Here’s one example: In 2015 Planning Commissioner Christine Johnson was swayed by popular opinion to vote for a provision requiring registration numbers on short-term rental listings (which was later ruled to violate the Communications Decency Act until a couple more years of revisions), but then she changed her vote after a text from the Mayor’s office who appointed her. The newspaper sunshine’d the texts (https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/planning-commissioner-change...). It wasn’t corruption to take advice from the Mayor (who was right that it was not enforceable), but it was embarrassing and in 2018 she lost her election for supervisor.

Here’s another article based on sunshining web browser history during a meeting that I thought had questionable newsworthiness https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/facebook-food-reservations-f.... Imagine if someone had compromising website visits such as porn.

On the other hand, I do see the importance of making records auditable. The school board wasted $15 million switching payroll providers and no one has published an investigation into who exactly made the key decisions. I imagine that emails would be very useful but they are probably all deleted. https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/san-francisco-may-dump-tro...

I think we need to strike a better balance such that text messages and personal browser history is not sunshinable, but design docs and official decisions and work are retained.