An SF resident wants the city to follow its rules for releasing documents: Kimo Crossman has been corresponding with me for several days about his efforts to get the City of San Francisco to release full documents about the request for proposal/information (RFP/I) to build a municipal wireless system. Crossman alleges that the city and state's sunshine laws, which require a fairly unfettered amount of access to public documents, regardless of origin, are being ignored.

Crossman's site documents the process of trying to track down an individual responsible and get them to respond. He maintains that the companies involved in the bidding don't have the right to self-redact documents, and that the amount of omission is far above what the law should require for openness.

We'll see how this plays out. I hope an SF-based reporter or publication takes up this issue. It's not about proprietary information; it's about requiring the same sort of exposure of information from this process as cable franchise boards and telecom regulators require from the incumbents and competitors operating in those spaces. There shouldn't be a lower bar for releasing information from municipal broadband bidders.

Update: Sasha points to an article in this week's Bay Guardian which covers the issue as deep as they can--without getting any substantive answers from the city government on the sunshine issues. It's slanted towards the socially progressive view, but they're wearing this slant on their sleeve.

The Bay Guardian also devoted its lead editorial to excoriating the secrecy.