Supervisor Jackie Fielder is making a “good government” push and sponsoring three new pieces of legislation aimed at increasing government transparency and preventing corruption.
The proposals cover the Sunshine Task Force, bidding rules for government contracts, and behested payments.
“I want to hold the city accountable,” Fielder said. “It’s had its history with corruption or appearances of corruption, and I believe in public integrity and following the rules.”
One proposal, which Fielder will introduce on Tuesday, would allow termed-out commissioners on the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force to continue to serve if the Board of Supervisors does not appoint a replacement within 60 days.
That task force oversees city officials’ compliance with transparency laws, like public-records requests, but has failed to meet since June because so many of its members have termed out that it cannot reach quorum. Members are appointed by the Board of Supervisors.
The task force is not always popular with politicians. In 2024, it found that former Mayor London Breed and City Attorney David Chiu had violated the law by deleting text messages related to official business.
Mayor Daniel Lurie was also recently castigated by the task force for failing to provide all records related to his Oct. 22, 2025 phone call with President Donald Trump. It was during that call that Lurie reportedly won a reprieve for the Bay Area, which faced the prospect of an immigration-enforcement surge.
The task force, Fielder said, is “an advocate for the public to get the records that they’re seeking.”
Another proposal would require competitive bidding on software contracts where the software would have to be tailored to the city’s needs.
At present, software contracts can be exempted from competitive bidding, a practice that came under scrutiny after the Lurie administration decided in October 2025 to award a $5.9 million contract to OpenGov to reform the city’s permitting system.
Another company, Clariti, was rated higher by city staffers, and was projected to be cheaper. Moreover, OpenGov was founded by two people who have given tens of thousands to a nonprofit founded by Lurie.
But, a city report concluded that awarding the contract to OpenGov, which recently won a $22 million extension, did not violate city-contracting rules. That’s because software contracts are not currently required to go through a competitive bidding process.
Fielder’s legislation would narrow that exemption so that it only applies to off-the-shelf software. Had it been in effect, the contract would have been required to go through a competitive bidding process in which OpenGov may not have won.
There should be high standards, Fielder said, “because every public dollar is from our taxpayers.”
At least one of her colleagues doesn’t support the change. Board President Rafael Mandelman said he thinks it may actually make the city’s contracting process worse.
“We’re trying to avoid corruption on the one hand, but at the same time, we don’t want to so hamstring public procurement that we can’t get anything done,” Mandelman said. “The more complicated our procurement processes get, the less good we get for the public.”
Fielder’s third proposal would change city rules around behested payments, a practice in which a city official asks someone to donate money to a favored cause.
Behested payments have been used corruptly in the past. In the 2010s, Mohammed Nuru, then the director of Public Works, often instructed companies that had business with his department to make donations to an account at a local nonprofit that he controlled.
After Nuru’s arrest in 2020, the city added restrictions on behested payments. If a city official wants to ask for a donation from someone who has business with the city — maybe they lease a building from the city, or have won a city contract — the official must get permission from the Board of Supervisors before making the request.
But the Lurie administration has frequently requested waivers from the Board of Supervisors for funding causes like homelessness and revitalizing downtown.
Fielder wants to tighten the rules. She said that when Lurie’s team appeared before her in November 2025 to renew a six-month waiver for “economic revitalization efforts,” they did not disclose how much money they had raised, and from whom.
“I thought that that was pretty preposterous,” Fielder said.
Her new legislation would require that officials who successfully solicit funds release a list of everyone they approached and how much they raised. The legislation also requires a cooling-off period of one year before another waiver is approved for the same fundraising area. It requires a supermajority (eight out of 11 votes) to pass.
It is not clear it will pass on a Lurie-aligned board. Mandelman, for his part, thinks the current system works.
He said the waivers help city officials who might not even realize that someone has business with the city ensure they do not “run afoul of some of the particularities,” and he strongly opposes the cooling-off period.
“If the Board of Supervisors thinks the waiver is inappropriate, it can always say no. But I don’t know why we would want to, as a matter of course, prevent any waiver beyond six months,” Mandelman said, saying that oftentimes waivers are used to raise money for areas with ongoing need and that new needs may emerge.
He’s also ambivalent about increasing reporting requirements. He feels that state requirements are sufficient. They require disclosing any behested payments of more than $5,000 that come from one source in a calendar year.
“More reporting and more stringency,” he said, “is probably not something that I support.”
SF Admin Code Ch. 67 Art 1 Sec 67.1
The Board of Supervisors and the People of the City and County of San Francisco find and declare:
-Government’s duty is to serve the public, reaching its decisions in full view of the public.
– Elected officials, commissions, boards, councils and other agencies of the City and County exist to conduct the people’s business. The people do not cede to these entities the right to decide what the people should know about the operations of local government.
-Although California has a long tradition of laws designed to protect the public’s access to the workings of government, every generation of governmental leaders includes officials who feel more comfortable conducting public business away from the scrutiny of those who elect and employ them. New approaches to government constantly offer public officials additional ways to hide the making of public policy from the public. As government evolves, so must the laws designed to ensure that the process remains visible, transparent, and accountable to the public.
The right of the people to know what their government and those acting on behalf of their government are doing is fundamental to democracy, and with very few exceptions, that right supersedes any other policy interest government officials may use to prevent public access to information. Only in rare and unusual circumstances does the public benefit from allowing the business of government to be conducted in secret, and those circumstances should be carefully and narrowly defined to prevent public officials from abusing their authority.
Public officials who attempt to conduct the public’s business in secret should be held accountable for their actions. Only a strong Open Government and Sunshine Ordinance, enforced by a strong Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, can protect the public’s interest in open government.
I hope Mandelman goes no further in California politics. He has shown time and time again that he doesn’t care about his constituents and bows to the rich.
Fighting corruption: Good idea, worth the energy
Fighting corruption with legislation unlikely to pass with BoS support: Not as good, performative effort only for personal optics and public awareness
Fighting corruption with legislation unlikely to pass with BoS support, and with other major issues underway in your district: Very bad, poor judgement, waste of limited time and mental health
Pay attention on Tuesday — if she didn’t line up the support for this one and took it forward blindly, then this district is doomed as she brand-builds as a fighter for justice.
The people of San Francisco enact these amendments to assure that the people of the City remain in control of the government they have created.
San Francisco has a citizen body called the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF) whose job is to oversee and enforce the city’s open-government laws — making sure city agencies actually hand over public records and hold open meetings the way they’re supposed to. Voters created and strengthened this body themselves, most recently in a 1999 ballot measure.
Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors passed a broad reform ordinance (File No. 260217) meant to clean up San Francisco’s sprawling system of over 100 boards and commissions. It set a rule: once a member’s term expires, they can only stay in their seat for 60 more days before being forced out, unless reappointed.
Nobody reappointed most of the Sunshine Task Force’s members in time. As a result, 9 of its 11 voting seats went vacant, leaving the Task Force unable to meet or rule on complaints — including a pending case about whether the Mayor’s Office improperly withheld records. For months, the city’s public-records watchdog went effectively silent.
Just because software is a deliverable doesn’t mean that efforts like OpenGOV’s should be considered a “software contract”. You’re looking at a technology transformation project and it 100% should have gone out to bid.
Here are common sense and practical ways to improve transparency and accountability from elected office holders and appointees. They are much needed. If the 11 district supervisors truly care about accountability to the public, they will support these measures unanimously.
CLEAN UP THE MISSION
Isn’t this the person who has the (political) power to make the streets safer for the people who elected her?
Please clean up the district streets before you spend your time and energy on anything else.
Somebody has to compare her outfit with the stuff Brooke Jenkins wears and I guess that’s me. Hope somebody can do something about the situation, but that’s definitely not me.
“Useless as tits on a boar hog !”
That’s what Ozark hill people say when tools or art or people are deemed useless.
Oh, Sunshine was a great idea by Guardian Publisher Bruce Brugmann but it never had a chance because it was required to feed its findings on up to Ethics which the mayors controlled and never acted.
And, I mean virtually NEVER !!!
They (Ethics) were controlled by Swells best, Jim Sutton who sat in the chambers for the entirety of every meeting just as Joe O’Donoghue did over at the DBI Commission and they failed to sustain a Sunshine case at one time I think it was a hundred times in a row.
A half dozen of my close friends going back to Joe Lynn and Hope Johnson and Bruce with the service dog who ran wild in the 2003 rainy nights all through the Gonzalez campaign construction of stages and offices and art and he ran with the Monkeybrains I think a Shepard type too …
Pardon the demented stream of consciousness interruptions.
All of them and Brugmann himself chaired Sunshine and I’m told broke down a door somewhere under the dome in his pursuit of truth and justice and the American way.
Good luck with making sunshine work.
Now, I want you to go out there and take two and hit to right.
Sutton is too fast for you but maybe you can get a walk or squibble one past first.
go Niners !!
h.
That break she took did something. I applaud Jackie Fielder for putting actual legislation on the books. I don’t agree with all her positions but she is clearly starting to govern more which is what the supervisors need to do.‘I like this “new” Jackie.
Jackie, we have one task for you leading the Mission. CLEAN UP 16th & 24th ST MISSION BART PLAZAS, and surrounding blocks. These are an absolute disgrace.
1. Change the laws allowing payments to drip tourists that make our lives (and theirs) miserable.
2. Work with SFPD, Jail etc to get the drug dealers out of our city.
3. Close the non-profits making the situation worse.
That’s it, that is the only thing we want you to do.