'Petrelis Requested Records' Page Created at City Attorney's Site
By Michael Petrelis
Sure wish I knew what brought a complete turnaround from City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his staff regarding my May request for his right-hand's emails, which are created with taxpayer infrastructure and public documents. I'd like to repeat the achievement here with other elected officials.
Herrera's City-funded site now includes a Resources page entitled "Michael Petrelis Requested Records" (http://tinyurl.com/SFCityAtty-Petrelis-page), and reads:
"[Here] are records responsive to Michael Petrelis' request for emails to and from Tara Collins between March 1 and May 28, 2014. Because the large file sizes -- which together exceed 68 MB -- may be unwieldy for some email systems, these have been uploaded to this web page for the requester's convenience."
A huge leap forward for San Francisco government transparency has been accomplished with these emails now on the web and just a few clicks away.
First, the City Attorney ended months of ignoring my request. Second, the office profusely apologized for the tardiness and neglect in responding. Third, they agreed to produce the public records.
Now, the fourth and biggest sunshine accomplishment here is the City Attorney has previously unreleased public records, a total of six (6) volumes, available for anyone to read.
This development begs the question of why can't we have Herrera and every City department sharing every public records request made to them and the responsive documents posted on their department's web sites? Doing this on a monthly basis would greatly expand San Francisco's City Hall transparency and make our elected officials more accountable to taxpayers.
City Attorney Apologizes for 'Tardiness and Neglect'
By Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis
Never underestimate the amount of bull fecal matter that can flow from an elected official in San Francisco when having to adhere to open governmentsunshine laws, especially City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office.
He's supposed to be the chief enforcer of such laws and yet his office has ignored my public records request filed on May 30, for copies of the emails from Herrera's top assistant Tara Collins.
As our #VotePetrelis team noted on October 17, the City Attorney sought a continuance regarding our impending hearing at the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force regarding the failure to produce the public records, and Herrera cited no reason for the continuance which we emphatically opposed.
A few days ago, Herrera's staff publicist Matt Dorsey, who was copied on my original records request and subsequent emails to the City Attorney's Office, sent this remarkable note:
It came to my attention earlier this week that our office had never responded to your request for emails to and from Tara Collins between March 1 and May 28, 2014, and I write to apologize to you on behalf of the City Attorney's Office for our tardiness and neglect.
I also want to apologize to you personally, because my team is ultimately responsible for processing Sunshine requests, and it is clear that I was less diligent in my oversight than I should have been in making sure your request was being handled appropriately.
A number of people pitched-in over the last few days to go through the material you requested as expeditiously as possible, in order to make the necessary redactions, and I now have six PDFs of responsive records to send to you. [...]
Again, my apologies for this. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yes, it's good to see the City Attorney acknowledge this outrageous tardiness and neglect, which is sadly standard operating procedure for Herrera's staff and we look forward to poring over the responsive records, however, we intend to pursue our SOTF complaint in order to once and for all put an end to the delays and obfuscations of Herrera's office.
We must point out Dorsey is a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and once told the New York Times the SOTF was a "rogue, lawless jury" and its meetings "tedious kangaroo court (http://tinyurl.com/Dorsey-NYTimes), to bolster our case that he is a professional and loyal functionary of the permanent ruling class at City Hall and within the Democratic Party.
Don't like this sort of underhandedness from a public servant, at the City Attorney's Office where the incumbent District 8 Supervisor was a deputy before being elected to the Board of Supervisors? Want to send a message to Herrera, Dorsey, City Hall and Democratic loyalists carving up San Francisco for the rich and powerful?
If you're pissed off, #VotePetrelis!
City Attorney Seeks Delay on Emails Complaint
By Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis
San Francisco's enforcer of all applicable open government and transparency laws is supposed to be City Attorney Dennis Herrera, yet he and his office staff are widely recognized as hindrances in terms of enforcement and compliance.
Earlier this year, the #VotePetrelis team filed public records requests for emails related to Jo Becker's gay marriage book "Forcing the Spring", and we showed that the City Attorney had practically turned his office into a boutique PR firm for the author and her book tour stop in San Francisco.
Since Herrera follows Willie Brown's dictum of never writing anything down and leaving a paper or email trail, he does not receive or send any emails from his official city addy.
However, his deputy assistant Tara Collins serves as his email gatekeeper and we filed a request in May for her emails and work calender for a few months, but we never received any responsive public records so a complaint was lodged with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.
Last week, we were informed that our complaint would be heard next week but we knew this didn't mean we'd finally have the matter adjudicated by the SOTF because we expected a delay or obfuscation attempt by the City Attorney. Lo, that's what happened.
Here's the SOTF note explaining the delay request:
"The Respondent (Office of the City Attorney) in the above mentioned matters has requested a continuance on the hearing of the complaint scheduled for October 28, 2014, to the next regularly scheduled meeting.
"The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force's complaint procedure states in Section B.8..b: If a respondent submits a request for continuance at least three business days in advance, upon agreement of the complainant the continuance shall be granted. If the complainant does not agree to the continuance, the request for continuance is not made within three business days, or the respondent is requesting a subsequent continuance, such continuance shall be granted by a simple majority vote of the members present.
"Please let me know if you agree or disagree with the request for continuance.
"File No. 14066: Complaint filed by Michael Petrelis against Tara Collins, City Attorney’s Office, for allegedly violating Sunshine Ordinance Section 67.25 for failure to respond to a request for public documents in a timely manner dated May 30, 2014."
Yes, we've responded to the SOTF disagreeing with the delay request and we now wait to hear from the task force regarding next steps.
The City Attorney has never acknowledged receiving our request and failed to comply with responsive public records created with taxpayer funds, and for unstated reasons want to push back when the SOTF would delve into the matter.
Standard operating b.s. for San Francisco's top sunshine enforcer and Dennis Herrera should be widely criticized for blocking access to public records from his office.
In this photo from a recent Sundance Film Festival, Herrera is on the right next to former Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solomnese. Thanks to a public records request, we learned that Herrera billed San Francisco taxpayer for his junket and promotion of a film in which he appeared.
12 Reasons to #VotePetrelis
By Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis
A District 8 voter asked recently us why he should vote for Michael, now that he's received his vote-by-mail ballot and wants to send it back to the Department of Elections.
We reeled off several reasons he should use his first ranked-choice vote for us, starting with he's not pleased with the politics of the incumbent Supervisor.
Then we provided him with a few accomplishments we brought about this year that he should consider as cause to vote for us:
1. Persuaded the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to repaint white bike lane stripes protecting riders near the dangerous Market and Octavia Street intersection at the ramp to the highway. The repainting was done in August.
2. Succeeded in getting the Department of Public Works to steam clean hazardous pigeon poop from surfaces at the 16th Street BART Plaza, while also nudging the Department of Public Health, the SFMTA and BART to expand pigeon proofing and other measures to increase sanitary conditions at this transit hub. This multi-agency advocacy project transpired over June and July.
3. Obtained emails from the City Attorney Dennis Herrera's staff revealing that this office provided extensive public relations assistance, using taxpayer-funded infrastructure including organizing an author meet-and-greet inside the City Attorney's City Hall office, to assist promoting a book about Prop 8 that showcases Herrera in a favorable light. This act of civic transparency and accountability was in May.
4. Requested and received the names and demographics on all city residents killed by members of the San Francisco Police Department, in officer-involved-shootings. For the first time ever, we had a central list of all 168 such fatal shootings stretching back to 1939. The SFPD released this info in April.
5. Posted on the web in May, for the first time, a similar list of all BART police officer-involved fatal shootings.
6. After seven years of lobbying, in March convinced the DPH's director Barbara Garcia and the Health Commission to broadcast their bi-monthly meetings on SF Gov TV, bringing much-needed transparency to the DPH and its decision-making process.
7. Revealed that Protocol Chief Charlotte Shultz has a nonprofit group that receives $250,000 annually in taxpayer funds to host soirees and she's violated the sunshine law requiring the nonprofit's board to hold two public meetings each year. It took six months of public records requests to hold Shultz accountable and follow the city dollars that she uses for parties with her friends.
8. Showed that Mayor Ed Lee and his staff hadn't sent a condolence note to Alex Nieto's family and friends after he was fatally shot by an SFPD office, to express condolences over his death. This info came to light after a public records act request was made in September.
9. Obtained the list of all attendees at Mayor Ed Lee's invitation-only meeting with tech firms and executives, where current and future city policies related to the tech industry were discussed, providing sunshine over whom the Mayor meets with behind closed doors. The list was posted on the web in January.
10. Organized a picket and press conference in July at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's pharmacy in the Castro to protest their unscientific opposition to using Truvada as a method to prevent HIV transmission to negative individuals.
11. Asked for and received monthly calendars from nine of the eleven members of the Board of Supervisors, along with the calendars from the Clerk of Board, and in January shared them on the web while calling on the Supervisors to voluntarily post their monthly calendars on their-city funded web sites.
12. For the first time, making the full audio of Dan White's bone-chilling confession to murdering George Moscone and Harvey Milk available on the web, after requesting a copy of it from the city archive at the San Francisco Public Library back in April. There can never be too much multi-media LGBT history on the web.
Just a few reasons why District 8 voters should make Petrelis their number one choice on their ballots in the remaining three weeks before Election Day.
Here's a photo of Petrelis with his friend and endorser Veronika Fimbres.
