Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office violated San Francisco’s public records laws by not fully disclosing text messages he exchanged with a Pacific Gas & Electric executive during the December 2025 blackout, a commission ruled Wednesday in an 8-1 vote.
The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, which enforces the city’s public records laws, ordered Lurie to hand over his entire late-December correspondence with Jake Zigelman, PG&E’s Bay Area VP, in response to a complaint filed by The Standard.
“They’re deliberately hiding something,” task force member Ankita Mukhopadhyay Kumar said during Wednesday’s meeting. Others warned of legal danger: “I think the city runs a great risk of exposure to litigation if this matter doesn’t get resolved in a more amicable way than perhaps we’re at right now,” said member David Pilpel.
Bruce Wolfe said, “I’m left curious, very curious, to the point of … suspicious about what is really going on here.”
The ruling stems from a months-long dispute over Lurie’s communication with PG&E about restoring power to the War Memorial Opera House on Dec. 21, a day after a citywide blackout began. This followed public comments from an executive at the utility, who said the mayor intervened on the venue’s behalf while thousands of San Franciscans remained without electricity. Lurie has denied any involvement, and The Standard has sought the full text exchange to determine what role, if any, the mayor played during the outage.
In February, PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh said during a public hearing at City Hall that Lurie had personally directed the utility company to provide power to the opera house. PG&E immediately retracted the statement after The Standard reached out for comment on the remarks, and Singh later said his remarks were the result of a “misunderstanding.”
The mayor’s office has denied that Lurie, whose daughter was set to perform in the ballet “The Nutcracker” on Dec. 21 at the opera house, was involved in requesting that power to the venue be prioritized. Photos from Dec. 21 posted by PG&E on X (opens in new tab) show trucks outside of the performance center.
It’s the second time the task force has found Lurie to be in violation of public records law. The body voted unanimously in January (opens in new tab) that the mayor’s office was improperly withholding documents related to an October phone call he had with President Donald Trump about the White House’s efforts to deploy federal agents in San Francisco. In that case, the mayor’s office said that no records exist other than undisclosable legal advice.
Whether the mayor’s office will turn over any records in response to the two violations remains to be seen. The task force has limited powers and can’t force public agencies to hand over documents, as a judge can. Lurie’s predecessor, Mayor London Breed, was accused of deleting her text messages.
Politicians' text messages are public record under a 2017 California Supreme Court decision, San Jose vs. Ted Smith. Correspondence that is not about city business is not disclosable.
The Standard’s complaint to the task force, filed in April by reporter Gabriel Greschler, centers on a screenshot of a text message obtained through a public records request in which Zigelman updates Lurie on the status of PG&E restoring power at the opera house.
“Opera house update,” Zigelman wrote to the mayor. “Our team is onsite and has been in touch with the opera folks. We’ve been told they have enough natural light and emergency backup power to move ahead with 2 p.m. performance. We have a vendor mobilized to support temporary generation for the 7pm show. Not 100% on timing but working feverishly to make that happen.”
The Dec. 21 message shows correspondence — visible but not fully legible — above and below Zigelman’s update. The Standard has sent requests for all messages exchanged between Lurie and Zigelman on Dec. 21 and on Dec. 20, the day the blackout began.
In response, the mayor’s office, represented by its legislative and ethics secretary, Dexter Darmali, has asserted that it has turned over all records in its possession.
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During Wednesday’s hearing, however, Darmali said that there are some messages between Lurie and Zigelman that the office had decided did not apply to The Standard’s requests.
The mayor’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, declined to answer whether the office would turn over more records following the ruling Wednesday. “I’m sure [Darmali] addressed all of this thoroughly last night,” he said in an email.
Task force members pushed back during Wednesday’s session on Darmali’s contention that everything disclosable had been turned over.
“It is inconceivable to me that there were no texts between Lurie and Zigelman for two entire days following the blackout, and then suddenly they’re talking about current status of the blackout,” said Dean Schmidt.
Wolfe concurred: “I think this one [Dec. 21] text message is clear that there was a message before that, and there was a message after that, and I think that that is enough beyond speculation that there is more information and records to be disclosed, and anything to continue to hide it, to me, is a violation.”
Members also criticized Darmali’s explanations, with task force Chair Matthew Yankee calling them “scripted” and “nonforthcoming.” However, some members, including Saul Sugarman, pushed back on the idea that the mayor’s office was concealing important documents.
“I don’t think that this case is quite the smoking gun that some of the members have made it out to be,” he said. “I am all for having the mayor’s office cooperate — we have experienced struggles with this office in the past, and that makes us very wary of how they’re behaving now.”
The task force voted 8-1 on an additional violation finding that the mayor’s office had not provided a representative — in this case, Darmali — who could explain the basis for withholding the records. Yankee voted against the first violation, while Schmidt voted no on the additional one.
Months into Lurie’s tenure in 2025, The Standard reported that the mayor’s office was refusing to hand over his text messages in response to records requests, suggesting that they were being deleted or hidden. Weeks later, Lurie’s office clarified its position that the mayor’s texts would be released.