Transcripts For SFGTV Ethics Commission 20240713

I know. Excited. When we had that big rainstorm last year that was racing down this hill i went out and when there was a break in the weather to make sure that was clear and that was definitely debris that draws down i make sure i have any bathroom we me and sweep that away that makes a big difference sfwrts can fleet floated and every year we were coming home he it was rainey noticed it the water with hill high on the corner and she was in her rain boats so she had fun doing that. I saved our house. So adopt a drain 25 he is a real leader that listens and knows how to bring people together. Brought this department together like never before. I am so excited to be swearing in the next chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, ladies and gentlemen, lets welcome, Jeanine Nicholson. applause . I grew up total tomboy, athlete. I loved a good crisis, a good challenge. I grew up across the street from the fire station. My dad used to take me there to vote. I never saw any female firefighters because there werent any in the 1970s. I didnt know i could be a fire fighter. When i moved to San Francisco in 1990, some things opened up. I saw women doing things they hadnt been doing when i was growing up. One thing was firefighting. A woman recruited me at the gaypride parade in 1991. It was a perfect fit. I liked using my brain, body, working as a team, figuring things out, troubleshooting and coming up with different ways to solve a problem. In terms of coming in after another female chief, i dont think anybody says that about men. You are coming in after another man, chief, what is that like. I understand why it is asked. It is unusual to have a woman in this position. I think San Francisco is a trailblazer in that way in terms of showing the world what can happen and what other people who may not look like what you think the fire chief should look like how they can be successful. Be asked me about being the first lbgq i have an understands because there are little queer kids that see me. I worked my way up. I came in january of 1994. I built relationships over the years, and i spent 24 years in the field, as we call it. Working out of firehouses. The Fire Department is a family. We live together, eat together, sleep in the same dorm together, go to crazy calls together, dangerous calls and we have to look out for one another. When i was burned in a fire years ago and i felt responsible, i felt awful. I didnt want to talk to any of my civilian friends. They couldnt understand what i was going through. The firefighters knew, they understood. They had been there. It is a different relationship. We have to rely on one another. In terms of me being the chief of the department, i am really trying to maintain an open relationship with all of our members in the field so myself and my deputy chiefs, one of the priorities i had was for each of us to go around to different fire stations to make sure we hit all within the first three or four months to start a conversation. That hasnt been there for a while. Part of the reason that i am getting along well with the field now is because i was there. I worked there. People know me and because i know what we need. I know what they need to be successful. I have known Jeanine Nicholson since we worked together at station 15. I have always held her in the highest regard. Since she is the chief she has infused the department with optimism. She is easy to approach and is concerned with the firefighters and paramedics. I appreciate that she is concerned with the issues relevant to the Fire Department today. There is a retired captain who started the Cancer Prevention foundation 10 years ago because he had cancer and he noticed fellow firefighters were getting cancer. He started looking into it. In 2012 i was diagnosed with breast canner, and some of my fellow firefighters noticed there are a lot of women in the San Francisco Fire Department, premenopausal in their 40s getting breast cancer. It was a higher rate than the general population. We were working with workers comp to make it flow more easily for our members so they didnt have to worry about the paper work when they go through chemo. The turnout gear was covered with suit. It was a badge to have that all over your coat and face and helmet. The dirtier you were the harder you worked. That is a cancer causeser. It casser. It is not cancer causer. There islassic everywhere. We had to reduce our exposure. We washed our gear more often, we didnt take gear where we were eating or sleeping. We started decontaminating ourselves at the fire scene after the fire was out. Going back to the fire station and then taking a shower. I have taught, worked on the decontamination policy to be sure that gets through. It is not if or when. It is who is the next person. It is like a cancer sniper out there. Who is going to get it next. One of the things i love about the Fire Department. It is always a team effort. You are my family. I love the city and department and i love being of service. I vow to work hard to work hard to carry out the vision of the San Francisco Fire Department and to move us forward in a positive way. If i were to give a little advice to women and queer kids, find people to support you. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep trying. You never know what door is going to open next. You really dont. [cheers and afternoon, welcome o the relationally scheduledcome o meeting of the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Roll call. [roll call] all five members are present today. Agenda item 2, Public Comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. Commissioners im sorry, can i get the overhead . Good afternoon, commissioners. Director San Francisco open government. A report of the grand jury of the city and county of San Francisco entitled San Franciscos Ethics Commission, the sleeping watchdog, reads in part as follows quote, because of the Ethics Commissions lack of enforcement, no City Employee has been disciplined for feying to adhere to the sunshine ordinance. The commission allowed officials to ignore the rulings of the Sunshine Ordinance Task force. I know this from experience, at least this point in time due to the three dozen orders of determination i hold fighting years of violations without any being enforced. It doesnt mean they were not effective. In most cases i got the things i wanted but we continue to have resistance, and people who just basically say middle finger to the sunshine ordinance. And its hypocritical because its on every meeting agenda, know your rights under the sunshine ordinance but if you try to act on those rights, you are completely ignored by all these different look at the bodies that are on there. Just about everybody in the city. The thing here is oh and one thing ill say about this. This is like President Trump right now and Nancy Pelosis comments about he will be impeached forever. He may be found not guilty or not found guilty by the senate but the bottom line, he is only the third president of the United States who has actually been impeached, and that will never go away. So those people who were all found in violation of the ordinance, that will not change. Second thing i would like you to consider today is this from the Good Government guide laying out the roles of commissioners and it reads in part when acting as quasi judicial capacity, members of boards and commissions function like judges, thus they must take care to ensure the parties appearing before them received due process. Now, look at my past record. Ive got over three dozen orders of determination. A no more of those have come to this, and not one has the Ethics Commission found worth supporting. And the bottom line is not only did they find them not worth supporting, what they did is undermine it by saying the task force got it wrong. So they devalued what i had gotten. Would anyone on this Commission Like to handicap my chances today . Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is ellen. I am a public employee. And i am a delegate for Government Employees. We have 32,000 Government Employees in San Francisco. I am also the director of Public Relations for california civic grand jury the San Francisco chapter. I have been coming to you Ethics Commissions for the last four years. 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. The last time i was in here was december 20, 2019. I came to you with many issues about possible government corruptions and Election Fraud. I still remember i was one of the eight candidates running for San Francisco mayor in june june 2018. I was also for the process i din many of the forums, debates, events in Public Places in city hall, public parks. I was one of the six candidates for San Francisco mayor for november 2019, which is two months ago. I was bullied by many of the Democratic Leaders, many of the Campaign Billboards that i have and posters were illegally removed by the Democratic Leaders including the mayors representative and board of supervisors and of the electoral officials who are democrats. And i was publicly called racist by the Democratic Leaders that endangers my familys lives, my own life. I am here today to let you know that i am a conservative republican. I care about my city, San Francisco. I have been coming to you about possible corruptions within the electoral officials. So the Election Fraud. For San Francisco election records in 2018 and 2019. Because i went through the process, we found 150yearold we have two voters, 150 years old, three voters, 136 years old, one voter, 119 years old, 659 voters. 100 to 109, we have 247 voters. That means many of those people they are no longer alive in this world continuing to vote in San Francisco. San francisco has many violations according to the United States constitution article vi it says the supreme law of the land is the constitution. The sanctuary city that San Francisco created is directly violating our rights. It is called treason. And we have many of the problems going on with the city that we have no rule of law in San Francisco that is protecting American People. Many of the people like the Homeless People suffering, dying on the streets, car breakins every day, crimes daily and we lost our quality of life. And you the Ethics Commissioners, i believe you signed up to do something, and you are judges and lawyers and attorneys, and if you dont do anything, maybe its time to think about 2020. Think about what you want to do for yourself and for the city. And for Public Record. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Agenda item 3, Ethics Commission december regular meeting. Ill move the meetings. Second. All in favor . Aye. Aye. The minutes are approved unanimously. Agenda item number 4, election of Ethics Commission officers for 2020. Thank you. Item 4 is on the agenda to provide for the election of Ethics Commission officers for this year. The bylaws as you will recall under article iv provide that each year the Commission Elects officers for a oneyear term of service. And they also provide that no Office Holder may serve for two consecutive oneyear terms. The memo before you provides some background on this service, ten years of both the current chair and vicechair, responsibilities of the chair and vicechair. And this item has been agendized to allow for the commission if it would like to at this months meeting take action to elect officers for the coming year of terms starting on march 1 continuing through the end of february, 2021. The process that is outlined in the memo is the process has been used by the commission. And thats the chair will open nominations for the chair. And any commissioner who wishes to nominate a candidate will state the name of that person. If the tern agrees to run, then that person is nominated. When there are no further nominations and following any Public Comment that might be received, the nominations are closed by the chair and a roll call vote is taken which each commissioner states the name of the nominee for whom he or she is vote. If no nominee receives three votes, the commission can proceed to another vote. The process then repeats until one nominee received three or more votes. That process is the same for the office of vicechair. So i wont repeat it, but they are both outlined in detail on page two of the memo, so i wanted to provide that context for that who may be following along and havent read it as well as for the memory of the commission. Thank you. So i will now open the nominations to my fellow commissioners. I would like to make a nomination. I would like to nominate commissioner ambrose to serve as chair in the upcoming term. I would accept that honor, provided you all agree to help me do that. Are there any further nominations . Okay. Could you take the vote, please . I would like to take Public Comment first. Im sorry. Public comment. I personally run many times for the election commissions. And many of the things that is not up to date in the website and many of the things that we, the public, addressed was not addressed. I said it earlier. People continue to vote that are dead. We have 93,000 voters still in the voters role. This person she or he or whatever do nothing, whats the point to appoint somebody . And San Francisco has been illegally operating for 45 years. I said that its because i studied the law and realized that San Francisco is only one party ruled, democrats, for 45 years. If you appoint somebody else, you would be considered nonpartisan, libertarians, independent, any other party other than democrats, if you continue to appoint people that are democrat, San Francisco is not going to recover nothing. We will continue the public, the Election Fraud is ongoing. The Election Office did nothing, and your commissioners do nothing. And the election commissions will not do a thing. So whats the point to appoint people other than having a title and show people that you have a title . If you want to help San Francisco, save us, we have so many Homeless People dying on the streets, so many dead bodies picked up by Public Health. I am a Public Health worker for the government. I am ashamed for San Francisco with so much money that we are not able to continue people dying on the street overdose. Im asking you because you have a law background, attorneys, justice, people are reasonable. Help save San Francisco. Appoint somebody who are nondemocrats, who are loving San Francisco and willing to serve from their heart. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . The nomination for chair for the upcoming term . Okay. Seeing none. The nominations closed and public received, if we do roll call vote alphabetically and if each commissioner could state the name for the person of whom they wish to cast a vote for chair commissioner ambrose. I always have that a, i have to go first. So i will vote for myself. Thank you very much. Thank you. Commissioner chiu commissioner ambrose. Thank you. Commissioner gray . Commissioner ambrose. Commissioner ambrose. Commissioner lee . Commissioner ambrose. Commissioner smith . Smirks ambrose. With five votes for commissioner ambrose, commissioner ambrose is elected chair elect for term beginning march 1. Thank you very much. Congratulations. And if the current chair would like to open nominations for vicechair for the coming year. I would like to open up nominations for the vicechair position. I would like to nominate commissioner lee. Commissioner lee, do you accept the nomination . Are you willing to serve . Call for Public Comment . Is there any other nominations . Public comment . My name is ellen eloen. I will be continuing to come in here when i have the time. I know you guys plan to have a finished in the morning. I will try my best to come here on behalf of the people in San Francisco. Whoever you nominated today and whoever is going to accept the nomination as commission, they have to have the heart and the time and energy to really serve according to what the bylaw says. Just like me, i am a public government employee. I am a social worker. I obey the law. I follow the direction. I believe in quality of life for my patients and clients. I signed up for grand jury, San Francisco chapter. I do government in the station. I do government in the station for improvement, because i sign up for it. So if you sit in here every month, once a month and sign up for something and you nominate it for somebody else to do something else, it is your duty to follow up, to really follow the Good Government conduct earlier the gentleman was saying in here, we the government have Good Government conduct, sunshine ordinance and brown act legislations. But the people that you guys sitting in here, i dont know what else to say other than urge you to have a heart for San Francisco so we can save the city that we dont need to see the Homeless People dying on the street. We dont have to see more than a hundred cars and many people dont report anymore. And the corruption that dead people are still voting in San Francisco and we dont have to see the commission that we reported to them and they say the record has been missing, it never exists before. Even we have six people report it in person with audiotapes and that tells us San Francisco is dying because of the people, you, sign up for something that you are not standing up for the United States constitution. Im asking you, please have a heart for San Francisco and save San Francisco from everything that we are going through right now. I live in San Francisco. I work in San Francisco. We do not have to suffer like we suffer. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . On the vicechair nomination . No . Seeing no more Public Comment and the nominations closed, we do a roll call vote alphabetically. If each person could state the name for who they are casting a vote. Ill start with commissioner ambrose. Commissioner lee has my vote. Commissioner ambrose for lee. Commissioner chiu. Commissioner lee has my vote. Commissioner gray. Noted. Commissioner lee. I guess i will have my vote too. Commissioner smith. Commissioner lee all five members voting to elect commissioner lee as the vicechair for the coming term, starting march 1, that election is closed. And congratulations, commissioner lee. Congratulations to the commissioner chair elect and vicechair elect. I did want to just take a moment, we should probably do something more formal and celebratory to thank daina chiu for her service. I came on to the commission after she had just recently been elected chair in the middle of a very difficult legislative process on the anticorruption and accountability ordinance. And she saw that through the adoption and the implementation, the regulatory amendments that were necessary and then in the past year, the comprehensive review of the campaign Public Finance process with similar code amendments and regulatory implementation. I really appreciate your attention on all the enforcement issues, on bringing forward information from the Ethics Commission website, the dashboard, bringing people into educate us about that, about our relationship with other City Departments, and i hope to maybe not do as much momentous legislative processes as you are. Im hoping to focus on implementing some of the things that weve just recently put on the books. And i think with the 2020 elections, well have a good trial run this year, but i really want to thank you and appreciate your leadership. And well count on you to help do the right thing. Thank you. Those are very kind words. And i feel like the credit really goes to staff and to the engaged members of the public for their passion and commitment and input into the whole process. I think it takes a village, and im happy to contribute where i can. And will continue to support both of you in your perfect as we take this work in your efforts as we take this work forward. Item 5, show cause hearing in re hearths versus norman yee. Thank you. Just a brief introduction to tee up this item for you today. So i think you know this item regards a referral from the Sunshine Ordinance Task force, which they sent to the commission on october 22. And we had endeavored to hold this show cause hearing at the november meetings, but the chair continued the item at the request of the one of the parties. The referral before you is Task Force File no. 19042, i believe. And that order, that file includes an order of determination that the task force issued in a matter in which ray hartz brought a complaint against board president norman yee. In that order of determination the Task Force Found that yee had violated two provisions of the ordinance, one is section 16 which governs the minutes of the meeting of the policy body. The other is section 31, which provides that elected officials must administer and coordinate the implementation of the sunshine ordinance for their respective offices. So the task force referred eventually that order of determination over to the Ethics Commission after it determined that president yee had declined to implement the task forces order of determination. So the posture of a situation like this is when a respondent fails to comply with an order of determination that the task force issued, the task force can refer that order to the Ethics Commission for enforcement, because is the sunshine ordinance provides that although the task force can review complaints and make determinations, the sunshine ordinance does not provide enforcement power to the task force but provides for a separate mechanism which would be the task force can refer matters to other bodies that do have enforcement power. Pursuant to that, the Ethics Commission and the task force negotiated a subset of the enforcement regulations that governs how the Ethics Commission handles situations in which the Task Force Made a referral of this kind. And it summarizes and explains how the regulations would operate here but briefly, as a reminder to commissioners, you today, if you find it appropriate to do so, can defer the factual findings of the Sunshine Ordinance Task force with respect to this file number. But you need not defer to the legal conclusions that the Task Force Made the regulations provide that you offer to review with respect to any legal conclusions. Both parties are present today. Mr. Hartz and a representative from the board of supervisors are here. Each party will have ten minutes to present any argument or evidence they wish to present. They can reserve three minutes for rebuttal. The regulations do provide that they may also call witnesses but in any event if either of the parties introduced new evidence today that was not before the task force previously an option that you retain is to remand the matter back down to the task force because the task force plays the role of the primary fact finder in a situation like this. After you have heard the arguments, and before or after Public Comment, which is required for this item, you must deliberate in public. And you must base your determination about whether the respondent has violated the sunshine ordinance on the entirety of the record before you. If you find that the respondent violated the sunshine ordinance, you may issue declaratory release and injunctive release but we may not assess financial penalties against the respondent for a sunshine violation. If the respondent, as is the case here, is an elected official, a Department Head or what is called in law, a manager City Employee, you might consider whether the respondent committed that violation willfully, because the ordinance provides when a respondent in those categories conducts a violation it will be misconduct. If they did so willfully, you would direct staff to refer that matter over to the appointing party for consideration of whether too institute official misconduct proceedings. And finally, whatever the Commission Decides today, if you bring a decision, your decision will be considered the end of the administrative process. It will be a final adjudication of this matter at which point the parties would have recourse only by virtue of a writ to the superior court. So i think well hand it over to the complaint, the petitioner in this matter, who is mr. Hartz. I would appreciate you set the time to seven minutes because i intend to reserve time for rebuttal. This is the order of determination that is in your packet. We are talking about it today. This is the 12th time the task force has ruled similarly on various other complaints. Going first to the question as to why ms. Calvio raised as to why this is against norman yee was laid out in the introduction to the fact that elected officials and others are responsible for seeing that the sunshine ordinance is obeyed. She has been found multiple times in violation and has simply refused to do anything, in fact, this is the first time i believe she has ever shown up at any one of the hearings. She sends someone else who makes excuses. And all of the excuses that she put in her letter are things that she has presented to the task force almost on every similar occasion. And also if you look at that list, you will see the Ethics Commission is on there twice as well as the San Francisco Public Library. And they raised the same objections, oh, we cant do it for this reason or that reason. Has this on her website. San Francisco Charter states the board of supervisors will libly provide for the publics access to their government meetings, documents, and records. Thats what we are talking about here. She has raised a number of times that the Sunshine Ordinance Task force has been inconsistent in their rulings, and she has misrepped that case. Misrepresented that case. Heres a letter that was sent out to all departments stating very frankly over and over that the Sunshine Task force said what the ordinance says is that if 150 word or less summary is provided, it will be placed in the minutes. And they interpret in the minutes as in the body of the minutes, and they completely refute the idea that it can be attached to as a reference or addendum or some other position. And i will give you an example why. On september 20, here is the Public Comment record in the minutes of the San Francisco board of supervisors. Now, if i hadnt highlighted my name there in the middle, how many of you would have ever found that name . And how many reviewers of this document would have ever been aware that i had made Public Comment and submitted that Public Comment in writing . Those same set of minutes had a hearing of the committee as a whole, and again, unless i had how many of you would have ever found the fact i submitted a 150word summary which was somewhere else in the minutes . And given that i had submitted three that same day, heres what you got at the end. Three separate summaries. And anybody reviewing these records would be very hardpressed unless they wanted to take a lot of time to figure out which of these was for which section of the agenda. They would have to go back and research. And i think this is really the intention that she has had, whether at the direction of the board of supervisors or on her own merit, to keep these things presented in a way where the public is much less likely to see it. You will also notice at the top it says the following information is provided by speakers pursuant to administrative code 6716. The content is neither generated by nor subject to approval or verification of accuracy by the clerk of the board of supervisors. Now, how many of you can honestly look at that and say if your summary of your free speech was there, that some people wouldnt look at that and say maybe this is a little questionable. It certainly isnt anything advocating that. And i think they should at minimum put a heres the summary submitted by mr. Hartz of his Public Comment. As ive said over and over again, all the other bodies who have had gone through the Sunshine Ordinance Task force proceeding now place by 150word summaries along with those of other members of the public in the body of the minutes. The board of the Library Commission does, the Ethics Commission does, the Police Commission didnt have to even be taken to the task force. The Arts Commission didnt have to be taken to the task force. The rent board didnt have to be taken before the task force. They all placed them in the minutes. And for some strange reason, she keeps presenting the idea that the board of supervisors is different than any other body, including this one. And you can ask your executive director, you can ask her where did the 150word summary i submitted during Public Comment today go in your minutes . Like i said earlier, although they have not been enforced, they have been effective. And the only holdout is ms. Calvio. This is the free speech issue. Its the first amendment. This is constitutionallyprotected political free speech. Obviously its political. It rises to the highest level of protection of any form of speech under our constitution. It is protected by also the brown act and is protected by, in this case, the sunshine ordinance, which says i have the right to submit 150word or less summary which will be put in the minutes. The reason i started doing this was for years i went to the Library Commission meeting. They would dumb down my statements. They would summarize them in ways that were misrepresentations, and i finally got sick and tired of it and have gone through this process. And now every single body except the board of supervisors puts them where the task force has said repeatedly they should be. Thank you. Members of the commission, chair chiu, angela calvio the clerk of the board for the board of supervisors. Director. Good afternoon. We are here today on behalf of the board of supervisors to attend to this complaint thats before the commission, specifically the complaint is made out against supervisor and president of the board norman yee. But i am here today, because i believe that i am the appropriate person to actually address the issues here. If there is any doubt in that the president has deputized me to represent him on the departments behalf. This particular complaint alleges that mr. Hartzs 150word summaries were placed in an addendum to the minutes. I will just indicate that administrative code section 6716 states that the clerk or secretary of each board or commission enumerated in the charter shall record the minutes for each regular and special meeting of the board. So in this case, im the appropriate respondent. Additionally i will just add that article ii of the legislative branch indicates, this is the front page of the charter section, but charter section 2. 117 offices of the board of supervisors, just i understand days that the board does appoint a clerk and the clerk shall have charge of its offices, its records and its classified staff. So the charter authorizes me to handle the boards records. Additionally, mr. Hartz indicated section 2. 108 of the charter, thats the publics rights to know, we are very proud of that section, we have huge respect for chapter 67 and Public Access to our records and to the board offices. But that the clerk shall deep a permanent Public Record of the proceedings of the board, showing all actions that were considered and taken. The text of the ordinances and resolutions the vote of each member of the board regarding any matter before the board. And so that is what we are talking about, the minutes. And so in your rather large packet, i would like to ask you to turn to page 3849, which is mostly toward the page 379. Chapter 67 for the viewers watching. This is what shows up. Yes, sir . Student [off . [off mic] page 211. We will adjourn each meeting, there being no further business before the board, we indicate the hour that the board adjourns and b, noted well, the minutes of this meeting set forth the actions taken by the board of supervisors on the matters stated but not necessarily in chronological sequence. And then i indicate the dates that the minutes have been approved by the board and my signature. The actions of the board are what my signature is attesting to. The very next page, mr. Hartz showed you, which is the section where we would place his minutes, which he read for you, i will not read it again, essentially im not vouching for the details contained in the statement. But most importantly, i would like to share with you that we do provide a summary in the minutes. It is essentially a summary, the speakers name and then the print that he showed there. Im not sure if you can actually see it on the television. It essentially put the page that you would be able to turn to where you would find the 150word statement, which is this page right here. So anyone, any likeminded thinker looking for a statement from mr. Ray hartz, they would see a brief statement under Public Comment and then the page number that they would need to turn to to find the entirety of the 150word statement. I will point out that the board of supervisors agendas, their packets can be very long. We oftentimes have large items. And when a member of the public could be thumbing through your agendas, looking for the items that come after Public Comment, depending on how much Public Comment is there and depending on how many subsequent items fall after Public Comment, they can be very long, land use items, committees of the whole, closed sessions, adoption without reference to committee matters. If a member of the public is not looking for mr. Hartzs statement, and if we were required to put the entirety of the 150word statement right under Public Comment, somebody looking for something that happened in the closed session would be flipping through several pages just to find out what had happened with that particular items vote. So its technically difficult for a member of the public looking after Public Comment for the vote, if we were to list all 150word statements right now its not a problem, because mr. Hartz showed one particular addendum had 350 word statements on it. But one day, if we created a process where all 150word statements were there and there were 40 people submitting them, i could see that happening. You put the word out on fox news, and for some unfortunate situation that fox news was upset about, they could get their entire customer base, client base to send us 150word statements, and we would be in a world of hurt trying to get people just to get through those statements to get to the back end of the agenda. So i would also like to state mr. Hartz has made several complaints against our department. We are hoping that there could be some relief from having to continually come to his hearings where we talk about the same issue. We are very concerned that the public get their 150 words out there, that we are hearing what the public is saying. We have multiple opportunities for the public to actually publish their 150word statements, not only would we be willing to put them in our agendas at this section of the agenda, we also have something called the communication pages, which we would be happy, which is on our website, and when a member of the public provides us 150word statement, oftentimes they do ask put this in your agenda, and i would like it in your communication pages as well. So a likeminded thinker could go to not only our agenda but to our website to find their 150word statement. So it is our hope that, again, similar to the regular meeting of october 2017, the Commission Held a show cause hearing. We did make a presentation. It was mr. Ang, and im today with mr. Willson ang who does attend these meetings for us. And at that time, the commission unanimously passed that our office did not violate the sunshine ordinance and voted there was no merit to mr. Hartzs argument. We believe this complaint is without merit. Again today. And ask that the commission find no violation. We ask that the commission provide administrative remedy to adjudicate all duplicative complaints pertaining to the placement of the 150word statement summaries in the minutes. We do appreciate your time. Thank you kindly. And im available for any questions. Thank you. Any questions . Commissions and boards, are they putting these minutes, these 150word statements in the actual minutes . Do we know . Commissioner, i can only speak to our commissions practice, and we have traditionally placed the 150word statements in the minutes in the flow of the minutes. We have not had significant number of them. But we place them in that context. Commissioner ambrose. Maybe a question that might be for our enforcement staff or the City Attorney, but i wanted to understand the request that you made at the end, i, as you know, ive been a was a City Attorney for 34 years, i think one of the most difficult things is when theres disagreement within the city family. Its hard enough dealing with thirdparty lawsuits and the like, but its the worst when theres some debate happening where people are looking at the same charter sections, the same sunshine ordinance sections and coming to different conclusions. And in particular, just to let everyone know my inclination is because i was in the City Attorneys office, i do know and have read the analysis that the City Attorney provided. And while it may easily be said that reasonable minds have differed about what in the minutes does in the minutes mean, this page that says Meeting Minutes with a subheading addendum, or does it mean some other section of the Meeting Minutes before your signature . And i can understand why the Ethics Commission and certain other commissions would reasonably agree and incorporate the 150 words within the body of their minutes, because our minutes are three pages long. I also understand that somebody who has done legislation before the board that finding things in the boards agenda is a nightmare, and it would be within your charter duties to reasonably decide how you wanted to organize the flow of information. But what i didnt understand is youd ask for certain relief about other things that im not sure before this commission. And i dont know that i understand what our responsibility would be and how that might be before us. Thank you for your comments, commissioner ambrose. I think chapter 67 of the administrative code, we honor that chapter. And respect when a member of the public might be in need of something and are confused about how to obtain it. We will bend over backwards to help them understand what it is theyre trying to achieve and get them to the endgame. When a member of the public, in this case, mr. Hartz, just views this subject differently than we do, he is continuing to create complaint after complaint after complaint of the same subject. Now hes moved on to the board president , next its going to be the board of supervisors as a whole. Without any of the facts underlying facts changing. And so my desire, its a rarity, but there are a few individuals who continue to make the same complaints over and over again after, even after a body like the task force or your body, has decided in the opposite direction than what mr. Hartz would like to do. We are concerned about repeated complaints, where my staffs time, we have a Small Department, we have a lot of work to do. And when mr. Ang continues to go to these meetings after hours, just for the task force to make the same decision, although they have decided in our favor in the past, it just depends on who is on the task force. Its just we would love some kind of relief for complaints, limit them to five times a year or once the Ethics Commission has made a determination in a particular section that there be something that is distributed to the department that you can handle it this way or you can hand it it that way, in which case it would not allow a complaint to continually be made again and again when the outcome is just going to be what it has been. Thank you. I think i understand that. And i do surmise that may well require some further research and or a legislative solution that may not be within our jurisdiction today. But i understand what you want. Thank you. We have a couple more questions. Commissioner. Yes, as you know, im fairly new to the commission, so this is my first encounter, although i have gone back to 2011 when i think were the first of the papers on the subject and looked at them. I do know that there were many times in the court when things were added to orders. And it was simply accomplished by saying heres an addendum. This matter is incorporated by reference as set forth. Im not aware of any legal challenge that we faced in doing that. And what im wondering is whether some sort of a qualifying Statement Like that might satisfy you and mr. Hartz as well by making it clear that these things are considered with the force and the respect as though they had been fully set forth in the minutes and yet would not require the potential that youre concerned about with suddenly having a 200page minute for an order. I dont know whether youve ever discussed those days possibilities or sat down with mr. Hartz to see if there was some sort of a compromise that could be reached. Commissioner smith, thank you for your recommendation. I am not opposed to that. I am more than happy to sit down with mr. Hartz and show him some draft language that we could place there. Even the word addendum, that was just a word that was on the fly recommended to us, not by the City Attorneys office, but by an individual in any office who no longer works with us. Thats a good word. Okay. So we are happy so work with mr. Hartz on that. And so ill take your advice. Question sure. Im not opposed to it. Thank you. And my question is that in your mind, whether its called an addendum or appendix but that by including that at the end of the minutes, in your view, though, it is part and parcel of the minutes so that for purposes of the legal requirements, that the Public Comment, therefore, is in the minutes . I whole hearteddedly agree with you, commissioner chiu chair chiu thats the bottom line here for me. But im still amenable to tweaking it further so the parties are satisfied. Thank you. Any further questions . Mr. Hartz, your three minutes of rebuttal. [off mic] chair chiu, i did not reserve time and nor do i need it. Thank you kindly. Ray hartz, director San Francisco open government. And so i now have gotten confirmation from her own mouth of what i have always believed but could never ascertain. She is not opposed to my 150word summaries, she is opposed to any citizen of San Francisco having the option of putting their 150word summary in the minutes. In other words, she is adamantly against free speech. And she has decided that whatever she can do or will be able to do to put it somewhere where it would be less likely to be seen, then she will do that. Now, she has not been willing to talk about this at all. She has never even come to one of the Sunshine Task force meetings. She always sends someone else who really cant answer why they are so determined that my 150word summary should be elsewhere than where the task force has ruled a dozen times that it should be. And this idea that fox news will put something on all of a sudden well get all these summaries, you have to make the Public Comment at the board of supervisors meetings, and then submit the 150word summary. So unless all these fox news people are going to come and sit for several hours and if you look at the board of supervisors agenda, theres no certain time for Public Comment. If you wanted to make Public Comment to the board of supervisors, you have to put aside an entire day. Because it could be, and ive had it as close as 45 minutes after the beginning of the meeting and as long as eight hours later. And how many people in the public can afford to take time off from their life to take an entire day just to speak to the board of supervisors one time . And, again, we are talking free speech. And she has failed to show a compelling state interest answer to commissioner grays question. Every body that i submitted these statements to puts them in the body of the minutes exactly where they appear as any item would in the flow of the meeting. The Library Commission, the Ethics Commission does, the board of the Arts Commission does, the Police Commission does, the rent board does. So, yes, every one. And thats where i keep getting confused about. She seems to be resenting the case that for some reason her minutes are completely different from all the other minutes run by every board and commission in this city. And for some reason, shes the only one now, you can ask her executive secretary, has there been a problem with putting my 150word summary in the body of the minutes . And i think her answer would be no. And it would get same answer from all the rest. There has been no identified problem. And all she is doing is making up the worst possible scenario to come up with something that will stick to the wall and justify her not putting those in. And all you need to do is look through the 200 pages here, and you will see repeatedly the number of times the task force had done. If i had gone to the task force a dozen times and they found i was wrong, then her idiotic idea about getting declarative relief, does that mean if shes a bank robber and they rob a bank five times that after that, they can rob a bank as many times as they want and nobody can file a case against them . Thank you. Call for Public Comment. Good morning, commissioners and director, im dr. Derek kurr. I commend and support ray hartz for pursuing inclusiveness and equity in the matter of including Public Comment within Meeting Minutes. Her emphasis on the number of times that mr. Hartz has raised this issue indicates that his persistence was somehow unreasonable or vexatious. In fact, the pursuit of fairness and justice usually follows this representative path, because power concedes very little without demand after demand and year after year. The board of supervisors has two options. It can integrate Public Comment next to the agenda item that they address or it can segregate them into an appendix. Choosing the latter, the back of the bus option, tells us that our comments are unworthy, that we are outsiders. It takes thoughtful effort to attend government meetings and to craft the 150word Public Comment. Why not encourage thoughtful Public Participation by including our comments where they belong, in the body of the minutes next to the item that we are addressing . Relegating our comments to an appendix marginalizes and buries public input. It conveys disrespect for the folks that government is supposed to serve. And worse, it fuels reciprocal disrespect. Isnt it unethical to undermine Good Governance by demeaning Public Engagement . The Ethics Commission could convey that message to the board of supervisors and emphasize that the spirit of the sunshine ordinance is just as important as the technical legalities. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Deputy director of operations for the clerk of the board. I would like to present myself as a member of the public to just correct a couple of inaccuracies that ive heard in the complaints statement today. There has been several precedents that have been set, both with the Ethics Commission and consistently with the Sunshine Ordinance Task force and also City Attorneys opinion has been welldocumented in the Good Government guide as well as directed to all City Departments. So the task force was previously heard allegations regarding 150word summary placement all from mr. Hartz, theres several past complaints that have been filed, numerous future complaints that have been filed, the exact same complaint we are talking about today, 1919042 and 19043 down the pipeline that is exactly the same that is addressing ms. Calvio instead of president norman yee. So i want to direct you to page eight of the agenda, which is the memo we submitted which we cite several references to precedent. In two of them was ray hartz versus the Public Library ethics complaint 0312402 and 07. On both complaints that were considered by the Ethics Commission, the Ethics Commission found for the city library saying the minutes provided were presented as a single document including the addendum, and the task force cannot add or imply the words into the body of the sunshine ordinance. And section 67. 16 of the code specifically states that the last sentence of the first paragraph, any person speaking during the Public Comment period may supply a brief summary of their Public Comments, not interpreted as the body of the minutes. If we were to submit so the way the minutes are is if theres january, february, march, april, may minutes that are all consecutive, so for example, if there was the first agenda set of minutes would be for example one to 20 then the second agenda or the minutes would be 21 forward. And so at the end of the year, they are all bound together as the general proceedings. And its essentially all documented. They are all the minutes. It doesnt matter header, footer, body, its the minutes. So i want to make that clarification. And i want to refer you to this for additional precedence. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners . I want to say that i thought the evidence actually that mr. Hartz provided showing that the minutes, the body of the minutes as we are calling them, does identify all of the public speakers with an acknowledgement of the sort of essence of what their testimony was and a specific page reference to the addendum. Going to the other speaker, i dont see that as disrespect or failure to acknowledge. I mean, they are there with as much fullness as a reference to something that a supervisor or Department Head would have said. I mean, the challenge of taking what can sometimes be a sixhour meeting and reducing it down to a memorandum, which from an attorney Research Point of view, ive always taken as essentially just i just want to find a keyword, a reference, so i can get back to the right section of the sfgtv video so i can see what did people say and how did they say it. So i want to make it clear that while i do come to the same conclusion that the City Attorney did that when the voters adopted the sunshine ordinance, and they wanted the opportunity for 150 words to be incorporated in the minutes, that that left the discretion to the clerk of the board as to where in the minutes to put those 150 words, notwithstanding the task force inclination to see it in an thive light. But in saying that, i want to be clear that i dont, and i dont think that the board is trying in any way to suppress free speech or deny mr. Hartz an opportunity to be heard. I really sincerely believe that. So i just wanted everyone to know that. Not supposed to apparently once the commissioners start to deliberate, but im happy to hear from you personally if you have a clarification. I would concur with commissioner ambroses sentiment sentiment. I think that the 150word summary is contained in the minutes. Its a matter of location. And that the reference in the agenda item where it lists all of the Public Commenters and the gist of their comment as well as a reference to the page number in the addendum where the written comment can be seen, i think is a it satisfies the legal requirements of including the Public Comment in the minutes. I would concur with what she just said. Without discussing the policy issues or the free speech or constitutional issues, from the standpoint of simply legal interpretation, i dont think the code section requires that it be in the body. The code section simply says what it says. And if theres an argument to be made, it seems to me its in the way the code is written. And the code should have said what it meant or been more specific if there was a now, that doesnt mean that there arent policy reasons to discuss. And apparently other commissions have decided theres certainly no reason not to put it in the body according to the code. But i find it difficult to see a legal violation, simply from the standpoint of legal interpretation and code interpretation and the way its written. Commissioner gray. I concur. If i were mr. Hartz, i would want to see it right where it should be in sequential order, but the statute doesnt say that, so i dont think we can find a violation. And i agree, it makes sense to me to have it in sequential order as opposed to having to find an addendum and search, but statute is just, its vague. So i dont think we can find a violation. But the task force will decide what the policy is, and they have decided it, and they have issued memorandums saying what the policy is. I think commissioner lee had a question had a comment, but i would like to ask the City Attorney, in terms reviewing questions of law as that may have been interpreted by the Sunshine Ordinance Task force, i believe that the commission can review the findings, the legal findings of the task force de novo thats correct. As jeff pierce explained on questions of law, the commission does review de novo. Commissioner lee thank you. The commission had an earlier discussion regarding the 150word Public Comment in our own minutes. But i think that fox news notwithstanding, i would like to see Civic Engagement in all aspects of government, and which means that it would be great if we have dozens and dozens of people commenting at proceedings or commission proceedings. And i think logistically, of course, i echo my fellow commissioners comments that the Public Comment is included in the body of the Public Record, whether you include it in the specific item or put it as an addendum or what have you, but it is part of the Public Record, which is really important in respect to respecting the publics point of view and the right to speech. So my i think since theres no legal statute to require that the Public Comment be specificallyplaced within a certain body, and theres effort to show that any interest of parties can say, hey, how many people commented on this specific item, you can refer to page whatever whatever. I think that that would satisfy all parties. And i think that in terms of publics right to engage, if i were resident, i may not want to go through 200 pages of Public Comment to go to an item that i was interested in. But as long as i know if i want to read, what people have been saying about a previous item, i could refer to a specific page, which i understand the board of supervisors has committed to do. So another comment i have is regarding the communication pages, the website that the board of supervisors have, i assume people click on a certain item and it would go directly to a specific page that would include Public Comments on that . Or how does that go . Im very lowtech so i have never used the web pages from the city before. Deputy director of operations for the clerk of the board. It depends on how the communication is submitted. If its just a general communication without any reference to any particular legislative item, with no legislative file number reference then there wouldnt be linkage. However if it is tied to a specific file number, it is searchable by that file number. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments from commissioners . I would like to make a motion that the board of supervisors president norman yee did not find that the board of supervisors president did not violate administrative code 67. 16 and 67. 31. And that the legal interpretation of this commission is that theres no legal requirement under the code that Public Comment be placed in the body of the minutes. A second from commissioner lee. All in favor . Aye. All opposed . The motion is carried unanimously. Handicap like that, i knew i would lose, because thats what you always do for sunshine ordinance. Every single one. Every single person. You deny every single one. [off mic] agenda item number 6. Discussion and possible action on proposed bylaw amendment, article 7, section 4 to revise regular meeting schedule effective april 2020. Commissioners, item 6 is in your agenda packets to allow the commission to act on proposed bylaws changed that would change the regular meeting date of the commission from the third friday of the month beginning at 2 00, change it to friday mornings beginning at 9 30 on the second friday of the month. You will recall this was discussed last month, directed that a Public Notice be issued to enable the public to be notified of the potential bylaws change. We were able to distribute that along with the language of the bylaws change as required by the bylaws change process. And for the memo before you shows the dates this would take effect. It is proposed to take effect beginning in april 2020. So the commission under the proposal before you would be to continue the commissions current meeting schedule on the third friday at 2 00 until the month of april, 2020 at which point the commission would switch to a regular meeting day of a second friday of the month beginning at 9 30 in room 400 rather than 416. So that is the proposal. The attachment that is included in this memo shows, depicts on a calendar so the public can see what those dates would be and the meeting dates that would be adopted pursuant to this bylaws change if the commission adopts, is shown on agenda item 6 page 2. Commissioner lee. I have a question regarding the earlier starting time. Is there anyone scheduled in the afternoon using that room . So right now we have this room forever so we can meet until past midnight. But for the room 400 meetings in the future, do you know if theres any other Commission Meetings scheduled, say, in the afternoons, that we would need to vacate this room . Would there be a stopping point or limitation on the time that we have . I will have to check. Typically the schedule of city hall rooms are quite packed. So it is possible that there may be other meetings after our meeting. But typically they book the room one hour before and after so the room is locked until 9 30 to 3 00 positive p. M. Yeah. So we do have the whole day. We are not going to be here six hours. Is there any objections received about this . I understand a notice was and i havent heard anything here yet, but i guess well ask. But was there any mail or anything received in response to this that you are aware of . Im aware of one email that we received, a general comment saying that 9 30 in the morning might provide less opportunity for the public to engage than a friday afternoon at 2 30. Any other comments . Commissioner ambrose . I did just want to say and i appreciate that were deferring this change overbecause of my schedule, but april 10 is the beginning of passover and its good friday so on the chance that anyone knows they might have travel plans or something that weekend, and if we wanted to defer and stay with the third, with the existing schedule which would be the third friday at 2 00 p. M. For april, i just want to put that out there. It doesnt matter to me. My schedule is i think thats a good idea. We didnt look at that. Thats a very good point. Friday, april 10 is good friday and the beginning of passover. So the commissioner ambrose, are you suggesting that we start the new schedule at 9 30 on friday, may 8 . Correct. And i guess since weve noticed this, im assuming we also have the right to make modifications to it as proposed schedule. I know you had so the proposed bylaw amendment had to be noticed, but since it has been noticed, we were able to tinker with it. Okay. And i would recommend that we start effective the change in the schedule, effective may, for the may 8 meeting. Any other commissioner comments or questions . Public comment . Commissioners, ray hartz, director San Francisco open government. I really dont think it matters when you meet. When i first started coming to these meetings more than a dozen years ago, they were held on the evening around 5 00 p. M. , and there was usually about half the auditorium filled up with members of the public. And you moved to a daytime and it went down to a few. Now the only people who come to these meetings are people who have a matter before the body. And whether you intend it or not, and i really do think you intend it, your intention is to cut back on purpose participation. The to put it at a time when normal working people wont be able to attend or families who have to find childcare needs cant attend. I mean, do you want the public here or not . I dont think you do. Because every time you change when you meet, it is to a time which is more hassle to the public being able to attend and palpable. And frankly, i see why, the public has caught onto something ive known for quite a long time. You dont want their input. You dont give a damn about their input, and you are going to do whatever you need to to hold these meetings at such a fashion at such a time the public will be uncomfortable in attending, they will not be able to attend, and if they have something to say, any of the meaning of what they had to say before you will never make it into your minutes, because they dont even know about my option of the 150award summary. And i think that is basically the problem with the Ethics Commission that i have seen over the years. You meet, and i dont know whose interest you serve but certainly not the ethics of this committee. I have never, ever seen you do anything except shuffle papers, rewrite the law and the ethics in this city are absolutely no better, in fact, they are worse than they were when i first started coming a dozen years ago. And you could sit there and go, oh, no, thats not true, thats not hey, one of your last president s resigned, a former Commission Member judge cop went to the newspaper and said how ineffective and how useless this body was after he had been serving on the body so it isnt just my opinion but youre a worthless waste of time. I think the general public has gotten to that same thing and even some of your own members. One of your president s got so disgusted he quit, he resigned in the middle of the meeting. What kind of a body does it take to act in ways that someone who is a law professor will get up so disgusted and say, i quit . Thank you. Any other Public Comment . Other comments or questions from commissioners . The only thing i wanted to say is i actually think that the purpose of moving it to 9 30 is with the hope that we will be able to get more people to attend that having a meeting at the end of the day on a friday, when people often have plans for that evening or the weekend, there are a lot of people who do work who might be able to come in and i think we are open to looking at alternative times of my it is a struggle, apparently, because of the limited room availability. Ive seen this before with other commissions trying to find a time that is most available to the public, but i do want to say that that is our reason is to find a time that will work for people. I would concur with my fellow commissioners. Commissioner am brothers comments ambroses comments. I would make a motion to amend the bylaws to read as follows. Effective in may, 2020, regular meetings shall be held on the second friday of each month, except in the case of a cityrecognized holiday or unavailability of a televised meeting room when the meeting shall be held on the closest practical day. Unless otherwise noted, meetings shall be held at city hall carlton b. Goodlet place, beginning at 9 30 a. M. All in favor . Aye . Those opposed . The motion is approved unanimously. Agenda item 7, discussion and possible action on proposed amendments to regulations related to article 28 chapter 1 of the article iii, chapter 1 of the governmental campaign and conduct code. Thank you chair chiu and commissioners. Im pat ford, senior policy and legislative affairs council. Happy new year to you. Its good to see you again. We have a new meeting schedule, new leadership, i think you have a very good 2020 to look forward to. Im glad to present this agenda item to you and i hope its the first of many agenda items this year that continue all the projects that youve been working on over the past number of months and hopefully some new projects that well talk about maybe in the next agenda item. But anyhow, just like to start off by saying that. Its very good to see you. This agenda item, weve talked about many times at many meetings. So ill be very brief. But i do want to give a quick intro on it for the benefit of anybody who is just joining this discussion now. This agenda item contains a set of regulations that would require that all City Employees who are already required under the law to file the statement of economic interests do so using an online digital filing system. First, what is the form 700 . Its a form created by the state, by the fair political practices commission, and its used by employees of state and local government, elected and appointed officials, all kinds of people in government across the state to disclose their personal financial interests. There are a number of Important Reasons for that. Dont need to go into depth about that right now. But essentially in San Francisco right now, officials such as yourselves or elected officials like members of the board of supervisors file electronically using an Online Filing system. However, employees like myself and thousands of other employees in the city filed this form in a paper format, either with your department or with a related department, maybe a Parent Department. And thats created basically a twotier system of disclosure where you have some people filing electronically with those disclosures being very easily accessible to the public, and you have a much larger group of people filing on paper, a format thats less efficient for the filer and also less available to the public. So what these regulations that are before you today would do is to create a single uniform system of filing, all electronic, essentially to move everyone who is filing on paper into the existing Electronic Filing system thats already being used by officials in the city. Purposes for that as i just mentioned, easier filing experience and better availability of information to the public. By way of background, i want to mention these regulations have been noticed before the public for ten days, so you can vote on them. And further more, as i discussed at earlier meetings, staff, assisted by the department of Human Resources, have already met with employee bargaining units, we have talked about this project of having employees file electronically. We have discussed the impacts of that. And we have explored some ways to help ease the transition, including training, written resources, and having employee bargaining units be more involved with departments during the code review, which is a way for departments to go back and look at which employees are required to file. So the upshot is that the meet and confer process is concluded, the regulations have been noticed, you can vote on them, and you can approve this today, should you so choose. But before i conclude, i do want to just mention to you that aside from the actual efiling requirement, because thats only one of these regulations, the others kind of setup processes to make that work. So you see in here that there are provisions that have the filer provide Contact Information to the filers filing officer. Thats the filing officer can set up the online account, basically get a user name and password for the filer. And then theres a process for the filing officer to ask for that information. Theres a deadline for that. Theres a deadline to file the information. Theres a deadline for the filing officer to can create the account and provide the log ininformation. Thats why this is a page and a half and not just one line. So i wanted to explain as its not so simplistic. It also sets up a infrastructure for administration which is necessary for any of these kinds of programs. So we believe that this was comprehensive of what needs to be in place in order for the Ethics Commission and all the departments to bring this project to fruition. And with that, i will answer any questions that you might have about the regulations or about this project, generally. Any questions from commissioners . I just had one question, mr. Ford, and that is for the paper filers of the form 700, those are kept on file with their respective office, so their filing officer. And so as a result, they are not searchable from a online database standpoint but from an after these implemented regulations and january 1, 2021, next year . Yes. They will be filing electronically thats correct. So to your question about how paper filed forms are available. All employee filers have a filing officer, typically another employee in their department, sometimes somebody in a department that is kind of a Parent Department to them. So if theres divisions or smaller departments within one larger department, sometimes they will file with, for example, the city administrator, if you are in a department that the administrator oversees. But, yes, you are correct that once the employee files on paper, the filing officer has to keep track of the employees compliance and report to us if theres noncompliance, and the paper form 700 goes into a filing cabinet. And it is available, it is a Public Record. It must be produced in full form if it is requested. But thats the problem is that its not always clear to somebody what forms to request or where to go to get them. Theres no one stop shop for form 700. Thats what this project would create. [please stand by] you could still do the kind of individual specific search that you can do now with form 700. If somebody wanted to know about my personal financial interest they could request my paper form 700. Under e filing they could see everything i have an interest in. That wont be go away. Additionally you will have a powerful tool to search all of the forms at once, which this is the future. This is the direction we are moving with, all forms. This is important to have this form included with that kind much progress, too. Commissioner, i have a question. Just to be clear, the database will be all encompassing for the city so you dont need to know the name of the department, you will be able to do a name entry or Something Like that . Thats correct. Larry bush in some comments raised some interesting questions that i am going to want to follow up on. I can understand that we wouldnt necessarily want to modify the form 700 because it is a standard form. It comes from the state, right . But that the crossreferencing other databases about statement of incomof of various reques. Can you have an opening page that if you wanted something that you had a database on you can go to these other places. There is some whatever, just a footnote or reference to allow people to tie it together. Then this is to the City Attorneys office. You raise some questions about a conflict between the code and state law. I dont know if you have seen any of these since these were directed. These were comments that come in 2018. We dont need to follow up now, but i want to get an answer to that and if we need to come up with a solution to it, then we can work on that. I can briefly address that. If you are referring to number three on the list . I am 64308 problem. He is conflating charitable contributions with campaign contributions. Those are two different kinds of payments subject to different rules. He is confusing them as a single type. All right. I will think about that. I will read it. Thank you. I didnt want to lose the thought because i am still trying to understand all of the moving parts. Anyway, thank you. Any other questions for mr. Ford . Okay. I would move that we im sorry. Public comment. Commissioners, director of San Francisco open government. In management i talked to the university of hawaii for 14 years. There is the preto principal. 80 of what a body or individual or business does has very little impact or effect. 20 is important. I have often over the years it is like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. You basically dont do anything to make the city any more ethical at all. I have called a number of times for any commissioner to point out one single thing this Ethics Commission does that makes our politicians more honest, open, transparent or anything else. All you have to do is look at the last case this body chose to deal with. That hearing regarding former supervisor mark farrell, which you screwed up so badly, the only thing to do was come to an agreement he would pay a little fine and he got away with it. That is one of the reasons the former commissioner quentin kopp resigned. It doesnt make any difference what you do. In fact, i think what you do discourages people. I am a member of men sa. I looked at the election laws. I would have to be insane to want to run for anything in the city. You have so many rules and regulations that no normal human being can understand them, let alone meet them. The only cases you choose to go after where people violate them are little petty things where somebody owes the city 1,000 or 1,500. Those drag on for years and years and years. I havent looked yet. We are probably going to get to the cases and the same cases there three years ago are probably still on the list. You can it is here and you can shuffle papers or whatever. I think the preto principal as it applies to this body is 991 . 99 of what you do doesnt mean jack. 1 is only meeting the legal requirements. I really do regret the fact i havent had a chance t to do my 150 word summaries today. Starting next month given you are moving to an earlier time i will devote every friday to come to every meeting. Thank you. Any other Public Comment . I would like to move to approve these proposed amendments to the regulations related to article iii chapter one of the governmental conduct code. Second. In favor, aye. Opposed. The motion is approved unanimously. Thanks to staff for your work on this. I know with all of the Union Meetings and explanatory conferences it was a lot of work. I think it will be really helpful. Item 8. Discussion of monthly staff policy report. Thank you commissioners. Agenda item 8 is staff policy report, and right now the e filing regs this is wrapping up on the policy side now that you have approved the regulations i will transmit those to the board of supervisors today where they it is for 60 days. The board can veto them or call a hearing or veto the regulations. If that doesnt happen they will be in effect in 60 days. There are different parts of the regulations with e filing starting january 1 next year and the procedures starting in september. This project will kind of drop into the background. I will be advising, but now that the meet and confer and the regulation process is concluded, really this project along with the Public Financing review project is in its final stages. That is a good update. I had originally forecasted bringing the policy plan to you this month, but after consulting with the Commission Leadership, i am going to wait until a later meeting so that we can coordinate the policy plan with the change in Commission Leader slip. I hope that that is okay with you, and i would be glad to hear your feedback on that idea. We have been talking about bringing this plan for a while, but i want to do it at a time that makes sense for everybody and that will be most effective for you. Feel free to give me feedback on that, if you would like. I would like to also highlight some work that is going on office wide that i am part of. That is the biannual review of form 700 list. I anticipate recommending this to you as policy project for the next really for the next year. This will probably be about a year long process that involves our office, the City Attorneys office, the clerk of board of supervisors, and department of Human Resources all working together to help departments review their list of filers, which is required under state law every other year, and to especially with the department of Human Resources facilitate involvement of any employee bargaining units that want to give feedback to departments about filers that they think shouldnt file or should time different disclosure category. That is going on now and warrants our involvement for much of the coming calendar year. Aside from that working with other folks in the office to identify areas that would be good candidates for policy projects and hoping to bring that to you at the next meeting or the one after that. I will stop and turn it over to any questions that you have. One question about the biannual review form 700 filler list. Would the work be done in 2020 in order to update or revise the required list of filers to be ready for the 2021 filing . Thats correct. State law creates some deadlines and essentially by i believe the first of july the board of supervisors has to send out a notice to the departments to tell them to start the review and provide the board with any changes to their filer list. Actually it is by march of next year that the ordinance has to be in effect, but i think traditionally the City Attorneys office has urged the city to complete that process much earlier, which i think is the right way to go. Typically that has been done in late summer or fall. This year we are looking at really changing a lot, moving it much earlier. In fact, the clerk of the board is hoping to send out a notice this month and send out another notice in april so the departments get two notices. They get them early. We hope to get people thinking about that. So they have a meaningful time to engage and himself we are anticipating. E filing will start that the employee unions will have greater interest to give feedback who should be filing since you have form 700 readily available that may incentivize them to pare down the list of filers. That remains to be seen. That is why we are moving the processor not move it but start it earlier so there is more time to have that happen. Good to have more runway. Comments or questions, commissioners . Public comment . Ray hard director of San Francisco open government. The Electronic Filing of form 700 what difference does it make if you get the forms and do nothing with them. A perfect example. For three years the former city librarian was receiving 5,000 or more each year from the friends o of the San Francisco Public Library. He filed the form 700 saying he had got nothing. I brought it to the Ethics Commission, the former directory fused to deal with it. I and two other members of the public took him to the fpbc in sacramento. They found him to have violated the law in the three year period which is as far back as they could go. They fined him a few thousand dollars and he was to put in new forms stating that he had got even in each of those three years 5,000 from this group and then lied under penalty of perjury saying he had not. You can get as many 700s and fill out as many sheets of paper and kill as many trees as you want, but if you are not going to do anything with what you have, what difference . I will go back to the mark farrell case. That dragged on for three years until it got to the point where they said this is so screwed up there is nothing we can do except bargain with him to pay i think a 30 or 35,000 fine. I will bring it next time. That was just, i think, 15 what he was originally charged for. You can fill out your paperwork and rearrange it and whatever. All you do is make it difficult for people who want to run for Public Office here and for citizens who are honest, which is 99. 9 of our citizens who fill out their forms only to send them in with people like formter city librarian who was a crook. You dont seem to care about that. It doesnt seem to, you know, register on your radar at all. As far as the policy prioritization plan. I have been here a dozen years. It doesnt matter who the staff or executive director is. I had high hopes for the correct executive director. Mr. St. Croix was a crook. He was nothing but, basically, i have been disappointed over and over. I dont think this Ethics Commission has any intention of doing anything to affect the ethics of this city. Thank you. Any other Public Comment. Agenda item 9. Discussion of monthly staff enforcement report, including an update of various programs and operational high lights of the enforcement programs activities since the last monthly meeting. Thank you. This months report provides highlight of one of the new protocols that we have implemented within the Enforcement Division, and by way of background, the goal of the Enforcement Division, something we have spent a considerable amount of time over the last 6 to 12 months evaluating is how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the work that the Enforcement Division does to implement the enforcement mandate that is assigned to the commission. We have certainly heard the feedback of the public, heard the feedback of former members of the commission and current members of the commission but independent of that feedback, our division wishes to increase efficiency and effectiveness. One of the weighs in which we sought to do that is to diminish the amount of time investigators or staff spend interfacing with complaints where it is clear the complaint would not fall to the jurisdiction of the Ethics Commission. This is the protocol we described to you in the presentation in august of 2019 when we presented to the commission an overview of process improvements the division was undertaking at that time. This particular protocol takes advantage or acknowledges a distinction the charter and enforcement regulations provide between formal or sworn complaints and informal or unsworn complaints. The charter requires the enforcement director consider review process formal complaints that are sworn, but it provides discretion to the enforcement director whether to consider informal complaints. As a matter of general practice we have not distinguished, we have considered all of them. Certainly the commission understands that anonymous complaints can have as much merit as a sworn complaint. There are those instances in which we receive informal complaints where we can tell from the face of the complaint whether or not that is a email or phone conversation some other body would be better equipped to deal with that complaint. We have a process called consultation and no further action. That means instead of adding that complaint to the docket and requiring investigators to analyze and provide a report to me to the executive director, in most cases as the enforcement director i interface directly with the complainnents. If they reach out by email, i respond by email. Occasionally i respond by phone. If i think there are benefits they reach out by phone and we have that conversation over the phone. There are other instances where complainants called and i have not been available until the front office would direct those calls to any of the investigators, in particular who is on duty that day. In short, if we know at the outset that the Ethics Commission is the wrong place for this informal complaint we will do everything to explain our jurisdiction and direct them to another body better equipped to serve their interest. Since we have started tracking this, we have received over the last four months or so at least two dozen complaints through this protocol. That means on average six fewer reports staff are writing every month and i and the executive director would have to review and process. If you look to the statistics this year or this month rather you will see we have fewer than 50 complaints in preliminary review. As a reminder that is the process whereby staff conducts a triage to determine whether there are enough facts in the complaint, if it is colorable and allegations violations within our jurisdiction. We have fewer than 50 complaints awaiting that triage. 70 of those we received in the last six months, and 40 of those complaints awaiting triage we received within the last six weeks. We endeavor to diminish the time it takes to get through that triage and the goal of the division is to ensure that triage is provided within a six week period for all complaints that come in. That is the goal we are working toward this fiscal year. If you look at the statistics regarding open investigations, you will see that we have approximately twice as many complaints now under investigation as we do awaiting triage. Half of the complaints are in the Campaign Finance context. I think given that much of the enforcement work the commission does is driven by complaint it may make sense there are a considerable number of complaints in the Campaign Finance because that is where the public is paying close attention and individuals are motivated to file complaints in that area. Among the 90 odd complaints under investigation, twothirds are two years old or younger so the majority of the complaints are within the last two years. It is the goal of the division to resolve all investigations within a twoyear period at most. That is like the six week period for triage and complaints. Two years is the maximum we hope to resolve investigations. That is the goal we are moving toward. As a reminder from data we presented in august. It is an industry average. If that is the right benchmark is the question. It is the average that the time that passes between alleged misconduct and the resolution of the particular matter among several of our peer agencies is approximately 2. 3 or 2. 4 years. We hope to diminish the time it takes us and we will come back to you in the future with additional methods that will be employed to accomplish that. Quickly, on the status of can accounts before the bureau of delinquent revenue, we were unable to provide an update in time for meeting materials to have been finalized. We did receive that from the bureau and a couple items of note for your benefit would be that the bureau as to mr. Chris jackson is preparing a wage garnishment which they intend to serve. I believe they will serve that on mr. Jacksons Payroll Office and not directly upon mr. Jackson. I dont 100 know the procedure there. As to ms. Sweet. You will remember from from prior meetings we were optimistic about settlement. She has stopped communicating with the bureau legal department. They have to pursue an entry of default judgment against her. Maybe lastly, another highlight would be that the bureau has mailed an intention to file a lawsuit against the arlo Smith Committee at the bottom of that particular table for you. Then lastly, the Commission Collection officer referred six additional accountings to the bureau. Those will be in future updates. Thank you. Any questions from commissione commissioners . Commissioners ray hard director San Francisco government. If i heard directly, a complaint is filed on average we are going to do 2. 3 to 2. 4 years to come to a conclusion. I have served in the last 11 elections as a poll inspector. I know elections happen much quickly than every two years. So we are talking about having complaints that just drag on and drag on and drag on. In fact, i referenced this earlier. If you look on page 3 of the document, you will see the referral date for Chris Jackson. July 2013. Seven years ago. Another one for Chris Jackson september 2016. Four years ago. Committee to elect norman for supervisor, our present board of supervisors president , may 2015, five years ago is still there. Elizabeth urbano mar2016. Lynnette suite, december 2016. Basically, it is just like a board where it kind of you drop one in one end and pushes another one out the other end and nothing happens. This is exactly what happened to the problem with formter supervisor former supervisor just lost his name. Who was in the similar circumstance and former executive director let this same thing go on until it got to where they couldnt do anything to him, and he only sent h settd because he was up for reelection and wanted it off the newspaper headlines. Your own president called him dishonest in the newspapers. Ir will bring that with me next time. You shuffle papers. You make a list, push people in one end, they bump off. It is like the game on price is right. You push the little blocks and they drop off the end april you wait until you get the price of the prize before you win it. That is what you do with all of these things. Very frankly, why shouldnt people cheat the city when they know the only people watching them are you, and you all fit under the thomas acquire nuss rule. Willful ignorance is a mortal sin. Boy, are you sinners. For the record, those are collection matters. Those judgments were secured long ago but getting the money out of the pockets is a longer legal process. Thank you for that. Can i ask for clarification. The speaker had alleged one of the items involving a current supervisor. I dont think that is the same. Thats correct, commissioner lee. I would like that on record. This is not. I believe that is right. He made a reference to an account that refers to the committee norman. That is correct. Thank you. Any other further Public Comment . Agenda item 10. Staff over view presentation and discussion ofth third quarters Commission Budget proposal for fiscal year 2021. I would draw your attention to item 10. The memo reproride option ride provided. We have our copilot to make sure we are providing full information analysis for you in the budget process. We are here for questions. I want to highlight a few things from this agenda item and the reason it is on todays agenda. You may recall at a resent meeting i indicated city budgets are due to the Mayors Office on february 21st. There is also an ordinance approved by the board of supervisors this past year upping the city game in terms of Public Engagement about city budget preparation and wants to move towards much more Public Awareness awareness in discussions City Departments. For us we have a regular Commission Meeting. We wanted to make sure we were able to put on this agenda for your discussion and input the recommendation that we have developed at the staff level for what we anticipate are our needs for the fy21 budget process. Other departments will do that over the next several weeks. The mayor Mayors Office asked everyone to do that no late they are tathanfebruary 14th. We want you to comment on it before it is submitted before your next meeting. That is why the information is here. We will be continuing to refine this document, and i will speak later about responding to the budget innstructions that the mayor issued for departments this year. There is a direction issued from the Mayors Office all departments produce cuts for this budget year of 3. 5 in fy21 beginning july 1 and 3. 5 the following year. The report at the back shows what those figures would be for our department. That is what we will provide more detail to over the course of the next month as we meet with the Mayors Office about the impact of those cut, were they imposed on the commission. First and for massachusett fores important to bring to you what we have as a real world assessment what it takes in the coming budget year to do the job and the mandate we are asked to do by the voters when they created the commission as that has expanded over the years with increasing opportunity but also demands of legislation and new programs. We have taken a look over the last year of the staff and the office assessing where we have come over the past several years. We have put together a Budget Proposal that is a 15 increase over the fy20 base operating budget of 4. 5 million. This is a process that is building on a Strategic Foundation that started in 2016 when i first joined the commission. The commission embraced the document to focus on very specific goals, and first and foremost were organizational efficiencies to make sure we had the structure and tools and approaches to better serve the mission that we have and better accomplish the goals that we had establishing the charter and other provisions of law. Obviously, as we spent time talking about effective enforcement we worked through Additional Resources and new structures and processes to clarify and strengthen that area so we have timely enforcement and case resolution. We have been focused over the last couple years with being on the executive fellow and Mayors Office to being the Department Director to development an expended team. We know that over time the commission has done a very good job of assisting people to understand Campaign Finance laws. We have not spent as much time really reaching out to city officials and employees on ethics issues, helping with statements of Economic Issues so that city officials are comfortable they know the rules of the road. That is something we have been working to build and have some success doing that with the works that has been led. We know the stakeholder base is much broader than the folk we say are usually in contact with. There is a broad world and part of the budget is broadening the impact of the work we have to get outside of the office to help people with the information that we have to understand the disclosures required of city officials, why important, how they can use them to be better engaged and informed participants in democracy and City Government. We had a strengthened policy unit several years ago and staffing that. Forward to where we are in fy21. A couple basic points. As a Small Department we have 24 fulltime staff positions. We have currently a four vacancies around the office. Audit, enforcement, technology and the other in policy. We are a small office. 87 of the budget is salaries and benefits. We have a very thin resourced operation otherwise. We were happy over the last couple years to have a training budget established for the first time, meaningful training budget of 30,000 for the staff. It used to be 4,000. We know in order to support, to help develop and retain staff, who are terrific, we need to invest in them. That is something we have been able to take advantage of and we look forward to continue to do that. Since 2016, by the time the positions are filled we will have twothirds of the staff recently hired in the last two or three years. That again speaks to the need to continue to develop and invest longterm the skills and talents that folks are bringing to their work. Page 3 of the memo gives you the overview what the current structure of the Commission Staffing looks like for the program breakdown. This leads to the areas of specific budget request in this years document in front of you. You can see the divisions we have. Each of them under the blue boxes on page three of the memo highlight they are blue if you have color and gray if you dont. They show the positions of our work and various functions within those program areas. One of the things is at the bottom of the first column is items in bold. Budget, performance, hr, recruit meant and staff training and development. These are functions that are very near and deer to my heart and to that of the Deputy Director. You can see those are currently under our Deputy Director in charge of our program areas, Campaign Finance, lobbying program, economic interest, training, materials, outreach, web content. One of the things we looked at critically is how do we adapt our budget and operations to make sure we are applying the right resources in the right way to do the work necessary to do as the City Department . One of the conclusions is that we can no longer use the model of absorbing these functions within the roles of the executive director and Deputy Director. These are ongoing,ness and critical functions that require special skills and assistance. We have not staffed ourselves at that level in my tenure and before i arrived that was also the case. Our first goal is to make sure we were assessing the needs for direct services and support for the work we do on our core mission. What we we realized is that we are compromising the ability to do that effectively by not having the appropriate resources across the bench to provide these services. We have been delayed in getting the positions filled. We are delayed whenmize time is not able to be devoted to getting the cases through. We are delayed in getting education and training to the level we know we want to and we can with the resources and talent that we have on staff to be able to develop an Educational Support Program for folks around the city. This is one piece that we have identified. We are asking this year, hr finance and operations to focus those functions and leverage that work much more effectively and efficiently to make sure we get our work done as well in other areas. Related to this we also have been building a lot of you see it every month when we have presentations about our data dashboards and the technology to put this in a digital way so people can access it in a way that is meaningful. We have been doing a helpful job with support of the committee on Information Technology to go from paper to digital. One of the things we will be stopped dead in tracks doing is being able to deliver on the dashboards that need created for the data ditc digital. To know how they can use that information. We have a lot of work to be done. If we do not continue to Fund Information Systems Engineer position that we received funding on a oneyear limited term for in this current fiscal year, that work will be stalled. It wont happen. That is at a time when we are perfectly poised to make a difference in the city and outside of the confines of City Government to engage people with information. Thirdly, as we continue to realign and assess what work looks like and is evolving. One of the things we will do is not be shy about saying the nature of work is changing. We asked in this budget one other change would be to realign a policy position to reflect the work we are doing across the board. There are many complex policy projects. Form 700, e filing for all or others that come along that we are developing, we are initiating with other city partners, and we are implementing. That takes a high level of coordination and collaboration. Those are beyond what we envisioned. One of the things we are doing is to be candid where we need to grow those positions to keep pace with the policy agenda and ability to implement processes across the city done in an effectives way. That is one thing in the budget as well. We have other nonpersonnel items. I draw your attention to dollar amounts. We are talking such small numbers. It is resources. We understand a dollar spent on our work is a dollar not spent on other work. We want to make sure we are using the dollar as efficiently as possible. Two things to draw your attention to. We are initiating a request with the Controllers Office for 30,000 to provide work order support for controller functions that we are not staffed to do. The controller has been very much a help and gracious with work and staff over the years. They can no longer sustain that model. We dont have funding to get that work done unless we establish a work order to provide the services identified. This is part of being a grown up City Department but we dont have resources for that. We need to have that in the coming year as we staff up the other positions. One last position that i would mention is something we submitted a request for today. That is to the committee on Information Technology. This is on the last page or page 8. This is the Customer Support for e filing. It is a oneyear limited Term Position, but we have identified through working with City Departments, department of Human Resources with the bargaining units as pat mentioned it is essential to provide Technical Support to implement this process soundly. We are proposing one year limited Term Position to get through that transition so we can provide that Technical Support and serviceness. We dont have the resources to make that support happen. It is something we recognize the importance of. One thing to come back to. This is important. This is a budget request we are proposing because we believe it speaks to essential needs that we center to have to do our work. Not having this work, we will be forced to identify areas of things we have to stop doing. That is something to be in conversation about internally and can raise as we know more. With 87 of the funding staffing cuts will eat into the staffing resources. It is through staffing we achieve the work we need to do on behalf of San Francisco. The mayor has been clear in issuing budget innstructions about the priorities in San Francisco. There are desperate needs for dealing with homelessness, clean streets. We know the mayor is committed to act ability and transparent government and makings sure we have a topnotch work force working as strongly as possible to support transparent government. Our work we are not in a position to provide beds or to provide housing or to maybe clean streets we can do on an occasional weekend. Our work is to support the citys work force and make sure our Decision Making is of integrity and that our work is supporting equity throughout the city. Decisions are made on the merits and not to selfinterest or ordealings that we all find improper. I think there is alignment with our priorities and what we in our conversations with the Mayors Office we look forward to talking with the mayors team when that. Come february 21st, the system that budgets our entries to submit them are restrictive. There will be a dollar amount permitted to be entered. At this point my guess it is not the dollar amount we are requesting in this proposal. That is the reality of the budget process every year. In my judgment it is our job to identify the critical needs. We do not fluff the budget to hope to get half of it. We will make tradeoffs. We want to be clear about the need. If we have to not be able to secure the resources then we need to be clear with ourselves with the public and with elected officials and others what we will not be able to do. With that i want to and if she has anything to add or if you yu want to have any comments i am happy to add at this time. Commissioners. I would say that i think the commission is part of the city family, but it is also charted by the voters. Understand that constraints that are facing the city and that under which it has to operate. We also have a public trust as you noted to uphold. A mandate recently approved by the voters to implement, and that we need the resources to do that to be effective. I think that the proposal here and increase of 15. 5 seems like a big number. In the large scheme of things, i think the staff has been the same size for the last five years . Yet the work has expanded. As mr. Pierce outlined to us during Public Comment it is taking two plus years to get through an investigation. That is a function of resources. There is only so many hours in the day and so many cases that someone can handle. Whatever we can do from here to help support you and emphasize the importance of funding and supporting the commission at this critical juncture, please let us know what we can do to do that. I think that the work that Steven Massey is leading and with tyler on creating dashboards to make the data accessible and searchable is the critical piece of making the government and Campaign Finance accountable and transparent to the voters of San Francisco. I think the one year funding we received gave us a good start, but in the absence of additional funding through this Budget Proposal, i think that will grind to a halt and that the price to be paid will be by the people of San Francisco because they wont have access to the information. The form 700e filing rollout could go well or not. The prudent thing to do is to prepare for support to help 3500 people navigate a very new system so it goes smoothly and so that everything will work as intended. I think from my position i would hope that the Mayors Office would consider our request in good faith and please let us know what we can do to help support your efforts in that discussion. Any other comments or questions . Public comment . Commissioners, ray hard San Francisco open government. I have been following this and attending meetings of this commission since a decade or more ago. I have to say that under former executive director john st. Croix he asked for a zero percent increase. I thought that was very appropriate because they werent doing anything. Giving them more money to do nothing was idiotic. He was honest about that. When ms. Pel lum came in i heard about things about what she had done in los angeles. They asked for a budget increase. I had high hopes for what they could do. Here we are years later. Again, it is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. If i am not mistaken there are 24 staff and so few people. Do you know with this number you are looking at here, that is an average of 164,000 per person . How many citizens of San Francisco make anywhere near that kind of pay and benefits . You have got 24 of them. Except i am sure there are certain people that get more than others. Again, when are you going to ever come here and any commissioners tell the citizens of San Francisco exactly something that you have done that has made this place more ethical city . Nothing i have seen. It is like the sunshine ordinance. All of these years and you have sided with the complainant in one case. I have three dozen. What about the hundreds of other people who brought things before you. Every single time you side with the city. That is what we are paying for. We are paying for a bunch of meat puppets who i honestly think somebody up there had a discussion with ms. Calvio prior to that meeting. You can shake you your heads not i remind you 164,000 per person. You still cant get the job done. It still takes two and a half years to process a complaint. I mean i have been looking at these reports for years. The only thing to do each month is change the numbers. They all say the same thing in the same order in the same way. Every agenda is item by item the same agenda. What the hem do you o on what the hell do you do with all of that money . Thank you. Agenda item 11. Discussion of executive directors report. Update of various program and operational written report highlights of the Ethics Commission. I am happy to note the commission is selected for participation in the San Francisco fellows program. That means we have a group of four young individuals who are within five years of having received the College Degree giving their service to the city as employees for the next year. As part of that process they are working with departments on various projects. Our projects is working on the engagement and Compliance Team to put together materials we have not been able to put together and we can use in our outreach and translation services. I want to draw your attention to that. They will start january 22. We are delighted we have that energy and support coming on board shortly. There was also a question that you had last month for an update on the payments reporting. What i want to do is we collected the data and listed in summarized in the attachment tto the executive directors report. It is filed pursuant to section 3. 3610p of the San Francisco campaign of governmental conduct code for payment disclosures in calendar year 2019. Also section 114. 5. This is also on our website. It is to show where the information is available on the website, where it can be found under the disclosure tab, then you can go down to the data sets, some people may call them databases. They contain the information disclosed. From there you can link to excel spreadsheets and play with the data to your hearts content. This is a summary. We wanted to provide it to you as responsive to your request from last month, and if there are further questions or if you would like u us to keep into ths we would be happy to do that. We want to high light that information for you. I think that is the summary of my report for this month unless you have other questions. Any other questions from commissioners . Public comment. No Public Comment. Agenda item 12. Discussion and possible action on items for future meetings. Anything from commissioners . Public comment on item number 12 . Agenda item 13. Additional opportunity for Public Comment on matters appears or not appears on the agenda pursuant to ethicis Commission Bylaws article vii section 2. San Francisco Open government. As much as you would like the public to think i am a malcontent who comes here to cause problems, i was very honest with every board and Commission Meeting i went. I walked in and said my purpose of being here is to ensure members of the public have a full right to participate and comment upon the activities of this body and the meetings. I also have a second purpose and that is to ensure any member of the public who needs access to Public Records to support his or her efforts to improve government, they should get those records without hassle. As you see i have over three dozen determinations by the task force regarding Public Comment or access to Public Records. I see before me five people who i step back from late last year. I dont remember but i came in at one meeting i think in november and made a Public Comment which was typical what i have done so far today. Then i thought to myself. I thought none of these people were here in my experience. So i went away for a few months. I came back and thought maybe there will be a change, you kn know. Hope springs eternal. But there isnt. You are all political appointees of the very bodies you are to maintain ethics of. One works for the mayor, one works for the board of supervisors, one works for the controller, one works for the City Attorney. I cant remember the last one. You are policemen of the people who pay you, who put you on the board and keep you on the boards. How can a reasonable person expect to see any different from you than what we have . You are not honest people. You are not honest people because up silt there and let this City Government do whatever it wants and you wont do a damn thing. As i said, i am sorry i didnt do the 150 word summaries but i will next time because i intend to come back here and call you out. Hillary mantling wrote about commas cromwell, chance lower of henry the eighth of england. Bring up the bodies. You have a ton of bodies to bring up. Thank you. I would note for the record that commissioners appointed to the San FranciscotSan Francisco ethn are not compensated. Agenda item. Motion to adjourn. Second. So moved. We are adjourned. Thank you. [ ] its always a slap in the face to our people and we see that happening all over this country, but always reminded us that as Indigenous People we didnt actually have a place. What we were thought of continuously was as savages and less than, that the white man came to save us. When i first saw the early day statue, i think it brought me back to the time of my ancestors. I think thats where genocide started. That was a time when people were being hunted down and slaughtered and bounties were placed on their heads. Not only were people murdered, our culture was stripped from us. Prior to my lifetime, our families were still in hiding. I think some of the folks do not understand some of the very first laws that were created and what is now called the state of california was extermination laws that legalized the killing of native people. I remember specifically someone had painted in red beneath again side and they put a wine bottle in the hand of the missionaries who was leaning down to hand this bottle to the indian man who was seated on the ground. It was a powerful statement about genocide and the distortion of history and what the true history is. I think that we have to remove all of these stereotypes and strip the world of this racism in order to build it back up with factually correct history and teach people not only native American People behave like this. Were all people, the same as you. We have a 9 00 to 5 00 job. We go to school. Were also different because our history and our ancestors and culture and arts make us different. Public art is very powerful, as we can see for 126 years, the common imagery was upholding white supremacy. Its important that public arts also evolved and what was accepted and appropriate and apparent 120 years ago is not so any longer. I think that its important that the statue went down the way that it did, with Indigenous People coming out from all different walks and different places. That its important for our Younger Generation to see that we can change what history has put up that depicts us. [ ] thats powerful to know that selectivity were able to remove that symbol. We are now able to occupy that space in our own voice. The native american movements that were conducted in the 1970s are extremely important to me because my grandpa was at the forefront of them and he was making the world a better place so that i would grow up in a world where i had one less issue to face and my generation could start from where he worked and continue working from that point. The struggle has been going on for many years to remove this statue, but its only one key in all of San Franciscos history and all of this countrys history about the misrepresentation of how this land was developed and colonized. We have to fight to regain our languages, have access to our lands, to keep our religions from being illegal. That is the legacy, that we are in a continuous struggle. I think those are ways of acknowledging our path so we can move forward together. No one is going home. This has always been our home. How do we learn to live in reciprocity with one another . Thats by acknowledging our histories and moving forward and telling the truth to history. [ ] [ ] the new friday farmer his market is in the u. N. Plaza. It features the best of San Francisco. Grab fresh foods and veggies from the heart of the farmers market. Shop from marker local vendors. Engage in free diy craft sessions and grab lunch representing cuisine from around the world. [ ] we offer 60 varieties of organic fruit and 30 varieties of conventional. One of our best sellers so sellers is our manager in. It is super sweet. We sell 600 pounds a week. One of the things they like about the market as i get to see my regulars on a weekly basis. I get to meet their families and kids and it is really good to be here. San francisco won my heart. One of our vegetables that is very popular is kale. A lot of people go for dino kale our mission is to make sure we have access for everybody to get organic foods, no matter your financial status. We make greeting cards, invitations, enamel pins, and we do workshops. I am participating in this market because it is a great opportunity for local makers to sell to a really Diverse Community of people in San Francisco. They partnered with the market here and invited us to come out and reach out to the public. We are going to do a full event of workshops where you get to arrange your own bouquet. We will teach you all the tricks and techniques and you will be able to take home a bouquet of your own. You. [ ] we really are wanting to bring opportunities to the community to introduce these local makers to a larger audience. This is my own pakistani recipe. It goes with rice, chicken, lamb we have a very delicious drink. We have a lots of variety of foods. [ ] we do lots of different curries. We do three different types of wontons. Spring rolls, too. Thats right. It is really great they are bringing out local artists from around the city to participate and really help us making our business more successful. I came to San Francisco in 1969. I fell in love with this city and and this is where i raised my family at. My name is bobbie cochran. Ive been a holly Court Resident for 32 years. I wouldnt give up this neighborhood for nothing. I moved into this apartment one year ago. My favorite thing is my kitchen. I love these clean walls. Before the remodeling came along, the condition of these apartments had gotten pretty bad, you know, with all the mildew, the repairs. I mean you havent seen the apartment for the program come along. You wouldnt have believed it. So i appreciate everything they did. I was here at one point. I was. Because i didnt know what the outcome of holly court was going to be. You know, it really got was it going to get to the point where we have to be displaced because they would have to demolish this place . If they had, we wouldnt have been brought back. We wouldnt have been able to live in burn. By the program coming along, i welcome it. They had to hire a company and they came in and cleaned up all the walls. They didnt paint the whole apartment, they just cleaned up the mildew part, cleaned up and straighted it and primed it. That is impressive. I was a house painter. I used to go and paint other peoples apartments and then come back home to mine and i would say why couldnt i live in a place like that. And now i do. Hello, im the Deputy Assistant manage and project manager for the control system bureau i consider any department as my extend family i know every member of my department the folks are that that talented and skilled and have their credentials since the people in the site are coming to before theyre put in operation its a good place to visit we share information and support each other the water system is a program we got 26 National Level with regards because of the dedication of any team the people are professional about their work but their folks they care about their community and the project i did this is a Great Organization with plenty of associations in you work hard and if you really do your job not only do you enjoy it but the sky is the limit we had a great job when i open up the paper every day, im just amazed at how many different Environmental Issues keep popping up. When i think about what planet i want to leave for my children and other generations, i think about what kind of contribution i can make on a personal level to the environment. It was really easy to sign up for the program. I just went online to cleanpowersf. Org, i signed up and then started getting pieces in the mail letting me know i was going switch over and poof it happened. Now when i want to pay my bill, i go to pg e and i dont see any difference in paying now. If youre a family on the budget, if you sign up for the regular green program, its not going to change your bill at all. You can sign up online or call. Youll have the peace of mind knowing youre doing your part in your household to help the environment. [drumming]