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Pay to play The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force unanimously approved a motion Feb. 24 urging the City Attorney's Office to release documents to former Human Rights Commission staffer Kevin Williams on "an efficient, convenient and economical basis." The decision came in response to an order that Williams pay as much as $100,000 to view records he had requested from the City Attorney's Office.

Williams, an 18-year city employee, was gathering documents for a lawsuit against the city after being fired on former mayor Willie Brown's last day in office. He was fired for allegedly doing personal work on city time, so he made the request for documents from his HRC coworkers' computers to show he was inappropriately singled out.

During his career in city government, Williams took on corruption in the Brown administration several times, including cases against fellow HRC staffer Zula Jones and construction contractor Tutor-Saliba (see "Whistle-blower Fired," 1/21/04).

Deputy city attorney Catherine Barnes presented evidence to justify the extravagant cost involved with producing records for Williams. Barnes invited Gary Shweid, an investigator in the City Attorney's Office, to explain the process of extracting the hard drive files.

Besides revealing his salary ($87,000), Shweid gave little indication of what it costs to perform his job. Garrett Jenkins, chair of the sunshine task force, said based on Shweid's testimony, it appeared the city was quoting Williams twice what it cost to reimburse the City Attorney's Office for Shweid's time.

But it wasn't clear what the City Attorney's Office was asking Williams to pay, because it wouldn't give him a bill until the work was done. "I see the people of San Francisco paying for work and being told they cannot have an invoice," Jenkins said.

Matthew Hirsch