Commissioners directed staff to move forward with the policy to reduce incertainty and time spent negotiating a settlement by providing a level of standardization and predictability to the commissions Enforcement Program. At the september 2019 meeting, staff delivered a process outline with eight steps and appear today to deliver step four by detailing the progress staff made on steps one through three. Commission staff reviewed the practices of other jurisdictions including the fair political practices commission, l. A. City Ethics Commission and san diego Ethics Commission as well as consulted internally with commission staff. These conversations were very helpful, and they developed the violations applicable to the goals of the new expanded program as well as the consideration for the inclusion or exclusion from the policy. In addition to a thresholds applicable to each specific violation type. As step two, staff hosted two interested persons meetings. After the november election and before the thanksgiving break and received Stakeholder Input on a series of questions related to the commissions efforts to revise these approaches. This feedback established members of the committee were in support of these efforts and expanding the existing policy and they provided an opportunity for these persons to present ideas on violations types they would like to see included as well as parameters that would include or exclude an entity or respondent from the program as well as ideas with regard to penalty structure. In that step three, based on its review of other jurisdictions, internal consultation with staff and feedback from interested persons, enforcement staff developed an overview of preliminary considerations for participation in the streamlined administrative Resolution Program. General requirements are that the director of enforcement reserves the right to include or exclude any respondent from participating in the program. Is it respondent must agree to commit to the commission stipulation and order pursuant to enforcement regulation section 12a and which the respondent acknowledges responsibility for the violation as well as to adhere to the payment. And the respondent must agree to abide by time frames for resolving these and keeping with the aspects of this program. General exclusions from the program would include evidence of intent to conceal, repeat offenders and conduct that resulted in more than minimum public harm. With regards to specific eligibility requirements, enforcement staff ongoing consultation with staff from other divisions of the commission and enforcement staff will draft specific requirements of eligibility and additional considerations factors and exclusions that are specific to each violation type and will provide that in the coming weeks, most likely the beginning of 2020. Now well turn to specific violation types we would like to include in the program. The preliminarily identified expanding the existing penalty program which includes essentially just three violation types from article 1 which is the Campaign Finance reform ordinance to expanding it to 35 violations over three articles of the San Francisco campaigning governmental conduct code. That would include the lobbying ordinance as well as conflict of interest code. And expand the policy and vision to reporting and conduct violations that are relatively straightforward and dont require a large n. Of resources to successfully resolve. As you can see within the memo in the agenda item, there are 18 violation types from article 1, eight violation types from article 2 which is the lobbyist ordinance and nine from article 3, the conflict of interest code. Before i move onto our next steps, i would like to pause and provide the commissioners an opportunity for any questions. How are the interested persons determined . The members of the regulatory committee, as well as anyone who is attached to our mailing list or watchdog groups. We had through our two different i. P. Meetings, we had professional services representatives, general counsels, as well as members of the common cause organization, as well as friends of ethics. And we anticipate additional engagement from these persons as they are presented more concrete and specific additions in the coming weeks with these next few weeks that well have scheduled in the future. Commissioner ambrose . The documentation for the existing six penalty fixed penalty actions, is there like a monthly report or memorialization of that your action was on that so that if somebody made a complaint about a violation and it ended up on the fixed penalty, they would be able to see, by going to some list somewhere that action had been taken . Thats an interesting consideration that we should take into account. For instance, this Commission Meeting did actually include a stipulateed agreement that was that took place through the existing fixed penalty policy. It was agenda item four or five. Right. I saw that. Obviously if it ends up with a stipulated, its going to be on the agenda. Just so we move, and really this is more for the protection of the staff, as you move towards more staffbased discretionary decisions, the responsibility and also the exposure to allegations of not giving due consideration to somebodys complaint can escalate. And i think if it gives you the advantage of saying ive made this Information Available to the commission, no one opt commission asked to bring no one on the commission asked to bring it before the commission for review or reconsideration or something. You know . Even though you are not going through the formal process of not making a probable cause finding or finding of no probable cause, if you had a list in general, mostly i was thinking about that in terms of the preference for using warning letters for certain of the minor and initial and unintended violations. Everybodys going to be asking you if they could please have a warning letter instead of a 1,000 fine. By making that public information, it still has some approbation associated with it and also allows, presumably, you have to keep track of it anyway, because once you get one warning letter, you dont get a hall pass the second time around. So that was just my thought, is that if it wasnt already something that somebody could do a pretty quick search for that you might want to keep a running tabitha we would see so that you could a running tab so we would see that you could see whats out there. I may have missed the first part of your question. If your question is are we currently memorializing and keeping track of the reason behind case dismissals is there a list of anyone who is been assessed a fixed penalty or got a warning letter. So i know you keep tabs of the complaints, but the disposition of them, warning letter, fixed penalty, probable cause finding, et cetera. I believe we do keep that information, but we would also keep it for the points you underscored. Yeah. At least where you have if you have a disposition with a fixed penalty or warning letter, thats going to be a public letter. The complaints themselves, im assuming, are not locally disclosed. But they are certainly known to the person who made the complaint. I just want to think about how to bring some sunshine on what the action item was, because i do think it will provide the staff with some, whatever, protection against criticism about how youve implemented or handled these various dispositions. Eligibility requirements will bring before the commissioners will include specific enumerations for warning letters, the thresholds for what is not minimal public harm, and that would be excluded from the streamline administrative Resolution Program, as well as we envision including that language within our regulations. So we would be able to cite to that within the stipulated agreements as well. Okay. All right. That was my only feedback. If there are no additional questions, our next steps for this fixed penalty process outline, which were detailed at the extent 2019 meeting, would be to host an additional two interested persons meetings to solicit specific feedback to these 35 different specific violation types and perhaps get a little bit more information with regard to penalty structure. And then revise the draft as appropriate as number 6 and then number 7 would be to present findings and recommendations for the commission for discussion of potential adoption and necessary. We were envisioning perhaps placing the administrative Resolution Program within the existing enforcement regulations. And then after commission approval, we would begin implementation of the new program. That concludes my presentation. Any questions from commissioners . When are the two additional interested persons meetings . We were hoping to do those in the early i put that in january or february, definitely within early 2020. I think weve got the momentum going here. So it would be great to continue to build on that as we head into the new year. And i do note here it is. Ms. Mayo has included comments on the agenda item number 8. So i just would want to make sure that you and jess and the team consider that feedback here. Yes. And she may come up during Public Comment as well. So take that into consideration. Understood. Thank you, chair chiu. Thank you, commissioners. Public comment on agenda item 8 . Commissioners, as ive indicated in my written testimony, i am in support of expanding the commission streamline Enforcement Program through the fixed penalty provisions. And i did want to point out in my paragraph too that i think its also important when the staff is considering factors and criteria for participation in the program, that they do look at violations that are readily apparent with little or no investigation. Those have resulted in minimal public harm. And then number three i think is important. Ive dealt with the fair political practices commission, and this has been very helpful in matters where the respondent fully captors with the investigation and cooperates with the investigation and sometimes self reports. In terms of the additional provision under Campaign Finance, i think since contractor contribution prohibition is included, it certainly makes sense to include violations of provisions regulating the contributions by persons with pending land use matters especially since thats going to be a new provision, and people are going to be very confused about that. The 10,000 business entity disclosure and Member Communications disclosure. I added the gift prohibition since the lobbyist contribution provision was already included. That, again, makes sense. And then the other items that i have under the governmental ethics issue. And i did particularly want to also emphasize the payment reports by donors and recipients. I think it was listed for the offices. But i do have a concern that donors and recipients, since this is a brand new law, may violate that inadvertently, and i think a fixed penalty would be appropriate for those as well. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comment on agenda item 8 . Okay. Ill look forward to seeing the next phase in 2020. Agenda item 9, discussion of monthly staff enforcement report, but not including an informational presentation on city whistle blower protection that was included as a clerical error in this agenda. This was covered in last months meeting. But public is welcome to comment on this. And this agenda item also includes an update on various programmatic highlights of the Enforcement Programs activities. Jeff zumwalt, investigative analyst, on behalf of our director of enforcement who is not here today. To the portion of this agenda item we are pleased to have mr. Jeffrey, the director of the bureau of delinquent revenue. He has agreed to appear to provide an update on b. D. R. s efforts to collect on up paid late fees and penalties the commission assessed. But the parties or respondents have yet to pay as well as to answer any questions the commissioners may have regarding their collection process. Good afternoon. So i have a list of questions. Im sure if you have those questions with you on specific items you want me to cover . No okay. So i can walk through the questions and then answer them. So theres 11 in total so let me know if i get too longwinded. One of the first questions was how does our office decide how many resources to invest in trying to locate a deter. To answer that question, we typically evaluate the collectibility, so how much information we have on the person as well as if theres any ways to execute on the obligation. And also the total value will help determine how much effort we are going to dedicate to try to invest in trying to locate someone or execute on the obligation in and of itself. So ill stop each time in case you have any questions on the response. The second question, does the bureau ever decide if the cost of locating a deter or seeking payment outweighs the benefits . And yes, there are times when, lets say for example if someone who has assets outside of the state or they reside outside the state but the obligations are owed here and we have to seek outside counsel or efforts there thats more costly, then we would typically circle back to the commission to communicate that so you would be aware of that. If you sent us an obligation for 5,000 but the cost to pursue them is going to exceed that, well communicate that so the Ethics Commission can make that decision. Do you have a list of objective criteria that tells you when you basically pull the plug . Or is it a discretionary decision . Typically discretionary. It really depends on what information we have available to us at the time. And we do have some cases where the balances are pretty significant or if we have momentum, we obtained the judgment, and its time to go back as we would like to, then that can also play a factor in deciding how much time and effort we want to dedicate to it. The third question, what roll, if any, does the Ethics Commission as klines play in adviseing bureau as clients in advising the bureau whether to cut their efforts. Its up to the Ethics Commission. If you have incidents where you believe its not worth us to continue to pursue them, we are fine with having those cases recalled back or referred back. Can i jump in here . Yes so do you meet with Ethics Commission staff periodically to review the list of we send a monthly report. So the monthly report will share what the current status is, the last actions taken, where these cases are. And it gives them a timeline. So we can have some cases like one is in a bankruptcy and how much time its going to take in the bankruptcy process. We show that information on a monthly basis. Okay. The next question, what method does b. B. R. Use and we have many. Within our office, we have access to various databases that are unique to t. T. X. , such as business tax filings and other information such as that. We also use lexisnexis, theres d. M. V. , employment information. And we have trained professional collectors that know how to leverage social media, linked in or internet tools so we can use information to locate a person. Number five, how does the bureau decide when to reassign an account to a collection agency. This is also part of the cost effectiveness discussion component. So sometimes if we look at our resources and we have had cases not specific to the Ethics Commission where if they are located outside of the state, and we do have two collection agencies who supplement our collection services. We can assign to them, and they do collections all throughout the u. S. Ive had them go for it versus us spending money directly. Number 6, recent status indicated debtors have refused to pay. How do debtors communicate that . Its normally through phone or email or some other way. A promise to pay is when the debtor has committed to a specific date of repayment and dollar amount. The dollar amount typically is for the entirety of the balance. So anything less than that would be either a settlement discussion or payment plan based on the debtors ability to pay. Refusals to pay is flat out refusing to pay. So they are not going to make any commitments to pay back the obligation. So that informs us for our next steps. Refusals will escalate if we have the ability to execute via judgment, thats the path they will go down. When the bureau secures a payment plan with the debt debtor, what form does that take . It is formal. We have them sign a payment plan agreement. I want to be careful with how i call it a contract. Its basically the language agreement stipulates to the debtor that they are acknowledging their obligation to pay, that they owe the obligation. They are waiving their right under the statutes of limitations for the actions that we are take, ask they are acknowledging that consequences of default. And we have the typical repayment terms as far as the duration of the payment plan agreement, the obligation deadline date and we provide for their convenience the methods of how they can pay us, online, for example. Question 8, if a payment plan is a contract with the city, are there Code Provisions that affect how the bureau and debtor interact . For example if they miss a payment have they breeched the contract . Does renegotiating a payment plan mean renegotiating a contract requiring certain formalities . I wouldnt want to call it a contract, per se, with the city. This is definitely a document that we would use as part of an enforcement proceeding if we took it to court to show the debtor acknowledged they have an obligation to repay the debt. It doesnt change how we interact with them. In our line of work, its kind of expected that you are going to have a sloppy payer. So we are get them on a payment plan agreement. If they happen to miss five days and pay on day ten, we will work with people who are oing with us on good who are working with us on good faith. If you default, it is considered a default of an agreement. And what happens is while the agreement is active, you are basically, we are going to suspend our collection process because you are making an effort to pay. Default will trigger that process to resume and go through the Debt Collection cycle that we normally would. Question nine, does the debtors agreement to a payment plan represent a waiver of rights to challenge the debt or underlying ethics penalty that forms the basis of that debt . I w