Ron Dellums, by the way was on the KPFA Local Advisory Board in the 1970s, where he probably first mastered the art of secrecy. Joe W. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/2007-04-25/news/oak-to-ninth-yin-yang/2 Secret Task Forces Revealed! If you read last week's column ("Base Politics," 4/18), you know all about Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' secret task forces. If you missed it, here's the condensed version: The mayor, who ran on a platform of transparency and open government, commissioned 41 citizen task forces that have been meeting for months behind closed doors to create his mayoral agenda. The groups, now in their second round of sessions, have been so secretive that the mayor has not even released their names publicly, let alone members' names and affiliations. But lo and behold, following last week's column, a City Hall source e-mailed Full Disclosure a list of the task-force names and their primary topics. Power of the press, you ask? Apparently not. In a later phone conversation, Dellums' spokeswoman Karen Stevenson asked Full Disclosure to keep the task-force names secret until mid-May, when the mayor plans to publish their initial results. Now Full Disclosure is not paid to keep secrets. You can find the names posted on our news blog (EastBayExpress.com/92510). And here's one we just love: One of the mayor's top-secret task forces — whose meetings Dellums prohibits the press from attending — is named "Transparency in government, public ethics, making city procedures and policies understandable in plain language." But this is where the irony meter flies off the charts: After last week's story came out, two separate task-force members contacted Full Disclosure to discuss their experiences. Both said their respective groups were disorganized and lacked leadership. Disagreements often got out of hand, and members got so fed up that they stopped coming. The membership of at least one task force dropped from forty to less than ten people. The two also said they were frustrated that they could not share their findings with other task forces, and that they had no idea what the other groups were working on. Now for the kicker: Neither would talk on the record. Both wanted their names, affiliations, and task-force names kept secret. Why? One feared Dellums' staff would kick him off the task force. The other was afraid of being blackballed in Oakland for speaking to the press. How's that for transparency in government? Show All New Pacifica Working Group http://www.egroups.com/group/NewPacifica 'Save Our Stations!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewPacifica/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewPacifica/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:NewPacifica-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailto:NewPacifica-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: NewPacifica-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/