Volume 42 Number 24

March 12 – March 18, 2008

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Secret crush

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By Andrea Nemerson


› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m having the best sex of my life, but when I’m having a good time — which is often — my PC muscles have minds of their own and they get enthusiastic. I know I’ve got strong PC muscles because the last time I went to Doc Stirrup she told me to squeeze and then said, "Whoa." The end result is that I inflicted one doozy of a bruise on my poor guy’s junk.

He’s being a sport about it and says he doesn’t mind, but I know it hurts him afterwards and I’d rather not strangle my man.
Any advice?

Love,

Supergirl

Dear Girl:

I think we’d all rather you not cause permanent damage, physical or psychic, to your sweet baboo’s manhood (also either physical or psychic, come to think of it), and I do think I can help, although I understand that you are a woman to be reckoned with and he probably shouldn’t take anything for granted. (Note: I know the writer slightly, and nobody would mistake her for anything less than a force of nature, although obviously I had no idea just how much of a force. Bruising! Really.)

Now here’s the thing: the whole deal with yer basic dentata muscles is that they do operate via conscious control, so even though you’d rather be all transported and let your eyes roll back in your head and all that, you’ll need to think, really think, about relaxing those muscles while you’re at it, exactly the way those with less-toned bits have to concentrate on contracting them. In fact, perhaps it’s best to look at this entire problem backward, if you will.

While your (boyfriend’s) problem is not unheard of — one can, for instance, rapidly lose all feeling in one’s hand after inserting it up to the wrist in the terrifyingly well-toned interior of a Kegel-exercise enthusiast — the opposite complaint is far more common. When a woman can’t feel much upon intromission, or her male partner finds himself diligently thrusting away but has to keep reminding himself that he isn’t just pumping blindly into thin air, then it’s time for some Kegeling and some applied mindfulness. I suggest that you practice not contracting your pelvic muscles when excited, either with his help (warning: this exercise is not particularly erotic), or alone, or both ways. Women trying to get their muscles under conscious control can buy something such as a "Kegelsizer" or "vaginal barbell," even. These are rather lovely, smooth, heavy devices of stainless steel or similar, and one practices holding onto the larger, more bulbous end and progresses to the smaller, at which point one may also be able to project ping-pong balls across the barroom or smoke a cigarette in an unexpected manner. (But of course you’re not interested in such circus tricks. You’re not, right?)

I am quite sure that you could employ such exercises in the pursuit of less instead of more, since it’s less reflexive clenching you’re after, not less muscle. Just do be careful not to accidentally ultratone yourself. You could break something.

There are also, of course, tips and tricks for genital-size-discordant couples that could be brought into play here — in reverse. Women who want more friction for themselves and/or their partners keep their legs close together, so do the opposite. The famous but not-for-amateurs modified missionary position where the woman lies supine and the man straddles her legs, keeping them clamped between his manly thighs lest they dare to make a break for it, is another obvious no-no. The one with your feet up around his ears while he clutches your hips? Don’t do that. Also, all those tricks for better alignment (hip-tilt pillows and whatnot) are meant for G-spot (internal clitoral) stimulation, but that is accomplished partly by just making things tighter in there, so they’re contraindicated too. I’d also throw in whatever you yourselves do in pursuit of greater sensation, since in intercourse sensation is linked to tightness, which is linked to friction, and quit doing (briefly, we hope) whatever you were doing when you caused the bruising. Remember, we’re in Bizarro World here, so whatever feels especially intense is on the "quit it" list, at least until you get those Supergirl muscles under control. And in the interest of equal time for opposing cartoons, stop eating spinach.

Now, let’s consider lube. Lube is tricky, since it actually decreases friction yet improves sexual sensation, making a lie of what I said above about friction, but never mind that. Yes, I tell people who aren’t feeling enough to try more lube, and yes, I tell people who are feeling too much to try more lube. What the heck, it’s cheap.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

What the verdict meant

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>>Read more at www.sfbg.com/lawsuit

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The press coverage was impressive: The San Francisco Chronicle put the story on page one. KTVU-TV made it the third item on its 10 O’Clock News. Editor and Publisher, the newspaper trade journal, picked it up, as did Forbes magazine. The San Francisco Daily used a front-page bold banner headline: "Jury punishes chain."

And indeed, as anyone who follows the local news media is aware by now, a San Francisco jury March 5th ruled that the SF Weekly and its corporate parent, Village Voice Media, illegally sold ads below cost in an effort to harm the Guardian. The jurors awarded $6.3 million in damages, and since the law allows as least part of that award to be trebled, the Weekly and VVM could be liable for as much as $15.6 million.

VVM already announced it will appeal, which means it’s unlikely the Guardian will see any cash award for several years as the case works its way through the legal system. But in the meantime, we will be asking Judge Marla Miller to issue an injunction barring any further below-cost sales.

Under state law, interest on the judgment will accrue at 10 percent a year. That means the Weekly and VVM will be paying $4,000 a day in interest for as long as they seek to dispute and appeal the jury decision.

The verdict alone sends a powerful message that goes beyond the newspaper industry. California’s Unfair Practices Act, a Progressive-era measure, forbids a big chain with deep pockets from coming into town and using predatory pricing to run a locally-owned, independent operation out of business. A San Francisco jury has confirmed that the law can be a powerful weapon against the consolidation of news media — and the chain-store assault on local merchants.

Not surprisingly, VVM’s principals have said they are going to try to invalidate the law in the courts. In a written statement posted to the SF Weekly Web site, the chain says it doesn’t think the law ought to apply to competitive markets.

Of course, the entire point of our lawsuit was that the Weekly and VVM wanted to end competition — that the chain was trying to harm its only direct competitor in the San Francisco marketplace. And that’s precisely what the law was written to prevent.

As James R. McCall, a law professor at Hastings, wrote in a 1997 article for the Pacific Law Journal, "the commercial practice of knowingly selling below cost with the intent to injure competitors or injury competition has long been considered unlawful by American courts and state legislatures."

The trial produced reams of evidence and extensive testimony on the business practices of both papers, and provided some remarkable insights into how the nation’s largest alternative newspaper chain operates. Some highlights:

•VVM, which has built highly profitable papers in many national markets, fared very differently here. The chain bought two papers that were profitable concerns — the SF Weekly in 1995 and the East Bay Express in 2001 — and turned them both into huge money losers. Over the past 12 years, the company lost some $25 million in the Bay Area, and has pumped $13 million from corporate headquarters into propping up the Weekly.

Financial data presented in court showed that in markets where the chain faces no direct competition from a strong alternative paper, VVM is practically printing money. Profits in Denver and Phoenix were sky-high, sending some $40 million back to corporate headquarters over about 10 years. But in places where a strong competitor challenged the VVM paper — San Francisco and Cleveland being the two most notable examples — the chain was losing money or its profits were much thinner.

•The folks in Phoenix were obsessed with going after the Guardian. The record is littered with e-mails between VVM headquarters and the SF office discussing ways to get ads out of the locally owned paper. The Weekly publishers had to send a regular "Guardian report" back to Phoenix to show how the two papers stacked up. Weekly publishers admitted that they might have offered special bonuses to sales reps who took ads away from the Guardian.

In fact, three witnesses testified that on the day he bought the Weekly in 1995, Mike Lacey, one of the chain’s two principals, threw a copy of the Guardian on the floor and vowed to put us out of business.

The jurors found that sort of behavior strong evidence of predatory intent. One panel member, Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that "it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly" and that "the predatory intent trickled down from the top."

You could see that same intent by the way the Weekly covered the trial. None of the local reporters at the paper were in the courtroom; instead, the chain brought in one of its top editorial executives, Andy Van De Voorde, from Denver to write about the case every day. And the blog posts he authored were about as personally vicious as anything I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Van De Voorde portrayed this entirely as an attempt by Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann to shake down the Weekly and VVM for money. (And he never reported on the fact that the evidence clearly showed Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, had never taken big profits out of the paper and had instead reinvested money to improve the Guardian.) From the start, Van De Voorde called the suit silly and stupid and tried to make the case that the Guardian had no evidence at all to prove predatory pricing.

As the case wore on, he started to change his tune: by the last few days, he was tacitly acknowledging that there was a chance the Weekly would lose, and he started attacking the law itself. In the end, he told me he "wasn’t surprised" by the verdict — although for weeks his blog posts had taken the position that the Guardian couldn’t possibly win.

•The Weekly‘s lawyers essentially argued that their own client was unable to handle pressure from the Internet and unable to adapt to a changing marketplace. Expert after expert on the VVM payroll testified that both the Guardian and the Weekly had seen revenues drop because of outside market forces in San Francisco that apparently were completely beyond the coping ability of a national chain that was making money hand over fist in the rest of the country. In his closing arguments, H. Sinclair Kerr, the Weekly‘s lead attorney, insisted that the market for alternative newsweekly advertising had shrunk and that both papers were, in essence, failing.

That contrasted dramatically with testimony from the only expert witness for either side who had actually run a weekly newspaper. Bill Johnson, publisher of the Palo Alto Weekly, testified that the Internet was not destroying alternative papers and that it was entirely possible to make money in the Bay Area, even during a tough economy. He pointed out that, unlike daily newspapers that rely increasingly on wire-service stories, alt-weeklies offer unique content that can’t be found anywhere else. And the people who are looking for those stories make up a lucrative market for advertisers.

His conclusion, after attending much of the trial and viewing much of the economic evidence: the reason the Guardian was losing revenue was that the Weekly had systematically depressed the price of display ads in the alternative weekly marketplace. And the chain paper was able to do that because of its deep pockets.

Numerous witnesses agreed that the Weekly could have raised its rates and made a profit. But that would have made it possible for the Guardian to compete for those clients — and VVM wanted the market to itself.

In the end, the jury got the message: the Guardian has been hurting badly all these years not because of any external factor but because a rich competitor was selling below cost.
That, Johnson testified, was exactly how predatory chains operate. "It happens," he said, "all the time."

The Guardian was (well) represented by Ralph Alldredge, Rich Hill and E. Craig Moody

Freedom of Information: Virtual meeting

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› news@sfbg.com

Forget smoke-filled rooms and paper shredders — today’s government officials can elude public scrutiny from the comfort of their own e-mail accounts, conducting virtual meetings to do the public’s business.

To curb such activity, provisions in both the Brown Act (the state law governing open meetings) and the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance have been interpreted as prohibiting the use of electronic communication between members of policy bodies. But not everyone has been heeding the rules, particularly in this hyperconnected age.

The TechConnect Task Force, a now disbanded advisory body charged by Mayor Gavin Newsom with creating a plan to bridge the city’s digital divide with free wireless Internet service, frequently used an e-mail listserv to conduct its business.

"Since these things were publicly posted right away, I should think there would be a transparency that advocates would like," said Emy Tseng, a member of the task force. "It was useful in the way e-mails and listservs are useful to anyone."

However, many contend the task force was engaging in activities prohibited under the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, even if the intent was to provide greater public access to the group’s work. Tseng, who claims to have never been informed by the City Attorney’s Office that the group might have been in violation of Sunshine laws, expressed the frustrations of many throughout the city who must comply with open-meeting policies.

"If you don’t use e-mail in this day and age, what can you do?" she asked. The answer, according to state and local laws, is to conduct public business in a public meeting, with the agenda posted in advance and where anyone can attend.

State and city public-disclosure laws apply to all "policy bodies," which can include nearly every government-sanctioned board, commission, or task force. Some members of these bodies have been suspected of vioutf8g open-meeting and public-disclosure laws through the use of online communication.

Seriatim meetings are presumably the most common illegal activity occurring under both open-information laws, although they are the hardest to detect. A seriatim meeting occurs when one member of a policy body privately contacts another, who then contacts another, in a chain of communication that eventually constitutes a quorum of the group.

An e-mail that is forwarded along to enough individuals, or a round of mass e-mails, would constitute a seriatim meeting, according to attorneys who spoke with the Guardian. While e-mail forwarding is a common practice for any office worker, some are just an unassuming click away from breaking the law.

"I would absolutely make it clear that anybody subject to the Brown Act or Sunshine [should] not communicate through e-mail," said Thomas Burke, a San Francisco-based attorney who specializes in media and Internet law and has represented the Guardian. "This could go on for years because people are not in the loop."

The Brown Act, passed in 1953 by the California Legislature, expressly bans a legislative body from using "technological devices" in order to communicate about topics relevant to the work of that body.

"The Brown Act itself forbids the majority of ‘technological devices’ — which is essentially anything you could imagine," said Terry Francke, director of Californians Aware, who also drafted amendments to the act in the early ’90s. Under the Brown Act, a committee member can be slapped with a misdemeanor for the intent to withhold information from the public or conduct prohibited meetings.

Many of the same issues are also addressed in the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, filling in more restrictions and open information requirements. Ironically, the TechConnect Task Force was charged with creating universal access to online discussions like theirs, although few legal experts think even that would nullify the requirement for open, public meetings in a physical – rather than virtual – setting.

According to a report released by the San Francisco TechConnect Task Force, 32 percent of Americans do not have access to the Internet. In San Francisco, certain populations are even worse off compared to national averages — for instance, women and the elderly.

"You have to consider if people are going to have equal access to meetings," Burke told the Guardian. "There is still a digital divide. As a public entity they have to be sensitive to this."

Recently, members of the city’s Peak Oil Task Force inquired with the City Attorney’s office about using Yahoo! Groups or a blog to increase efficiency on the all volunteer committee. Attorneys advised the group to stay away from Internet communication, as it can easily lead to prohibited seriatim meetings. Jeanne Rosenmeier, who is the chairperson of the task force, now spends more committee time trying to determine alternative ways to engage the public.

"It is certainly something that should be rewritten, to deal with modern technology so it corresponds with today’s reality," Rosenmeier told the Guardian. "If we have a public e-mail listserv that anyone can sign on to, that seems transparent; or if we have a blog, that’s pretty transparent."

In other cities that do not have sunshine ordinances, teleconferencing may be used legally under the Brown Act to conduct meetings. In Los Angeles, for instance, some boards and commissions teleconference when members would need to drive a few hours just to meet. There is some speculation that the language of the Brown Act could be augmented under this provision to allow for online communication, but there are no major groups pursuing the amendment.

In 2001, former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wrote an opinion declaring the use of e-mail between policy-body members as an infraction of the Brown Act, even if the e-mails were made publicly available. "Members of the public who do not have Internet access would be unable to monitor the deliberations as they occur," the opinion states. "All debate concerning an agenda item could well be over before members of the public could [participate]."

According to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, there have been no complaints filed concerning prohibited online meetings, however there have been public information disclosures of private e-mail messages over the years. Recently, a group of deputy city attorneys were required to turn over an e-mail correspondence when a member of the public filed a complaint.

While Peter Scheer, director of the California First Amendment Coalition, understands the frustration of government officials who must abide by the cumbersome laws, he thinks the tradeoff is well worth it.

"The whole rest of society uses the power of e-mail and the only business that can’t use it is government, because they’re subject to the Brown Act," Scheer told the Guardian. "But we made the tradeoff already in efficiency versus accountability, to force all meetings and information to be open to the press and public."

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Freedom of Information: The leaks go on

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news@sfbg.com

In what may be the last act of a quickly unfolding drama, Swiss banking giant Julius Baer has dropped its lawsuit against Wikileaks, an anonymous whistle-blower Web site, and Dynadot LLC, the site’s registrar. Baer’s attorneys had sought to shut down Wikileaks through a permanent injunction for hosting potentially damaging material about the bank’s activities in the Grand Cayman Islands.

The bank’s decision last week follows its legal defeat Feb. 29 in which San Francisco federal court judge Jeffrey S. White withdrew his ruling to halt the US version of the Web site Wikileaks.org — and to also stop information from the site from being transferred to another server.

White weighed arguments from both sides and said his withdrawal of the order against Wikileaks still raises serious issues about the extent of jurisdiction any US court has over the Internet. He essentially agreed that prior restraint of the site was unconstitutional, and that it could create a "chilling effect" on future free speech cases. He bowed to arguments from defense attorneys and said his prior order raises questions regarding "possible infringement of protections afforded to the public by the First Amendment."

The anonymous forces of Wikileaks seemed to have braced for the legal blow. Within hours of the Feb. 15 takedown order by White, those in the know could access the site by entering the IP address, which is run on a server in Sweden and on other servers around the world.

While no official Wikileaks defendant ever materialized because its operators remain a secret, the preliminary injunction order set off a firestorm of criticism from free speech advocates. One after another, lawyers from the ACLU’s San Francisco chapter, Public Citizen in Washington D.C., and nearly a dozen civil rights organizations rushed to intervene and defend the site.

Shutting down the site is akin to "locking the doors of The New York Times," said Julie Turner, an attorney who represented Wikileaks in prelitigation matters.

"I think this was a textbook example of what not to do," said media law attorney Thomas Burke of the bank’s efforts to seek a prior restraint. "This just completely backfired and garnered international attention."

The documents posted on Wikileaks have been used as the basis for major news stories on subjects such as the treatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, the US military’s rules of engagement in Iraq, and corruption by Kenya’s former president. And instead of concealing documents, the case has drawn a maelstrom of attention to the bank’s alleged dealings, and it raises big questions about freedom of speech on the Internet.

In their filing, Julius Baer attorneys said they still reserve the right to consider filing suit in the same court or elsewhere and are considering the company’s legal options. The bank’s spokesperson, Jenna Agins, declined a Guardian request for comments.

Founded in 2006 by Chinese dissidents, journalists, and tech gurus, Wikileaks hosts 1.2 million leaked documents that aim to expose government and corporate wrongdoing. Anonymous site creators say they’re developing an uncensorable system for "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" and are ready to fight any legal attack.

Wikileaks may have evaded its censors this time, but the latest case portends the vulnerability of such sites and those involved in them. Julius Baer’s attorneys admitted to the judge they had a hard time tracking down a Wikileaks representative. So they went after Daniel Matthews, a Stanford grad student. According to the bank’s court filing, the bank’s attorneys found his name on a Facebook page listing him as an "officer" of Wikileaks and summoned him to court. Joshua Koltun, his pro bono attorney, rushed to file a brief to defend Matthews.

"It was an extremely aggressive move because they were basically grabbing at straws," said Koltun, who appeared without his client in court. "They said he would face liability for a very tenuous connection or be confronted with disobeying the court order."

The bank’s attorneys claimed that Wikileaks had disclosed confidential or forged information about its clients and said there was nothing newsworthy about it. In this way, they are attempting to pit freedom of speech against personal privacy rights.

"Wikileaks has actively solicited the theft of private information," said William Briggs, one of the lawyers for the bank. "They are no longer shielded by the First Amendment."

But freedom of speech laws trump privacy rights in this case, argues Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief opposing the judge’s injunction against Wikileaks. "The information was already out there and the bank wanted to force everyone who had a copy of it to pull it down."

Perhaps the more salient point going forward, Zimmerman says, is that consumers are more wary of what Internet provider or domain registrar they choose and to make sure those companies protect free speech rights.

In their suit, Julius Baer’s attorneys sued Wikileak’s domain registrar, Dynadot LLC in San Mateo, for hosting the site. The small start-up agreed in a Feb.14 court stipulation to all of the bank’s demands to disable the site and prevent its transfer to another server, in exchange for getting the case against them dismissed.

"This is part of the reason why Congress has passed laws to get the intermediary out of the way," Baer said. "Dynadot was never liable for the information its user posted. It’s unfortunate that they apparently didn’t know the law well enough and decided to fold."

Dynadot lawyer Garret Murai denied that his client had agreed to all of the bank’s terms. "The court’s order to remove the domain name settings is not something we wanted to do," he said. "We did not agree to that."

David Ardia, an Internet law expert at Harvard, says even in the US, which has long established First Amendment protections, the threat of lawsuits against Web sites such as Wikileaks still lingers.

The power of an individual judge to bring down a Web site still remains, he says, but not if sites can function on international servers outside US jurisdiction.

Most online bulletins or blog posts allow people to post comments and remain anonymous, but not to the point where governments can’t find out who they are. What makes Wikileaks formidable, some say, is its software’s ability to cover the tracks of its users.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, says time will tell whether the Wikileaks site can prove its mission to covertly leak information and should never have been silenced in the first place.

"As we as a society become increasingly dependent on the Internet as a source of information, the vulnerability of the Web site to that kind of action is something to fear," he said. "So when it happens, it’s important to draw maximum attention to it, to go into court with all guns blazing."

From the stand, White conceded the problem with pursuing a case against an anonymous entity such as Wikileaks, which has no official representation and whose chief players remain invisible.

Then he questioned the effectiveness of trying to control leaked documents, even if those responsible had somehow violated personal privacy rights: "When this genie gets out of the bottle, it’s out in the world."

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Freedom of Information: Sunshine in the digital age

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Public records used to be dusty old documents, stuck in dog-eared files or bound in aging folders. They were held in back rooms or the basements of city halls, available during government hours — and often, only by written request.

These days, a lot of that information is stored on hard drives and servers. That can make it harder to access and easier to hide — or it can give the public vast new access. That’s what this year’s Freedom of Information issue — our 22nd — is all about.

On one front, the advocates of secrecy are pushing hard to keep electronic data under strict controls. The state Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit the release of electronic data embedded in a public record. The county of Santa Clara tried to set a $100,000 price on access to a public database.

But on the other hand, sunshine advocates are pushing for ways to use the same technology to make government more open. We’ve been in the forefront of sunshine battles for more than two decades; this is just the next step. (Tim Redmond)

>>2007 James Madison Award winners
Society of Professional Journalists Northern California announces First Amendment award winners

>>A citizen’s guide to fighting secret government
Local and national organizations that offer a wide range of resources for journalists, citizen activists, and hell-raisers

>>More sunshine — easily and at no cost
Technology can allow the city to take a huge step forward in public access — right now
By Kimo Crossman

>>Battleship metadata
Legislation on mapping software would create an expensive new category of public records
By Sarah Phelan

>>Virtual meeting
Open government laws prohibit online official discussions, but they’ve happened anyway
By Bryan Cohen

>>The leaks go on
A federal court judge says prior Wikileaks ruling was unconstitutional
By Megan Ma

>>Sunshine experiment in Palo Alto
Posting e-mails from council members on the city’s Web site
By Emma Lierley

Freedom of Information: More sunshine — easily and at no cost

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› news@sfbg.com

Imagine sitting at home — or in your office, or in your favorite café — and listening in on what are now secret, backroom policy discussions and decisions in the San Francisco mayor’s office. Imagine having access to an immediate transcript of the talks. Imagine being able to read internal e-mail discussions among city staffers about issues that affect you — without ever filing a public records request. In fact, imagine never having to file another written request for public documents; imagine just going to a city Web site, entering a search term, and finding all of the records yourself.

Imagine filing a complaint with a city agency and tracking the issue, minute by minute, as it works its way through the system.

Imagine listening on your cell phone to any policy body as it meets in city hall.

All of this is possible, today. Much of it is not only consistent with but actually required by local law. And it won’t cost the city more than a modest amount of money.

Transparency is a common buzzword during this presidential campaign; the Barack Obama campaign has even issued a white paper describing policy and technological ways to embrace it. He’s talking about live Internet feeds of meetings about significant issues involving executive branch appointees as well as for those of regulatory departments (a program that would go far beyond what you see on C-SPAN).

So there’s no reason San Francisco can’t take the lead in using technology — generally simple, off the shelf, existing technology — to dramatically increase sunshine at City Hall and public participation in local government.

Proposition G, the city’s 1999 sunshine law, mandates that San Francisco use "all technological and economical means to ensure efficient, convenient and low cost access to public information on the Internet." Here are five easy ways to do that:

1. Fully adopt the voyeur concept for city meetings. This is the idea that the public should be able to observe and engage in government decision making — all government decision making.

All policy meetings in City Hall should at the very least be broadcast as audio on the Web and available via phone teleconference. In other words, the meetings should be streamed online, and that stream should be accessible by calling a free conference line. This is already standard practice in the business world and is working well for many investors in public companies that disclose financial information in compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission rules. It can be done for little or no cost with services like blogtalkradio.com, skype.com, freeconferencecalls.com, and webex.com.

Today only a limited number of public meetings are broadcast, mostly because the only outlet is SFG-TV and resources are limited. But audio streaming is a no-brainer — there’s no need for a staffer to control cameras, the microphones are already set up, and these days just about every room has a speakerphone.

Currently, the SFG-TV video coverage isn’t posted on the city’s Web site, sfgov.org, until two or three days after a meeting. That’s too long; the audio should be made immediately available online. And the Internet URL and dial-in options should be listed on the meeting agenda so that news media and citizen bloggers can instantly refer back to the URL with timecodes to point out specifics, and include them in their stories and blog postings.

With streaming, you can follow along in real time when you are stuck at home taking care of a sick relative, or at the office listening with headphones, or you are disabled and can’t cross town to attend in person.

The city already has a great contract for real time captioning — the text you see at the bottom of the screen for video. It’s not 100 percent accurate, but it’s pretty decent. That could be expanded to cover streaming audio, and the text could be computer translated (or translated by bilingual typists) into other common languages. The advantage of media integrated with RTC is that specialized search engines like blikx.com and everyzing.com can be used to find relevant phrases and begin playback directly at that spot. And transcriptions can be posted online in real time (somewhat like live blogging!) so that if you are late for a meeting you can quickly scan what has already transpired, and by the end of the meeting you will effectively have a draft of minutes. That saves a lot of staff time and provides an immeasurably more useful historic record.

Today, video recordings of city meetings can’t be downloaded — the only way to review it or post a clip to YouTube is to order a $10 DVD, which arrives a week after you send a check (and no, they don’t take PayPal). And while many other city meetings make audio recordings, you have to pay $1 for an audio tape and pick it up during business hours or pay more for postage. They all should be available as free podcasts.

The SFG-TV video shows more than just the speakers and officials; there are other angles, and they ought to be available too. It’s important to know who attended the meeting but never said anything, who greeted whom, and even who ignored whom.

2. Let the public do the broadcasting. All City Hall meeting rooms should provide wi-fi (and electrical outlets), and the system ought to have enough speed to allow bloggers or activists to upload high-quality video broadcasts of meetings that SFG-TV can’t afford to cover. It can be done using existing services like Justin.tv, Upstream.tv, and live.yahoo.com. This would also allow live blogging — and let people preparing to testify on an issue have access to the Web to do research on the spot. If the room had a projector and a screen, people who were unable to attend the meeting could still comment, either through video or just by posting text messages that the decision makers could read.

The audio broadcasting of meetings should be expanded to include all meetings between the mayor (or supervisors) and city staff. The law already requires public access to so-called passive meetings — those between the mayor or department heads and outside parties that influence city policy.

3. Make public most city emails and other documents as soon as they are produced.

San Francisco city employees produce thousands of records a day — e-mails, memos, reports, etc. — and the vast majority of them are and should be public record. But many are deleted and others never see the light of day. When a member of the public asks for all the records on a topic, just finding those documents can be a sizable task.

But it’s technologically simply to solve that problem: every time a city employee produces a document, the computer system should automatically send a back-up copy to a public web server. That way nothing would get lost or erased, and anyone looking for public information could simply go to that site and search for it him or herself.

For e-mails sent by city staff, one way might be to CC (carbon copy) an online message board (for example Google or Yahoo groups, which would be available at no cost to the city). Other approaches for instant messages, text messages and voicemails could be adopted as well. The Palo Alto City Council is already doing something like this for a narrow collection of e-mails (although not in real time).

We all know there are some city communications that must remain private or be redacted — for example Attorney Client discussions or human-resource conversations regarding personnel. But there are simply ways to make sure those stay confidential: one approach might simply have the user tick a flag or answer a Yes/No Possible Redaction popup when the message is sent. Certain employees — like the people who handle sensitive employee health records and certain litigators in the city attorney’s office — could have software that defaults to a confidential server.

The added advantage, of course, is that the computers could also make a record of the title and date of every confidential document — and that information could be made public. If a dispute arose over whether the city was improperly withholding records, the public would at least know that certain documents existed.

All city files could be stored on network drives (not on local drives) with one location for default public files that would not allow overwriting or deletions and would be mirrored to a Web server and another drive for the few that may require redaction first.

4. Save all the old records. After a very embarrassing lawsuit that is threatening the Missouri governor’s job, that state in January adopted an email retention system that preserves all email for at least seven years (based on federal requirements for financial records). And e-mail/instant message/text/fax retention systems are standard practice now in the financial industry (Morgan Stanley lost a $1.45 billion judgment because the company failed to preserve e-mail).

In fact, we all know storage continues to get cheaper and smaller — so San Francisco should abolish any retention timeframes for electronic records and keep them all into the foreseeable future. The world-famous Internet Archive is right here in the Presidio: I suspect that group would love to archive all the city information, and keep it online, free and forever.

When paper documents are part of the public record, they should be scanned and converted to text and posted within two days. This would include discussions between staff and individual members of policy bodies and the creation of the draft agenda and supporting materials as they are obtained.

All these methods would significantly reduce the number of public records requests to the city staff and thus save the city money.

5. Make calendars public — and keep communications public. Mayor Gavin Newsom won’t provide detailed daily calendars — even after the fact, when there is no possible security reason for keeping his workday itinerary secret. All top officials should post their calendars on the web so the public can track what they are doing.

The city needs to adopt a global policy that city business should be performed on city devices (computers, email accounts, phones) whenever possible — and when city employees or officials use their own computers or hand-held communications tools, those should be forwarded immediately to the city system and made public.

San Francisco has one of the best local Sunshine laws in the country — and at a time when activists at every level are looking for ways to use technology to expand public access, the city should be in the forefront. All it takes is some political will.

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Here are some more ways that the city could use technology to improve public access:

1. Use a program like govtrack.us to follow legislative changes.

2. Explore ways to bring nonprofits that perform traditional government services under sunshine laws.

3. Significantly improve the city’s Crimestats system (more real-time allow alerts for crimes near you) – google mashup et al. See http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/

4. Embrace e-rulemaking technology – similar to federal rulemaking use technology to get ideas online and generate more participation for those who can’t show up in a meeting.

5. Require the Police Department to issue press credentials to bloggers.

6. Fund a few open-government lawsuits to expand the boundaries on access to public records (the law provides for attorney’s fees if the suit is successful).

7. Require city agencies to post the method for obtaining public records online. Require posting of all negative determinations on home pages.

8. At budget time, mandate that each agency provide statistics as determined by SOTF on sunshine responsiveness.

9. Require an assessment of sunshine compliance as a mandatory item for all Financial/Management audits.

10. Televise SOTF and Ethics Commission formal hearings.

11. Require active Ethics investigative files to be open.

12. Embrace fully the much-improved but incomplete example of posting online all interactions as part of large contract negotiations – as was partially done with TechConnect.

13. Host accounts payable/receivables online with the scanned images of invoices paid.

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Freedom of Information: Sunshine experiment in Palo Alto

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The Palo Alto City Council is conducting a unique experiment in its efforts to comply with the Ralph M. Brown Act, which requires government bodies to conduct business in a public way.

Palo Alto now posts e-mails from council members on the city’s Web site (www.cityofpaloalto.org/council), providing easy access to all with Internet capabilities. The e-mails were first posted online following a 2003 settlement of a Brown Act lawsuit against the city of Palo Alto by two local newspapers — Palo Alto Weekly and The San Jose Mercury News.

Eight private e-mails were in question, disclosing the votes of a closed city council session, and while the city never admitted guilt in vioutf8g the Brown Act, language in the settlement established the practice of posting council e-mails on the Web site and making them available in council agenda packets prior to meetings.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, questions the merits of the system.

"Some people would look at this and think it is a giant and serial violation of the Brown Act — but I wouldn’t necessarily say that," Scheer told the Guardian, noting that the prohibition on serial meetings bans such an approach. But he said that this is an interesting experiment, as long as council members don’t deliberate by e-mail. But assistant city manager Emily Harrison told us the messages avoid Brown Act violations by sticking to basic questions about agenda items, which the public can scrutinize.

The city of San Francisco has no such system in place, and e-mails to and from the Board of Supervisors is available only through direct request. Frank Darby, the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force administrator, said that the city had never looked into putting one in place.

"We are not required to post e-mails [under the Sunshine Ordinance]," Darby said. However, he added, the city "constantly monitors" itself to ensure that it is in accordance with the Sunshine law. "There may be some people who disagree and feel that maybe we should put every e-mail online — but currently the Sunshine Ordinance does not require that e-mails be made available online."

Freedom of Information: Battleship metadata

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› sarah@sfbg.com

On Valentine’s Day, Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) introduced Assembly Bill 1978, legislation that seeks to define computer mapping systems and make them available to commercial interests at a fee — a one-two punch that freedom of information advocates fear constitutes a serious blow to the California Public Records Act.

Noting that computer mapping systems, computer programs, and computer graphic systems do not constitute public records under current law, Solorio’s bill seeks to amend the CPRA to define computer mapping systems to include "assembled model data, metadata, and listings of metadata, regardless of medium, and tools by which computer mapping systems are created, stored, and retrieved."

AB 1978 would also allow "commercial interests, who are most benefited by these systems, to obtain the portion of these systems developed by a public agency, at a fee designed to offset the agency’s cost of maintenance for the computer mapping systems."

But Oakland-based Bruce Joffe, who works as a geographic information consultant to cities, counties, and state agencies in California, warns that AB 1978 would allow public agencies to charge the public more for this data than the cost of duplication.

"It would severely weaken the CPRA and reduce the public’s access to government records," said Joffe, noting that as the law currently stands, CPRA requires state and local agencies to make their records available and, upon request, to provide copies on payment of any applicable fee.

Solorio aide Hazel Miranda told the Guardian that the intent of the bill is to protect software, not to restrict access to information.

"Our intent is to protect the software, not to restrict the information that is given out on it," Miranda said, noting that the bill’s sponsor is the government of Orange County. "The concern was that a lot of corporations were taking this information — and when the information is given out, you have to give out the software, too — and using it to their own benefit."

Joffe, who was the California First Amendment Coalition’s technical advisor when CFAC successfully sued Santa Clara County over access to the county’s tax maps, disagrees.

"When you give information out, you are not giving out software, you are giving out data in export format," said Joffe, who believes Solorio wants to change the law so that AB 1978’s sponsor, Orange County, which has sold its tax maps for $400,000 in the past, can continue to sell its data.

Holly Fraumeni, the AB 1978 lobbyist with the well-connected firm Putf8um Advisors, deferred questions to Bruce Matthias of Orange County’s legislative affairs, who told us, "The County of Orange has never disagreed on sharing public data. We are not trying to hide data down here. If you want it on a disk, we charge 25 cents. All we are doing is updating language in the bill. Our exclusive intent is to protect the software we’ve developed." Records show Orange County paid Putf8um Advisors $60,000 between October 1 and December 31, 2007.

CFAC executive director Peter Scheer believes AB 1978 is an attempt to take the information that CFAC has tried to make freely available and put it back under lock and key, so that it is proprietary information that can be sold.

Recalling how, years ago, the only way you could see a county’s tax maps was as an engineer’s rendering on paper, Scheer observed that when this data is computerized and made publicly available, "individuals and businesses can create all kinds of valuable tools or simply post the raw data on the Internet."

Blair Adams, chief consulting officer at San Francisco’s Department of Technology and Information Services, says the city’s GIS data has been publicly available for five years.

"We have no intent to change that," Adams said. "Our motto is ‘Go have it, and help us make it better.’<0x2009>"

But while San Francisco treats this data as a public record and copies it for the price of a blank DVD, Santa Clara and Orange counties have treated it as a revenue generator.

"They charge an arm and a leg, and another arm and leg, and whatever other appendages they can think of," said Scheer, noting that Santa Clara County charges $100,000 for a full base map of its real estate parcels — data that can be used to determine whether properties are assessed correctly, and whether pothole repairs are carried out equitably.

"Likely clients willing to purchase this data would be utilities, phone companies, and developers, who can’t do without it," Scheer said. "But public health and safety departments need access to it, too."

Joffe agrees, and it’s something he has plenty of experience with. He helps cities and counties create geographic information systems that allow ambulances to take the most efficient routes, the Department of Public Works to carry out better capital improvements, and the police to conduct better crime analysis.

"Every department uses it, and because it’s in the government system, therefore it is a public record, and the public has the right to access those records at no more cost than it takes to duplicate them," Joffe said. He added, "If AB 1978 passes, we’ll lose considerable access."

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Freedom of Information: A citizen’s guide to fighting secret government

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San Francisco has the best local sunshine law in the country — and there are still problems getting access to information. Even though the digital age in which we live affords government agencies with myriad ways to give citizens more access to public documents, there is too often little official will to create transparency. And often, bureaucrats are downright hostile to public scrutiny. But help is out there. This guide to local and national organizations offers a wide range of resources for journalists, citizen activists, and hell-raisers who want to track their tax money and hold their government accountable.

LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS


The California First Amendment Coalition is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to "promote and defend the people’s right to know" by improving compliance with state and federal access laws. CFAC’s Web site contains an archive of articles dealing with FOI issues, the texts of state FOI laws, and other useful resources. 534 Fourth St., Suite B, San Raphael, CA 94901. (415) 460-5060, cfac@cfac.org, www.cfac.org.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association is the umbrella organization to which most newspapers in the state belong, so it has an acute interest in open government. Its FOI Watch newsletter (also available online) includes a clearinghouse of sunshine news from around the state. 708 Tenth St., Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 288-6015, tom@cnpa.com (general counsel Thomas Newton), www.cnpa.com.

Californians Aware, run by former CFAC general counsel Terry Francke, helps activists and organizations get access to public meetings and records and offers resources on the Web for citizens, public officials, journalists, and attorneys. 2218 Homewood Way, Carmichael, CA 95608. (916) 487-7000, info@calaware.org, www.calaware.org.

The Center for Investigative Reporting sponsors workshops on investigative techniques for journalists and university students. The center’s Web-based magazine provides FOI information, tips for journalists, and updates on past CIR investigations. 2927 Newbury St., Suite A, Berkeley, CA 94703. (510) 809-3160, center@cironline.org, www.muckraker.org.

The DataCenter provides on-call research, consultation, and referrals to justice organizations regarding FOI issues. It also offers research and action training. Services are free or on a sliding scale, depending on one’s ability to pay. 1904 Franklin St., Suite 900, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 835-4692, ext. 376, www.datacenter.org.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online First Amendment organization, works to uphold digital free speech, empower the online public, and protect privacy on the Internet. It provides stories and alerts on its Web site, with daily updates. Effector, an e-mail newsletter, is available through the site. 454 Shotwell St., S.F., CA 94110. (415) 436-9333, information@eff.org, www.eff.org.

The First Amendment Project is a public interest law firm that provides legal representation, educational programs, and low-cost or free advice for journalists, public interest organizations, and individual citizens with public records and FOI-related issues. In a joint publication effort with the Society of Professional Journalists, the project offers three free pocket guides, on the Brown Act, California’s Open Meeting Law, and accessing court records. The Web page has information on using the California Public Records Act as well as on getting court records. 1736 Franklin St., 9th floor, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 208-7744, fap@thefirstamendment.org, www.thefirstamendment.org.

Media Alliance is a nonprofit media center that offers classes on journalism skills, including how to find and use public records. 1904 Franklin St., Suite 500 Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 832-9000, information@media-alliance.org, www.media-alliance.org.

The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, FOI Committee fights for open access to information and educates members of the public on FOI issues. The group provides a subscription e-mail list for journalists and others involved in FOI and First Amendment issues in California as well as putting on the James Madison FOI Awards. 222 Sutter St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108 (415) 321-1700, www.spj.org/norcal.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS


The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information conducts research and educates the public in mass-media law and the First Amendment, including public access to government meetings and records and litigation information. University of Florida, College of Journalism and Communications, 3208 Weimer Hall, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400. (352) 392-2273, www.jou.ufl.edu/brechner.

The Center for National Security Studies works with concerned citizens and groups to expose secret government policies and offers free assistance to those seeking records under the Freedom of Information Act. It also coordinates related litigation. 1120 19th St. NW, 8th floor, Washington, D.C. 20036. (202) 721-5650, cnss@cnss.org, www.cnss.org.

The FOIA Blog, created by an FOIA Washington attorney, has an updated list of documents currently being released by several government agencies infoprivacylaw@yahoo.com, www.thefoiablog.typepad.com.

The Freedom of Information Center of the University of Missouri School of Journalism has a collection of more than one million articles and documents about access to information at the local, state, and federal levels. The center works to ensure compliance with sunshine laws around the country. Its Web site contains links, updates, and tips on FOI inquiries. A free e-mail newsletter provides information on developments in FOI access and issues; you can sign up by contacting umcjourfoi@missouri.edu. University of Missouri, 133 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-5736, daviscn@missouri.edu, www.missouri.edu/~foiwww.

GovernmentDocs allows people to browse and search thousands of pages acquired through the FOIA and sunshine laws. Registered users can review and comment on documents. www.governmentdocs.org

GovTrack provides information on the U.S. Congress. It compiles information on federal legislation, voting records, and other congressional date and simplifies the language for ordinary citizens. It also indexes all bills, as well as changes to them, in Congress and all roll call votes www.govtrack.us.

Investigative Reporters and Editors provides educational services for investigative reporters and editors. The group’s Web site offers FOI-related resource guides, a database of FOI stories, tips for using the Freedom of Information Act, and a database of previous FOI requests. University of Missouri School of Journalism, 138 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-2042, www.ire.org

The National Freedom of Information Coalition is composed of First Amendment organizations dealing with FOI issues. It provides resources for the media, government officials, lawyers, and citizens who want access to public information. The coalition also offers seminars and workshops to media professionals, attorneys, academics, students, and the public on FOI issues and helps nurture start-up FOI groups and Internet sites. Its Web site offers links to relevant legislation and organizations state by state, as well as an Internet mailing list, FOI-L. 133 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-5736, cdavis@nfoic.org, www.nfoic.org.

OMB Watch is a member of the Public Access Working Group, a coalition of organizations promoting greater access to government information. OMB Watch offers an online newsletter, OMB Watcher, available on its Web site or by e-mail, which typically includes articles on FOI issues. To subscribe to the weekly e-mail version, e-mail join-ombwatcher@lyris.ombwatch.org. 1742 Connecticut NW, Washington, D.C. 20009. (202) 234-8494, www.ombwatch.org.

The Project on Government Secrecy is an advocacy and public education project of the Federation of American Scientists. The project has an extensive archive and provides regular news updates through its Web site and e-mail newsletter, Secrecy News. 1725 DeSales Street NW, 6th floor, Washington, D.C. 20036. (202) 454-4691, www.fas.org/sgp/index.htm.

Project Vote Smart provides information on local, state, and national candidates, including voting records, issue positions, campaign contributions, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. The database is accessible by calling the toll-free hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART. 1 Common Ground, Phillipsburg, MT 59858. (406) 859-8683 comments@vote-smart.org, www.vote-smart.org.

The Radio-Television News Directors Association is the world’s largest professional organization devoted to electronic journalism. It lobbies for cameras in courtrooms and strong FOI laws and provides coverage of FOI issues on its Web site. 1600 K St. NW, Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20006. (202) 659-6510, www.rtnda.org.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press operates the 24-hour FOI Service Center at 1-800-336-4243 to answer emergency questions from journalists and others with open-records problems. 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1101, Arlington, VA 22209. (703) 807-2100, rcfp@rcfp.org, www.rcfp.org.

The Society of Professional Journalists advocates for open access to information and educates members of the public on FOI issues. The society’s Web site has an FOI section with extensive links to resources and information, including a list of FOI advocacy organizations. 3909 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46208. (317) 927-8000, questions@spj.org, www.spj.org.

State Sunshine and Open Records shares information, guidance and advice on developments and news about open records at the state and local level. They also have an extensive list of links to other sunshine blogs. www.openrecords.wordpress.com.

The Student Press Law Center works with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to cover FOI and other First Amendment issues reutf8g to high school and college journalists. It offers free advice, lawyer referrals, and analysis. 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209. (703) 807-1904, admin@splc.org, www.splc.org.

The Sunlight Foundation develops a database to ensure transparency in government and fiscal accountability. They digitize new info and provide access to existing information. 1818 N Street NW, Suite 410, Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 742-1520. www.sunlightfoundation.com.

WikiFOIA helps people understand the FOI Act on a state and federal level by providing a how-to-guide about open records requests, as well information on how to make that request. www.wikifoia.pbwiki.com.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND RESOURCES


The Guardian Web site has extensive information and links concerning international press-freedom issues. For details on journalists under fire, including frontline dispatches and reports from the battle to keep the world safe for journalists, go to www.sfbg.com/journalists/. For updates, dispatches, and links to national and international FOI groups, go to www.sfbg.com/FOI.

The UK FOI Blog provides a glimpse into how FOI issues are dealt with across the pond by listing news and developments on FOI in Great Britain. www.foia.blogspot.com.

Local government resources

The Government Information Center, on the fifth floor of the San Francisco Public Library’s Main Branch, stocks public documents published by the city. These include annual reports for committees and departments, minutes and agendas of official meetings, environmental impact reports, and city audits, ordinances, and resolutions. San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., S.F., CA 94102. (415) 557-4500, www.sfpl.org.

The Oakland Public Ethics Commission responds to complaints and holds hearings on possible violations of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. Records, tapes of the commission’s meetings, agendas, and minutes can be picked up at the commission’s office. 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, 4th floor, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 238-3593, ethicscommission@oaklandnet.com, www.oaklandnet.com/government/public_ethics/webpage.html.

The Office of Information and Privacy, U.S. Department of Justice, provides online versions of frequently requested records, opinions, policy statements, and guides to the Freedom of Information Act. The guides include detailed instructions for filing FOIA requests, average response times for different governmental offices, and a wealth of other useful information. The text of the FOIA is available on the office’s Web site. 1425 New York Ave., Suite 11050, Washington, D.C. 20530. (202) 514-3642, www.usdoj.gov/oip/oip.html.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records is an online database of court records and decisions. Web access is 8¢ a page, and requires registration through the Web at www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov. P.O. Box 780549, San Antonio, TX 78278. 1-800-676-6856, pacer@psc.uscourts.gov.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission monitors and enforces the Sunshine Ordinance and the city’s governmental-ethics, campaign-finance, and lobbyist-reporting laws. Individuals can file complaints regarding violations of the Sunshine Ordinance. The commission meets the second Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall, Room 408. 25 Van Ness, Suite 220, S.F., CA 94102. (415) 252-3100, ethics.commission@sfgov.org, www.sfgov.org/site/ethics_index.asp.

The San Francisco Law Library is open to the public, though only government officials, state bar members, and judges can check out items. Main reference library: Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Veterans War Memorial Building, 401 Van Ness, Room 400, S.F. (415) 554-6821. Courthouse reference room: Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 400 McAllister, Room 512, S.F. (415) 551-3647. Financial District branch: Mon.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., noon-4 p.m., 685 Market St., Suite 420, S.F. (415) 882-9310, www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/sfll_index.asp.

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force oversees compliance with San Francisco’s sunshine law by investigating complaints from individuals who believe city officials have withheld records or conducted meetings in violation of the law. The task force meets the fourth Tuesday of each month at 4 p.m. City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244 (meetings held in Room 408), S.F. For complaint forms and other information call (415) 554-7724 or go to http://www.sfgov.org/site/sunshine_index.asp

PUBLICATIONS


The California First Amendment Coalition publishes the California Journalist’s Legal Notebook, a handy guide to the legal issues surrounding telephone interviews, press passes, gags on sources, and other journalism-related topics ($36.25, $30.88 for CFAC members, shipping included). Also by CFAC is The New Brown Act: How the Open Meeting Law Has Been Revised ($12.75, $7.39 for CFAC members, shipping included). (415) 460-5060.

The Oakland Public Ethics Commission publishes a free brochure, How to Notice a Public Meeting under the Oakland Sunshine Ordinance and the Brown Act, useful for making sure a public meeting follows the requirements of the Brown Act. (510) 238-3593, (510) 238-6620, ethicscommission@Oaklandnet.com, www.oaklandnet.com/government/public_ethics/webpage.html.

Access to Courts and Court Records in California, Open Meeting Laws in California, and The California Public Records Act are free, convenient, quick-reference guides published by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, and the First Amendment Project. (510) 208-7744, www.thefirstamendment.org/freepress.html.

The ACLU Freedom of Information Project publishes Using the Freedom of Information Act: A Step-by-Step Guide (#4002, $3) and Your Right to Government Information (#1190, $5.95), which covers a broader range of topics, including how to get into public meetings. Both publications can be ordered online through the ACLU’s e-store or by phone. ACLU Publications, P.O. Box 4713, Trenton, NJ 08650-4713. 1-800-775-2258, www.aclu.org.

The Government Printing Office publishes The Freedom of Information Act Guide and Privacy Act Overview ($63), a 986-page guide to the FOIA produced by the Justice Department. It can be ordered by phone at 1-866-512-1800 or online at bookstore.gpo.gov. The Citizen’s Guide is available in its entirety online at www.fas.org/sgp/foia/citizen.html.

The Freedom of Information Clearinghouse Guidebook is a free brochure about making FOIA requests and appealing agency decisions. It’s available online through the Freedom of Information Clearinghouse. www.citizen.org/litigation/free_info/index.cfm.

Paper Trails: A Guide to Public Records in California ($12.89), written by Stephen Levine and Barbara Newcombe, is published by the Center for Investigative Reporting and supported by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. It can be ordered from the CIR. An abridged, online version is coming soon. 2927 Newbury St., Suite A, Berkeley,, CA 94703. (510) 809-3160, www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/

The fourth edition of the Investigative Reporters’ Handbook ($61, $51 for Investigative Reporters and Editors members), by Steve Weinberg, Brant Houston, and Len Bruzzese, is a comprehensive and accessible guide for novice and experienced journalists that shows how to locate and use more than 500 sources of public information. (573) 882-3364, www.ire.org/store/books.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press supplies a wealth of publications on public access and other First Amendment topics. How to Use the Federal FOI Act ($5) is a handbook on FOI rights, with instructions for appealing if your request is denied, and includes sample letters. The First Amendment Handbook ($7.50) is a journalist’s pocket guide to FOI issues. Two guides — Judicial Records: A Guide to Access ($3) and Access to Electronic Records ($5) — analyze state laws and decisions regarding access to legal records and government electronic data. Tapping Officials’ Secrets is a set of guides to state public records and open-meeting laws ($10 a state). The News Media and the Law is a quarterly magazine that includes updates on legislation pertinent to FOI ($30 a year for four issues). Some of these publications are available in their entirety online; all can be ordered online. 1-800-336-4243, www.rcfp.org.

The second edition of Law of the Student Press ($18) is a vital handbook for student newspapers. It’s extensively annotated but avoids legalese and tries to bring the law to life for students and educators. The Student Press Law Center also publishes Covering Campus Crime, Third Edition ($2) and the Student Press Law Center Report ($15 for three issues a year). (703) 807-1904, www.splc.org.

Citizen Muckraking: How to Investigate and Right Wrongs in Your Community ($9) offers advice on writing press releases, conducting interviews, and using the FOIA. The book, a collaborative effort by the Center for Public Integrity, is available through Common Courage Press. 1-800-497-3207, www.commoncouragepress.com

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Freedom of Information: 2007 James Madison Award winners

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Click here for details on the First Amendment Awards Dinner.

Norwin S. Yoffie Career Achievement Award

DAN NOYES (COFOUNDER, CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM)


If journalists were the subjects of trading cards like baseball players, the Dan Noyes rookie card would be just as impressive as a 2008 career highlights card. Think Reggie Jackson: a long, impressive career, spanning multiple organizations and a propensity to come out swinging big at the end of a hard-fought battle.

Over a career spanning 30 years, Noyes has pursued serious investigations, some lasting as long as a year, into everything from questionable Liberian timber imports to illicit gun trafficking from United States suppliers to the Nuestra family gang. Journalism first interested Noyes during the crucial investigative reporting that sparked Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.

In 1977 Noyes cofounded the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), an independent news organization which produces in-depth stories and documentaries for all major news outlets. In 1979, reporting for the ABC News program 20/20, CIR broke a story on a swindling United Nations charity organization and its connections to international drug trafficking.

More recently, Noyes has done a series of print and broadcast pieces concerning gang violence in California and its effect on the lives of those surrounding the lifestyle. Noyes still holds an executive position at the CIR and continues to contribute to the world of investigative journalism.

Beverly Kees Educator Award

CLIFF MAYOTTE


Cliff Mayotte sees his Advanced Acting Class at Lick-Wilmerding High School as one that merges students’ "consciousness and awareness as young adults with their skills and energies as performance artists."

The subtitle of the course is "Theatre as Civic Dialogue," and the eight students enrolled during the 2007 spring semester used all their abilities to pull off a notable show.

After an introduction to Documentary Theatre — a form he described as "oral history turned into performance" — the group selected a topic that was important to them, giving birth to the "Censorship Project."

The students interviewed their peers, teachers, and administrators to gather perspectives on the ways in which expression and opinion can be muted or altered, both voluntarily and involuntarily. They reached out to organizations such as Project Censored, the First Amendment Project, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. They transcribed interviews and studied subjects in order to capture statements, word patterns, and mannerisms of interviewees, then shaped the themes into a 60-minute performance.

Professional Journalists

WILL DEBOARD


"Being a high school sports guy, I don’t get to do this very often," the Modesto Bee‘s Will DeBoard said of his first major foray into investigative reporting. He had gotten a tip that the California Interscholastic Federation was investigating recruiting violations by the football program at Franklin High School in Stockton, which competed with schools in his area. DeBoard asked the school and CIF about recruiting violations, but the football coach flatly denied the allegations and the CIF wasn’t much more helpful.

So DeBoard decided to make formal requests for public records with the help of business reporter Joanne Sbranti, and after fighting through some initial denials, he obtained hundreds of pages of investigatory documents from CIF showing how the school was recruiting players from American Samoa. "It really was a treasure trove of great stuff. We got two weeks’ worth of stories out of these documents," DeBoard said. "It really showed us that what the school was telling us just wasn’t true."

The documents detailed the recruiting scheme and gave DeBoard tons of leads for follow-up stories, including the address of "a home owned by the coach where there were all these gigantic Samoan linemen living there." DeBoard called the effort an "adrenaline rush" better than that caused by the best game he’s covered and a high point of his journalism career.

THOMAS PEELE


Contra Costa Times investigative reporter Thomas Peele has a long history of battling for public records access on behalf of both reporters and private citizens. Peele, who helps with projects for all the newspapers under the Bay Area News Group-East Bay ownership, helped ensure the recovery of thousands of e-mails from the Oakland mayoral tenure of Jerry Brown when he left office to become the state’s attorney general in 2006. Peele also helped conduct a statewide audit of Public Records Act compliance by law enforcement agencies with the nonprofit Californians Aware, which revealed glaring inconsistencies in how police across the state make information about their activity available to the public. And he’s been a major figure in helping the Chauncey Bailey Project pry out new information about Bailey’s murder last year and it’s connection to Your Black Muslim Bakery. He began his career in 1983 at a small weekly in Bridgehampton, N.Y., and moved from there in 1988 to the Ocean County Observer in New Jersey before joining the CCT in 2000.

ROLAND DE WOLK


KTVU-TV producer Roland De Wolk is leading the investigative team of photographer Tony Hedrick and video editor Ron Acker in a quest to get the names of drivers who regularly use FasTrak lanes but don’t pay anything. But to date, says De Volk, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has been blocking his team’s quest.

De Wolk told the Guardian that his team filed a California Public Records request when the MTC wouldn’t provide information on the amount of money it was losing thanks to drivers who don’t pay tolls when they use FasTrak lanes.

"We asked MTC for specific numbers last summer and got little information. That makes a reporter’s antennae quiver," said De Wolk.

But when he and his team asked for the numbers of people obstructing their plates, the MTC started acting squirrelly, De Wolk said.

"Finally, after six to eight weeks of asking we got an answer: a photo of a car whose plate was blank," fumed De Wolk, whose team continues to push for the names of the 10 most frequent FasTrak violators.

Broadcast News Outlet

KGO-TV


When KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes and producer Steve Fyffe asked Muni to turn over records of public complaints against its drivers, they were ready for some bureaucratic foot dragging. But they never expected the yearlong grudge match that followed. First, the union representing Muni drivers sued to keep the records sealed. Then Muni’s parent department, the Municipal Transportation Agency, made a backroom deal with the union and released a blizzard of confusing and heavily redacted paperwork that would have made the Pentagon blush.

"It was essentially a big document dump," Fyffe told us. "There was no way to tell one form from another or which driver was which."

Noyes and Fyffe convinced their bosses at KGO-TV to file a lawsuit for full access to the records. The station prevailed, after which Noyes and Fyffe received over 1,200 pages of public complaints about 25 drivers. Recently, the station went back to court after Muni refused to release surveillance tapes of the drivers. As in the previous case, the judge ruled that the public had a right to the materials and forced the transit agency to hand the tapes over.

Fyffe said he sees KGO’s legal successes as small victories in a much larger fight. "I hope in the future that this case will make Muni and other city departments more [responsive] to records requests … these kinds of incremental victories hopefully lead, little by little, to a more open government."

Print News Outlet

SACRAMENTO BEE


The Sacramento Bee operates in a city run by top-tier politicians and their spinmeisters, so the editors and reporters there have placed increasingly high value on using documents to support their stories.

"We’ve always used public records here. Being in a state capital, we’re a little more aware of the necessarily of that," managing editor Joyce Terhaar said. "You just need to be able to tell a story about what’s really happening."

Yet she said that in recent years, the Bee has made a concerted effort to hire public-records experts and to have them share their knowledge with the paper’s staff through regular workshops. And last year, those efforts paid off with a string of big, impactful investigative stories.

Among them was Andy Furillo’s look at how much the state was spending to fight inmate care lawsuits, Andrew McIntosh’s exposé on the lack of oversight for paramedics and emergency medical technicians, and stories by John Hill and Kevin Yamamura on misconduct by the state’s Board of Chiropractic Examiners.

In selecting the Bee, Society of Professional Journalists judges recognized these individual efforts as well as the Bee‘s "institutional support of reporters and their use of public records for numerous stories."

Community Media

THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET


One of the only ways to uncover corporate wrongdoing is to dig through court records, and it’s the job of the press to report what it discovers, said Becky O’Malley, executive editor for the Berkeley Daily Planet. She was convinced that a prior court order violated the public’s constitutional rights to see court documents, so the small daily newspaper sued and won in a California appeals court last year, making public 15,000 pages of records from a class-action suit filed against Wal-Mart in 2001.

The documents included allegations that the company had denied rest breaks to its workers and deleted hours from paychecks. In the Planet‘s freedom of information suit, the appeals court judges agreed with the paper’s attorneys that the case could set a dangerous precedent where the public would have to prove its right to access court records. "It’s becoming more of a trend for judges to grant permanent seals on court records," said O’Malley. That’s unfortunate, she added, since "the only way the public finds out about bad things going on in society is through court records."

Special Citation Award

CHAUNCEY BAILEY PROJECT


After Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey was murdered last August, a large group of Bay Area media organizations formed a rare coalition to investigate his death and the activities of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a long-time East Bay institution believed by police to be involved in the killing. Since then, the group has produced several stories complete with audio, video, and photo presentations, the most recent of which is a series by retired Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reporter Mary Fricker detailing the sexual assault allegations made by young women once in the custody of Yusuf Bey Sr., founder of the bakery. Fricker received help from independent radio journalist Bob Butler, investigative reporter A.C. Thompson, and MediaNews staff writers Cecily Burt, Thomas Peele and Josh Richman. Other stories have reported allegations of real estate fraud against bakery associates, explored potential coconspirators in Bailey’s death, and examined the bakery’s ties to several prominent politicians. More about the project — the first of its kind since a group of journalists investigated the murder of Don Bolles more than 30 years ago in Arizona — can be found at chaunceybaileyproject.org, or at www.sfbg.com/news/chaunceybailey.

Public Official

MARK LENO


It was a staff member, Kathryn Dresslar, who told Assemblymember Mark Leno how horrible state agencies had become at complying with the California Public Records Act. Dresslar served on the board of Californians Aware, a group that advocates for open government, and she described to her boss how a 1986 audit by the organization had given every one of the 33 agencies in California government a failing grade.

Ryan McKee, then a high-school student and the son of CalAware board president Rich McKee, had visited each agency and asked for a few simple things. He wanted to see each agency’s guidelines for public access, and he requested some basic information, including the salary of the agency director. Agency after agency refused to follow the law.

So Leno introduced legislation that would have mandated that every agency post its access guidelines on the Web — and included stiff fines for agencies that violated the Public Records Act. "It put some teeth into the law," Leno told us. "And I got 120 of 120 members of the state Legislature to vote for it.

That wasn’t enough for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed the bill, saying it wasn’t needed. The governor insisted that he had already ordered state agencies to fix the problem.

"It was a great eye-opener for me, and showed me the resistance this administration has to allowing public access to state government," Leno said. "Without that access the public is at a great disadvantage."

Library

UC BERKELEY’S BANCROFT LIBRARY LOYALTY OATH PROJECT


It might be hard to believe, but in 1949 the University of California Regents, a bastion of higher education, rode the wave of anticommunist fervor and McCarthyism, forcing all UC employees to take a loyalty oath. The Board of Regents adopted the rule that UC administrators pushed forth: denounce communism and swear loyalty to the state, or face losing your job.

As could be expected, people resisted and 31 faculty, workers, and student employees lost their jobs. They appealed the case to the California Supreme Court and eventually were reinstated in 1952, but the controversy cast a pall over the UC’s reputation and divided campuses. With the help of a grant from UC President Emeritus David Gardner, archivists from UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library and other researchers painstakingly compiled 3500 pages of text, many audio statements, and photos from four UC collections.

The online collection, which went live in December 2007, serves as primary source material for students and researchers who want to understand how UC administrators got embroiled in and came to terms with the McCarthy-era tensions that rocked the country.

Legal Counsel

RACHEL MATTEO-BOEHM


Electronic data is the new frontier for public-records law, and Rachel Matteo-Boehm, a lawyer with Holme, Roberts and Owen, last year won a key case preserving the public’s right to access to what some public agencies have tried to claim was proprietary data.

The county of Santa Clara produced a digital map showing property lines, assessors parcels and other key real-estate data, and that became the basis for a geographic information system tool. The GIS would allow users to plot everything from property taxes to street repairs, public investment, political party registration, school test scores and other trends. But Santa Clara wasn’t giving it out to the public: The database cost more than $100,000, which meant only big businesses could use it.

Boehm went to court on behalf of the California First Amendment Coalition to argue that the data was public, and must be made available without high charges. "As information begins to be collected in electronic form, and governments choose to put information in sophisticated electronic formats, you can run into real public-access problems," Boehn told us.

Boehm convinced a Santa Clara Superior Court judge that the data was indeed covered under the California Public Records Act. Now Santa Clara must make the map available to the public — and other counties with similar data, seeing the results of the suit, are following that rule.

The decision was a key one, Boehm said: "One day we’re going to wake up and all there will be is electronic records," she noted. And if governments can apply different rules to those documents, "you can kiss the Public Records Act goodbye."

Whistleblower

DAN COOKE


When Dan Cooke shared details of an alleged sewage spill on Alcatraz Island with the Guardian, the health of the national park — where he’d been working as an historical interpreter for over a decade — was foremost on his mind. But he lost his job after the story was published — apparently for taking a proactive role in noting details of the spill in the island’s log book and speaking candidly to the press about what he’d seen. Wanting nothing more than a return to his job leading educational tours of the island, he filed an administrative claim with the US Department of Labor against the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy and the National Park Service. And he called the Guardian. We reported his firing. The next time Cooke called, it was to happily report he was back on the job.

Citizen

SUPERBOLD (BERKELEYANS ORGANIZED FOR LIBRARY DEFENSE)


SuperBOLD has accomplished something entirely different from what it set out to do. Originally, the small group of devoted Berkeley public library users organized to oppose the installation of RFID tags in books. "In the process of going to library board of trustees meetings, we discovered they were vioutf8g the Brown Act," said Gene Bernardi, who heads SuperBOLD’s steering committee with Jane Welford, Jim Fisher, and Peter Warfield. They found, among other things, that certain documents were only made available to trustees and a lottery system was employed in selecting speakers during public comment. They took their complaints to the Berkeley city attorney and joined up with the First Amendment Project, which threatened a lawsuit. Things have changed, though it’s still not perfect — city council meetings only allow 10 speakers and the library trustees still play the lottery for public comment, but marginal improvements portend better days.

"Now you can speak more than once," said Bernardi. "Now you can speak on consent calendar and agenda items. So there are more opportunities to speak … if the Mayor [Tom Bates] remembers to call public comment."

Electronic Access

CARL MALAMUD, PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG


For years, web pioneer Carl Malamud has sought ways to use the Internet to connect average citizens with their government. His new Web site public.resource.org helps that cause by excavating buried public domain information and posting it online. Though still in its early stages, the site already allows users to tap into hard-to-find records from places like the Smithsonian, Congress, and the federal courts system.

Even though most government records are part of the public domain, fishing them out from the bureaucratic depths can be a daunting and expensive task, even for someone like Malamud. During a lecture at UC Berkeley last year, he related his recent difficulties in acquiring a simple database from the Library of Congress. Instead of turning over the materials, officials at the Library cited dubious copyright protections and presented Malamud with a bill for over $85,000 — all for access to supposedly public information.

Thanks to Malamud’s Web site, that database and millions of other documents are now available with the click of a mouse. Ultimately, Malamud hopes public.resource.org will help bring about an age of "Internet governance," in which every last byte of public data winds up online for all to see, free of charge.

THE SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CHAPTER presents the 23RD ANNUAL JAMES MADISON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AWARDS DINNER

MARCH 18, 2008
NEW DELHI RESTAURANT
160 ELLIS STREET
SAN FRANCISCO
No-host bar @ 5:30 p.m.
Dinner/Awards @ 6:30 p.m.

TICKETS:
$50 SPJ members & students
$70 General public
For more information, contact David Greene (dgreene@thefirstamendment.org)

>

Sunshine in the digital age

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EDITORIAL The California Public Records Act needs an update. So does the state’s Brown Act, which mandates open meetings of government bodies, and the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance. These are the landmark laws that keep government from operating in secret — but all were written long before the explosion of information technology profoundly changed the way city, state, and local agencies compile, sort, process, present, and preserve information.

And now, with agencies at every level trying to use information technology to hide data from the public and courts struggling with laws that didn’t anticipate the modern era, open-government advocates need to be working on every level to protect and expand access.

As we point out in this issue, technology can be used to spy, to hide, and to obfuscate — but it can also be used to make the operations and processes of the public sector far more open and accessible. Properly used, today’s information technology can vastly improve the way governments work — and it’s neither difficult nor expensive to make that happen.

The state Legislature, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and the Sunshine Task Force should be looking at ways to make sure that computers don’t increase secrecy — and to take advantage of the opportunities modern technology offers.

The Brown Act, passed in 1954, forbids public agencies from meeting in secret, except in very limited circumstances. The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance goes further. The laws have been interpreted to mean that the members of a board or commission can’t use e-mail to discuss pending business; that would amount to a closed-door meeting. That same interpretation ought to apply to members participating in discussions on, say, a Yahoo! news group. Deliberations on a policy matter would be taking place outside of public view.

But what if the public was invited? What if a virtual discussion took place before or between traditional meetings — and any member of the public could log in from anywhere (work, home, the public library, terminals in City Hall) and watch? What if people — who are now allowed only a minute or two to comment in public meetings — were able to post longer, more detailed comments that policymakers would see during online discussions? What if the entire record of that meeting were instantly available on the Web, in a searchable form?

Would that be an increase in public access? What about the large number of people who still don’t have computers or Web access — would they be left out?

That’s just one of the questions sunshine advocates are talking about. Legislators need to be addressing the issues, too.

As Kimo Crossman reports on page 14, increasing public access doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive — in fact, there are ways to save the city money. One obvious idea: almost every document that’s produced by a city employee, including e-mail, is already considered a public record. Why not simply program the computers to make an instant copy of everything and post it to a public Web site? That way someone looking for memos from, say, the Public Utilities Commission addressing solar energy could simply search that site with those key words and come up with all of the records quickly.

That would save time for journalists and citizen watchdogs who now have to request those records from the agency — and it would save money for the city. If the documents were all searchable for anyone, there would be no need to spend time and money responding to public-records requests.

It wouldn’t be hard at all to add a "possibly confidential" key to records, preventing documents that really should remain secret from going into the public file. And the computers could automatically generate a list of the documents being withheld, so the public could find out what records are remaining out of view.

Over time, old paper records could be scanned and put on the site, too. And with electronic storage so cheap these days, there’s no reason why all public records can’t be preserved in an accessible form and location.

The County of Santa Clara a few years back began putting together a valuable data trove that included all of the county’s real estate and property ownership records. That allowed for the creation of a geographic information system that could be used to track property sales, taxes, crime rates, building permit applications, and much more. A wonderful public service — except that the county didn’t offer it to the public. The data was for sale, for more than $100,000 a license.

It took a lawsuit by the California First Amendment Coalition to force the county to back off and make the data public. But that’s just an example of a trend that’s cropping up all over the country: governments are developing ways to make more use of information — and then are trying to copyright it, sell it, and make money.

The problem with that, as attorney Rachel Matteo-Boehm, who handled the CFAC case, points out, is that it segregates access to information by wealth. The rich get the tools of technology to understand and use public data; the poor don’t.

It’s a dangerous trend and the Legislature should address it right away. Information created by public agencies using public data should be public — no excuses, no exceptions. And if the software that makes it easy to process that information is created by the public sector (or under contract to the public sector) the public needs free access to it.

The Legislature also needs to shoot down a series of attempts by the secrecy lobbyists to cut off access to new types of data. A bill now before the Assembly, AB 1978 by Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim), would exempt certain types of information from the Public Records Act. The bill appears to be aimed at overturning the Santa Clara decision but could also address an issue that has come up in San Francisco: that of so-called metadata in public documents.

Metadata is embedded information that may be in a file that doesn’t appear when the file is printed out. The City Attorney’s Office has been arguing that metadata isn’t public. That’s nonsense — it’s part of a public document, created at public expense by public employees. The Legislature needs to reject this bill — and instead pass a law that would specifically require agencies to release any internal data that’s created as part of a public record.

The San Francisco Sunshine Task Force is in the process of updating and improving the city’s landmark law, and it should seek to incorporate some of the suggestions above.

The Task Force also needs to be sure that the amendments to the law give that oversight body the teeth it needs to enforce public-access requirements. Far too often, city officials simply ignore task force findings, and, as Sarah Phelan reports on page 17, the Ethics Commission and the district attorney rarely follow up with sanctions.

For starters, the task force should have the right to subpoena documents and witnesses (without first asking the supervisors for approval — a cumbersome process). The panel should have its own full-time legal counsel. It should also have increased enforcement power: while giving the task force the right to levy fines and sanctions is politically tricky, a provision that allows the task force to order the release of documents — backed up with the full support of the City Attorney’s Office — ought to be part of the final package.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The week that the San Francisco Unified School District sent out preliminary layoff notices to 535 teachers, the New York Times Magazine devoted much of its special money issue to educational philanthropy. It’s a vicious kind of irony.

The United States heads into a deep recession, but for a new generation of multibillionaires, it’s another gilded age. Fortunes built over the past 15 years or so put the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller to shame, and as the guys from Google recently proved, it’s still going on.

And the tax laws are more favorable to the rich than they have been at any time since the 1920s, so less and less of that greater and greater concentration of wealth is available for public priorities such as education.

But that’s OK, the Times says: Bill and Melinda Gates are giving a lot of money to schools. Something like $350 million a year. Wow! That’s enough to make up for maybe 10 percent of the current cuts to school districts in just the state of California. Thanks, Bill.

I don’t think anyone with the last name of Gates or Buffet reads the Guardian every week, but I bet a copy or two makes its way down the Peninsula to the Googleplex and maybe Oracle headquarters, so I’d like to make a suggestion here to the very rich.

You want to make a difference with your philanthropy? Well, you could start by funding a massive educational campaign to convince Californians that public education works and is valuable, then underwrite a ballot initiative to raise income taxes on people like yourselves. That would do more good, for more kids, for more years into the future than any amount of grantmaking on planet Earth.

But maybe that’s asking too much. Maybe that’s not measurable or accountable enough. Maybe you can’t put the test scores on a computer graph and track the day-to-day impact or your investment the way you can track your stock prices.

So let’s try something else. Maybe you could save one school district.

That’s right: one school district. A big one. Somewhere in urban America. I’d suggest the San Francisco Unified School District in the great state of California, but I’m biased. Just pick a district where the public money falls far short of the educational needs that also has a credible, competent elected school board running things.

And instead of setting up charter schools or building new gyms or concert halls with your name on them, put a big chunk of money — say, $3 billion — in a trust fund that would generate a few hundred million a year, forever. And then let the local school board spend it.

Sure, you’ll get some corruption. Sure, some of the money will be wasted on stupid pet projects or dumb ideas. But that’s going to happen whatever you do. And I would argue that right now, if the San Francisco schools got an additional $300 million a year, no strings attached, on top of the existing state funding, the public schools would improve radically, a generation of kids would be far better prepared for life, the achievement gap would close up a good bit, and there would be quantifiable, measurable progress on every possible metric.

And suddenly, maybe even the tax-averse people of California would realize that well-funded schools are worth paying for.

Sergei? Larry? Anyone?

Killing in the dark

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Police Department doesn’t want people to know about Asa B. Sullivan, a case that illustrates how difficult it is to get even basic information about law enforcement, which leaves the public in the dark about a public agency that makes life-and-death decisions.

Officers filled Sullivan with 16 bullets nearly two years ago on June 6, 2006. Sullivan was unarmed and hiding in the cramped attic of a townhouse at the Parkmerced complex near San Francisco State University when the shooting occurred.

The Guardian has spent the intervening time trying fruitlessly to obtain public records and other information from the department about what happened to Sullivan and about the officers involved, including the results of now-completed investigations.

Sullivan’s death briefly grabbed headlines, but beyond what police told the press at the time, the department has rejected several requests for reports and other documents related to the shooting. The department in February of this year rejected another records request, one of four rebuffed since Sullivan’s death.

Police initially claimed Sullivan’s gun was found at the scene, but that story changed significantly within a short period of time. Police later said the officers who shot him believed an eyeglasses case held by Sullivan was a gun.

It all started when the neighbors of 2 Garces Drive called police believing squatters had taken over the townhouse, but Sullivan was helping the tenants clean up so they could get their security deposit before moving out.

When police arrived, they ordered Sullivan’s friend, Jason Martin, to the floor after the officers aimed their weapons at him without explanation while Sullivan fled into an attic, according to allegations that later appeared in a federal civil suit filed by Sullivan’s family.

Sullivan was on probation for pot and any contact with police would surely have caused him more problems, but as we reported shortly after Sullivan was killed, the department’s General Orders instruct that when a suspect is barricaded, the responding officers should call in a negotiator. A K-9 unit was called that night, according to the suit, but it doesn’t appear the officers waited for it to show up.

Two officers tried to call Sullivan down before pursuing him into the attic. The rest is unclear except that the officers, John Keesor and Michelle Alvis, shot Sullivan to death believing he was armed and intended to shoot them first. But no gun was ever found. The 25-year-old Sullivan, a San Francisco native, was working for Goodwill Industries at the time and had a young son named Asa Isaiah Sullivan.

We first sent a public records request to the SFPD shortly after Sullivan’s death asking for "any and all documentation" related to the shooting including e-mails, notes, and witness statements. The department’s legal division responded that the material was exempt from disclosure laws because they were part of an ongoing law-enforcement investigation, a common response when reporters seek such documents.

After learning at a September 2006 San Francisco Police Commission meeting that some elements of the investigation were complete, we filed another request. The department’s rulebook requires that two divisions in the department — the homicide detail and internal affairs — complete their examinations of deadly officer-involved shootings within two months of the incident.

But again, citing the state’s Government Code, which allows them to withhold material considered part of an ongoing probe, the department responded that an investigation by the district attorney and an analysis of Sullivan’s body by the medical examiner were not complete.

Two months later, we confirmed through Sullivan’s autopsy that he’d been shot 16 times, so we filed another request for documents related to the shooting. But again the department’s legal division claimed the investigation was still open and disclosure would endanger its successful completion.

The alternative by then was to wait for the federal civil suit filed against the city by Sullivan’s family to unfold slowly: through that, perhaps we could determine if new evidence from the shooting would appear in the public record. No success there either. The parties requested a protective order in August 2006 that made crucial information in the case confidential, including personnel records of the officers involved as well as audiotapes, videotapes, photographs, and transcripts related to the investigation.

Through the suit, however, we did learn last November that the Office of Citizen Complaints and the police department’s Management Control Division, a.k.a. internal affairs, had completed their investigations of the shooting.

So we filed another request in February of this year. Yet again, however, the department’s legal division responded that the records were protected under the state’s Penal Code, which grants special exemptions for information related to the conduct of law-enforcement personnel. The OCC responded the same way in its denial of our request.

Making matters worse, California’s State Supreme Court ruled in an unrelated case in August of 2006 that citizens and the press would no longer be able to access most public information about why individual officers are charged with misconduct or even possibly breaking the law.

Records of misconduct charges filed by the OCC or the police chief against officers had largely been open to the public until then through summaries that appeared on the agenda of the police commission. The public could also attend misconduct hearings at the Hall of Justice which included testimony from officers.

But the Supreme Court ruling — known as the Copley decision — put a stop to it by broadening the scope of privacy laws that exclusively protected cops from the disclosure of disciplinary records. Since then, stories from Bay Area media outlets about police misconduct have been few and far between despite a steady stream of cases.

Of course, there’s a way around it all. Sometimes documents show up at the Guardian building in Potrero Hill without a return address, and literally dozens of people with potential access to records related to Sullivan’s death could plausibly deny knowing how they were accidentally sent to G.W. Schulz, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 135 Mississippi St., San Francisco, Calif., 94107.

Maybe by the June anniversary of Sullivan’s shooting, a fuller story of what happened that day (from any number of perspectives — we’re interested in talking to anyone) could land in front of readers. Maybe.

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