Critics Accuse City of Paying Lobbyists to Weaken Public Access Laws

​Yesterday we reported on how, despite detailed complaints from the public, San Francisco's lobbyists were skipping out on requirements to file with the Ethics Commission and report how they're using public money.

Now, open government activists, spurred into sifting through some of the city's Sacramento lobbying activity, are not pleased with what they've found. They accuse San Francisco of a dubious trifecta: 1. Using city money to; 2. lobby for state laws restricting public access to government data; and 3. failing to disclose this via mandated lobbying reports.

"I think this is a very big deal," said Terry Francke, the general counsel for the open government group CalAware and the original drafter of the city's Sunshine Ordinance. "The people who established the Sunshine Ordinance wanted to make sure their efforts were not undercut by the city's lobbyists going to Sacramento and trying to get more secrecy in state law."

Here's the nitty-gritty:

Two years ago, the state passed AB 101, which was sponsored by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and the city of San Francisco. You may remember the hullabaloo around this quirky law, which authorized the city of San Francisco -- and no other city -- to install cameras on the front of Muni vehicles so as to theoretically more expediently bust ingrates who park in bus zones and the like. Here's where a curtailing of public access comes in. Lobbyist Steven Wallauch of Suter, Wallauch, Corbett & Associates responded to SF Weekly's public records request that, yes, his firm was employed by San Francisco to push for this law's eventual passage. And included within the law AB 101 became -- California Vehicle Code 40240 -- is this nugget:

Notwithstanding Section 6253 of the Government Code [the California Public Records Act] or any other provision of the law, the video image records are confidential. Public agencies shall use and allow access to these records only for the purposes authorized by this article.

This is what raised red flags with Francke. Enshrined within this law is its explicit acknowledgment that it sidesteps the state's public records act. And in the city lobbying for it, Francke sees a blatant violation of the Sunshine Ordinance: "Funds of the City and County of San Francisco ... shall not be used to support any lobbying efforts to restrict public access to records, information, or meetings ..."

"It's a clear-cut case," says Francke. "The Sunshine Ordinance prevents the city from laying out any money for lobbying to achieve secrecy in state law. Yet you have this bill that does enact secrecy in state law -- and only for San Francisco."

City lobbyist Wallauch says outside groups mandated that the video records be made confidential: "Legislative committees and the ACLU requred that this information be confidential and shall not be used for any other purpose in order to protect the privacy of the violator as well as any person inadvertently included in the video."

Francke feels that statement is a convenient crutch -- and doesn't alter his allegations about the trampling of the Sunshine Ordinance. "I can't imagine a more flagrant and substantive violation of the no-City-money-for-secrecy-lobbying provision of the Sunshine Ordinance."
 
In the meantime, if ever you're walking or driving through San Francisco and notice yourself on one of the forward-facing cameras the city is now legally entitled to place on Muni vehicles, a paraphrasing of Allen Funt's tagline is in order: "Smile, you're on candid camera. And you paid for it."