Bruce B. Brugmann, the co-founder, editor and publisher of the

San Francisco Bay Guardian, is as natural a candidate as you

can get for CFAC's Beacon Award.

Institutionally speaking, he has given much of his time and an

unusual share of funds to the organization. As a longtime leader

in the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional

Journalists, Bruce was one of the handful of news executives

who, 14 years ago, decided that freedom of information and the

people's right to know were important enough to warrant a

full-time organization to "promote and defend" them ­ and for

the first time in this state's history, an organization serving the

entire community, not just journalists. Since then Bruce

has been a perennial member of the board of directors of the

California First Amendment Coalition and, for two years, its

president.

But Bruce is much too restless and locally preoccupied to

confine his zest for open government and robust speech

exclusively to the statewide issues that the Coalition attends to.

As creator of the self-proclaimed Guardian of what needs

guarding around the Bay Area, Bruce has done three things

highly relevant to the Beacon Award, not even two of which

can be said of anyone else.

First, (speaking of awards) he has put his energies and those of

his staff behind an annual mid-March recognition dinner on or

near James Madison's birthday, at which a dozen or more Bay

Area people or institutions are honored with Freedom of

Information salutes by the professional journalists' chapter.

Many of the honorees are themselves professional news people,

but by no means all. Those given kudos over the years have

included students, teachers, lawyers, librarians, researchers and

now and then a local or state official. The James Madison

program would probably not have been started, or continued for

well over a decade now, or sustained in its quality without

Bruce's personal drive and zest to encourage exemplary conduct

by public commendation.

Second, in keeping with his Madison Day observance, Bruce

devotes the core of his reporting, features and legendary

list-making in the Bay Guardian that same week to telling his

readers who's promoting secrecy and the suppression of truth

on the local scene, who's fighting to roll back the fog of

disinformation and denial, and where ordinary people can get

help in their own search for well-camouflaged public

information. How many newspaper owners, publishers or

editors do you know who annually treat open government and

courageous, dedicated speech and reporting as a Topic A cover

story worth broad and deep review?

Third, Bruce is the godfather of the San Francisco Sunshine

Ordinance, a feat of local lawmaking and citizen reform that bids

fair to make his city the most committed in the nation to open

meetings and public records, well beyond minimal state law

requirements. Almost 10 years ago Bruce found an author on

the Board of Supervisors (eventually two), spent long hours in

the office of the city attorney haggling line by line over the

manifold subtleties of the proposal, and personally shepherded

the measure through committee review and on to unanimous

adoption by the board. Several years later he was second to

none in championing a citizen initiative to improve the ordinance

once some of its shortfalls became evident. Oh, and lest it be

thought that Bruce is strictly parochial on such matters, you

should know that it was he who led the delegation to ask me to

carry what became the major Brown Act revisions bill effective

in 1994. For good measure, and not coincidentally, John Burton

supported the same reform. And of course it is no secret that

Senator Burton, now President pro Tempore, is the principal

author of the current unprecedented campaign ­ SCA 7 of 2002

and, when resurrected, a likely SCA 1 of 2003 -- to make open

government a bedrock constitutional principle throughout all

public institutions in the state, including the courts and the

Legislature itself. That proposal has turned out to be so

controversial on so many fronts that the Senator can be forgiven

for asking himself why he ever said, last winter, words to the

effect of, "So, Bruce ­ any good bills you think I should be

carrying for you folks?"

Bruce Brugmann is the cheerful celebrant of free speech, free

press and candid disclosure in the halls of power, whether it be

in San Francisco, Sacramento, or the even more desperate

struggles for fearless reporting and transparency in Africa, Asia,

Latin America, Glenn County or Washington, DC.

We are overdue in celebrating him: tall, blazing and undimmed

as any beacon we could ask for.