Against: Little real protection, a lot to weaken transparency

There’s only two things you need to know about the “Privacy First” measure (Proposition B) on the San Francisco ballot. First, it wouldn’t do anything to protect your privacy that our elected officials can’t do already. Second, it would give city officials unilateral authority to weaken San Francisco’s landmark government transparency law.

At its core, Prop. B purports to be a shield that supervisors can wield to protect against unwarranted invasions of our privacy by technology companies and scooter startups alike. A noble idea, in theory, to help balance the scales in a town dominated by tech. But when asked what, specifically, supervisors could do with Prop. B that they couldn’t otherwise, city staff admit: not much.

That’s because the amendment merely presents guidelines — a set of best practices, if you will — that would serve as a framework for future legislation. Legislation that’s sure to attract intense lobbying and scrutiny by the very companies the city seeks to more closely regulate.

What’s worse, tucked deeply into the proposed charter amendment is a very real threat to our democracy, one that would require no closed-door meetings to implement. If you are unaware of this hidden danger, that’s by design: The seven sponsoring supervisors of the amendment don’t address it in the voter information guide or in their proponent materials.

Subsection (i) of Prop. B would authorize the board to amend the voterenacted Sunshine Ordinance, our local open-meeting and public-records law, so long as any changes are “not inconsistent” with the intent of the law. The catch? The power to determine the intent of any possible changes would rest with the city attorney, a conflict of interest because the city attorney represents the same government officials the Sunshine Ordinance holds accountable.

Prop. B’s sponsors, led by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, say they would not enact any changes to limit access to government records or otherwise weaken transparency. And while that may be true, there is nothing stopping future supervisors from gutting the law, which they almost did in 2012. Two years later, supervisors similarly thumbed their noses at sunshine by blocking the appointment of two wellregarded candidates for the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, a citizen group that hears complaints and ensures the law is followed. It wasn’t until my predecessors at the Society of Professional Journalists called out officials that the task force was restored to full strength.

San Francisco’s Sunshine Ordinance is one of the first, and is widely regarded as among the best, local public records laws in the country. Access to public records has served as the foundation of some of the Bay Area’s most important news stories in recent memory, including PG&E’s role in starting, and then covering up, its involvement in deadly wildfires, abuse against citizens by San Francisco and Oakland police, and costly mistakes in the construction of the Bay Bridge. None of these stories would have come to light without access to public records.

Ordinarily, only the voters can amend voter-enacted ordinances. We cannot allow politicians to take this authority for themselves.

We need a strong Sunshine Ordinance to ensure that we, not our elected officials, have the final say over how San Francisco is run. City officials will tell you they intend only to strengthen the ordinance. But as my colleague and former Sunshine Ordinance Task Force member Richard Knee recently noted, the word “strengthen” doesn’t appear in the text of Prop. B.

If you value transparency and believe citizens have a right to hold their government accountable, vote “no” on Prop. B.