Ellen Shershow Peña / via mayorgavinnewsom on Flickr

Luis Cancel (right) and former mayor Gavin Newsom present 2010 Annual Art Award to Carlos Santana

Wednesday morning, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Cancel, director of cultural affairs, has raised the ire of city higher-ups due to his frequent trips to Rio de Janeiro and treatment of staff.

The commission, as a city department, is responsible for dispensing around $10 million in city funds for public art programs around the city.

And last week, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force scheduled a letter to be sent to the Board of Supervisors advising that city officials give extra careful scrutiny to the San Francisco Arts Commission’s spending policies and practices, and to its requested budget for the forthcoming fiscal year. It will also urge the board to raise concerns with the commission regarding its repeated flouting of the Sunshine Ordinance. 

Task Force Chairman Richard Knee does not recall ever sending a similar letter during his seven-year tenure with the 11-member, all-volunteer body appointed by the Board of Supervisors to enforce the public record ordinance. The missive was to be sent to Mayor Ed Lee, the Board of Supervisors and the SFAC.

“The Arts Commission staff has shown a pattern of dodging or evading public information requests, and when they do comply they might give some information that is not exactly what the requester asked for,” Knee said.

The Sunshine violations were issued in part due to complaints filed by twin brothers, artists Bill and Bob Clark, who have been doggedly filing public information requests and Sunshine complaints against the SFAC for more than a year.

In an email to The Bay Citizen, Cancel stated that the SFAC has complied with all requirements of the Sunshine Ordinance and would continue to do so, adding that “interaction between the SFAC and the SOTF has centered almost exclusively around issues raised by a small number of participants in the Street Artists licensing program.” 

The Arts Commission has historically suffered from spotty oversight, as shown in a previous Bay Citizen story that detailed the disrepair of the city's art collection, from which artwork has gone missing or been stored in inadequate conditions.

Those issues came to a head at the commission's May 24 meeting, when the Clark brothers addressed a complaint they had filed against the SFAC. At the core of their dissatisfaction is the whereabouts of $18,875.18 that was charged to the Street Artists Program by the SFAC.

Per the program’s guidelines, no city funds are supposed to be spent on it; fees paid by the members of the Street Artist Program, which licenses artists to sell their wares in public areas like Justin Herman Plaza, are used to pay any expenses incurred and for the salary and benefits of city employees who work for the program, such as Street Artist Program Director Howard Lazar.

In 2010, the commission charged the Street Artist Program more than $18,000 to pay for time that Cancel and Director of Programs Jill Manton spent working on the program. The Clark brothers, who have been active members of the program, say they were told that the money would be transferred to the city’s General Fund, which it never was. 

In an email to The Bay Citizen, Cancel stated that the funds were transferred to the SFAC’s Administrative Fund.

The SFAC also failed to send a representative to the May 24 meeting. Knee noted that the SFAC often sent a person ill-prepared to address the issue at hand if they sent anyone at all. The letter states that the SFAC’s failure to send a knowledgeable person to meetings “shows a callous disregard for the public’s right to know and for the Task Force’s exercise of due process.”

But, as previously reported by The Bay Citizen, the task force has few meaningful avenues of recourse against public record offenders; no penalties were built into the 1994 ordinance. However, in addition to the letter, the Task Force has issued an Order of Determination which demands the SFAC take remedial steps to fulfill information requests. If the SFAC fails to respond, they can be found in willful violation of the ordinance — which Knee believes them to be. 

A finding of willful violation could then move the complaint to the Board of Supervisors, the Ethics Commission, the district attorney or the state attorney general.

As for Cancel's other issues, it seems that a closed session for the Executive Committee of the SFAC was convened last week, and the commission asked for his vacation records as part of a personnal review. The next meeting of the arts commission is on July 11.