Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has the right metaphor for the mayor's Tech Connect plan: "We don't want to be faced with another do-or-die Comcast vote," he said at a Dec. 16 hearing.

The point: Earlier this year, the city Department of Telecommunications and Information Services negotiated a behind-closed-doors deal that extended Comcast's cable franchise for another four years. The supervisors were presented with a finished product, and the mayor and city attorney insisted it was a completed deal that had to be accepted without significant changes.

The mayor's plan to bring wireless broadband access to the entire city could be headed in the same direction. But as Camille T. Taiara reported last week ("WiFi: Who's in Control?" 12/21/05), Newsom is refusing to demand open negotiations, refusing to tell anyone exactly what he has in mind for the program, and refusing to explain how the project can be done with no city money. Our fear: Once again, private vendors, who are looking to make big cash off the potentially huge local market (through, say, targeted ads sales that would require monitoring private Internet use), are driving the process.

We fully support the mayor's idea of a fully wired city. But it has to be more than another public-private partnership where the private party gets the money and the city gets screwed. Ideally, we'd prefer the city do all the work and run its own system. But at the very least, the supervisors should pass a resolution informing the mayor that he must release a full, detailed plan at least 60 days before even considering formal proposals – and that all vendors should be warned that their proposals will be made public.