Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie is getting plenty of advice as he prepares to take over City Hall in January. Here’s some unsolicited advice from a supporter: When it comes to transparency, don’t be like your predecessor.
Don’t try to avoid scrutiny by conducting much of your government business via texts, then quickly deleting them, as Mayor London Breed was found to have done. Adhere to both the California Public Records Act (CPRA) and San Francisco’s Sunshine Ordinance, so the public can see whether you’re following through on your promise of accountability.
To put it more bluntly: Don’t just pay lip service to transparency. Embrace the command for sunshine found in those two laws. They are vital to reestablishing the people’s faith in local government.
Doing so would not only advance good government and adhere to the law — always a good idea — but might be good politics, too. After all, one of the reasons Lurie will take the reins at City Hall is his promise to clear up the stench of corruption, sleaze, and scandal that enveloped the Breed administration. As I opined before the election, Breed’s communications practices were inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of open-government laws.
Lurie should not emulate Breed’s penchant for secrecy, especially after he ran his campaign as an outsider who wasn’t part of the corrupt City Hall establishment. It’s too early to tell whether he will deliver on his promises to shake up an old-school political system that has delivered a bloated bureaucracy and little else.
But the unveiling of his transition team this week may offer cause for concern or, at least, vigilance.
One of the members is former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who won national renown as an advocate for a universal basic income. A former Stockton city manager charged that Tubbs had him fired in an effort to avoid severance obligations. The city and Tubbs resisted disclosing text messages on the subject, and a judge ultimately found that Stockton had violated the CPRA, in part because of Tubbs’ actions. (Lurie had no involvement.)
Another cause for concern may be Lurie’s appointment of Open AI’s Sam Altman to a key role on the transition team. Open AI lobbied City Hall for a tax break while Breed was mayor. The appointment of someone who leads a company that may seek favors or influence raises a red flag, as one independent ethics expert told The Standard.
Lurie has never served in elected office, something voters saw as a good thing, so he hasn’t had to deal with local open-government laws. But his wife, Becca Prowda, has spent her highly acclaimed career working for Gavin Newsom, as an aide when he was San Francisco mayor and now as the governor’s chief of protocol. Prowda should know the open-government drill. As governor, Newsom has never been a beacon of transparency, and California under his leadership has routinely resisted CPRA requests, although no evidence exists that Prowda was involved in this resistance.
Why does this matter when many voters, both nationally and in San Francisco, are more concerned about inflation, the job market, and housing than about government transparency? Lurie’s first priorities will no doubt be homelessness and the fentanyl crisis, and he’s expected to tap his deep network of nonprofit leaders and corporate executives to help fund his programs addressing these issues. The public will need to know whom City Hall is shoveling money toward, what kinds of connections they have with the mayor, and how they stand to benefit from taxpayer dollars.
Just as we did under Breed, San Franciscans need a check on organizations that attempt to exert influence on government decisions. The new mayor, after praiseworthy pledges to curb corruption and ensure accountability, should take seriously those laws — which the Legislature has called “fundamental and necessary rights of every person in this state” — and not hide or delete texts and other communications dealing with the people’s business.
Karl Olson is a San Francisco lawyer who successfully argued two Public Records Act cases before the California Supreme Court. He was not involved in Lurie’s campaign, although his law firm represents the city manager in the case involving former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs