Form had been filed, specifically form 3209 had been filed. So will the commission or the Department Also get a copy that this form has been filed . No, not the commission. The filing responsibility is on the commissioner who did the recuse recusal. Right. Im thinking would there be some accountability that this person has recused him or herself and they filed this form. So should the Actual Department of the commission be notified . They would be aware of the actual recusal because it occurred that it occurred prior to the filing requirement. The filing requirement is a requirement imposed by the Ethics Commission. So i dont know that that would be something that they would be looking to ensure that its because the responsibility is actually on the commissioner who recused themselves. But there is again, in the public environment, you know, a department could they wouldnt actually receive notice from this process, but if they wanted to check that it happened, they could do that. Or implement another process where the commissioner had to bring a copy. But i think that would be a protocol that would have to be enforced at the commission level, that the commissioner belonged to the Planning Commission in this case. The form 700. We all know we have to file it. Sometimes its nice to have reminders that you need to file. And so and actually, thats a great segue into the i want to show you actually, if a member of the public or if the commissioner who just filed that wanted to see what i just filed is not going to be on what im going to show you now, but show you where that is laid out and how the information is made available to the public. So again, its going to be available in sf r data sf which used to be open data, but they changed the name. So if you have a member of the public that doesnt know that they can navigate from the commissions website that is familiar with sf data, they cannac citizens this from that website. We wanted to make it relatively easy and navigate from the commissions website. Im going to go to disclosures and in this case actually. Conflict of interest doesnt fall under my jurisdiction. Disclosures, i would navigate so we have it kind of itemized here. Campaign finance, city officers, lobbyists, campaign consultants, major developers, so all the disclosures relevant to these parties would be under the corresponding field. In this case it applies to city officers. The notification of recusal. And at the this is again it just yeah, there we go. This again just it highlights the requirements in the law and so forth again on this page. But at the bottom here youll see a dashboard. So lets say that the filing that i just filed, lets say this is live right now . This is live, absolutely. There was one specifically that i saw the other day that i wanted to show. But accessing it from this particular table would actually reveal the p. D. F. Of the filing. I did want to make sure to show you what that looks like in real time. Here we go. This was a file filed on june 24 and its i want to see i just want to show you the form is completed and at the end of it is the attached agenda. And a member of the public could just review it here if they wanted to print it out and so forth, theyre able to do so. I also wanted to show you how the information is parsed out to the to data sf. You can actualliac actually access that information as well. If the Planning Commission take it up in august and they dont decide and hear it again in september, would the commissioner need to file again in september, like an amendment, or is a single filing sufficient to cover that matter no matter how long it takes to be decided . I dont have the answer to that actually. I would assume that it would be each time the recusal took place, but im yeah. Im not id have to do that research and get back to the commission on that. Most likely it would be every meeting. Every meeting, okay. Thank you. So now ive entered data sf and it took accessing it from that page took me right to the recusal notification filings on data sf. So that same filing that i just showed, i just want to quickly show you what it looks like h e here. Here we go. The p. D. F. , but it is available on data sf. I dont believe we actually have dashboards because this really wouldnt work in a dashboard format, this particular filing. But it was a Campaign Finance form that had a contribution associated with it and so forth, it would also be available on the commissions dashboard. That concludes my presentation. Any other questions . Thank you for this. This was very illuminating and a tremendous amount of work clearly has gone into the development of the forms and the workflow and creating a experience that is streamlined and contemporary in feel. I think its utterly fantastic that this data is available not just to the Ethics Commission staff and commissioners, but to the public as well in a searchable and in an easytonavigate format. Thank you for that. Well done. Thank you so much. If i may add a brief comment. Thank you for your comments as well as the commission and public for this ability to present this information today. As i think you can see, theres a lot of information from the law that was enacted. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge the amount of team effort that went into getting us this far. I think everybody on staff who had a hand in this process is excited to seeing rachael present today because of the technology and the thought that went into it. I would acknowledge rachaels contribution. Rachael joined the commission in late february and her responsibility is in the Campaign Finance area. She has taken on a tremendous effort in shepherding this process and a great contribution to getting it this far. Two other things youll see as we go through this, a lot of the questions you might have on your minds today are things we will look to develop further as we do more outreach to departments and other officials so they know how to work these forms and they find it easy. At the bottom of every page rachael showed us, there is a green box that says provide feedback. We will be monitoring that closely so we can get feedback about the realworld users so we can continually improve this process. Thank you for your time because it is exciting to have gotten this far. This is a great presentation, by the way. Great job. I notice that even though the website is in different languages, that some of the materials are not made available in other languages. I would suggest that for the fact sheet be made in different languages because that was very important. The p. D. F. Thats available . The fact sheet that you would be producing. Thats an internal document that we actually dont publish, but we could potentially think about maybe translating the web content and maybe the p. D. F. Version of the form. Or maybe you can make a publicly available fact sheet because theres so much information. If people can just get a onepage fact sheet just to get them aware of whats happening with the new law in different languages, especially in the chinese and spanish language, that would be helpful. Thats a great point and well be sure to have those discussions. Thank you for that. That was a really important point, to make sure that the information and tools are accessible to everyone in the community. Thank you. Thank you. Now well move to agenda item number 12 and 10. Well take those out of order. Im sorry, we need to do im sorry, agenda item number 9, Public Comment. No Public Comment. Agenda item 12, discussion of monthly staff enforcement report, including an update on various programmatic and operational highlights of the enforcement programs activities since the last monthly meeting. Mr. Pierce, id like to ask you as you go through this, just bear in mind the level set all of us in terms of where we are and enforcement activities and use this as a background in framing item to teeup the discussion in agenda item number ten. Sure. Thank you, chair and comirge commissioners. I will also have an opportunity to teeup the discussion around item 10, given some of the statistics weve reported there. But youll see that in this months enforcement report in item 12, weve provided some additional data, given that we made it through the end of the fiscal year and have not had a meeting since we turned over into the new fiscal year, we provided for you at the top of page 2 some of the metrics that we keep track of as a division there. For comparison, weve reported them, both in terms of the fiscal year that just concluded, as well as the prior fiscal year. Some of these metrics youve not seen before. On the monthly enforcement report, we typically report on the number of matters in preliminary review and under investigation, as well as the average number of months that each of those matters might be. Here weve provided a wider snapshot of the things that division has kept track of for the last, i would guess, three years. You can see that comparing the two fiscal years we got twice as many complaints in fiscal year 2018 as we got in 19. I think one two reasons for that. One would be the Mayoral Election of 2018 took place in fiscal year 2018. We actually saw between march and june of 2018, the division received 89 complaints just during that fourmonth window leading up to the election there or leading up to and including the election, which accounted for more than twice the complaints of that fiscal year. For comparison, between august and november of 2018, november 2018 in which we had another election, we got only 41 complaints. So the public and others were substantially invested in the Mayoral Election in june of 2018. A second reason for the distinction in complaint numbers would be something that you may have noticed in item 10, which is a process improvement that the Enforcement Division has adopted, which draws on the distinction that the charter makes between formal and informal complaints, a distinction thats enforcement regulations reinforce, which is to assign to the enforcement director discretion to consider informal complaints. The charter requires that we consider informal complaints, but offers discretion to consider informal complaints. One of the changes to process we have adopted is if on the face of the complaint its immediately obvious to the enforcement director and to investigators that they lack jurisdiction, rather than assigning it to an investigator and turning it through the ordinary preliminary review machinery, i as the enforcement director will consult with the complainant, advise them about the scope of our jurisdiction and if i can direct them to some other entity that might be able to handle their complaint. So you will see in fiscal year 2018 we had 34 complaints for which we lacked jurisdiction. Those we had actually logged. So that 34 is a subset of the 163. In fiscal year 2019, the roughly 30 that we handled through this consultation and no further action process are in addition to the 83. Then a couple of other things to note would be that in each of the fiscal years we dismissed approximately dismissed or referred approximately twothirds of the complaints that we received and opened approximately onethird of those. Then finally, as to resolutions, we had fewer stipulations in fiscal year 2019, but larger penalties overall. But we did also resolve more matters in fiscal year 2019 than we had in fiscal year 2018, 22, as compared to 15. One reason for that is the regulations that this Commission Adopted i think in january of 2018 and which became effective in march of last year provide that the commission can close in the interest of justice an open investigation, meaning that we can decide, irrespective of the evidence, irrespective of potential liability in that matter, that there are overriding reasons why the commission should no longer invest resources in that particular matter. So i think if you look at the numbers there, in fiscal year 2019 we saw a 60 increase in the number of times we utilized that option. The reason is likely that the option came into existence only in the final quarter of fiscal year 18. If you go down to the statistics that we traditionally report in the monthly enforcement report, you can see again that we have an increased number of complaints that are awaiting preliminary review. The time that it takes us to review those complaints is somewhat down from our last reporting in june, but significantly up from our last reporting in july of 2018. One reason for that may be again that these numbers are averages, but considering the number of complaints that would have come in, in june of 2018, the bulk of the those awaiting staffs review at that time were effectively brand new. So that would be one reason, but potentially not all of the reasons theres a distinction in the amount of time it now takes staff to now move through these reports. It may be that we had four investigators at that time as well, but i cant remember with 100 accuracy. And then finally looking at the number of investigations open, weve reported for august that there are a full 95 investigations on this docket for a staff of three investigators. So every investigator has assigned to him roughly 30 investigations. A couple of them remain mine from the time that i was an investigator before i occupied the role as director. Given the commissions unanimous decision today to approve the proposed stipulations, this number will actually shift to 90. Once we close those particular matters, we should expect to see the average age of those investigations come down a couple of those that were on the agenda for today were some of the older ones. But as we turn in a minute to item 10, i would ask you to hold in your minds the size of the investigative docket at 90 or 95 and the amount of time overall that it takes staff, which includes for most matters, not just the investigators but also the executive director the enforcement director and the executive director and in some instances the commission itself, but if you contemplate overall from complaint receipt to resolution, 7 and 16, were looking at nearly two years on average from receipt of a complaint to resolution of a matter, whether thats by stipulation or closure or a determination that the evidence suggests an absence of liability. And then finally i would direct you to the numbers that we report each month in relation to the bureau of delinquent revenues. The collection officer continues to complete her review of delinquent late fees based on her calculations she had managed to sweep up 34,000 in previously unpaid fees at this point since her initial efforts finger since her start in february or march of this year. If you look at the status of matters before the bureau, you will see there are an additional four matters we have referred there on the basis of delinquent filers who did not or could not respond to the fines collection officer. I would note of those four, one of the entities listed there has already negotiated a payment plan with the bureau. The others apparently remain nonresponsive. Finally an update on the Lynette Sweet matter. Youll recall this matter is actually in litigation in superior court, which the city and county brought previously. That litigation was stayed as a result of a federal bankruptcy filing that ms. Sweet made. That bankruptcy filing has been dismissed, as we discussed last time, dismissed but not closed. I dont know whether judge smith could enlighten us on what a federal court means to dismiss a matter without i avoided bankruptcy cases. The superior court judge was interested to hear from the parties in august what the status of that bankruptcy hearing might be. The superior court judge has once again postponed that hearing to february of 2020. I was just over at the tax attorney at the bureau. That tax attorney and i have been in pretty close contact. We have been communicating with ms. Sweet and we have communicated to her that the commission would agree to a settlement of 20,000, which represents the amount of public funds for which she could not account. So effectively 20,000 is the minimum to which we would agree because thats the amount of damages that the city and county suffered as a result of her particular Campaign Finance misconduct, which was a failure to account for how that money was spent. And at my last communication with the tax attorney, ms. Sweet has made a proposal to pay that 20,000 through a payment plan, which would be longer than the commission would allow if this were a settlement negotiated with the executive director. Because it is, instead, a settlement negotiated through litigation with the bureau of delinquent revenue, were happy to allow that because it does not render the commission itself effectively the Lending Agent in this case. Ms. Sweet has agreed to that and i can provide further details at a future meeting, although nothing is yet written down. Well, thats great news because this has been pending for quite a while and it is a significant amount. Its if we can get to 20,000 in a reasonable payment plan, i think thats a terrific outcome. Good luck with that. The question i had is the matters with chris jackson. I think these have been on this report since i joined the Ethics Commission. Is there i think we talked last time about directing either the bureau of delinquent revenues or an alternative to the bureau to try and locate mr. Jackson or to send it to a Collections Agency. Is that something that we could do . Because were coming up now on six years. Actually, we passed the sixyear anniversary of when the referral was made for collection of this amount. I dont know how much the bureau invests in trying to locate him. I dont know if this is a heavy resource constraint in comparison to what they might get out of it. Im happy to follow up with them and even permit them to cut and run here or assign it to a Collections Agency as they did with others. Im happy to do that. And then do we have a payment plan for some and others did not . Obviously the Lynette Sweet is out of our control from a commission standpoint, but i see the Latino Democratic Club is on a payment plan. I thought at one point we were not doing payment plans and now we are. We are talk about this in agenda item number 10 as well, but whats the current play . My own understanding of that is the revisions to the enforcement regulations communicated newly a preference against payment plans. The executive director retains discretion to engage in a payment plan, but she would need to be convinced of the need of that. As the regulations are written, she would agree to a payment plan of not longer than six months. Again, my reading of the regulations is that they apply in instances where the executive director is, herself, negotiating that settlement with the respondent. It comes before the commission before its consideration. This is a different posture in this regard. Its an unpaid late fee. Effectively an unpaid debt that has been reassigned to another agency, whose job it is to collect those debts. So it is not a negotiated settlement directly with the commission, with the executive director. It its possible that the tax attorneys would have been happy to apply the sixmonth limitation, but our view is that that is not necessary because one reason to refer to the bureau is for the city and the county to recover what they can. So if the bureau sees fit to negotiate other approaches, then were happy to permit them to do that. If there are not other questions on item 12, ill turn to item 10. I think we need to take Public Comment on agenda item. Commissioner, did you have a i have a couple of questions or comments on item 10. First of all, i want to complement you on your new procedures sorry, commissioner, i think were going to take comment on 12. Do you want to speak on 12 . [ indiscernible ] did he have two separate violations . Is that what this is about . He did. I think the i. D. Number refers there to well, actually the i. D. Number is a number the bureau assigns to it but not the commission. But the answer is yes, two separate matters. Any other questions from commissioners . Ill call for Public Comment on agenda item number 10. Any Public Comment im sorry, on agenda item number 12. Okay. No Public Comment. Okay. Well now move to agenda item number 10, discussion and possible action on enforcement process improvements review. Thank you, chair and commissioners. So item 10, were pleased to bring this to you today. This has been in development for some time and were glad that each of you could join for this discussion because we covet your feedback, your guidance, your direction on the particular proposals that were bringing for you today. Just as a reminder, item 10 comes before you essentially at the request of chair chu who requested that staff prepare a presentation about information regarding the existing case load and certain proposals that staff might bring about how to prioritize the commissions enforcement resources. So in presenting item 10 to you, id like to highlight just three particular things before we open it up to questions or guidance from the commission, though i would also invite you to interrupt me at any time that you might wish to. But theres three things that i want to highlight include remarks about the existing case load and basically picking up again from item 12, effectively how we got to where we are today. The second thing id like to highlight is the discretionary factors that staff are proposing to adopt that we would apply to the existing docket and to complaints as they come in and welcome your direction as to whether those are the right factors that you think we should be applying; and if so, receive your guidance on how we should go about applying them. The third thing id like to highlight for you is our readiness to engage in a process to revise the fixed penalty policy and, again, to receive any direction that you might have for us to do so. Turning to the first thing that i wish to highlight. In figures 1 and 2, we sought to respond to your request here too that we would provide information about the existing docket. Figure 2 gets more granular than figure 1 and provides some information of the variety in terms of categories that you, chair chu, have suggested previously. In terms of trying as a commission to distinguish between broad categories of matters, and those broad categories that you have suggested previously are administrative and substantive. I think if we examine these categories, we find that even digging in with a little more granularity, it can be hard to know what the type or scope of public harm might be in a particular matter. So if we look there at figure 2, you can see that we had five cases. Again, these numbers are based on the open investigative docket that existed at the time of the may meeting, which is the snapshot we used to produce this analysis. But we had five cases at that time related to contribution limits. And we had 17 which concerned the failure to file certain disclosures or to disclose contributions or expenditures properly. I think one challenge that we find is that although we might contemplate that a violation of the contribution limit is a substantive violation and a violation of the disclosure or recordkeeping requirements constitute an administrative violation, you could imagine that if in one matter somebody inadvertently violates the contribution limit by, say, 100, but in another matter a Committee Fails to account for 80 of its expenditures, you would agree in that comparison the administrative violation creates a greater threat of public harm than the substantive violation. Its because of wrestling with these distinctions that we would like to contemplate discretionary factors, as opposed to a different approach to setting priorities, which might be to assign greater care to certain kinds of violations, as opposed to others. We think that using discretionary framework is the more suitable way to go. Its also the case, just to close that point, that we certainly acknowledge the feedback that weve received from the commission about maybe the disproportionate number of disclaimer settlements that we bring before the commission. One reason for that is those are proceeded through the fixed penalty policy and they require relatively little investigation and far fewer resources than other matters. But we could at the same time envision a disclaimer case which, like the recordkeeping case, creates a greater threat of public harm. Certain disclaimer cases can be, for example, dark money cases. Committees may fail to disclose who their top donors are, or they may fail to disclose the committee is candidate controlled. Or they may fail to disclose that it was a candidate expenditure. Those types of failures to disclose can be one type or another. If you look at a regulation that a Public Commenter how it was handled through the streamlined process, you will see there are particular characteristics that would actually disqualify a disclaimer case from the benefit of the streamlined process. Some of those circumstances include situations that create confusion for the public about who paid for the advertisement and what sort of an advertisement it actually was. We understand that a lot of the interest in advancing this item today, going back again to item 12, turns on the amount of time that it takes for the division to move through im sorry, could we pause for a moment. Id actually like to solicit the input from my fellow commissioners on the point you just made about a discretionary framework, versus a focus on specific types of cases. So what i hear you saying is that providing staff with the discretion to determine which cases because a disclaimer case could really go to the heart and integrity of our Public Financing system, for example, or our election system and that it could rise to the level of something that would be all hands on deck, lets make sure we investigate that. But ill love to hear from my fellow commissioners your thoughts on that because, youre right, over the past in my time on the commission, weve seen a lot of the font size or disclaimer cases and they are easier to dispose of. I just think its important for us to be mindful of our limited resources, finite resources. Again, that 90plus matter case load and how do we best deploy your team against that to have the best results possible and what are our priorities in that context. And is this the right framework for us to be thinking about. I think for my own part the discretionary piece is really important because its not i dont think that its a good outcome for us to say cases of x, y, z type are less important than others because, depending on the fact pattern, they could all be very important and they could all go to the heart of the integrity of our system and trust in the process. But i would really like to hear from my fellow commissioners on that. Because this is kind of a fork in the road, right, if we go down one path versus the other, its hard to do both or. I mean, i confess that i had not given a great deal of thought before you raised this question, but it seems to me any time you start going from a bright line to a discretionary rule, theres always the chance of slippery slopes and different peoples viewpoints making a big difference. At first blush, its hard for me to imagine, for example, the size of the font ever amounting to a huge substantive issue. On the other hand, could it . I dont know. So i dont know. Im not sure if im addressing your question or what it is youre worried about. I have not been troubled so far by what ive seen on the discretionary aspect. Im happy with what discretionary decisions ive seen by the staff certainly on these stipulations and things ive i have not been on the commission very long, but i certainly have not seen any cause to be concerned about any of the stipulations that ive seen so far which has enhanced my respect and ability to rely on the staff at this point, but i do understand the point youre making and think its something we should keep watching. I have a question. On the discretionary aspect, do you guys look at intent . Because just as an example, we went through in preparation for todays meeting, we had five or six stipulations. For me, one stood out more than the rest. The reason it stood out was because, as far as i was concerned, the intent, right. So is that do you guys look at intent when you figure, well, this is discretionary, we can deal with this one rather easily because we review a lot of materials, theres no intent. Whereas in this other case theres clear intent and maybe we should focus on this one a little more in depth, if that makes sense. It does make sense. We certainly do look at intent. I would note that intent is a factual question. So we may not be able to evaluate at the outset that a respondent committed a violation willfully. So if we were to try to utilize intent as a factor to determine that we want to pursue one case instead of another, theres a slight chicken and egg problem. If there were reasons to believe that the violation may have been willful, that we then later had to substantiate, that would be a reason to contemplate it. I would locate intent, for example, among the factor for severity. If a respondent commits a willful violation, it is a more severe violation. It is, in fact, a criminal violation. Any violation committed with intent becomes a misdemeanor, obviously that doesnt fall to us to prosecute. Likely, we could also assign intent to the second discretionary factor which could be the intent of the decision. If it could be found that the respondent behaved willfully, under the existing factors provided in the enforcement regulations, we would seek a higher penalty because intent is an aggravating factor. Presumably, the public has a heightened interest in the commissions bringing to resolution matters for which they behaved intentionally and willfully. I think that raises a very important issue and does in a sense go to the comment i was making. Intent is a factual decision. So if what youre trying to do is cut down on procedural time and make your enforcement more efficient, whatever, adding intent as a major component of it, i think, is going to do exactly the opposite, which is going to slow down your investigations and cause more im not quite sure what the appellate issues then are, but that you would then get into that whole area. I dont know where that line i may provide one clarification, which is that is discretionary factors that we have proposed here regard which of the complaints staff wish to pursue. They say less about how we pursue those complaints. So the object before us now is to decide, okay, given the limited resources that staff have, given the number of complaints that come in or the number of investigations that are already on the docket, should we be making harder decisions at the outset . So how did we get here . One way that we got here was that for at least the last couple of years, our ambition was to lay a foundation in the Enforcement Division. We intended to adopt clear and more reasonable regulations and to implement them in the most practical way. And at the same time we intended to effectively take whatever came in, to work our way through all of the alleged misconduct that we inherited from prior staff, as well as to contemplate whatever came in under our own watch in order to increase fairness, predictability, public trust in the process. But i think what we are discovering today is that although that effort to lay that foundation has fielded certain benefits, it has also come with certain costs. So what were asking ourselves is if we are to depart from a process by which we look at we open all meritorious complaints and we investigation all meritorious complaints in roughly the order we receive them, how would we depart from that process . What is the most sensible way of making hard decisions about which investigations the Commission Wants us to conduct. So talking again about forks in the road. If discretionary factors is a way to do that, another fork would be how do we apply those discretionary factors . There are options. So to be more specific, we could say staff intends to apply these discretionary factors at the outset. We get a complaint. We evaluate the severity, the impact, the probability that will be able to prove it up. And if something falls too far down on the ladder, we dont open it, even though its meritorious. So we have fewer matters on the docket. We could, in addition, look at the existing docket and decide applying these factors, considering the 90 matters that are still open, which of them again fall too far to the bottom of the ladder in terms of the factors that we wish to apply here. Lets clear out some of the chaff and free ourselves up to pursue the ones that we think matter the most. That would be one approach to this, is to whittle down the size of the docket on the basis of these factors. A second approach would be different. The second approach would be to say we will continue to open all meritorious complaints and to place them on the investigative docket. What we will then do is apply the discretionary factors in determining how to assign resources to the complaints that are on the docket. So we would take the 90 that we have right now and we close out any of them. We would, instead, assign resources to the most significant ones on the basis of analysis that staff would make together in office. One of the considerations that i would ask you to make as a commission and directing us between the options available to us, if we take the second approach, we continue to open all meritorious complaints, but we intentionally allow some of those complaints to lie fallow, is that you must anticipate that the average age of investigations on the docket will continue to go up because we are intentionally opening investigations, knowing that we may not investigate them. We are intentionally assigning to the docket matters that may expire under the statute of limitations. One result of that would be that the statistics that we report on a monthly basis would become less meaningful or possibly misleading without a sufficient amount of explanation about why those numbers are changing. Im happy to receive guidance about whether either of those options make sense or i can continue with other remarks. It seems to me that there i mean, maybe theres a crossing of the two. For example, i think your idea about getting rid of lack of jurisdiction cases immediately makes great sense. Theres no point in dwelling on something lack of jurisdiction it seems to me is fairly bright line. You either have it or you dont. It really doesnt call for a great deal of discretion. So getting rid of those, it seems to me, highly efficient is a way of clearing out cases. Your numbers are showing that. And then perhaps after you do that, then you take whats left and i dont know if theres a diminimus amount that provides response to the request of justice to say that given youve got three investigators and youve got this many complaints, is it in the interest of justice to spend to take one of your investigators and spend time on a matter that might result in a 100 fine . And maybe it doesnt. I dont know if thats an appropriate thing for you to consider, being almost the n newbie on the block. It seems to me some combination of those two is appropriate. Obviously im looking at the way a court might look at it to kind of do that interest of justice analysis. But is there anything that would prevent you from doing that . In other words, having your once you get rid of the no jurisdiction and the obvious ones, then to separate cases in which its pretty clear that theres no merit to the ones that there may be merit and working down that way. I dont know. I think there is nothing to prevent us from doing that. There is nothing you said . I dont see there is nothing to prevent us from doing that. I think one of the this may be jumping ahead to the last couple of pages of the report, but one of the things that i think about with this process is making sure that were putting the appropriate resources proportionally to the kind of cases there. As jeff points out, there could well be disclaimer cases that by vast majority are the smaller, maybe more routine, easily resolvable cases, which we really are trying to speak to a new process that can help streamline that in the normal course of things. But its really important to think about how we apply the appropriate resources by thinking about not necessarily the assumption that we have to eliminate cases, but that were going to streamline our approach to them so that it simplifies it enough in a way that it makes it standard and predictable for folks that might be in that pipeline, that also frees up investigative resources for us to focus on these bigger cases that i think we all know we havent been able to get to as directly as we would like to. So i think thats how i see it in terms of the application of resources. I think to your point, i see it as sort of a hybrid approach. We certainly do want to feel comfortable that the commission is comfortable with the approach that were taking generally for sorting through all of these cases. We also feel the need to want to make sure were dealing with the most severe cases. Also, this isnt just about receiving cases. Its also about initiating cases and looking at the data we have and having our own periscopes up to know where we need attention. I think thats the process of looking at where were implementing, but its important to hear your feedback what weve seen so far. I think jeffs point is a good one, as our processes change, how we ensure you all have appropriate oversight and the public has some transparency appropriately into this process. That will also change. This wont be the end of the conversation by any stretch, but it is important to lay the groundwork that youre comfortable with the approaches the staff has been thinking about. Because we want to make sure there is confidence in the process and were comfortably moving forward with changes that we do think are constructive with the program. I would agree with the comments of getting rid of the cases we dont have jurisdiction over. The second is were calling it a hybrid approach, but i think that applying it to the existing case load and making some decisions because as time passes, to your point, if we open all meritorious cases, i think the Downside Risk that you pointed out, memories will fade, documents will go missing, people will leave, and we inherited a caseload from 2010 and 2011, and its going to be 2020 next year. The information is only going to be more difficult to extract as part of as an investigation goes on. So i think that deploying our finite resources against the critical cases and the ones based on the application of your experience and your discretion, that really go to the heart of the integrity of our system and at the following the money and getting at some bad conduct i think would be a higher and better use of our time and resources and get to Better Outcomes and having a really bloated docket with cases that actually dont go anywhere otherwise. I appreciate that and im sympathetic to that view as well. A couple of points. One would be to clarify we never open investigations for which we lack jurisdiction because we dont have the power to do that, but we do handle them in a more streamlined way than we used to. A second point would be that the as commissioners you dont strictly need to take action on this item today. If you are comfortable, as you have expressed, with the way that staff might apply its discretion, for example, to decide under the existing Regulatory Framework that we might dismiss or close matters in the interests of justice, then you might consider the factors that weve described here as an explanation for the kinds of things that we now consider and will continue to consider as we make those determinations which the regulations provide. You could at the same time provide us more guidance about how you want us to apply those factors under the existing Regulatory Framework, which would be what kinds of matters do you believe go to the heart of the public trust . So you could, for example, give us guidance under the severity of the alleged violation. You could give to us a list of the kinds of matters that you want us to prioritize. Obviously we wouldnt make those resource allocation decisions based only on the kind of matter, for the reasons that i described before. But in concert with a consideration about the impact of that decision, the likelihood that we could substantiate it, that could be a way that you could provide guidance to the division in how we apply our discretion. And then the last thing i will say to piggyback on what was already said, is that we are prepared to expand the existing fixed penalty policy. The Commission Adopted that policy in 2013. As far as we understand it, the commission did not engage in a public process. When it adopted that policy, it set out that five specific kinds of violations will can be, not necessarily will be, but can be handled pursuant to that fixed penalty policy. Each of those kinds of violations arises in the Campaign Finance context. This jurisdiction is not the only jurisdiction to provide for a streamlined process if you had an opportunity to read Public Comment, you know that the sspb does as well. Their management of streamlined cases is much broader than our own. We would intend to do a handful of things at the direction of the commission. We would intend to expand that policy to include violations additional violations within the Campaign Finance context, but also beyond that context. So they may be paperwork kinds of things, but they may also they may be disclosure kinds of violations, but they may also be conduct violations that we could handle through fixed penalty. And then secondly, at your direction, we would intend to engage in a public process to do that. So we would i think bring to commissioners a draft proposal, get your feedback on that proposal, take it out, and share it with interested persons, gain the feedback of interested persons, make revisions based on your feedback, their feedback, bring to you a revised proposal which you could either adopt or, again, amend. But that process i think would better reflect the way that the spbc has contemplated it streamlined penalty process. It would invite the regulated community to the table on this process for the first time. As one of the Public Commenters points out, it would give the commission an occasion not only to expand the number and kinds of matters that we handle through fixed penalty, but we could at the same time revisit the penalties that we assign there to evaluate is the existing penalty structure fair, is it just, is it proportional, is it like or unlike what other jurisdictions are doing. As the executive director pointed out, after it if we can adopt such a policy and begin to implement it, then we will we should discover that we free up investigative resources to do the kinds of things that are improper for a streamlined administrative program. So you as a result of that process, you may actually get more settlements that are simple because theyre easy to accomplish. Additionally, you may get more settlements that are complex because we have the resources to do it. So i think the ask i would make of the commission today would be to give us, if you wish to, some guidance about how we apply the discretionary factors under the existing Regulatory Framework, which is that we can dismiss or close matters in the interests of justice and direct us to initiate the process to expand the fixed penalty policy. In your view and i was going to mention mr. Menardis comments about the comparison to the spbc as far as the amounts of the fixed penalties as well as the scope. Do and maybe this is an unfair question. Do you consider the f. P. P. C. Schedule and approaches to be rational and reasonable and something that would offer significant or good valuable guidance . There seemed to be a significant difference in some of the numbers youve put on some penalties versus the other. I appreciate the question. I think if you were to pull the regulated community, it would insist that the f. P. P. C. s schedule is the only i cant remember what terms he used, rational and reasonable maybe approach to penalizing the kinds of misconduct that are set out there. My own view, but this is open to revision through the process, is that when the f. B. B. C. Adopted the schedules, they had to contemplate that their jurisdiction includes all of california, meaning jurisdictions not just like San Francisco and los angeles, which have their own Ethics Commissions, but also very small towns, small towns that have very less significant need of fundraising or less significant opportunity for fundraising. Granted one way that they account for that distinction is that their schedule assigns a percentage to the amount of activity, for example, reported in a committees disclosures. Thats one approach. My own view at this point, again open to revision is that 1 of the committees activity does not provide significant punitive or deterrent value. So i would intend that in San Francisco, also considering the amount of money available and utilized in elections here, that we would pursue a significantly different schedule. What that schedule might be, i cant say at this point. But that your schedule might be worth revisiting at least . Yeah, were certainly willing to. An open amount. Were certainly willing to revisit it. I think one think about their regulations is they provide certain circumstances by which their Enforcement Division can decide that a particular respondent is ineligible for that schedule, ineligible for the streamlined process. So they dont get the benefit of the 1 modifier. They instead get pumped through the ordinary settlement process, where the penalties might be larger. If we were to undertake a revision of the existing fixed penalty policy, we would ask that the commission approve our ability to do that because the existing policy says that staff is down by that policy until changed by the commission. I mean, our own view has been that there are situations in which we could exclude someone from that policy because we think the policy envisions scenarios that dont require investigation. So we have,
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