We only got penciled in?!?So, there's this cool thing called the Sunshine Ordinance, which allows people to access public records generated by our dear city family, including the daily calendars of the Mayor, City Attorney, and all department heads.
A group of Sunshine activists have been trying to get copies of Mayor Gavin Newsom's calendar regularly emailed to them, but rather than just hit the forward button, a mayoral aide dutifully copies the daily calendar into a Word document, prints it out, turns it into a PDF, and THEN sends it, attached to an email.
Sounds efficient. Needless to say, the calendars arrive in fits and spurts -- days, weeks, months after originally requested.
A new batch came in today, which the activists posted on the PROSF group email list. I was clicking through it, checking out what the Mayor's been up to when I noticed a glaring omission.
According to my calendar, on October 1, 2007, me and my fellow editorial staff met with Mayor Newsom at 11:30, here at SFBG headquarters.
According to his calendar, no such meeting occurred.
One could reasonably infer that someone redacted that bit of information for some bullshit security reason. However, there are several other entries on several other days showing the Mayor met with the Examiner editorial board, the Chronicle editorial board, and -- in a whirlwind press tour on October 12 -- the editorial boards of the World Journal, Sing Tao Daily, and Ming Pao. He also regularly met with anonymous local and national press members throughout the month of October.
Maybe the censor got sloppy, but this isn't the first time that the Mayor's public calendar wasn't accurate. Maybe the Mayor wants to forget he ever met with us (here's the proof) since we didn't endorse him.
Whatever the reason, this is another example of the need for a clear and easy way to access public documents, especially with the glory of technology on our side. The Mayor's calendar is something that could go up on his website at the end of the day, and stay there, to be a part of the permanent record. If there are meetings that occurred which aren't duly noted, then other attendees can point out the errors publicly. Otherwise, these inaccuracies undermine any faith we should have in the piddling amounts of information our government does give us.
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