THE SAN FRANCISCO Community College Board is scheduled to consider next month a move to put the agency under the key provisions of San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance. But college officials are still resisting the changes, and the board will have to defy its own chancellor and general counsel to bring some badly needed accountability to the trouble-plagued district.

The central issue is that state law has always given public officials fairly broad discretion to withhold information either because it is part of internal "deliberations" or because the "public interest" in keeping it secret outweighs the public interest in disclosure. The city's sunshine law is intentionally drawn much tighter – it effectively eliminates those two excuses.

Chancellor Philip Day and general counsel Ronald Lee continue to insist that, as a state agency, CCSF can play by the looser rules – but even that has changed. Proposition 59, which enshrined sunshine in the state constitution, was specifically aimed at limiting discretionary exemptions to disclosure. The Legislative Analyst's Office noted that the measure "will compel [officials] to narrowly apply laws that limit openness."

The voters, who overwhelmingly approved Prop. 59, wanted a change in attitude at secretive public agencies that handle millions of dollars in public bond money without adequate oversight. The CCSF board needs to make sure that Day and Lee don't block that from happening.