Putting every public record on a database is neither cheap nor easy to do up front. DIstributed systems need to be developed and integrated into each department's work plan. Departments want to integrate a distributed immediate access records system into their work plan as much as they want to hand over records in the first place. There must also be provisions for coding each record with legitimate grounds for secrecy, as in legal and personnel records.

The costs downstream, of course, will be minimal compared to current costs, and the potential efficiencies that immediate access to public records will bring to government will only be matched by the hostility of the bureaucracy to resist those changes.

Back of the napkin ciphering on this comes to $30-50,000,000.00 up front.

on how well the commission works is like asking George W. Bush how he thought the Iraq war was going while getting a counter-opinion from Joe Lieberman.

Again - this is advocacy with a thin film of journalism thrown over it. It's highly unethical to simply ask a member of the commission in question the worth of the commission's work - what did you expect him to say? Wait - don't answer that - I think we ALL know what you expected him to say.

ROAST THE LITTLE WIENER - self serving corporate stooge!!

Supervisor Weiner doesn't identify the real cost of compliance. Every request does have a cost to comply. However, when a City agency won't comply and decides to fight the request, the result is a Sunshine complaint. Those costs are a direct result of the agency simply refusing to comply: hearing costs, overtime, etc. Then, if the complainant wins, the City agency has the same cost of compliance they would have had prior to the complaint. I filed a one-half page complaint against the Ethics Commission and it resulted in a 143 page response: an 8 page response letter and 135 pages of supporting documentation. All to keep from complying with a decision issued by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. How much of a waste of City resources was that? And somehow they will attempt to hold me responsbile for those costs when all I was doing was exercising my rights under the law and trying to avoid all the costs of going to court, for myself and the City.

Let's see, an advocacy piece which was taken from the blog of one of the biggest abusers of the sunshine laws who also happens to be obsessed with the audit requestor? Yeah. I see where this is going

There seems to be a false assumption by a Guest here with regards to posting of documents online. Actually, putting every document up online costs nothing now since the city is nearly complete on a new document management system which will make it easier. We're San Francisco Technology Gulch, after all.

It would also save the staff multitudes of time in that they would be making all the documents in their possession available to the public for self retrieval. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case for most departments. With the new system coming online soon, there should be no more excuses thus this survey is really meaningless except to show a baseline of how this new system will help reduce staff hours, interaction with the public, and, ultimately, the public's ability to easily access its public records.

It has also been city law for some time that every department must maintain an "index to records" for public records and online (SF Administrative Code - Sec. 67.29). Paper, of course, costs more plus printers, computers, toner, copiers, etc. So, again, there should have been no excuses before and soon should be absolutely no excuses, whatsoever. Period.

Let' s be clear, the Sunshine Ordinance is mostly and primarily replicated from the CA Public Records Act and the Ralph M. Brown Open Meetings Act. So, please do not insult the general electorate who voted for this most important law which sets to bring more 'sunshine' on how our government works. And, it requires the respect it deserves to afford the general populace an avenue to the workings of their governmenthe as should every other elected official, department head and custodian of records.

Know that the federal FOIA, state CPRA and SF Sunshine Ordinance were strongly supported by the media in order to get information to report on. They are the orginal Sunshine advocates without a doubt and we owe certain gratitude as many interesting secrets have been uncovered in many nooks and crannies, and continue to this day.

Public documents requests are also used by our elected officials when they cannot get information from our own agencies and departments. Sounds ludicrous, right? But, it's very true and happens quite often. Many times our city officials do not know what contracts, MOUs, relationships, transactions, communications, etc., that are being made between departments and/or external agencies. So, our elected officials have to file their own Sunshine requests or similar instruments to get that information as your representative possibly to help protect your interests, property and civil rights.

It is well worth posting the primary purpose. There should be no disagreement about this as it is repeated at the state and federal level, too, in all respects.

"Sec. 67.1 Findings And Purpose.

"The Board of Supervisors and the People of the City and County of San Francisco find and declare:

"(a) Government"s duty is to serve the public, reaching its decisions in full view of the public.

"(b) Elected officials, commissions, boards, councils and other agencies of the City and County exist to conduct the people"s business. The people do not cede to these entities the right to decide what the people should know about the operations of local government.

"(c) Although California has a long tradition of laws designed to protect the public"s access to the workings of government, every generation of governmental leaders includes officials who feel more comfortable conducting public business away from the scrutiny of those who elect and employ them. New approaches to government constantly offer public officials additional ways to hide the making of public policy from the public. As government evolves, so must the laws designed to ensure that the process remains visible.

"(d) The right of the people to know what their government and those acting on behalf of their government are doing is fundamental to democracy, and with very few exceptions, that right supersedes any other policy interest government officials may use to prevent public access to information. Only in rare and unusual circumstances does the public benefit from allowing the business of government to be conducted in secret, and those circumstances should be carefully and narrowly defined to prevent public officials from abusing their authority.

"(e) Public officials who attempt to conduct the public"s business in secret should be held accountable for their actions. Only a strong Open Government and Sunshine Ordinance, enforced by a strong Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, can protect the public"s interest in open government.

"(f) The people of San Francisco enact these amendments to assure that the people of the City remain in control of the government they have created.

"(g) Private entities and individuals and employees and officials of the City and County of San Francisco have rights to privacy that must be respected. However, when a person or entity is before a policy body or passive meeting body, that person, and the public, has the right to an open and public process. (Added by Ord. 265-93, App. 8/18/93; amended by Proposition G, 11/2/99)"

Quantifying the cost of compliance is an old idea, frequently discussed at meetings of the SOTF. The problem is separating the costs of compliance with the CA Public Records Act, which the City would have to comply with without Sunshine. It will be interesting to see how they will accomplish this.

For example, Immediate Disclosure Requests, required under Sunshine but not under CPRA are difficult to measure. Does disclosing a record within 24 hours cost more than taking the full 10-14 days CPRA allows?

In order to get an accurate measure, we should see the estimates for both. Of course, CPRA does not have a mechanism for hearings, but comparing them to court costs might also be useful.
-d

That seems reasonable, but the actual time it takes to fulfill an IDR in real time may be less. For example if a department receives an IDR but wants to take the full time allowed by CPRA, they must notify the requester with the reasons for the extension of time delay and that response, in itself, would take more staff time than simply pushing the send button or pulling a file. In my experience, most requests fall into this category, people need a simple document ASAP. -d

Actually, responding to Oral or Written information requests for information is part of every SF City Employee's job duties as mandated under the Sunshine Ordinance (see below)

I wonder if the city had ever done an Audit of the "cost of responding to either of the following legal information requests:

1) Answering oral questions by phone or at public hearings - This are information requests.
2) Responding to discovery requests from lawsuits.

http://www.sfbos.org/index.aspx?page=5549#67_24

"The work of responding to a public-records request and preparing documents for disclosure shall be considered part of the regular work duties of any city employee, and no fee shall be charged to the requester to cover the personnel costs of responding to a records request."

hi all,

it's fascinating to see how scott engages in very limited outreach before he introduces legislation or in this case, no public reaching out that i'm aware of. for his proposals on making nudists cover their butts and the castro's public plazas, he held no public meetings of his own in the castro before introducing the legislation.

sure, he attended the monthly MUMC meetings and met with the merchants, and he and his staff quietly and privately consulted with the CBD, but he was not interested in wider castro community discussions about either issue. once word was out about his proposals, he was shocked that stakeholders were not pleased with him and his lack of transparent engagement beyond his supporters.

now, with the SOTF audit request, we see not even that sort of scant outreach was done by wiener before making the request. clearly he's not interested in being transparent or engaging with folks on the other side of his ideas.

if he's made genuine outreach and public, open discussion of his various proposals beforehand, i've not seen evidence of it. he has an agenda and he's gonna carry it out, knowing full well how his methods are polarizing lots of constituencies.

however, i do want to offer a smidgen of praise for wiener, in that he spoke with tim redmond. i hope that he'll soon link to this thread from his facebook wall, where he links to practically all stories about him and his agenda:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Wiener/133650406967?sk=wall

regarding his lack of regular meetings in his district open to all that HE organizes, he's continuing the lame legacy of bevan dufty, tom ammiano and his mentor mark leno. none of these gay electeds have a decent record on democratic engagement.

michael

"I've been reporting on San Francisco City Hall for a long, long time, and I can tell you that, more often than not, it's difficult and frustrating to get access to even basic records that ought to be handed over instantly. Why waste all of our time? Why not just make every document created by any city employee immediately available in an online database? Easy to do, cheap to do -- and simple to check a box that would keep those very, very few records that truly ought to be confidential out of the public eye."

AGREE. It's ridiculous how difficult it is to find basic documents online. I think CIty employees have a clear intent in being as opaque as possible. The SFERS Retirement Board whose actions has direct and significant impact on the General Fund operates under the cover of darkness...

http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-03-28/news/dark-side-of-sunshine/

"Back in October, Sucka Free called out Crossman for "deluging city workers with e-mails, [and] asking for the same documents over and over." At the time, city officials estimated it had cost taxpayers at least $200,000 processing and responding to Crossman's numerous records requests under the city's Sunshine Ordinance. Since January 2006 Crossman has generated more than 2,350 pages and 621,000 words of correspondence between himself and the office of City Attorney Dennis Herrera — more than Tolstoy needed to write War and Peace,"

As someone else has already mentioned, its hilarious that some of the gadflies which are the biggest abusers of our sunshine laws have posted here defending their right to grind things to a halt with their personal requests

It is very interesting to me that the so-called "gadflies" post their inputs with clearly stated names. You would think by now they would know their names will attract the kind of posts that attempt to disparage their efforts. These posts are usually from people who haven't got the "stones" to use their real names. It's easy to attack from under cover!

If the "requests" are not legal, then the various City departments and agencies can simply state the portion of the law that exempts them from replying. Instead, they ignore the request, reply incompletely, or use various other means to be nonresponsive. One way is to reply with 20 copies of the same pages, pages that have unexplained (and unlawful) redactions, and other methods which are too numerous to mention. Then they blame the requestor for the time it took to respond and decry the number of pages in the response or the time it took to comply. All to make the requestor look like they are "abusing" the open government laws.

If they cannot fight the requestor on some legal ground, they use all sorts of means to attack the person making the request. Believe me, I've had it happen to me. I was doing nothing but asking for documents which were "public records." What I found is some departments are NEVER before the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. Why? They respond in an appropriate and timely manner and in accordance with the law. OTHERS are there on numerous occassions, with different responders, over different "public records," etc. Why is that?

Some of the "nameless" comments posted here are folks who want to disparage the efforts of people to keep government open and (at least to some degree) responsive. Public officials like Matt Dorsey, then the Public Information Officer for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said in an e-mail, "The task force has degenerated into a rouge, lawless jury that beats up on city departments and tries to get consicentious public employees fired." Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Herrera both know that not one City employee has ever been disciplined as a response to a Sunshine complaint. They also know, from a recent Sunshine referral, except one, in the 8 years which the Civil Grand Jury reviewed. If they can't assault the "gadflies" they'll go after the members of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

They also make most of their "attacks" without the courage or integrity to put their names to the comments. Please consider these facts before you decide to judge the "gadflies."

Some of these trolls think so highly of themselves, that they believe that they have sole rights to a username on a site which does not allow registration.