Take roll call. Commissioner lee is absent today. Agenda item number 2, Public Comment on those items not appearing on the agenda. Good afternoon. Thank you, commissioners. My name is ellen. I have my name tag here. I am a public employee. I am a union delegate for government employees. I am also the director of Public Relations for california for the grand jury for the San Francisco chapter. I have been coming to you at the commissions with other government employees, many times. In 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. The last time i was here was november 15, 2019, which is last month. I came before you demanding as a commission to investigate corruption within the commission department. Between april 2017 to july 2017, six Public Employees reported bribery, extortion and retaliation with the Ethics Commission department, but no record was found, and they never got back to us. I was one of the eight candidates for mayor, june 2018 election. I just finished my mayor run for the november election. I was one of the six mayor candidates for the last months election. I was bullied by democrats and Democratic Leaders from city hall and from different departments and different leaderships from different communities. Many of my billboards and posters were illegally removed because i am a conservative republican. I am a conservative republican, and i am for the people. I have been coming out to you about possible corruption with electoral officials and Election Fraud. In 2018, San Francisco payers, taxpayers, paid 4. 16 million in matching funds to support government scam. The government has been running a scam for Election Fraud to empower democrats only. For the last 45 years, no other party other than democrats. It is a public scam created by democrats. November 19, 6 million bond for 2800 Housing Units is also a violation for equality for all. The United States constitution article 6 and the Supreme Court which stated that United States constitution is the supreme law of the land, the state and city violate the constitution. Its called treason. Recreational cannabis is also a violation of federal law. It is a government race to raise a lot of money to do drug rehabs because the Illegal Drugs support it and pay for our taxpayers. You as Ethics Commission, i believe you have the duty to investigate many of the complaints that i am bringing to you before you today. We the people have been facing a tyranny government for the last many years. We lost our quality of life in San Francisco. We are worse than a third world country in San Francisco. So today im here again because you Ethics Commissioners to restore law and order to protect San Francisco for the way you sign up for. Thank you. And for public record, my packet. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment on agenda item number 2 . Moving onto consent calendar items to consider number 3, draft minutes for the Ethics Commission november 15, 2019, regular meeting, agenda item 4, the proposed stipulation, decision and order in the matter of the coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods, complaint number 16 17056. And agenda item 5 the proposed stipulation decision and order in the matter of Affordable Housing for all, yes on d, complaint number 1718134a. Call for Public Comment on all three of these items . Seeing no Public Comment, ill move the items. I second. All in favor. Aye. So the agenda items 3, 4, and 5 are unanimously approved. Agenda item 6, discussion and possible action on proposed amendments to regulations related to article i chapter i of the campaign and governmental conduct code. Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners. Im pat ford, senior policy and legislative affairs counsel. This agenda item contains a set of regulations or i should say amendments to the regulations that support article i chapter i of the campaign of governmental conduct code, which we call cfro because its the Campaign Finance reform ordinance. The amendments represent updates that are part of two separate projects. Ive condensed those into one document so that essentially for convenience that you can act on it if you choose to do so at one time. Two different projects are the Campaign Financing review project, phase 2. This would update regulations to match the statutory changes. And secondly, the regulation amendments also address changes to the code brought about by proposition f, which was passed in the last election and the same idea, brought changes to the code so we need to update the regulations to follow that and especially in this case to provide guidance about these new laws, because these are new provisions of law, dont provide all the details someone would need to comply with them. So this is to help fill in the blanks. What i would like to do is briefly go over at a high level what these regulation amendments are. And i would like to suggest to you five different amendments that were requested by stakeholders. I think all five of them make sense. And i will explain what they are. And i will also read the text of them where you dont already have it. I provided you with he mails from emails from these folks so you have that. These are also on the table for the public. So in some cases you have the amendments in writing. In other cases they were proposed to me in conceptform and i have texts for you that i will read. Before we proceed, i would like to ask the City Attorney, is it okay for us to consider these amendments . Yes. Okay. Thank you. So ill start by going over whats actually in this agenda item first and then move on to the amendments. So the way that i structured this is in the actual attachment to this which has the regulation amendments that are ordered by regulation number. So on the Public Financingrelated amendments are combined in with the prop f amendments. I can tell you that the vast majority of what is in here is really prop f. The Public Financing amendments are very, very minor. So well talk about those first i think just to kind of get them out of the way. So really the only thing in the regulations that needs to be updated because of the changes to the code from the Public Financing phase two ordinance is basically just update the initial iec amounts, the individual expenditure ceiling, the limit that each candidate must agree to. The ordinance changed where that starts. It used to start at 250,000 for supervisor candidates and at 1,475,000 for mayor candidates. It will change 300,000 and 1. 7 million. The places where those need to change are called out here in the amendments. So in regulation 1. 1402, which is if you are looking at the attachment with the amendments, thats on page 8. You can see thats changed once for each number in that regulation. Then on the next page, regulation 1. 1431, its changed there and in regulation 1. 1422 its changed throughout. I had to do a little bit more updating in regulation 1. 1432 than just changing the initial iec levels, because this regulation consists of a set of examples to explain the mechanics of the iec adjustment process. So i had to go through and make sure they still made sense, given the new levels. Some of the numbers just didnt work out. So i kept the mechanics the same, the concepts are all the same. But youll see there are a number of changes throughout. It should basically keep the spirit of these as is. I did the same thing with phase 1 ordinance that changed the increments of the adjustment, made the increments larger. I had to do the same thing back then, going through the examples and updating them to make sure they still made sense and showed the new regime. So this is the same idea, going through the examples, making sure they add up and now reflect the new law. So thats all for the Public Financingrelated changes. Maybe ill stop here and ask if there are any questions about those set of changes before moving on. The only question i have relates to the change in the matching ratio. That was done in the ordinance itself so its not required to be addressed here in the regulations l. Surprisingly there was nothing in the regulations that talks about the matching ratio. I was surprised myself to find the only things that needed to be updated pertain to the initial iec level. Theres nothing in the regulations about the matching ratio, nothing about what portion of a contribution can be matched, which went down from the full 500 down to 150. Those things werent in the regulars. The regulars i would describe as being more about process of how the Financing Program is administered and how the different mechanics work, not so much about the goal posts or the actual parameters of it. Those are just set forth in the code, and the regs, i would assume didnt see the need to elaborate on those because they were just very clear in the statute. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from commissioners . No. Okay. Ill move on to the prop frelated changes, which are a lot more substantive and may be have more room for discussion. And this is where the amendments are. So i think maybe ill start by giving a quick overview of what is actual in prop f. I know commissioner ambrose asked about that the last meeting. So i included some bullet points here. And ill roll through those quickly so you are all primed with what is in this ballot measure. So this is on page 3 of this agenda item. Starting at the top of the page, the first thing that is in prop f is that it expands the prohibition on corporate contributions, which is currently construed narrowly, it could apply to just corporations. It expands it to cover llps and llcs. And i would presume that the intent behind this was that it doesnt matter what form of entity you choose, that these are business entities, they are for profit, they should be treated the same way. Im just curious. Was there any date that showed data that showed how limited partnerships and limited Liability Companies were not being picked up by the prior prohibition of a 100 contributions were 95 coming from llps and llcs therefore we needed to address this issue . Im not aware of any kind of data like that. The only thing that im aware of that i can speak to is actually addressed in the regs, which is that the regs used to address when llcs might be actually captured by the rule and it was based on how the l. L. C. S had elected to be taxed. I found the taxation principles to be complicated, and i am not familiar with an actual application of that regulation to an entity, so i cant tell you too much about how it worked. But thats the only thing i saw in here about noncorporation business entities making contributions. And i really couldnt tell you how common that was, only that we didnt get any advice questions that ever came to me about it. Thank you. So the next bullet point, theres a new contribution prohibition now in section 1. 127. And the basis of this rule is that the person who has a financial interest in a land use matter, as defined, may not make a contribution to any candidate or Office Holder of mayor supervisor or City Attorney, so anybody currently holding the positions or running for them. And financial interest in land use matter are both defined terms in the code. And thats where a lot of the clarification in the regs focused on, what does it mean for something to be a land use matter, what exactly does that term encompass, and what does it mean to have a financial interest. So the third bullet point is related to 1. 127, to that contribution prohibition. And it essentially requires that certain departments post a description of this rule in their agenda materials and on their websites. And those departments are the same list of departments that is used in the definition of land use matter. So we are talking about the Planning Department, commission, board of appeals, essentially, any of the city departments that would be making decisions on land use matters. They have to put a notice thats publicly available that just tells people that the rule exists, that they should be aware of it. So just to clarify the prohibition on making contributions. So this is the 500 political contribution so that 500 is now going to zero . Correct. Its similar in its format to the contractor contribution prohibition, which says that if you are someone who is currently bidding on a city contract or who has had a city contract approved in the last 12 months, you cant give a contribution to an elected official who is considering that bid or approved that contract. This is loosely similar, saying that if you are someone who currently has a land use matter pending or a land use matter that was resolved within the last 12 months, you cannot make a contribution to a certain set of officials and candidates. Its not pegged in the same way as the contractor rule that you cant make a contribution literally to the officials who approved that land use matter. It instead takes a different approach and defines a fixed set of officials and candidates and says you cant make a distribution to that entire set of people, regardless of whether they were actually involved in the land use matter. So if you are remodeling your house because of flood damage and you need to get permits, does that qualify as a land use matter and therefore that person would be prohibited from making a contribution . Most likely not. There is an extension in the code for primary residence. Thats carved out of the definition of land use matter. Theres also a dollar threshold thats baked in. So you have to have a financial interest of 5 million or more in the project or in some cases the project has to have an estimated Construction Cost of 5 million or more. So depending on which type of financial interest applies, theres different ways you can have a financial interest. In each one of those ways, theres a 5 million threshold thats baked in. So that would probably exclude the scenario you were describing. Thank you. So the one, two, three, four, the fourth bullet point moves on to a different part of prop f. And the next few are all related. And its about disclaimers. So the fourth bullet point refers to an existing requirement in state law, and it builds upon it. So state law requires that certain political advertisements contain disclaimers and that the disclaimers state who the committee paying for the advertisements top funders are. So if a committee pays for independent expenditure and theyve received contributions of over a certain amount from other individuals or committees, they have to put the names of those individuals or committees on the advertisement. Even before prop f was passed, San Francisco law expanded on that and made it the top toledo nowheres and lowered the thresh the top three donors and lowered the threshold. This lowered the threshold to 5,000. And it also requires that the dollar amount contributed by each of those people be included in the disclaimer. And further more it requires that if any of those major donors i shouldnt use the term major donor. Thats something thats used elsewhere. Top contributor, well say. If any of the top contributors are themselves political committees that have taken in political contributions that the disclaimer must additionally list the top two contributors to those contributors. So to phrase it differently, you could have a disclaimer that says this ad paid for by abc committee, Major Committee funding from xyz committee, which is funded by these two people. Additional funding provided by california Voter Committee with funding from these two people. So you could have up to, i guess it would be nine different funders listed in a disclaimer. And with each of them it would have a dollar amount that they contributed. And from what i saw in the voter information pamphlet talking about this measure, the idea is to put more information in front of viewers or readers who see political advertisements about who paid for the advertisement and who that person got their money from. So trying to give you a glimpse into the chain of funding. Sometimes people talk about nested committees or gray money when committees give money to other committees. So the policy rationale here is to try to shed some light on that series of transactions that is behind a particular advertisement. And aside from the merits of that idea, it comes with some degree of confusion for people making advertisements. Some of the regs try to provide people with guidance about how to put all that information because it is a lot of information, into a disclaimer that both complies with state formatting requirements, which say nothing about any of this material, the funders of the funders or the dollar amounts, and also something that looks readable and legible to people. So thats what the regs endeavor to do. Ill go over that in a moment. So the following bullet point, prop f changes the font and format requirements for disclaimers. The highlight here is that it changes the font requirement to larger. Its now 14. 5 for all disclaimers. So leaving the disclaimer world, the secondtolast bullet point prop f requires committees making independent expenditures to disclose separate cost associated with any independent expenditures during what we call the late reporting period, the 90 days before the election. So during that 90day period, as you know, any time a Committee Makes an independent expenditure of 1,000 or more, they have to file a form 496, the late independent expenditure report, within 24 hours. What prop f says is not only must you file that form, which the form basic