Article Printer-friendly PDF file
Westside Observer In Press
July 2012 at www.WestsideObserver.com
Ask Supervisor Scott The Tinkerer
Wiener:
Who Killed
Sunshine?
by Patrick Monette-Shaw
Has Supervisor Scott The Tinkerer Wiener single-handedly killed open government Sunshine in San Francisco, however temporarily? Sunshine has left the City, leaving the Sunshine Task Force in official limbo.
Clearly peeved, Wiener kicked physically disabled member Bruce Wolfe off of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force on May 22, filling the remaining "member of the public" seats with non-disabled appointees. Wolfe was the only physically handicapped member of the Task Force, which now can't convene while lacking a physically disabled member.
Sunshine
Ordinance Section 67.30(a) has long required that At all times, the Task
Force shall include at least one member who shall be a member
of the public who is physically handicapped and who has demonstrated
interest in citizen access and participation in local government,
a requirement lawyer Wiener either didn't know about, or studiously
ignored. [Note: Handicapped refers to a person
having a physical disability.]
What was Vice Chair Wolfe's crime that warranted being removed from the Task Force? Wiener claims Wolfe had been part of the Task Force when all of these things have happened, ostensibly including when it found Wiener guilty of official misconduct on September 27, 2011.
Wolfe
may have earned Wiener's enmity a second time a month later on
October 24, 2011, when Wolfe publicly opposed Wiener's Prop. E
and Prop. F November 2011 ballot measures during the West of Twin
Peaks Central Council endorsement session. Wiener left that meeting
in speechless shock after retired Judge Quentin Kopp questioned
Wiener about why we even need an Ethics Commission.
Removing Wolfe smacks of political payback.
Wiener presented no specific charges against Wolfe, just that Wolfe had been around. Wiener was referring to things he classified as bad, but were clearly within the Task Force's legitimate purview.
Wiener went so far
as to state conclusively during the May 22, 2012 Board of Supervisors
meeting broadcast on cable (SFGOV TV) that the Sunshine Ordinance
Task Force had engaged in official misconduct. He
didn't qualify his accusation with allegedly, or potentially,
or perhaps had engaged in misconduct.
Wiener went further May 22, claiming not only that the Task Force had engaged in official misconduct, but also that the current Sunshine Ordinance Task Force frankly, has undermined both the Ordinance and transparency in government in several ways.
To support this claim, Wiener lied at least four times. One tiny problem: None of what Wiener claimed had happened; none of it was true.
What had been the Task Force's crime? As the first of his lies, Wiener whined This Task Force purported to exempt itself from the San Francisco Charter.
The Task Force did not exempt itself from
the City Charter. Instead, the Task Force had amended its bylaws
in April 2011, a lawful act. Because of ambiguities in Charter
Section 4.104 a section not clear that it even applies
to the Task Force the Task Force disagreed with an opinion
from City Attorney Dennis Herrera regarding how many members need
to be present during meetings to pass motions.
Indeed, before voting to change its bylaws, the Task Force recognized that the types of entities listed in Charter Section 4.104 excluded task forces; referred only to entities of the Executive Branch, since the Sunshine Task Force is an entity of the Legislative Branch; and that this section of the Charter specifies only entities created by Legislative acts, not to entities created by the electorate (i.e., members of the public otherwise known as voters).
When the Task Force adopted its rule, changing to a majority of members present rather than a majority of all members, those who voted for the bylaw change did so believing that they were not flouting the Charter or any other law, they just didn't agree with Herrera's interpretation, since City Attorney interpretations and opinions don't carry force of law.
Wiener Slanders the Task Force
Wiener stated, as if he were both the judge and jury, And frankly, that was official misconduct, in my personal view.
He didn't afford the Task Force an opportunity to respond or
defend itself; he just falsely accused the Task Force and concluded
with no debate
or evidence, and without a hearing presenting any charges, slandering
the Task Force in the process. After the Task Force lawfully amended
its bylaws, why did Wiener wait for a whole year before making
this an issue?
Was it retribution for the Task Force having found Wiener guilty official misconduct six months after it had adopted its bylaws change?
Perhaps Wiener is taking cues for slander from Mayor Ed Lee, who appears to have slandered Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi by claiming, as the mayor did on June 20, that Mirkarimi had engaged in beating his wife, appalling many observers by not qualifying it with allegedly. Lee reached this conclusion before the Ethics Commission or the Board of Supervisors completed their investigations of the wildly inflated charges against the Sheriff. Both Lee and Wiener are throwing false accusations against the wall, hoping to see which libelous accusations may stick.
Ironically, although Wiener stated on May 22 that The Sunshine Ordinance, and transparency in government in general, is incredibly important, he's sponsored measures to lessen campaign finance disclosure transparency, and the Task Force found that Wiener violated the Sunshine Ordinance himself, as this article explores.
Second, Wiener lied claiming that he had asked the Board's Budget and Legislative Analyst, Harvey Rose, for an audit, inferring an audit of the Task Force. In truth, Wiener had requested a survey of each City department's costs to comply with the Sunshine Ordinance, not an audit of the Sunshine Task Force's revenue and expenses.
Third, Wiener claimed on SFGOV TV that the Task Force had responded by saying, How dare you! How dare you shine sunlight on us? No Task Force member had ever said any such thing, even remotely; Wiener clearly lied on broadcast TV during a Board hearing.
In truth, the Task Force's only response was a March 22, 2012
letter to Wiener, respectfully noting he had not
extended the courtesy of informing the Task Force
of his intent to conduct such a survey, and asking for clarification
about his motivation for requesting the survey. The Task Force
asked what benefit Wiener expected the public to receive from
such a survey, since he had not asked Rose to estimate or quantify
the benefits of Sunshine, just expenses. Wiener failed to ask
that costs of compliance with the California Public Records Act
be reported separately, which turns out to be the major driver
in costs of compliance with local and state open government laws.
The Task Force was within its rights when it appropriately requested an explanation from Wiener, and it extended an open invitation to him to discuss any issues regarding the Sunshine Ordinance and the Task Force's procedures. It never once said How dare you!, as Wiener falsely claimed.
Fourth, Wiener claimed on May 22, On average, City employees had to spend 1.9 Task Force hearings to get complaints against them adjudicated. They couldn't go the first time and get it done, which Wiener then found to be unacceptable because It creates enormous inefficiencies.
Here, Wiener was
relying on Rose's flawed analysis. Rose had included 21 Sunshine
complaints filed in 2010 in his estimate of the costs of Sunshine
that was to have focused on 2011. As well, Rose had excluded 31
of the 86 Sunshine complaints filed in 2011 a full 36%
that may either never had a Sunshine hearing (perhaps dismissed
or resolved before requiring a hearing) or were not heard until
2012. Of the remaining 55 complaints filed in 2011, six
or 11% were resolved in just one hearing.
If 31 complaints never received any hearing, the claim of 1.9 average hearings begins to fall apart.
So in potentially 47% of the Sunshine complaints filed in 2011, the Task Force did a commendable job resolving those cases with one hearing per case or less, which Rose clearly overlooked. But Wiener blames the Task Force for multiple hearings, when indeed many of the cases that required multiple hearings were because respondent departments failed to show up at the first hearing something obviously beyond control of the Sunshine Task Force which Rose never quantified and which Wiener ignores.
In order to be more efficient, the Task Force changed its procedures, eliminating the requirement that all complaints be heard first by its Complaint Committee, requiring a second hearing only in cases where the Task Force's jurisdiction was questioned. It's also unclear whether Rose counted as multiple hearings the vast majority of cases where a five-minute agenda item to determine jurisdiction at a full Task Force meeting preceding a second agenda item to hear the particular complaint was double-counted as two hearings, when in fact it may have involved a single meeting with a two-part agenda item, perhaps inflating Wiener's claim that City employees couldn't just go once to get cases against them heard.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Wiener is known as a hard worker,
but he's not faced much adversity in terms of
advancing his political career. Wiener worked five years as an
attorney at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, where he focused
on financial, accounting-related, and commercial litigation. In
2002, he took a position with the San Francisco City Attorney's
Trial Team representing City departments in civil litigation.
In both positions Wiener was thought to have a lily-white reputation.
Perhaps while a Deputy City Attorney, Wiener may have ran across the Sunshine Ordinance as a result of knowledgeable litigants who had used the City's open government Sunshine law during legal discovery. Then he ran for District 8 Supervisor, and his reputation began getting black marks.
Luckily for San Franciscans, Wiener has faced a number of setbacks to his various schemes tinkering with lessening transparency at City Hall. Here's the timeline that reduced Wiener to vindictiveness:
Wiener's Tinkering TImeline
Sunshine Blackout
Given
these embarrassments, Wiener apparently engineered on May 22 stripping
Bruce Wolfe of his seat on the Task Force. Wiener also supported
the Rules Committee recommendation to hold up approving four nominations
for appointment to the Task Force by demanding that three nominating
agencies the Society of Professional Journalists, the League
of Women Voters of San Francisco, and New America Media
submit multiple nominees from each agency, rather than single
nominees (as they have since Sunshine became law) be forwarded
to the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee for appointment. Those
four appointments to the Task Force also remain in limbo.
On June 6, following advice from its advising Deputy City Attorney, the Sunshine Task Force voted to adjourn its regularly scheduled meetings until such time as a physically handicapped member is re-appointed to the Task Force, as the Sunshine Ordinance requires; without a disabled member, Task Force votes on its action items could be legally challenged. Supervisor David Campos noted during the June 6 meeting speaking as a member of the public, not in his role as a City supervisor the embarrassment the City will suffer from shutting down its Sunshine oversight body due to failure to comply with disability rights provisions in the Sunshine Ordinance.
A day later, on June 7, Wiener was slapped again, this time
by his Board colleagues on the Rules Committee. Again
carrying water for the Ethics Commission despite the resounding
rejection of Props.
E and F by voters last November
Wiener introduced an Ordinance that would have, among other things,
modified and streamlined reporting requirements for candidates
and third parties spending funds in local elections, and
to eliminate the overall contribution limit on contributions
to all candidates on the ballot in a single election.
Wiener's proposed ordinance would have, according to some observers, strengthened application of the U.S. Supreme Court case Citizen's United in San Francisco by undoing contribution caps. After hearing from a number of former Ethics Commissioners who spoke during public comment on June 7, and after hearing Supervisor Campos' many concerns, the Rules Committee didn't forward Wiener's latest ordinance to the full Board of Supervisors for adoption; it sent the legislation back to the Ethics Commission for further work. Poor Wiener just can't get anything right.
Here it is a month
later, and Wiener-The-Tinkerer remains unrepentant.
He single-handedly shut down Sunshine in San Francisco, and he's
in no hurry to let the Sunshine back in. For all anyone knows,
Wiener may be counting on keeping the Sunshine Task Force deadlocked
and shut down for as long as possible.
The longer the Sunshine Task Force is in limbo, the more likely it will be for City Hall to engage in backroom deals without sufficient public oversight. Call the Mayor's Office on Disability at 554-6789 and ask them for its support in getting Bruce Wolfe reinstated so the Sunshine Task Force can resume its operations.
Monette-Shaw is an open-government accountability advocate, a patient advocate, and a member of Californias First Amendment Coalition. He received the Society of Professional JournalistsNorthern California Chapters James Madison Freedom of Information Award in the Advocacy category in March 2012. Feedback: monette-shaw@westsideobserver.com.
During the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force meeting June 6, 2012, newly-appointed member David Pilpel repeatedly questioned the Task Force's advising Deputy City Attorney, Jerry Threet, about whether the seat reserved for a disabled member was inclusive of all Task Force seats, or exclusive to the community organization nominees. Threet remained silent on the issue, but the Sunshine Ordinance is clear that it specifies the member with a physical disability must be a "member of the public," not from other reserved seats.
_______
Copyright (c) 2011 by Committee to Save LHH. All rights
reserved. This work may not be reposted anywhere on the
Web, or reprinted in any print media, without express written
permission. E-mail the Committee
to Save LHH.