By Tim Redmond

The Planning Department is the latest San Francisco agency to slap a gag order on its workers.

A Sept. 30 memo from director Gerald Green instructs all planning staffers to refrain from discussing their work with the news media unless they've cleared their comments in advance with the director.

Green's memo is framed as a "reminder" of existing policies that "date back to previous directors." But if that's true, the policy was never enforced: over the past 20 years, city planning staffers have routinely answered press inquiries and spoken openly about department activities.

The directive was issued three days after the San Francisco Chronicle published an article about the future of the industrial and manufacturing areas on the eastern side of Potrero Hill. The article quoted planner Miriam Chion, who had recently been removed from the team working on new zoning for the area, criticizing Green's apparent move to relax protections for industrial businesses.

The memo goes far beyond simply mandating that all press inquiries go through the director's office. In a truly remarkable passage, it states: "While you are entitled to the expression of personal opinions on any matter of public concern while not on duty, your actions cannot disrupt coworker relations, impair discipline or control by superiors, erode a close working relationship premised on personal loyalty and confidentiality, interfere with the employee's performance or obstruct the routine operation of the office in a manner that outweighs the employee's interests in expressing that opinion."

Former planning commissioner Dennis Antenore, who was on the panel in the 1990s, told me he didn't recall what the media relations policy was during his tenure. But he said the new directive was "outrageous."

"That's so broad that it imperils the free flow of information," he said. "The only way to prevent corruption in that department is to do everything in the open."

Green, who was slated to leave office Nov. 1 to take a job at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, didn't return calls seeking comment on the memo.

The planning memo follows a similar gag order recently issued by the San Francisco Police Department (see "An SFPD Gag Order?," 10/20/04) and one Superintendent Arlene Ackerman placed on San Francisco Unified School District employees (see "End SFUSD's Gag Order," 10/8/03).

E-mail Tim Redmond at tredmond@sfbg.com.