THE WAY THE conservatives – and increasingly, a lot of otherwise liberal Democrats – see it, the role of government is changing profoundly. In a Feb. 21 New York Times opinion piece, Harvard University professor Stephen Goldsmith and Manhattan Institute fellow William D. Eggers outlined the new world: Instead of directly providing services to the public, government agencies are (and, Goldsmith and Eggers argue, ought to be) contracting with private outfits to do that work. Instead of running, say, health departments or public works crews, city, state, and federal administrators should be contract officers, hiring others to do the work and simply monitoring those contractors' performance.

It's not a pleasant picture, for a lot of reasons. Privatizing public services eliminates direct accountability. In many cases, the private contractors take a cut of the money, turning a profit from what should be public services. In other cases, private nonprofits offer cheaper services by hiring low-paid, nonunion employees who don't have the needed skills or training.

But perhaps most important, private contractors operate outside of the public records and open-meeting laws that are an essential part of any attempt to make sure the public's money is being spent in the public interest.

The amount of money involved is massive: As Matthew Hirsch reports on page 16, San Francisco spent more than $1.5 billion over the past three years on contracts with nonprofit service providers. The list of nonprofits getting city money runs 177 pages, with more than 835 groups getting grants of as little as a few thousand dollars to as much as many millions. And by all accounts, the trend is only increasing.

That's why it's absolutely essential that San Francisco adopt extensive legislation requiring nonprofits that provide city services with city money to operate in the sunshine.

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Most of the nonprofits that operate with public money in San Francisco are doing good work. Most of them are run by well-meaning people who are motivated by a desire for public service and who operate on tight budgets without excessive overhead or waste. Some of these organizations play crucial, life-saving roles, and, in some cases, funding community-based nonprofits is by far the most effective way to deliver public services.

But when you have that much money flowing, there are bound to be problems – and the city doesn't exercise anywhere near the level of oversight necessary to avoid pointless waste and outright fraud. There are endless cases in point.

As A.C. Thompson and Tali Woodward report on page 20, the headlines over the past few years have been full of stories of nonprofits abusing city funds. A nonprofit run by political fixer Julie Lee diverted $125,000 in public funds to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's campaign. The director of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners may have used city-paid staffers to try to influence the outcome of an election. The head of Catholic Charities of San Francisco, which gets millions in city money, ran up a $73,000 tab for laser hair removal, Botox treatments, and meals at posh restaurants at a time when the organization was cutting back services to homeless kids.

There may be dozens more examples like that – but because nonprofits are private entities, it's difficult, and in some cases almost impossible, for the public to keep an eye on where the money's going.

That's something AIDS activists have been saying for years. The extensive network of nonprofits set up in the 1980s, in the early days of the epidemic, have been praised as a national model – but grassroots critics argue that they've become secretive, unaccountable operations that spend money, often public money, with little effective community input. By law, the top executives of these organizations have to make their salaries public – but below that level, line-item expenses are often hidden. Meetings at which crucial policy decisions are made (including decisions about how public money will be spent) take place behind closed doors. And since many of these contracts are issued without competitive bidding, and include "preference" clauses that almost guarantee they'll be renewed year after year, there's little the public can do about it.

AIDS activists managed several years ago, with the help of Sup. Tom Ammiano, to get some modest measures in place requiring limited sunshine and accountability. But that was only after a bitter fight: nonprofit executives and board members pulled out all the stops to prevent real oversight, arguing that sunshine provisions are expensive and onerous and would damage everything from client confidentiality to the level of services.

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We recognize that, like schools, some nonprofits have special needs and that it's crucial to protect the privacy of clients and some employees. Many nonprofits that get city money also raise money from other sources, and the city has no right to demand information about the sources or use of private funding (beyond what's already required by state and federal law).

But these are not insurmountable problems. And it's not hard to craft language that would address the real, legitimate issues. The San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance already protects sensitive information – for example, patient records at San Francisco General Hospital and city employee health records.

But the public has the right to know where public money is going. And that means any nonprofit (or for-profit) organization that gets a city contract to provide public services should have to abide by the basic elements of the Sunshine Ordinance, including:

• Complete records of how all public money was spent, including itemized reports, receipts, and payroll records, should be considered public records, and the organization should be required to release them upon request.

• Board and committee meetings at which decisions about spending public money are made should be open to the public and provide an opportunity for public comment.

• Records of requests for proposals, subcontracts, and any other documents or correspondence relating to a publicly funded project should be considered public record.

• The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force should have the authority to review and adjudicate complaints about the disclosure of information by city contractors. Ammiano has vowed to push this issue. The Board of Supervisors and the task force should both hold extensive hearings.

Ideally, the city ought to be providing its own services whenever possible, using city employees. But at a time of record budget deficits, when every dollar matters, if San Francisco is going to keep giving billions to private contractors to do public work, the era of nonprofit secrecy has to come to an end.