Fighting secrecy, from here to DC

EDITORIAL

It's been a banner year for secrecy. President George W. Bush has condoned a stunning level of covert domestic spying, including warrantless wiretaps. Vice President Dick Cheney shot a hunting buddy, then didn't tell the press or public for 24 hours. The nation's top archivist has had to speak out to demand an end to the quiet "reclassification" of tens of thousands of pages of formerly public records.

In fact, as Steven T. Jones, A.C. Thompson, and G.W. Schulz report on page 15, under Bush and his Justice Department, the federal Freedom of Information Act, the landmark law that kick-started the open-government movement four decades ago, has been eviscerated to the point where it's barely even functioning.

The result: It takes a mighty battle, often involving considerable legal expense, to gain access to information that ought to be provided to the press and public as a matter of course. An example: The Guardian and the American Civil Liberties Union have requested access to federal records showing when and how federal agents spied on student organizations at UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz. The Bush administration almost immediately rejected a central claim — that the matter had immediate public interest and should be expedited — which could allow a delay of a year or more before anyone in Washington, DC, responds to the request. (With the help of cooperating attorney Amitai Schwartz, we are appealing that ruling.)

But the open-government forces are fighting back with energy and organization that we haven't seen in years. The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, based in Washington, is pushing a major FOIA reform bill, along with other bills that would crack some holes in the administration's brick wall of secrecy. The key bills are S 394 and HR 867, House and Senate versions of the Open Government Act, which would substantially improve the Freedom of Information Act by slowing delays, creating an ombudsperson to mediate disputes, and requiring an impact statement whenever Congress tries to carve out new exceptions to the law. The bills, sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) are now in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and support for the bills (which the Bush administration will almost certainly oppose) should be a major issue in the midterm congressional elections. For more information, go to www.cgoj.org.

On the home front, San Francisco's 13-year-old Sunshine Ordinance has kept the city far ahead of the federal and state government on open-records and -meetings policy, but there are still some major loopholes and escalating problems. The biggest disaster: the San Francisco Unified School District, where even members of the school board have complained about being unable to get basic information from the office of the superintendent. Under Arlene Ackerman, who just left office, the district was starting to resemble the White House with its passion for secrecy.

Gwen Chan, the acting superintendent, needs to take a clear stand to differentiate herself from Ackerman; immediately announcing that she supports putting the school district under some version of the city's Sunshine Ordinance would be a tremendous first step.

The same goes for the Community College District, which still hasn't adopted a functional sunshine law. Supporters of open government should refuse to back any candidates for the School Board and the Community College Board who don't pledge to immediately end the reigns of secrecy in those institutions.

The offices of Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Attorney Dennis Herrera are far better than their predecessors at releasing information. But it's not always sunny at City Hall: The mayor's new plans for bringing wireless Internet service to the entire city have been conducted with extraordinary secrecy, and the public can't even see the complete bids for the job. The Sunshine law still doesn't cover nonprofit organizations, which get half a billion dollars a year in city money.

Overall, the biggest problem the city faces is that the Sunshine Task Force, which oversees the ordinance, has no real enforcement power. City officials have resisted any move to empower the agency, but there are other models that have worked fine. For more than 25 years the Connecticut state Freedom of Information Commission has had the authority to order public agencies to release records, and there have been no real problems.

It's often too costly for members of the public or small media organizations to go to court when they are denied government records or access to meetings. Giving the task force — where lawyers aren't required — the ability to order the release of records would change the entire climate at City Hall, and it ought to be a political priority for the next year. *