199,000. This would ensure that t. M. G. And their executives cant give money, that the projects are approved on their merits and not based on money. So with that, i have given you my testimony on the three components of the initiatives. Again, i really agree, i really encourage everyone to read it for themselves, and really thank your support for the measure. Supervisor mar thank you, peter, and for all of your work and these important issues protecting our democracy for so many years. I think that concludes the presentation. Chair ronen fantastic. And if supervisor walton has no comments, well open it up for Public Comment. Please come forward. Vice chair kopp good morning, members of the committee. Im quentin kopp, a former member of the board of supervisors, and id like to divide my remarks in procedural and substantive categories. This has been a long, long process which began in San Francisco in 1973. The trivia question before the committee this morning is what is the first municipality in california to adopt an ordinance to control Campaign Contributions and expenditures. Its not San Francisco. We were second. San diego was first. After san diego adopted an ordinance, i telephoned the city attorney, obtained a copy of it, introduced it in 1973, and it was enacted my memory fails as to whether it was unanimously enacted by the board of supervisors, and it had both spending and donation limits in it. And those spending limits remained in effect until one of the cases John Gollinger referred to, buckley versus vallejo was decided by the United StatesSupreme Court which held that the First Amendment was violated by a spending limitation. And so american government, local, state, and national, has been struggling ever since to control a campaigns spending through laws addressing [inaudible] chair ronen judge kopp, can you continue with the point that youre making, please. Oh, did you have a time limit on testimony . Chair ronen i wanted to hear both. All rig. Vice chair kopp all right. Let me see how fast i can say i wa want i was appointed to the commission by the board of supervisors until i resigned out of a feeling of futility. And i know that peter keen isnt dramatic in his presentations or public pronouncements, but he was understandably dramatic, and if he isnt dramatic enough, i know my friend, mr. Ammiano will be dramatic because that was once his profession. And we should have done this two years ago in the Ethics Commission of the city and county of San Francisco. And the record which mr. Gollinger amassed is absolutely persuasive to anybody who doubts what happens underneath the spotlights and out of the public sunshine, and i am pleased that the board of supervisors has adopted what otherwise would have cost much time, money, and effort to put before voters, a. And i know this is just informational, but i believe it will be successful with a combined effort of all those who believe in trying to present voters with honest choices of people with integrity who are not the minions of vested wealthy developers or other professions in San Francisco. Thank you. Chair ronen thank you. Assembly member ammiano, would you like to speak . Drama queen. Good morning. If you dont mind, mr. Young, i just wanted to say hi, its been a long, long time, and its nice to see you. I think the eloquence that youve heard today, as an elected, i think you all know you get that swearing in ceremony, and youre just so happy, and were going to take on the world. And then, the kind of offers that come in because you won not because they necessarily agree with you when you were running are somewhat astounding. When i was first elected, i was approached by an entity who said they might be able to raise 25,000 for me. I dont want to embarrass anybody, but ill give you its initials, which is pg e. Needless to say, stopped in the hole by a prominent member of the community, mentioned his name, and presented me with an envelope of cash. This is how blatant it was. And i think the senator can relate to sacramento, things are bad here. In sacramento, they are amazingly tricky, and theres so much stealth that goes on. I was walking to work one day and was approached by a lobbyist. Wanted to know if i wanted to stop at starbucks. And i said no, and she said here, heres a check. And i said no. And she was actually hurt because its been so inured into the system, and in the system, its things that are wrong. So im very happy to have the sponsorship and i thank you, supervisor mar, for your leadership, and i look forward to a victory. And just one kind of caveat, a spoiler, but i cant help as a citizen [inaudible] chair ronen thank you so much. Mr. Bush . Thank you very much. Im larry bush. Im a member of friends of ethics. In 2016 and 2018, both times, we paid for professional polling to find out what the public sentiment was on contributions coming from developers and those with land use issues, and ive provided you copies with that, but it was shown that 70 of the people felt we needed to go further than we had. With charlie marstellar, we did a review of lobbying in San Francisco city hall and found that 90 of the lobbying is about development, but our law only addresses contracts, not developers per se. This will close one of those loopholes. Theres been a lot of talk about what examples we have, and i would point your attention to an article i provided from San Francisco public press, which was about allies of the mayor who were called in by the mayor and his top aides, as well as some officials from the board of supervisors and told that their applications for development hinged on whether or not they gave contributions. It was very explicit, and there was a billionaire who was present who said if you dont want to give directly, i will give money in your name to someone so that it will still be covered and the money will still be raised. It was then raised by commissioner kopp for investigation by the Ethics Commission, and while there was some interviews that took place from the City Attorneys Office, the City Attorneys Office decided not to seek subpoenas and put anybody under oath about what had happened, so this is something thats very real and very much influences how decisions are made in San Francisco. Thank you. Chair ronen thank you so much. Is there any other member of the public who wishes to speak on this item . Good morning, jordan. Thank you. You know, i was not here for is this item. I was here i was not here for this item. I was here for another item, but i wanted to speak on this item. I am a district 6 resident. I did a lot of volunteering on supervisor haneys campaign, and he won, which im really glad he did, but a lot of dark money came in to his opponents. Funny story. You know in district 6, theres a lot of concern about the fate of the streets. Well, our streets were littered with all these glossy mailers funded by god knows who. Im, like, whats going on here, and i would often take pictures of it and postit on facebook, saying, you know, if youre going to litter our streets, youre automatically not fit to be supervisor. And of course, like, there was the other things, like, you know being like, influenced by diagnosed like, who knows, ron conway or whatever . But you know, i kind of, like, took the opportunity to troll some people. I said send some pictures of glossy fliers with bad color schemes. And said pick up your trash. And i want to know where that fucking trash is coming from. This proposition is so fucking necessary. We need to get it on the ballot and get rid of this shit, and if we cant get rid of this shit, we need to know whats littering our streets with it. Chair ronen good morning. My name is vivian torelli. I have been a Campaign Worker since 1985, for art agnos. I carefully choose my candidates in terms of what they can bring to my city in terms of values, organization, and insight, and then, their chances of getting elected are threatened when their opponents have huge war chests to slam us. These are not only designed to affect the outcome of the election but are designed to exert undue influences on the policies of our opponents. A striking example was mayor breed, who in obvious deference to her donors who would be taxed under prop c did not support this strong source of revenue that was the antithesis of what her donors wanted. Yet, then she turned around and said her priority was Homeless Services and lamented that we need money for that. Donations have a loud voice and can shout down candidates who have the moral integrity who refuse to do the same in return. We need your support for the package of Public FinancingCampaign Reform to give admirab admirable candidates a fighting chance against elections seeking control and elected officials. Chair ronen thank you. Next speaker, please. Eileen boken. Coalition for San Francisco. And San Francisco education and action committee. Here on my behalf here in support of the sun light on dark money initiative. This initiative would take steps to level the Playing Field by increased disclosure, limiting contributions, and enforcement to ensure compliance. It would take steps to control some of the excesses created by Citizens United. It would repeal the board of supervisors ordinance from 2015 eliminating certain Disclosure Requirements for independent expenditure committees. It would implement safeguards against paytoplay for that appearance on development decisions. I would like to acknowledge each of the supervisors who have sponsored this initiative. It would move the election process in a better and more equitiable direction. It would make elections more competitive even for those candidates without deep pocket donor base. It would encourage more candidates to run who might not otherwise because of the daunting task of competing with candidates connected to super p. A. C. S, and hopefully this will reign in the endless reporting in the media about which candidate has raised the most money. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. My name is holda garofalo, and i have served on two grand jurys. The Ethics Commission was one of our topics, but that led us to looking into how nonprofits and super p. A. C. S really prevent present a huge problem in our city. We always here about the swamp hear about the swamp in washington, d. C. San francisco has a pretty murky swamp of their own, and its time we tie up all those loopholes, have a city for the people, not for the lobbyists, the politicians who benefit because theyre totally selfinterested. Its time to start serving San Francisco. Oftentimes, our Public Servants forget Public Servant means serving the people. You work for us. Its time to start doing that without the slime and murk attach tod attached to it. Thank you. Good morning, supervisors. Im charles marstellar, formerly with common cause and certainly now with friends of ethics. I do want to say that at one time, we had a very robust investigative press, and like the rest of the country, weve seen a terrible decline in the ability of the press to fund that type of investigative reporting. Were working our way through that, but right now, theres a deficit that we really need to makeup for, and i think it goes to the law. We need to adjust our law accordingly and now to take action to make sure on this side of the law, we rewrite our laws to deal with some of these loopholes that we hear about and no longer expect the press to address those through robust reporting. They do what they can, but its not enough. And i think the supervisors here saw that in the last election process season that brought them to this body. And i do want to thank them for their efforts and interest because they saw what that means, and the corruption in this town that the press could not pick up the story on. So nows the time to address the law, and i think youve done an excellent job with this bill, and i want to thank the sponsors, mr. Keen and John Gollinger and mr. Ammiano on this, and im glad that eight members of the board are supporting this, a Broad Spectrum of the board, as we are on this issue, a Broad Spectrum of america. Chair ronen thank you so much. Next speaker. Hello. My name is agatha vassilar, and im speaking to you as a regular constituent whose family has been here 30 years. Before the 2018 election, i travelled around the country doing a project called inside out book project, and you know the San Francisco mural thats on display in the sf moma, its the same project thats on the voter registration. I talked to hundreds, if not thousands of people, and the major reason i heard that people dont vote is in a system where a corporate machine drowns out our vote, its very easy to believe that our conversations with elected officials dont matter. This is it. Big money out of politics is that root cause issue, and its my greatest wish to revitalize the culture of democracy in San Francisco and the country, and i think this is such a great step towards enacting that movement, so thank you so much. Chair ronen is there any other member of the public who wishes to speak . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. [gavel]. Chair ronen i just want to say that its rare to see such a piece of common sense legislation. Its pretty straightforward. If corporations cant donate to candidates, then limited Liability Corporations shouldnt be able to donate to candidates. If people with contracts before the board or before a Decision Maker who is running for a particular office should not be allowed to donate, then developers with housing projects before that same body shouldnt be allowed to donate. And if a law exists to ensure that we know who pays for campaign propaganda, then we shouldnt allow those donors to hide behind fake names. I mean, thats the essence behind this really common sense lemgs latio legislation. I have shared your frustration, commissioners keen and kopp for the failure of the Ethics Commission to pass something so common sense. I want to thank all of the advocates, thank you so much for your relentless work in this matter for not getting so disenchanted that you stopped pushing and stopped trying and stopped using other methods to go directly before the voters who i agree with you, peter, are going to overwhelmingly pass this measure. And i really want to thank my colleague, gordon mar, for putting this being the leader behind this effort. Supervisor walton . Supervisor walton thank you, chair ronen. I just want to echo the terms of my fellow Committee Members in terms of the importance of knowing who is giving to whom. The Citizens United decision set us back in a lot of decisions in the Supreme Court. As you know, were going back in a time warp, so any time we have a chance to make a decision in good policy that is really going to disclose some of dark money and some of the things that are happening in our political system, we ought to be able to do that. And i want to thank supervisor mar for stepping up and all the colleagues that supported this initiative or ordinance because it is important for us to know who is giving money toward races, so we can shine a light on whats happening in our campaign. So thank you so much, and again, i appreciate all the Public Comment and everyone for coming out this morning. Chair ronen supervisor mar . Supervisor mar thank you, chair ronen. And i just wanted to thank everyone for being here today and actually for many years, as judge kopp mentioned, this work goes back to the 1970s, and really for standing up against dark money, standing up for transparency and democracy. This is all about us knowing about whos trying to buy our elected officials and votes. We need to ensure our leaders are accountable to the public, not to dark money donors, corporations, or big developers. And with this initiative, we will end corporate contributions. We will end paytoplay policy particulars. And our work doesnt end there, and the board of supervisors will have another public finances ordinance to vote on this coming fall, but this initiative is crucial and a Ground Breaking step forward, so thank you so much for everyone here for all of your work on it. Chair ronen thank you. And with that, i will make a motion to file this hearing. If i can take this without objection . Without objection, that motion passes. Thank you so much. [gavel]. Chair ronen mr. Clerk, can you please read item number 2. [agenda item read]. Chair ronen thank you so much. And weve been joined by supervisor haney. Hello, supervisor haney. You want to start us off . Supervisor haney well, thank you, chair ronen and our rules Committee Members for having me again. And this will be, as required by the when we amend a charter amendment, we have to come back a second time. I just want to reiterate what some of those amendments are which reflect feedback from the department, from the Mayors Office and from stakeholders to ensure better coordination moon the existing advisory bodies. We are also in the process of drafting trailing legislation that will enact legislation among the current advisory bodies. These amendments also ensure that the commission acts in partnership with the committees to comply with mandates from state and federal funding, and they reflect the need to exempt