By Matthew Hirsch

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force bade farewell to Bruce B. Brugmann, editor and publisher of the Bay Guardian, who departed April 27 after 10 years on the task force, just as the Sunshine Ordinance may be on the verge of undergoing sweeping changes that would again make it a national model for open government.

Brugmann helped lead the effort to pass the Sunshine Ordinance in 1993 and served as a founding member on the task force. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors appointed task force member Richard Knee, who was nominated by the Society of Professional Journalists, to fill Brugmann's seat and named David Pilpel to fill another vacancy.

Meanwhile, members of the task force are attempting to increase access to public meetings and records by placing a series of changes to the Sunshine Ordinance on the November ballot. They're also encouraging the City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District to adopt sunshine guidelines that are more stringent than current state laws.

CCSF trustee Milton Marks III told us college representatives are reviewing the Sunshine Ordinance to pick out sections that would best apply to the college system.

Because CCSF is separate from the city government and doesn't receive city money, it cannot simply adopt San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance, Marks said. But he noted several ways CCSF could make information more accessible and said he hopes to present recommendations to the CCSF board next month.

"I think there is enough support on the board and in the administration to put some changes in place," Marks told us.

While CCSF representatives have been meeting bimonthly with a Sunshine Ordinance Task Force committee, talks with the Board of Education are in a much more preliminary stage. Task force member Doug Comstock met informally with Superintendent Dan Kelly April 3.

The task force now has to find a sponsor for its recommendations to strengthen the Sunshine Ordinance after Sup. Matt Gonzalez turned down a request for sponsorship. The measure needs four votes to go directly to the November ballot, or else supporters will have to mount a petition drive to collect 10,486 signatures by July 5.

In other news, the task force ruled that the Library Commission failed to give library watchdog Peter Warfield a draft of the minutes from its March 4 meeting in a timely manner. The task force also advised the San Francisco Public Library to be "as diligent and expeditious as possible" when providing information about events, such as the March 4 forum on radio-frequency identification, or RFID, which prompted Warfield to file four sunshine complaints.