San Francisco’s transparency watchdog commission has found that the mayor’s office violated the city’s Sunshine Ordinance by refusing to release basic records about Mayor Daniel Lurie’s phone call with President Trump on Oct. 22, a conversation that immediately preceded the cancellation of a federal immigration enforcement surge planned for later that month.
At a Sunshine Ordinance Task Force hearing Wednesday, San Francisco resident Rick Sanders outlined the complaint that he filed in October, saying the mayor’s office refused to provide even the most general and innocuous information, such as the date and time of the call, claiming attorney-client privilege.
“The president of the United States has initiated a national terror campaign against our neighbors,” Sanders told the task force. “The people of San Francisco deserve to know the contents of the call between the mayor and the president.”
Dexter Darmali, Lurie’s legislative and ethics secretary, defended the mayor’s response at the hearing, asserting that all related records involved city attorney participation and were therefore properly withheld. He told task force members that the office had complied with sunshine requirements.
Darmali added that the mayor’s official public calendar covering scheduling and communications did not exist in a disclosable form when Sanders submitted his records request on Oct. 24, and therefore could not be produced.
That explanation conflicts with the city’s own records production timeline since the calendar was produced in response to a request filed by the San Francisco Public Press on Oct. 23, indicating it existed and was disclosable then.
The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment over this discrepancy by Thursday afternoon.
Several members of the panel responded skeptically, pressing Darmali on how routine factual records could all be privileged.
“I’m not that stupid,” said task force member Maxine Anderson, calling it an implausibly broad claim of confidentiality. “I would urge the office of the mayor to recognize that they are servants of the public, of the citizens of the city of San Francisco, and that they should approach these hearings and requests for public records in that spirit.”
In public comment, several speakers criticized the mayor over the apparent lack of transparency. Patrick Miller said proper disclosure was crucial to reveal any “political horse-trading,” and whether the mayor might have engaged in flattery or other tactics to get Trump to call off the National Guard.
“If the city’s office is able to withhold these documents, or any documentation, it potentially creates a permission structure for the president to extract future favors from our mayor,” Miller said. “Particularly when we consider the World Cup is coming up, the Super Bowl is coming up. If this remains in secret, it creates a permission structure for that to continue.”
Lurie has said publicly that he did not make any deal with Trump in connection with the call or the decision to call off the federal deployment.
The task force voted to rule that the mayor’s office violated Administrative Code section 67.21(b), failing to respond in a timely and complete manner, as well as section 67.21(c), failing to assist a requester.
Members directed the mayor’s office to make a renewed disclosure effort. They discussed referring the matter to the San Francisco Ethics Commission for enforcement, a decision that will be taken up by a committee of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.
The task force itself cannot enforce the order, but the Ethics Commission is empowered to pursue administrative enforcement.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a San Rafael-based free speech and sunshine advocacy organization, was once a member of the task force. He said that to his knowledge, a referral to Ethics Commission that compelled the disclosure of records “has rarely been done, or potentially never.”
Snyder has characterized Lurie’s claim of attorney-client privilege as overreach, even if there were lawyers in the room when it happened. And regardless of the technicalities, he said, the public’s right to know how influence is wielded in City Hall should take precedence.