March 12 2003

By Savannah Blackwell

LAST JULY NEIGHBORHOOD activists Joan Girardot and Emeric Kalman headed down to the city's Recreation and Park Department headquarters at McLaren Lodge in Golden Gate Park to express dismay over the department's plans for an expensive overhaul of the boat harbor in the Marina District.

The hearing they attended, held before the Rec and Park Commission's Finance Committee July 10, was lengthy: In addition to Girardot and Kalman, several engineering and finance experts testified. And the three committee members, the experts, and the activists debated issues key to the viability of the department's proposal. That's not unusual: much of the hashing out of government matters occurs at committee meetings.

Girardot wanted a record of the proceedings, so she asked committee chair John Murray, who also serves as president of the full commission, if the department was recording the session.

The answer: no.

"I was told there would be no minutes, no audiotape, nothing," Girardot said. "I couldn't believe it."

On February 6 a different aspect of the harbor upgrade plan went before the same committee. Rec and Park was trying to get a state loan to pay for the roughly $35 million project, so under state law the department had to hold a hearing to consider whether the harbor's operations should be privatized. No one other than Girardot and Kalman showed up to speak. And since department officials have no intention of turning over the harbor to private hands at this time, the hearing was simply perfunctory.

Even so, Girardot and Kalman felt there should be a formal record of the proceedings, showing that no experts came forward. And once again they were told the meeting would not be recorded in any way. This time Kalman filed a complaint with the city's Sunshine Task Force, the agency entrusted with insuring the city's officials comply with local open-government laws.

But it's unlikely the task force can do much: the Marina boat harbor issue has exposed a loophole in the city's Sunshine Ordinance. The landmark measure doesn't require city officials to keep minutes of committee meetings.

That's a big problem, Girardot says.

For example, at the July 10 meeting, Kalman was able to point out, using the mayor's budget records, that a consultant's report showing how much money the city spends operating the harbor was off by several hundred thousand dollars. According to Girardot, Murray requested a report with updated numbers. But no such document has ever been produced, she said.

Moreover, on August 15, when the full Rec and Park Commission was asked to urge the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to support the department's loan application, two brand-new members – Rebecca Prozan and Jim Lazarus – had only recently joined the commission. How could they make an informed decision without the ability to review the testimony presented at the July committee meeting?

"It makes a travesty of their decision-making process," said Girardot, a longtime activist who has served as the president of the Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods. "They went ahead and made a decision without having important background information."

Rec and Park officials simply noted that they are not required by law to take minutes or record committee meetings.

Committee meetings of the Board of Supervisors are aired live and recorded by SFGTV, channel 26, the government-owned and - run broadcast station, and San Francisco school board officials tape their committee meetings. But the committees of other city panels aren't routinely recorded.

Terry Francke, general counsel of the California First Amendment Coalition, said that even if the city's sunshine law doesn't require officials to make some sort of record of committee meetings, common sense and hundreds of years of parliamentary custom dictate they should do so anyway.

"The concept of taking minutes has been around since King Arthur's Round Table," Francke said. "In a city the size of San Francisco, with a complicated enough structure and such a proliferation of boards and committees, 90 percent of the close consideration of the details of proposals is going to take place at the committee level.... The only possible reason why a commission wouldn't want to [record its committee meetings] would be because they don't want to be confused by the facts or tied to them.... But in a political arena where there are all kinds of opportunities for finessing and spinning things and confusion, if not outright deception, it's a lot cleaner to have an exact record around, at least for a while, that's available to everyone.

"That's why 'It's a matter of record' has a certain ring to it."