Investigation and analysis that needs to be done on these topics . Were learning more information every day, supervisor. Thats the important of the tip line as well as the Public Integrity tip line, and our report will give you a breakdown of the large departments, so happy to talk to you about that as soon as we publish it. Supervisor haney are there specific topics that you identified in this report or more broadly that your office has identified as a need for a lot further investigation . And with that, what are the next steps for your office . I mean, one of the concerns that i have and i understand that we have, you know, recently been through a pandemic, and im sure you all are being pulled in all sorts of different directions. But it has been, i guess, about five months since this process first started, and theres a lot more that needs to be investigated and analyzed and reported on. What are the next steps for your office, and what topics are you going to be working on . How can you possibly do all of this . Yeah. Thanks a lot, supervisor. If i may, mark, were learning a lot more every day. What we know so far is that the additional work product related to outside accounts and friends of organizations in particular, as well as what the ethical standards are for Commission Contract approval processes, including contracts at s. F. O. Will be one of the next areas, as well as the awarding of contracts through d. B. I. It is a great deal of work. We do have folks that are able to do much of this skilled work and investigation. Some of this does include onsite review of materials. We take this very seriously, and this is part of our duty and our service to the city, and so thank you for all of your support, as well. And just quickly to add to that, the first two that todd mentioned that were working on, the assessment as well as the airport, ethical standards surrounding commissions, we started the field work on those two way before covid, so those two are actually far along in terms of our report writing, and those are going to be upcoming and forthcoming in the next few weeks, with the friend being the next one to be publicly available. Supervisor haney great. Well, i do appreciate all of the work, and its a huge amount. I want to underscore a large part of the reason why i think theres a couple of levels of additional oversight and investigation that is required to make sure we go through all this and correct all the loopholes and problems in how the systems work, you know, we are i put forward, with a number of others and supervisor mar around a special investigator to be able to really follow up and go deeper on some of these things that i think your office has really uncovered in really important ways, but we need to go further, and i do think that looking at what has come in front of us, this is really underscoring the need for that. And also, the two proposals that are in front of us, which is a commission over at d. P. W. , which obviously is a huge, glaring gap in oversight at this department. I think this is wonderful work that youre doing. Its way more than what we thought needed to be done. As i said, ive started the process on tuesday to address some of these things, including putting an investigation around the contractor pool and streamlining. And in addition, one other thing that didnt come up so much in this report but has come up in the last few months oh, and also, the grant piece, which i think is particularly important with d. P. W. , but also, the donations to, like, shell nonprofits that are really behested payments that are never reported, and then kickbacks with these required donations to to nonprofits, some of which are not even real nonprofits by contractors at the behest of bureaucrats is a huge problem. I hope when you look at the friends piece of it, thats also a piece of what you look at. Its not just that theyre getting people to donate to friends of. Theyre actually getting people to donate to friends of, like the lefty odoul charity, which then turns around and donates to the department, as well. There are a nb umber of things that we can do to investigate better on our behalf, and we can put a number of things in place. Supervisor mar supervisor peskin . Supervisor peskin i assume were going to have a presentation by the City Attorneys office, as well . Supervisor mar yes. Supervisor peskin ill hold my questions until after that. Supervisor mar why dont we go to the investigation by the City Attorneys office. Id like to welcome deputy City Attorney ann pearson. I would like to note that unlike the structural review by the Controllers Office, the City Attorneys office is looking for evidence for potential crimes or charges, so because of that, they may not be able to be as forthcoming as we would like. With that, deputy City Attorney ann pearson. Thank you. Im joined by deputy City Attorney andrew shen, who would be happy to answer questions pertaining to ethics. [inaudible] a former commissioner of the immigrant rights commission, balmour fernandez, and walter huang, whos a contract official. The Law Enforcement tools that are used to uncover these crimes included search warrants, secret grand jury subpoenas for bank records, and require taps that allowed the f. B. I. To listen in on conversations between coconspirators. Based on the allegations against mr. Nuru, we interviewed tom hui, whos the former director of d. B. I. We reviewed his emails and report reported our findings to the mayor, who immediately recommended his removal. This took place before the shutdown in march. Because of the pandemic, many of our interviews were delayed for about two months, but since the beginning of june, weve begun working with various departments to direct employees to participate in interviews by video. The City Attorney has three priorities that i want to talk about. Identify employee misconduct to support the removal of unethical employees and officials, and recovering illicit gains for the benefit of taxpayers. Now there are strict limits to what can be disclosed publicly about public individuals while charges are pending. There are things today that i cannot say. Employees have privacy rights and personnel actions, and any compelled statements made by an employee as part of a personal investigation could jeopardize the integrity of any investigations by city officials. Firs let me talk a little bit more about the three priorities that i outlined before. The first one being official misconduct and employee investigations. Criminal allegations are not evidence. Criminal charges standing alone will not support terminations of an employee or termination of a contract for cause. The City Attorneys office has begun the difficult and prolonged work of developing independent evidence to support the release of employees involved in misconduct. So to date, mohamed nuru resigned as he was about to be terminated. Tom hui resigned as he was about to be terminated. Linda creighton with the airport resigned, and Florence Kang has been removed. We are focusing our efforts on gifts and bribes from improper sources and improper contracting positions. With the help of the Controllers Office, our office has reviewed every contractor grant with an entity implicated in the criminal allegations to see if theres a basis to terminate the contract or debar the contractor. The citys contract with nick bovis for toilets, for example, has been terminated. The p. U. C. , with the citys help, has determined azulworks to be disbarred for a contract it is now seeking. Az azulworks would be entitled to an appeal hearing. The City Attorney is looking at the debarment process for a number of contractors, but absent a conviction, it can be difficult for the city to show willfulness misconduct. Our third priority is recovering illicit gains. In light of the announcement that walter huang is pleading guilty in his involvement with the city, we are reviewing every contract that he had a part of with the city and bar those entities from doing further business with the city. As part of this investigation, we are identifying areas in the citys gift laws. Were looking at issues now, and well be reporting back to the board of supervisors on our findings after we have a better sense of where their rules might be best revised to strengthen improper contracts through gifts and favors. Id also like to note in the midst of all this, our offices separate investigation into building and check fraud by former Building Commission and president rodrigo sanchtos ledo criminal charges against him. He was charged with multiple counts of bank fraud for stealing funds from clients intended to pay for city permits. These allegations, as well as multiple allegations of permit fraud were included in a civil lawsuit that our Office Brought against mr. Santos. So with that, i will conclude my remarks. I am available for questions, as is deputy City Attorney shen. Supervisor mar thank you very much, deputy City Attorney pearson. I just have, like, one question before i allow my colleagues to speak. I was wondering if you share more on the construction or process of the city work that you just described. Many of the complaints coming to light now date back years or, in some cases decades . So my question is what could have found these out earlier or prevented them, and what steps of the county attorneys investigation . Well, we unfortunately lack some of the investigation tools that the f. B. I. Has. We dont have the ability to listen in on conversations and get the wiretaps, but we do look into every complaint thats filed, either through the whistle blowers office or thats filed with our office, and we will continue to investigate every complaint that comes to our office. Supervisor mar so this basically, this the City Attorneys investigatory work on this type of conduct are complaint driven . They are complaint driven. We lack some of the tools that i mentioned. We have the ability, though, to, through departments require employees to discuss with us whats gone on. We have subpoena authority, civil subpoena authority, but we lack some of the tools that assist the f. B. I. In this instance. Supervisor mar thank you. Supervisor peskin . Supervisor peskin thank you, chair mar. Miss pearson touched on everything i was going to ask. But there is, within the city and county of San Francisco, two agencies that have other authorities. One is the ethics commission, and the other is the District Attorneys office. Your office is a civil office and has certain duties and powers relative to the civil side, but on the criminal side, we do have a d. A. S office, and the City Attorney has been within the bounds of what is legal and appropriate, been working with the u. S. Attorneys office and federal bureau of investigation without compromising or releasing your internal investigations. In what circumstances does this Office Report to the City Attorneys office for this time of crime . I don id be happy to follow up with you on that information. Supervisor peskin and i was actually having this conversation with one of my colleagues the other day, and in this particular case, and in my 20 on and off years on the board, when wrongdoing is found that is either short of criminal wrongdoing or because we dont refer a case to a d. A. Or the d. A. Doesnt take the case or the case isnt Strong Enough or they dont charge the case, what happens is the wrong doer disappears into the night, and we never hear anything about it again. Tom hui would be an example of that, although it was more public and covered in the press and whathaveyou. This Committee Meets in private closed session to settle lawsuits, and often in those closed sessions, one of us says, well, what happened to the City Employee who had, unbeknownst to us weve got 35,000 employees and a few are bad apples unbeknownst to us had a long history of Sexual Harassment or workplace behaviors, and occasionally, the Department Head or City Attorney says that individual no longer works for us. But theres never any ill use the word, overt punishment short of having at the top it let [inaudible] supervisor peskin so at any rate and i realize all of these are protected and under personnel confidential matters that are covered under state, federal, and local law. Supervisor mar supervisor haney . Supervisor haney thank you, and can you, deputy City Attorney pearson and all of the folks in your office who have been doing extraordinary work to investigate this even without some of the tools that obviously the federal government has. Its just been doing so much to unearth a lot of the issues here. I you know, one of the things that im concerned about, and i want to know how you all approach this. When you have people that have engaged in conduct like this on the private side, there are often a string of victims who they have left behind that have lost some things, in some cases, irreparably. In these cases, would we go through and try to look back at each of these instances of wrongdoing as a way to look at what type of support or repairing or whatever it is could be done for the people that were harmed, and in some cases, they were harmed potentially due to things we should have known, and ill given a story here of rodrigo santos. There were hundreds of checks that people had written to him that were, in many cases, intended for d. B. I. Or for others that he basically just pocketed, which means that there may be hundreds of small property owners, Small Businesses, and others who maybe lost their homes or lost their businesses because they gave a check to rodrigo that they thought was going to d. B. I. , that they were in violation of some sort of repair that caused them to lose their home. Im not saying that as a hypothetical, i think i actually know an elderly filipino couple who lost their home because rodrigo somehow got involved in helping them with repairs, and they dont understand really what happened because they thought they handled everything and did everything they were supposed to, and rodrigo probably stole their money. They lost everything, so how do we actually investigate to help the people that were harmed, not just to hold the back folks accountable . Supervisor haney, thats a great question, and it does not surprise me that the consequences of this behavior is felt far and wide, and that the damage is not just to the city but to provide individuals who may have lost money, who may have lost contracts, all those things. We will follow these investigations where they take us. We represent the city and county, and we will act on behalf of the city and uncover money lost to the city and look into what action we can take on behalf of individuals in the city who have been harmed. Supervisor haney i appreciate that. Im just concerned that were sort of as you said, were in kind of a tough place there because were uncovering individuals who may have harmed people outside of the city which candidly, could create some liabilities for the city for not putting a stop to that. And connected to this, for d. B. I. , hundreds of checks that were intended for d. B. I. That went into the pocket of somebody who was the most frequent flier at the d. B. I. Office, and the fact that they didnt know that is, like, hard to believe. So i think following it in terms of im sure youre following it in government, and even though they may not have liability, what sort of checks should be there to connect the sort of to be able to identify bad behavior as its happening. If youve got 30 people who come into your office and say, well, i paid, and i did it through rodrigo, and now, i need repairs, you should be able to put a stop to it without it going this far, and that doesnt seem to have happened. The other thing i wanted to bring up, if you could clarify the process by which somebody forfeits their pension. I was shocked to find out that, essentially, you have to be convicted of a crime of moral terpitude to forfeit your pension, and are there any other processes that we have to and it has to be related to your job. Can you clarify what that is and what options the city has when it comes to somebodys pension for somebody who may have been stealing from the city . Youre exactly right, supervisor haney. There are provisions in the charter that govern the circumstances under which someone is required to forfeit their pension, and those circumstances are very narrow and do require a conviction for a crime involving falsity thats committed in the course of your job. And once that conviction occurs, then, there are administrative procedures to proceed for the forfeiture, but it is very narrow, and that exists in our charter. Supervisor haney and thats the only way. You have to be convicted, and then, we have to go and seek for it to be. Okay. Supervisor mar supervisor haney, are you done . Supervisor haney im all done. Thank you. Supervisor mar well, thank you, deputy City Attorney pearson. Thanks to mr. Ridestrom and mr. De la rosa for engaging in the discussion and your really important work into the investigation into this widespread and pretty outrageous and disturbing misconduct and corruption here in the city, yeah. So this has been a helpful hearing just to get an update on the investigation that were doing here in the city to not only rid out the misconduct thats happened but take really bolder and proactive steps to keep this from happening again. Why dont we go to Public Comment. Mr. Clerk, are there any callers in the queue . Mr. Qu, please let us know if there are any callers in the queue. For those in the queue, please wait until youre prompted to begin. The system will tell you your line has been unmuted. For those watching on cable channel 26 or via streaming line or sfgovtv, please call in by following the instructions on your screen. Dialing 4084189388, enter the meeting i. D. 1460991337. Press