – or if findings against him are at the root of the shutdown.

Transparency laws speak not of pragmatism, rather, they mandate openness. The Sunshine Ordinance requires city officials and employees to provide, without unreasonable delay, records to “any person” wishing to see or copy them, no appointment necessary.

Both the state Public Records Act and the California Constitution — which voters amended in 2004 via Proposition 59 to include a transparency mandate — require public agencies and officials to take the broadest possible view of disclosure and the narrowest possible view of non-disclosure. 

Most task force members historically have been decidedly pro-disclosure because they recognize and respect the laws requiring it. 

The U.S. Constitution gives people a responsibility to be knowledgeable about their government and to watch over it. Nothing in any transparency law requires anyone to explain why they want records. Yet it’s a common City Hall refrain that people use the ordinance to request records to be a nuisance or simply an annoyance, while some officials base disclosure decisions on value judgments, not the law. 

Mandelman told The Standard some requests “move into the realm of harassment.”

What might seem a nuisance request to a government official could be from someone with the answer to fixing a societal problem that a citizen has identified, or could contain the key evidence a reporter needs to expose corruption.

Supervisors need to remember that government’s purpose is to serve the people, not vice versa. 

If someone wishes to see the expense reports and credit card receipts of supervisors or department heads, the city’s better for it.

After all, sunlight, as U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, is “the best of disinfectants”. 

Rather than stacking the task force with toadies, Mandelman and other Rules Committee members should appoint independent-minded people knowledgeable on and favorable toward transparency laws and should work to strengthen the task force with enforcement and subpoena powers. 

The timing of the sunshine shutdown deserves scrutiny. Mandelman is a close ally of Lurie, who often says he endorses transparency. But the task force’s violation findings against the mayor are not insignificant. 

The task force voted 9-0 in finding that Lurie violated the ordinance by refusing to release records of his January 2025 call with Trump, which reportedly led Trump to cancel a deployment of ICE agents to Bay Area cities.

The task force found that Lurie was equally, illegally secretive about his communications with PG&E that allegedly resulted in the restoration of electricity to the War Memorial Opera House, where his daughter was starring in The Nutcracker last December as thousands of homes and businesses around the city were in their second day without power during a massive blackout.

Sumeet Singh, the power company’s CEO, publicly told supervisors in February that “we were requested by the mayor to restore power to the opera house. Singh later told The Standard he was confused when he appeared before the supervisors and misspoke.

When The Standard used the Sunshine Ordinance to request details of the mayor’s communications with PG&E, Lurie’s office turned over texts that appeared truncated, without citing any disclosure exemption to legally justify redactions. 

“They are definitely hiding something,” a task force member said of Lurie’s office during a hearing. The task force fund Lurie in violation a second time.

The Standard’s since reported that Lurie’s office appears to be concealing or deleting other public records – in one case denying existence of texts that a supervisor had already released. 

It’s fair to ask Lurie’s allies on the board if they are delaying appointments because of the task force’s findings against the mayor.

Please tell city officials to turn the lights back on at City Hall and support transparency by immediately seating and reactivating a robust and pro-openness Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. 

And tell Lurie to keep the lights on not just for the ballet but for democracy and open government.

Here’s how to reach the mayor and key supervisors:

– Mayor Daniel Lurie – email daniel.lurie@sfgov.org; phone 415-554-6141.

– Board President, Rules Committee member and District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman – email: rafael.mandelman@sfgov.org; phone: 415-554-6968.

– Rules Committee Chair and District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton – email: shamann.walton@sfgov.org; phone: 415-554-7670.

– Rules Committee member and District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill – email: stephen.sherrill@sfgov.org; phone 415-554-7752.

The following individuals and organizations endorse the above statement:

The Northern California Chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists

The Pacific Media Workers Guild (The NewsGuild-CWA Local 39521)

San Franciscans for Sunshine 

Former Task Force Members 

Karl Olson, Esq.

Bruce B. Brugmann

Douglas Comstock

Allyson M. Washburn, Ph.D.

Richard A. Knee

Others

Thomas Burke, Esq., Sunshine Ordinance co-author