Transcripts For SFGTV Ethics Commission 20240711

Will participate remotely. This is taken pursuant to the local, state and federal orders and directives. Commission members will attend through video and participate to the same extent as if they were physically present. It is streamed live at sfgovtv. Once again, streamed live online sfgovtv. Org ethics live. Public comment is available on each item. Each member of the public is allowed three minutes to speak. Call 415655000 4156550001. The access code 146 2698877. Followed by the pound sign. Press pound again to join as attendee. You will hear a beep when you are connected to the meeting. You will be automatically muted in his senning mode only. When your item comes up dime dil star three. Please wait until the host calls on you. The line will be silent as you wait to speak. Ensure you are in a quiet location before you speak mute the sound of any equipment around you including television, radio or computer. It is important to mute your computer if you are watching via the web link to prevent feedback and echo when speaking. When the system says your line is unmuted, this is your turn to speak. You will hear staff say, welcome, caller. State your name clearly. As soon as you begin speaking you have three minutes to provide Public Comments, six minutes with an interpreter. You will hear a bell at 30 seconds remaining. If you wish to withdraw press star 3a again. You have lowered your hand. Once the three minutes expired the staff will mute you. You will hear your line is muted. Aattendees may stay on the line to listen for the next Public Comment opportunity and raise your hands by pressing star 3 when the next item of interest comes up. Public comment may also be submitted in writing. It will be shared with the commission after the meeting and will be included as part of the official meeting file. Written comments should be sent to ethics. Commission at sf goff. Org. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you. With that i will call the meeting to order. Moderator, can you proceed with item one. Commission roll call. Commissioners u unmute your microphone. [roll call] madam chair we have five members present. You have a quorum. Thank you very much. We are resuming our Commission Meeting from the remote format. We welcome the publics participation and patience as the meetings progress. I would like to add because we are remote, hopefully, we would be able to get more Public Participation than at city hall. I do appreciate commissioner bushs reaching out to his staff to participate. We should all do the same. I want to give you all a remeander that if you can mute your microphone when not speaking so we dont have audio feedback during the meeting. I will call agenda item 2. Public comment on matters appears or not appears on the agenda. Members of the public who wish to speak dial star 3. If you are not already done so to be added to the queue. Moderator, can you please proceed with Public Comment if we have anyone in the queue . Thank you, madam chair. We are receiving Public Comment on item 2 remotely. You will have three minutes to provide Public Comment. If you joined early to listen to the proceedings now is the time to get in line to speak. If you have not already, please press star three. It is important that you press star three only once to enter the queue. We will move you out and back to listening mode. When you are standing by the system will prompt you to speak. It is important to call from a quiet location. Please address the comments to the commission as whole and not individual members. We are checking to see if there are any calls in th in the queu. Thank you. We are on agenda item 2, Public Comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. You have three minutes or six minutes with an interpreter. Please press star 3 to be added to the queue. For those on hold please wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. There are no callers in the queue. Thank you very much. Public comment is closed. I will proceed with calling agenda item 3. The draft minutes for the october 9, 2020 Ethics Commission regular meeting. If any members of the public intend to offer Public Comment for the consent item, dial in now and enter star 3 to be added to the ky. Item 3 is on consent. This is considered routine. If a Commission Objects it can be removed and considered separately. Does any Commission Member wish to sever any items and call up a separate discussion . Commissioner lee, i am going to ask for a verbal from you since i cant see whether or not you are raising your hand. Madam chair, i dont have any. Thank you very much. Now, can i have a motion to adopt the minutes for the october 9, 2020 meeting. So moved. Moved. I will take that as move and second. If you can can we move for Public Comment on the consent items, please. Thank you. We are receiving Public Comment on consent item 3 remotely in this meeting. Each member has three minutes to provide Public Comment. If you joined early now is the time to get in line to speak. If you have not already, please press star three. It is important that you press only once to enter the queue. Pressing again will move you out of the Public Comment and back to listening mode. Once you are in the queue and standing by, you will be prompted. Call from a quiet location. Please address your comments to the commission as whole not individual members. We are checking to see if there are any callers in the queue. If you have not already done so press star three to be added to the queue. For those on hold please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. If you have just joined this meeting we are taking Public Comment on consent calendar item 3. Draft minutes october 9, 2020 Ethics Commission regular meeting. Please press star three to be added to the Public Comment queue. There are no callers in the queue. Thank you very much. Public comment on agenda item 3 is closed. Can i have a roll call on the motion and second that we will have to adopt the minutes. Motion has been made and seconded. I will call the roll. Commissioner bush. Yes. Commissioner moore. Aye. Vice chair lee. Aye. Commissioner smith. Aye. Chair ambrose. Aye. With five votes affirmative and zero opposed it is approved unanimously. Thank you, commissioners. I will call agenda item 4. Discussion and possible action on presentation by Controllers Office on the controllers november 5, 2020 report. I am going to ask executive director to introduce this item. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, Commission Chair ambrose. This report is a third in a series of Public Integrity reports Public Integrity reports to assess policies in wake of citys attorney investigation stemming from alleged wrongdoing by former public works director. The reports as you know from previous meetings are conducted with the City Attorneys Office issued with the goal of highlighting areas where laws need strengthened to avoid a future similar circumstances to prevent abuse and fraud in the city. The controllers report was issued the end of june and was we had the controllers staff here to present its findings and recommendations regarding conflicts of interest. The contracting and procurement processes. Second report was issued in september and that addressed gifts to the departments through noncity organizations and creation of risk of pay to play. That report was also presented to the commission at its meeting last month to provide opportunity to provide input. Just last week the Controllers Office issued the third in a series of reports. This report is on the agenda as well for you to hear the summary of findings and recommendations from the controllers staff and provide input you might have. As you know, all of the issues addressed in these reports to the extent they have overlapping jurisdiction or raise issues will be forwarded to the policy work. We very much appreciate the focus of Controllers Office and appreciate them taking time to be with us to walk through the findings and recommendations here. Mark is the city controllers acting director of audits is here with others to provide that information. I am happy to turn it over to mark with thanks for participation again. Thank you so much. Commissioners, let me share my presentation right now. Can you see my slide . Yes. Great. Thank you very much. Good morning again. Acting director of audits for the Controllers Office. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you as executive director mentioned the third in a series of Public Integrity assessments. As you will recall back in june we issued one on public works contracting. In september the seconded one on gifts to noncity organizations. This third one is on the citys debarment process. I want to first thank our team at the Controllers Office. Tiffany and kay for the excellent work they have done in helping us complete this third deliverable. By way of background, as you know, back in february when the investigation became public we sept out to conduct the series of assessments to look at the internal control weaknesses, practices, policies, surrounding the various allegations related to mr. Nuru. The goal as previously stated is to provide recommendations that would ultimately improve transparency, reduce risk of fraud and safeguard public funds in the city and county of San Francisco. In conjunction with the controllers efforts in conducting these assessments, is the City Attorneys focus on the investigations on misconduct by current and former City Employees and city contractors and vendors and they continue to do so and identify remedies for certain legal policy violations. One example of this action from the City Attorney is the start of the process to debar back in july 2020. From contracting with the city for five years in connection with allegations contained in the affidavit. It is through this action from the City Attorneys Office that prompted us to look at debarment procedures to see if there are areas for improvement or anything that we can recommend to further improve and promote transparency and safeguard city funds. In conducting this assessment on the debarment procedures, we looked at the Citys Department policies, as stated in the ad min code. We also looked at the City Attorney proposed changes to the debarment process. In august this City Attorneys Office put forth legislation as proposal to the board of supervisors regarding the debarment process. I believe it is current leap cuy pending currently pending board of supervisors approval. We compared against the state of california and various provisions within the federal law to see if there is any Lessons Learned and areas for improve meant. With all of the previous assessments. These results are preliminary and open for Public Comment and review. We may revise elementses our recommendations based on the input that we do receive. Just to provide further context on the debarment process currently ongoing, according to the fbi report that was issued back earlier this calendar year, mr. Hernandez was alleged to have provided mr. Nuru with bribes in connection with steering city contracts to mr. Hernandez and his firm that he owns. Per the fbi report, mr. Hernandez was alleged to have supplied mr. Nuru over 250,000 worth of labor and materials for work related to mr. Nurus vacation property. The fbi report also alleged mr. Hernandez paid for mr. Nurus hotel stay and some meals costing over 1,000 each. In exchange for these bribes, mr. Nuru is alleged to have provided inside information about city contracts and approval results in mr. Hernandez to submitted an alleged unqualified for one of the contracts that was awarded to his firm. Given that backdrop, we set out to really look at what is currently in the citys admin code and what is currently the procedures being followed by Key Stakeholders involved in debarment. The City Attorneys Office and some parts of it for the Controllers Office as well. Just wanted to for background define debarment that appears in chapter 28 of the a of the admie contractor declaring disqualified from participating in the competitive process from city contracts or entering contracts for a period specified in the debarment order. Basically, this means the city has authority to debar a contractor found to be involved in a willful misconduct with respect to any city bid, request for qualifications or proposals or purchase orders in a contract. Some of those willful misconduct included submitting false information in response to bids or proposals, not complying with contract terms per the city admin code provisions, disregarding certain conditions of the city contract, failing to abide by rules or regulations per sf municipal codes, submitting false claims, involved in collusion in obtaining contractor payments or approval and being involved in any and i just highlight this aspect con to last bullet. Any verdict, judgment, settlement or plea agreement establishing the contractor violation of civil or criminal law against any Government Entity relevant to the capacity to perform under or comply with the terms and conditions of the city contract. That is the part of the willful misconduct that the de barment process for the Azul Works Inc got started. As mentioned we reviewed procedures and looked at the states and federal guidelines or procedures related to debarment. These six bullets on slide 5 really outlines the six findings from our recently issued report. First one being that overall our procedures debarment procedures are generally consistent with those of california and certain aspects of the federal government process. The city does not require an investigation as the initial step. I just wanted to also note that even though it is current bely not required purr the City Attorney, per the City Attorney an investigation does occur before debarment proceedings start. It is not a requirement but it is practice that it does occur before any proceedings begin. In terms of how we issue our notice of initiation of debarment, providing contractor with an opportunity to respond, including or basically hiring a hearing officer to or appointing a hearing officer to be the administrator of the hearing, those are all very consistent with how the state and the federal government conducts debarment. That is the first key finding that we noted. The seconded bullet on the debarment period up to five years is also very similar to how the state and the federal government does it. For the state it is basically the period is for one to five years of debarment. Really the factors that determine the duration that include severity and frequency of violations that is relevant to the case. It is similar also to the federal government of one to five years. We are aligned with how it is done outside of the city. The third finding that is included here on the suspension is one of the key findings that we had in our report, and this is also part of what has been set forth or put forth by the City Attorneys Office as part of the legislation they introduced back in august. What we found unlike the federal government, the city and state currently do not suspend contractors, and to provide some background within the federal context what we learned from the federal government example they concurrently can suspend a contractor 18 months short of debarment. [please stand by] and yeah, so its actually both, and its almost like a disciplinary phases that happens, but yeah. Okay. I just wanted to make sure i understood. And just to the point well get to this at the end of this. I mean, the Ethics Commission has very few contracts overall, and i think its only in fairly limited circumstances that these matters would come before the Ethics Commission. It would be more likely that the underlying activity that led some other department to suspend or debar a contract would involve Ethics Commission jurisdiction, so just so we put it in perspective. Thanks. Go ahead. Of course. The next finding that we highlighted in our report just stated that the city can pursue claims against contractors under state law or bring other civil actions. What we did find was that the city, state, nor the federal government currently neither none of them currently require a debarred contractor to pay any of the fees of the debarment process, but under california civil claims act, we could fine those fees to the debarred contractor. We did find that the citys admin code currently does not include minimum qualifications for hearing officers, which is unlike what happens in the federal government as well as the state golf. Within the federal example, they do have a minimum qualification of being either a federal agency head or a designee of that agency head, and it was in the State Government example we did find a little bit more of a specific type of qualification, which is to be an attorney, for example, employed by the division of labor standards or an Administrative Law judge employed by industrial relations. And our sixth and last is really about the public reporting requirements. So currently, we San Francisco does currently publicly list the contractors that we have debarred, but we should also list suspended contractors should that pass, so this is really just taking the example that the federal government is doing, whereby they have a system called s. A. M. , and they have a division of labor standards enforcement does list all of the suspended and debarred the board of supervisors [inaudible] the admin code to include the suspension provision to include the minimum qualifications for the hearing officers. And then lastly, for there to be a public listing of all suspended contractors. So that concludes our very brief presentation on this quick review. As we previously noted, we are still continuing to complete the other assessments that we have started relating to the mohamed nuru investigations. Its more how to to better track and ensure that everyone in the city that should be filing certain certain reporting requirements from the commission, that they are complying with them, and that theyre publicly reported. And then, the building inspection policy and procedures, and then, our final report, which will be a coup accumulation of all of what we have reported so far. Thank you. Im wondering if we should go to Public Comment before we go to comments and questions from the commissioners . Commissioner, i had a question for mr. De la rosa. Thank you to you and your team for doing all of this really important work. A question that i had, in one of your previous reports, better understanding the tone at the top and these different organizations, will your reports be diving into that or looking at what mechanisms might be in place to foster a culture of compliance . Because i think its not only good to strengthen the laws and rules and regulations, but thats just whats on paper. In the absence of a culture and norms that say that we have to do the right thing, and if i say someone whos not doing the right thing, then, i need to go and raise the flag or report it to someone. I think that in the absence of that component, i dont know that were going to make as much progress as we otherwise would in creating a more ethical and a more transparent and accountable government, so if you could speak a little bit to what the Controllers Office will be doing to identify or analyze the opportunities there, that would really be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, very good question, commissioner. Through the chair, as previously noted, were definitely planning on including the tone at the top as one of the key sections in our final, final report because what were basically doing is were hitting the various internal controls and policies in these deliverables that weve been issuing over the last few months. From an audit perspective, as someone whos been auditing for for almost 20 years now, tone at the top is really a conglomeration of all of those facets of internal control. Its a common, you know, element of an organization that can definitely be the root cause of anything that could go wrong, and how were going to be addressing tone at the top will be in the context of how some of those internal controls that have been identified by the f. B. I. , as well as some of the key things that weve identified in our previous reports were able to happen. A lot of it was because of the lock of oversight of certain procedures. A lot of it was was there were certain policies written in our admin code that allowed for those loopholes to occur. Youll also be hearing after this item on our whistleblower system, which is a whole set of controls of the system within the city and county of San Francisco that is kind of the larger body of things that create the culture within our City Government. So well definitely be hitting tone at the top. You know, some of the smaller kind of examples that we will definitely be including will be certain training requirements, certain procedures and practices that that would help encourage, further encourage a tone that encourages transparency and hopefully not replicate any of what happened at the department of public works as part of the investigation. So well definitely be a part of well be including that in our last deliverable, and well be providing recommendations that will speak to it. Wonderful. Thank you. Commissioner bush . I think you are you are muted, commissioner u bush. Commissioner bush thank you. Point noted. So in the past, the mayor or chief of staff would interview annually, for performance matter, each Department Head. And in the past, Department Heads were often named without any training on what the rules are for Department Heads. Would your recommendations take a look for a tone at the top building on what commissioner chiu just said, that how do we instill that, and isnt instilling it is part of a process of briefing them on their responsibilities . And secondly, including some guidelines for the performance reviews by the mayor or the mayors chief of staff . Thats a very good question, commissioner bush. Through the chair, completely agree with you that and in answering previous questions performance reviews are how youre holding anyone accountable, whether it be staff heads or the city. Its part of the tone at the top as part of the elements of how you build a healthy organizational culture. Training is going to be one key aspect of it, and i think the ideal thing is that expectations are clearly laid out in the beginning, and then, once evaluation is basically based on on how youve met those expectations and objectives, so its definitely going to be a part of what that certainly control system would look like in terms of tone at the top. Commissioner bush thank you. I have a couple of questions about the whole debarment thing, which i can wait until other questions have been asked. Chair ambrose any members of the public who might want to comment so the presentation is fresh . So if we do have Public Commenters in the queue, id like to hear from them; and then, if you can remember your questions about the debarment, well wrap up with the rest of the commissioners questions. Will that be okay . So actually, braun, if you can call Public Comment or announce the procedures for making Public Comment and see if theres anyone wanting to weighin on this . Clerk thank you, chair ambrose. Madam chair, we are checking to see if there are any callers in the queue. For those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. If you have just joined this meeting, we are currently on the public discussion section on item number 4, discussion and possible actions on presentation by Controllers Office on controllers november 5, 2020 report. Vicechair lee madam chair, i wonder if, while were waiting, if i could ask a question. Chair ambrose thank you. And im sorry. I forgot to read your text. Vicechair lee if you could because its hard for me to ask a question. Chair ambrose commissioner lee has a question about appointments and notes that the director should not be in a political position. Thats something that we can hear about from mr. Delarosa. I just want to make sure that if somebody pressed star, three, theyre not in a holding pattern. So back to the moderator, do we have any callers in the queue in. Operator madam clerk, there are no public callers in the queue. Chair ambrose okay. Then Public Comment is closed. And mr. Delarosa, if you can speak to that. And i understand the chair should be a licensed attorney, but there is really a substantial due process that has to go along with debarment. Youre depriving someone of their livelihood. Ive been involved in debarment proceedings before. Its extremely challenging to build the evidentiary record to overcome the objections, and by opening by changing the rules and introducing the concept of suspension, but im presuming is a lower bar because you have allegation, not not an actual conviction where that hearing has taken place in another court of law, and then, youre just applying it to your contracting process. So any way, all that to say i agree with commissioner lee that it would be best if hearing officers were above reproach and independent and well educated in the you know, in due process and there are not political appointees, but i dont know if thats part of the legislation. And through the chair, actually unsure about exactly how its worded. I can speak to you about stuff of the things that weve put forward, which is a set of minimum qualifications which could include the licensed attorney. How its worded, i actually would defer to the City Attorney on that, but i can also look into it and get back to you. Chair ambrose great. Im going to actually go back to commissioner bush, who had specific questions about the department process so we can get all of the kind of substantive questions on the floor. And then, if there are things that the City Attorneys Office can illuminate for us, we can go to them. Commissioner bush . Commissioner bush thank you. Am i unmuted . Chair ambrose you are. Commissioner bush okay. I have three sort of technical questions. A debarred entity can continue to make contributions to candidates or make behest payments . Is there an answer to that question . I would actually defer to the City Attorney for more of a technical commissioner bush it would seem a little odd, you debarred somebody, and then, they turnaround and make contributions to the candidates or Office Holders of the city. Mr. Givner this is jon givner, deputy City Attorney. To answer your question, commissioner bush, disbarment does not prohibit someone from making candidate contributions, and the report does not impose a contribution ban. Just going back to commissioner commissioner ambroses questions on the city officers, [inaudible] under the debarment code. Commissioner bush so if i understand correctly, a contractor cannot contribute, but someone whos just been debarred can . Mr. Givner if the debarred contract is falls within the the parameters of section 1. 126, because they recently obtained a contract approved by an elected official, or the contractor has a pending a pending contract that has to be approved by an elected official, then, the contribution ban in section 1. 125, but theres not a separate ban on contributions to debarred contractors. Commissioner bush it would be good to have some clarifying language in here about all of that. The second question i have, if the federal government debars someone, do we add them to our debarred list if they happen to also be city contractors . So lets say you have a street bond. Some of the street bond is being paid with federal money, and the feds have debarred that person. Do we then debar them as well . Mr. Givner not sure if this is a question for me or for mark who might know more about the process how we track federal debarments . Yeah. From the Controllers Office perspective, commissioner bush, so there is a step in the citys procurement process, whereby a new contract is let and entered into our financial system, there is a let that is currently being done to check and see if they do appear on that sam. Gov website, which is the website thats maintained by the u. S. General Services Agency that lists all the federally suspended and debarred contractors. And so there is that check that happens at least before things are let or paid, it was in the citys system. How its included in the review of the contractor in the definition of a responsive or responsible bidder, i am unsure about how that is whether there is a check that happens at that juncture to see if the contractor thats bidding on a contract appears on that list. Commissioner bush okay. Thank you for that. The last question i had was that you said the city may require repayment of a contract that was lost because of debarment, but i wasnt clear what constitutes may require a repayment. Is that entirely discretionary according to the Department Head . Who decides what the grounds are for repayment . Actually, through the chair, i would see if City Attorney givner has an answer to that . Mr. Givner yeah. I dont know the answer to that, but im happy to look into it and get back to you, commissioner. Yeah, and ill do the same, commissioner. Commissioner bush okay. Thank you. Chair ambrose okay. Let me just check. I dont see actually, commissioner chiu, i see your hand up, but i dont know if that was for previous comment. No, that was from earlier. Commissioner smith id like to commend the Controllers Office for adding a suspension to the possible remedies. I think if the only one that exists is a complete disbarment, there might be more hesitancy to impose it and allow misconduct to keep going on until there were more episodes, so i always believe a more moderate restraint is a good one, and id like to commend the Controllers Office for proposing that. All right then, thank you. Im looking at commissioner lee, and i assume your comment was addressed. With that, im going to close agenda item number 4 and call agenda item number 5, which is, again, mr. Delarosa. Were going to have discussion and possible action on presentation by Controllers Office Whistleblower Program staff on annual report of Whistleblower Program for fiscal year 2019. Director pelham, if you can discuss this item and other folks from the Controllers Office who are here to review this matter with us. Thank you, chair ambrose. I am going to hand off to our presenter, jeff rose, for a brief introduction. Chair ambrose okay. This is a second presentation from the Controllers Office, this one from their annual report fiscal year 2020. The Whistleblower Program was created by ballot measure i believe in 2003. Dave jensen is the supervising investigator with the Whistleblower Program. Its a branch of the office that Mark Delarosa oversees, and commissioners may know that the Enforcement Division coordinates pretty closely with the Whistleblower Program on complaints that entails overlapping jurisdiction or we coordinate in instances where it may it may be important for us to evaluate whether the Ethics Commission should contemplate imposing remedies where the Whistle Blower Programs investigation has identified liability of one kind or another. As i mentioned, dave jensen is with us, the supervising investigator from the whistle blowing program. He will have Mark Delarosa with him, as well as senior investigator dave munoz. Dave has conducted investigations since 1996, first with the City Attorneys Office and now with the whistleblower. He received a masters in Public Affairs from the l. B. J. School at the university of texas, so ill hand it off to dave to present their annual report. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to present before you today the highlights of our fiscal year 1920 annual report. Working with me [inaudible] is senior investigator steven munoz. Be happy to answer any questions that you have assort during or after the presentation, but may require some seen munoz to answer some more technical questions you have about the data that well be showing you today. All right. Next slide, please. Just some quick background for you. The authority of the Whistleblower Program. The authority is granted by both state and see law. California code sections 53087. 6 enables a city and county auditor or controller to maintain a while blower program to receive reports of allegations of fraud or waste by city or county employees. San francisco government code article 4 directs the City Services auditor to initiate a Whistleblower Program and investigate whistleblower complaints. The section also makes confidential all of our drafts, notes, preliminary reports or benchmark studies and audits, investigations, some other reports with very few exceptions. Next slide. The campaign and government code spells out matters that are appropriate for investigations by the Whistleblower Program, [inaudible] improper activities by city officers and [inaudible] deficiencies in the quality and delivery of Government Services and also wasteful and inefficient government practices. Next slide. The campaign and government conduct code also mandates that we refer out several types of complaints. Those would be complaints that another City Department is required by federal, state, or local law to adjudicate [inaudible] or a contract, complaints that involved violations of criminal law, complaints that are subject to [inaudible] investigation, and complaints that allege violations of governmental ethics laws. Next slide. In fiscal year 20192020, the Whistleblower Program received 599 new reports. This represents a 19 increase from the previous fiscal year. The Whistleblower Program has received more reports each year since fiscal year 1213. We believe there are several factors that can influence the volume of reports that we receive. We dont attribute volume to any one factor, but several factors may influence how many complaints that we receive or such as how the program is being advertised or otherwise publicized through the city workforce. The high volume of reports can mean that the hotline is working as we planned it to or that theres a greater awareness [inaudible] filed the complaint or that management is setting the proper tone in setting reporting mechanisms and requirements, including setting the Whistleblower Program. I will let you know that for quarter one of this current fiscal year, we received 142 reports. [inaudible] for your information, we currently have 90 complaints investigating. Next slide. Most of the reports that we receive come through our online web forum, but we use multiple intake channels to make sure that its accessible with any reporters. Regardless that the reporting channel that the reporters use, each report is assigned a unique tracking number so it can be reviewed as quickly as possible. One of the our new features is weve allowed the implementation of walkin complaints. Next slide, please. The Whistleblower Program closed 585 reports in fiscal year 1920, and we did see in an average of 64 days. The program closed 75 of those 585 reports within 30 days of receipts. We recognize if approximate we do not resolve reports in a timely manner people dont feel that their investigations are being investigated seriously. There are a number of factors that we believe that influence a report closing in time, including the type of allegations, the sheer number of allegations made in the report [inaudible] and the availability of City Employees to be able to work from home during this time of covid [inaudible] next slide, please. Of the 585 reports weve closed, over half, or 381, reach closure after an investigation. An investigation includes research and other preliminary information developed in determining whether a full [inaudible] investigation is warranted or possible. Whistleblower staff will lead certain investigations whereas other departments can head certain investigations or have further city oversight in the investigation and response. Further City Ordinance utilizes all [inaudible] involved [inaudible] must respond to the Whistleblower Program on any actions taken in response. All responses are reviewed by the program before any case can be considered closed. Next slide. This chart summarizes the disposition of closed complaint is dating back to fiscal complaints dating back to fiscal year 1617. [inaudible] but having this Whistleblower Program as a city Central Point ensures that systemic issues and risk trends are identified promptly so that City Management can address them. Jeff talked about the close working relationship we have with the Ethics Commission and their staff. We also work very closely with the City Attorney ease office and district Attorneys Office to review complaints and make sure that we get them where they need to go for whistleblower investigations. 106 investigations resulted in the Department Taking corrective or preventative action, and we believe that the factor substantiation is increased when well informed reporters make [inaudible] that are investigated effectively and timely. The program has reissued a [inaudible] grant misuse, split purchases, and miss characterized expenses. Mischaracterized expenses. Next slide. Of the 130 reports open on june 30, 43, or 41 were 90 days or older at that time. The whistleblower investigators delays that affect closure and worked with leadership to improve these issues. [inaudible] they increase the investigative skill kesets of these employees [inaudible] and just recently on tuesday, we had our annual deputy liaison training that was attended by over 90 members of the city family. All right. And in the next and concluding slide, weve got our fiscal 192020 initiatives. Were hoping to close out 90 of our whistleblower cases within 90 days. We continue to issue reports on the issue of our fairness reporting activities, and we are hopeful and it is our plan to have the q1 report issued by the end of this month. Additionally, well be hosting two webinars to instruct on [inaudible] and hosting techniques. We had an attendee from the northern marianas last time. We implemented a new Case Management system that we began testing yesterday, training our Department Liaison on how to conduct remote investigations, which is what we discussed on our tuesday meeting, and then [inaudible] from our peer jurisdictions. So these are some of the things that were doing, and we hope to continue providing San Francisco one of the better known and better considered whistleblower hotline programs. This concludes what i have prepared to present to you today. Happy to answer any questions that you might have. Chair ambrose thanks, dave. Nice to see you, and appreciate you and your report. Commissioner, do any of you have your hand up to ask a question now . I think commissioner bush or was that up from previous . Commissioner bush no, its current, thank you. Chair ambrose okay. If you could, please. Bu commissioner bush there some background to the Whistleblower Program that gives some resonance to what were facing now. The program was actually begun in 1990 by thenmayor agnos, and the first whistleblower was a guy named ed lee, who went onto become mayor of the city. It stayed in the Mayors Office until mayor jordan became mayor, and he transferred it out of the Mayors Office and over to ethics, and then, ethics took responsibility for the program but didnt implement anything with it, and it was in 2003 that Ed Harrington, as controller, helped draft a charter amendment, which was the 2003 prop c that made the Whistleblower Program split in half, part back to ethics. The first thing that started it in 1990 were problems at the department of human resources. Shows that some problems last a long time. When you come back to overall questions, i have a series of questions i want to ask about the Whistleblower Program now. Thank you. Chair ambrose all right. Thanks for that. Im wondering, again, if we shouldnt see if theres any members of the public that have any comments before we get into questions with the Controllers Office staff, so actually, moderator, if you could please find out if there are any public callers in the queue. Operator madam president , we are checking to see if there are any callers in the queue. For those of you wishing to speak in Public Comment, we have just finished the presentation on item 5, discussion and possible action on presentation by Controllers Office whistleblower paragraph staff on annual report of Whistleblower Program for fiscal year 201920. You will have three minutes to present your Public Comment, six minutes if you are using an interpreter. Please hold. Madam chair, there are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose all right then. Public comment is closed. Im going to go back to the commissioners. Commissioner lee, i see your hand up, so im going to look and see if you have a text youre typing. All right. While youre doing that, ill go ahead and let commissioner bush pose his questions, please. Commissioner bush thank you. I have a series of questions, most of which can be answered quickly. The Whistle Blower Program seems to have handled its cases in a period of 50 to 64 days, which is quicker than what weve been able to do on ethics. What has made it rapid from the filing of a complaint to conclusion, the Whistleblower Program . Not knowing the specific inner workings of ethics, i can tell you what might be applicable. We have three full time investigators working 40 hours a week, and then, we have three parttimers usually working with 10 to 15 hours about 10 to 15 hours, so i think were pretty well staffed. One other thing that allows us to close complaints out quickly is the quality of the complaint that we receive. The Whistleblowers Office is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. Well close something out 15 days, two weeks of receiving it, rather than keep something open, so i think that might be one of the things that allows us to close things out quicker than staffers at ethics do b. H commissioner bush i dont think we have three people who are involved in investigating complaints with us. Through the chair, i wonder if i might offer some additional perspective on that question. Commissioner bush yes. Chair ambrose please. I think the Whistle Blower Program certainly operates with tremendous professionalism, and the work that they do to move quickly through those reports is commendable. I would add a couple of distinctions to what dave said. One enables the charter Whistleblower Program, as dave described, to refer complaints to the subject departments, so the investigative staff at the Whistleblower Program, which is larger than the ethics investigative staff investigates some but not all of the complaints. So the 90 or so departmental liaisons that we met with on tuesday also conduct quite a number of the investigations on reports that come through that office. A second distinction that i might offer would be that when the Whistleblower Program closes an investigation, it does so with a series of recommendations, so neither the charter nor the campaign and governmental conduct code provides remedial powers to the Whistleblower Program, and in contrast, the Ethics Commission, it does retain remedial powers, which means when we endeavor to close an investigation, it it may it may include what can be an elaborate process either to settle a case with a respondent or to engage in administrative proceedings, effectively administrative litigation, which, as you know, itself can be a very lengthy process. So the numbers that we track include quite a number of layers of process that dont apply in the context of the Whistleblower Program. And so as i mentioned, the work that they do and the speed with which they work is really extraordinary, and we are endeavoring to increase our speed and better resemble the work that we do, but i would offer those clarifications to explain that the numbers, they dont lineup because the systems and the programs are different. Commissioner bush thank you. That delineates things further. It still goes back to you could use more resources than what youve got now. For dave, do you have a dollar value on how much was involved and impacts to the budget the Whistleblower Program had . One of the ways to measure the success of a program is money saved because it tracks down waste and fraud. We have not tracked that because in our process, thats not something we can attach a dollar figure to. Where we get an indication, might be theft of goods, or time, we might be able to quantify that, but many of the cases that we process each year dont involve things that we could easily quantify with a dollar amount. So in some cases, were able to attach a dollar figure, but many of the cases that we work on, including if somebody has a complaint that a bus driver was discourteous to them, im sorry that happened to you, but i would struggle to find a way to equate that in economic terms, and thats one of the reasons why we have not looked to do that in the past. Commissioner bush well, i think to the way that it can be done, it would be a useful method to look at. I noticed in the complaints that you reported, there are only two complaints that resulted in action at the Police Department and five at the Sheriffs Department and two at the department of human resources, and those are departments where there have been a lot of controversy and lawsuits filed about wrongdoing. How does your report lineup with court cases, for example . Are we seeing cases go to court that are involved in the Whistleblower Program . I think those are both remedies that are being used. We are limited in our ability to conduct investigations by the Police Department, for example, by the charter jurisdiction given by the department of police accountability. So when we have an investigation of that type, we would not investigate it, we would report it out. With the sheriffs office, we had several allegations, but after investigation, they were found not to be sustained. Commissioner bush werent there some civil rights violations, treatment of inmates at the jail . There was, and the sheriff is a little bit different because of Union Contracts which allow their employees more extensive rights and typical regulations than what we would operate under. So if youre reading about something in june, it might not hit one of our quarterly reports until a year afterwards, and so that would be some of the reasons that i see, particularly with the d. H. R. , which is happening in a more current time frame, which is why were not seeing a number in ta an extension in the number of sustained findings. Commissioner bush in your report, there is a number [inaudible] i know in other jurisdictions, those situations do provide protections to the whistleblower. Does our program allow protections like that . This is something i would like to confer with our City Attorney. Rather than give an incorrect answer to you, i would like to consult with the City Attorney to see what information we can provide. Commissioner bush okay. Theres another part to my question. What about retaliation . That question would be better answered by jeff pierce, and he would be better able to answer that. Commissioner bush all right. Well, i can try to answer both questions, but deputy City Attorney givner is welcome to jump in. [inaudible] theyre available to whistleblowers who made a complaint in good faith to the wrong office. So conceivably, if someone complains to the board of supervisors, they might receive protections under the language of our ordinance if we could establish in that case that they believed that that was the appropriate avenue to do so. I think it may be a harder question to evaluate, whether bringing a complaint to, say, a federal agency would result in local protection, conceivably they would receive a number of times, its really a question of policy, and i think youre aware that under existing law, even as amended a couple years ago, those whistleblowers do not receive protections under the law, meaning, my office would not be empowered to investigate and offer protections to those individuals, but the federal and state constitution offers protections to those individuals under their First Amendment rights, and they could seek remedies against the government for retailiation in ways effectively that far exceed the protections that we can offer them. And as a matter of policy, its certainly credible for the city and county to decide that they wish to offer protections that encourage people to report in and not strictly to offer protections above and beyond those that already exist in the constitution that would encourage people to vote or to report out. But i can pause there before turning to the second question if givner wants to jump in. Mr. Givner i dont have anything to add on those. Thank you. Sure. So to your second question, commissioner bush, what the consequences might be, the commission retains authority to impose financial penalties against a respondent who is found, after a hearing on the merits, to have committed retaliation. And under the charter, those penalties can be up to 5,000. I think there has been some conversation whether that respondent would be personally liable for that 5,000 penalty or whether they were acting within the scope of employment and that somehow the city would pay the penalty, but that remains to be seen. Beyond that, you may know that the whistleblower protection ordinance empowers the commission to do two more things, but those two additional things are recommendations only. One is to suggest, to recommend, that the subject department impose discipline on the employer who took the negative action, and the other is to recommend that the subject department unwind that negative action and restore the whistleblower to their preretaliation status, whether thats undoing a transfer, undoing a termination, revising a performance evaluation, but again, these are recommendations only, and theyre subject to the Civil Service rules, union protections, and Everything Else in the labor context. Commissioner bush thank you. What im getting at is San Francisco would not face a situation like weve seen in washington where federal employees testified before congress under subpoena and did so under oath and then later lost their jobs without apparent consequences for the people who fired them. And i just want to make it clear in the presentation today that that situation would not happen in San Francisco. Am i correct . Are you correct that employers who who took or required an adverse action to get rid of the whistleblower would face no consequence . [please stand by] and looking at the supervising branch, the elected official for any of those departments, one would hope that they would create a culture where retaliation wasnt tolerated. Again, that goes back to training issues and support from d. H. R. And other entities in addressing what the appropriate way of dealing with it. Before i ask any other further questions, i have questions from commissioner lee that id like to present. Commissioner bush, is that ok or did you have another followup question . No, im fine, thank you. Commissioner lee, she asks regarding the tip line, how does the number of complaints compare, say, with other cities . Are we get agro bust number . She notes that the number of complaints seems low. I am working a you have of memory here and whatever call is, when we have take and look at other jurisdictions with tip lines, were actually overperforming and receiving more complaints than they are. As of sheer volume. The last comparison recall hearing was with san diego and we were receiving more complaints per employee than san diego was. It may look small in number, but i would also point out that ier single year since 1213, weve received an increased rate. Were doing something right as an avenue to report wrongdoing and [inaudible] fraud and abuse. Can we do more . We can always do more. But as a comparison, it is my recollection that were overperforming some of the comparable jurisdictions with comparable programmes. And this is my question as a followon to commissioner lees question about the tip line. Do we do outreach to our Contractor Community about tip lines in the same way that every city employee, you know, sees portia ing in the break room and get regular information about the availability of our programs. What about our Contracting Community . About this time last year, if were engaged in a process with d. H. R. And also an aught reach to contractor, we put a pause on that once covid hit. But it would be great to see where we are now in that outreach effort. Because of all if you look at the citys budget, a considerable amount of work done through the employee programmes, we also have literally billions of dollars of city Business Done by outside contractors. Do you have a demographic breakdown on complaints and do they correspond to the citys workforce demographic breakup . We do not collect that information from our reporters. Most of our reporters present anonymously. That is not something we have asked of them in the past. All right. I understand your reasoning. I will allow commissioner lee would like, she can raise her hand again. Any other comments from commissioners . I have one quick one. One of the things that is kind of interesting is that in this covid world where you have i dont know what percentage, but some people are out to the show up on the job. A good number of City Employees are looking remotely. Has that made it more challenging for you to do investigations . Have you seen more complaints around the changing circumstances related to covid . I think i would answer that question in two parts. The first part being operationally. How have we been able to respond . We hit the ground working remotely on march 13. Now seven months aing and havent lost too much traction in our ability to do this work. Where weve seen some issues with other departments that havent been ready to work remotely and that has delayed the responses as a matter of course. There have been some delays due to covid and people working remotely and not able to have the tools to do the work were asking them to do. But that hasnt been the case. We did see a dramatic downturn from quarter 3 to quarter 4 of last year. We were on track to receive almost 200 complaints but i think it was 99 so half of what we were thinking we might see came in. And that is probably a result of people interacting with each other in the workplace. People having to complain there and the type of complaint. Right after everybody started sheltering in place, some people were essential. Some people were not. Some people have complaints that they were essential. Some people have complaints that they werent essential. And those have dried up now. But we saw a rash of complains about working conditions when people still had to go into work. People had concerns about masking. Some people were masking and some people werent. Some people had adequate cleaning supplies and some people didnt. When we went through that procedure of figuring out how do we work remotely and safely, the number of complains is about Workplace Environment complaints have dried up. I think weve come through it in the sense that were getting more complaints about the things we were seeing a year ago in a way that six months aing we were seeing a difference type of complaint. Were still getting occasional complaints about people failing to mask and make sure to get those through to investigation within 24 hours of receipt because that helps with our employees. It has been interesting to see the array of complaints. I think one thing that came up and we noted one of the earlier reports the number of additional complaints that you got just as the mohammad neru corruption indictment came down. Im sure those whistleblower complaints or tips have been refered to the appropriate authority or division. So hopefully youll continue to encourage and receive that participation. For our part, i appreciate the work that we want to get the word out that well give them our full attention as theyre brought to us. I dont know if anyone else from the department had any comments because, if not, im going to go on to the next agenda item. We have a full agenda today. No further comments, but id like to thank dave and steve and mark for joining us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. With, that ill close agenda item number 5 and call agenda number 6, which is discussion and possible action on staff report on phase one of the government ethics and conflict of interest review. Im going to ask Patrick Forge to give us a presentation on this agenda item. Thank you. Pat ford, legislative chairs council. Counsel. This agenda item is the first set of findings and recommendations as part of the commissions ongoing review of the citys conflict of interest in government ethics laws. At the Commission Meeting in september, this was identified as the top priority. The reason for that is pretty obvious but ill state it here which is that there are multiple, serious, ongoing corruption investigations in San Francisco. You heard about the work that the Controllers Office is doing earlier tooful and the f. D. I. Made multiple arrests of both city officials and city contractors. Some of those individuals already pled guilty to federal charges. And on top of that, the City Attorneys Office is also [inaudible] that they hear about. They suspected departments, both profit and nonprofit. So, were continuing to learn more all the time as these reports come out. Essentially the goal is to and lie and interim what were learning from the various agencies that are conducting investigations and to identify policy approaches to prevent future incidents. The reason that is so important is, number one, to restore the publics trust. Anytime these scandals happen, it has a severely negative impacts on the way that people view City Government and its vital as a city and in particular as an Ethics Commission that we show that we are very attendive to this and high priority to learn from these experiences and to make the changes that we need to prevent them. They are phrasing this as tone at the top. It is a huge issue. And i think that will be a major theme as well, how do we change for the better the tone at the top in the city. So, the project is being undertaken in multiple phases. The first is at behest of payments and the report attached to this agenda item provides staff findings and recommendations about this phase, about behest of payments. Ill give a quick presentation about what staff recommendations to the commission is at this time and then be glad to answer any questions. First of all, behest payments is essentially made at the behest of a Government Official or employee. And usually that is an official asking for a cash payment to an organization. Lots of times it is a Nonprofit Organization. Currently, behest payments are defined in the law, in california state law. And both the state and San Francisco require disclosure of certain behested payments. Not all. Kis closure is the extent of existing clause. Existing clause is not to limit the kind of behest of payments that can occur. But officials can can for through disclosure only regime. The reason it is focusing on behest of payments is number one we have learned that it involves significant ethics issues from that we believe that basic guardrails on this practice are needed to bring it more in line with existing laws on gifts and political contributions. In the second report, the Controllers Office recommended a substantially similar rule so we wanted to address that recommendation to us and also supervisor haney has introduced legislation that contains this kind of rule as well. It seemed timely to approach this part of the project first. Essentially what we learned about behest of payments through the work of the Controllers Office, and the work of the f. B. I. Is that there is a documented practice amid employees of San Francisco asking members of the public seeking to input them to make Cash Payments to third parties and well discuss shortly some of the exams that we have of that and this practice is problematic. For one, it carries a major risk of pay to play. Pay to play is when there is an understanding that those who seek things from the city have to essentially pay for that. But pay to play is when people believe they are required to make a payment in order to extract favorable outcomes from government and severely undermines the meritbased trust of government and should generally be prevented in all cases. The tuberculosising problematic because they can be a conduit for outright bribery. If a quid pro quo does, in fact, exist. Well talk about that momentarily as well. And another thing that we learned through these investigations about behest of payments, officials [inaudible] behest of payments in ways that benefit them. The official will get some kind of benefit from the behested payment and, again, that carris the risk of pay to play since there is an elements of selfenrichment and undermines existing gift rules and contribution rules that limit the gifts and contributions that Public Servants can receive if theyre ultimately able to financially benefit from a behested payment, it can be a workaround to those rules. These policy goals are not new. In this review, we were looking to existing gift rules and contribution rules to understand what the policy goals for those rules were and to understand whether or not they apply to these payments and they do. They need to be included in the same kind of rules that apply to contributions. Uno i want to give a quick overview of some of the examples that what we learned from the ongoing corruption investigations that learned that these kind of rules are warranted. First of all, as i mentioned, the f. B. I. Isen gauged in a major corruption investigation in f. B. I. One of incidents we learned about in january in the complaint against mohammad neru and city contractor nick davis is that neru engaged in a conspiracy to bribe an airport commissioner on behalf of two individuals who were seeking a concessions contract in s. F. O. En they turned out to be f. B. I. Informants and had involved an undercover officer so they were secretly recording conversations and in one of those conversations it is xlaoer that they were coaching these individuals on how to use a behest payment as a way to bribe the appropriate commissioner. They instructioned them they would find out which organisations the airport commissioner would like them to donate to and then by making the donations they would secure that commissioners support for their contract. That connie taouts a bribe and even absent quid pro quo it would still be pay to play. Because people think that by making the payment, they are securing favorable treatment. Another example that weve learned about, and this comes from investigative reporting, we learned that public works have an ongoing practice of asking contractors doing business with their department to make behested payments. The most notable examples are the garbage contractors that handle the citys waste and also, of course, public works plays a major role in setting the rates for that garbage contract. So definitely an organization that has a lot of financial interest at stake. And also Major Construction Companies Like clark, also making payments at the behest of mohammad neru and other highlevel employees within the department. Again, that is problematic because there is a risk of pay to play. That i that ear getting contracts and these rates are being set in large part by the director of public works. Many of these were going to accounts and ultimately to public works employees. So, perks alliance was one organization. So, public works employees were directing the payments to Parks Alliance and then the parks a alliance account where this money was heading held was under the control of public works employees. They were making direct payments to themselves. They appeared to be reimbursements for departmental costs however, in any situation that that was not the case, that would be a gift and that was a major problem. The other thing that we learned is that the public works employees were directing payments through a nonprofit that was not only providing services to children, giving them sporting equipment, but we know from Investigative Journalism done on this, it was spending money on holiday parties that cost 30,000 or 40,000 so it was ultimately benefiting the very people who are asking for it. That is problematic because it can carry a major risk of pay to play. Another thing we learned is that there are documented incidents, according to our review of at least one lexed official in multiple cases acting for behested payments from restrictive sources. Our review was limited, necessarily limited. We had to pick a Certain Group of filings to look at because there are many. What we decided to look at were behested payment filings by mark ferrell during the review period was a member of the board of supervisors representing district two and we compared those filings gwen existing lobbyist disclosures and essentially what we were trying to see is whether or not supervisor ferrell was asking people who were either lobbying him, meaning the lobbyists, or the people paying those lobbyists to lobby him. They asked him to make behest of payments. The reason we looked at that is that those individuals would constitute restricted sources under city law. Meaning they could not give supervisor ferrell a gift. Existing gift rules prohibit restrictive sources for giving gifts, restricted sources are those who are either doing business with the Officials Department or who have sought to influence the official in the last 12 months. So, obviously if you are lobbying somebody and reported that lobbying contact, you [inaudible]. Not to say that this would have been unlawful for supervisor ferrell to solicit these. This is part of the point of this project. There is a loophole here in the law and that is what were hoping to demonstrate with this review. So, we reviewed documents from april 2015 to june 2018 because those are dates when we have electronic data for behested payment filings and, in that period alone, about three years, we found four instances where supervisor ferrell asked entities or individuals to make behested payments who are lobbying him. And those instances are detailed in the report and well go through each of them right now. But you can see who they were and what the dates and amount were in the report and we believe that this is problematic because, number one, it clearly undermines existing gift rules. You cannot accept a gift from someone, but you can ask them to make a behested payment, arguably the policy purpose for the gift rule is not being served. There is a way to get around it. And there is a clear risk of pay to play. If somebody is coming to a public official asking them to do something, in their official capacity and then in that same sense the official is asking them to make a payment, it definitely creates a [inaudible] that the payment is required in other words for the favorable outcome. There is also two other incidents in other jurisdictions that i noted in the report. Both of these come to us from two separate f. B. I. Investigations. The first one is from the ongoing f. B. I. Investigation in los angeles and involves a number of people for whom have pled guilty. But the main defendant involved is Council Member of the Los Angeles City council and he, at this point, has been charged with bribery, extortion, Money Laundering and on the services fraud. One of the schemes thats discussed in the f. B. I. s complaint against him is that he was soliciting behested payments from partis that had matters before him. He was the chair of the Land Use Management Committee t committee of the l. A. City council that looks at Large Development agreements. He was asking those developers to make behested payments and, in some instances, he was asking them to donate to a private high school that employed his spouse as a paid fundraiser. So, in this fact pattern, we have both kinds of harms that we looked that at in this report. You have a public official asking somebody who has business before them and trying to influence them to make a behested payment and that brings the issues of pay to play, potential bribery and then you also have an official directing organisations to give him a potential benefit through the income paid to his spouse and that could be an end run around gift rules and have serious pay to play implications. Another incident we know about through the f. B. I. s work involves former state senator ron calderone. This took place in 2014. He asked two individuals that he thought were filmmakers to direct behested payments to a particular Nonprofit Organization and there was an explicit quid pro quo that because of those behested payments he would support favorable tax legislation for those individuals. The payments were made to a nonprofit that his brother was in control of and ultimately those funds went directly to ron and tom calderon. So they were bribes through this organization and turned out that the two filmmakers were undercover f. B. I. Agents and senator calderon was ultimately charged, pled guilty to bribery, Money Laundering and Honest Services fraud for this and a number of other schemes. And was sentenced to a term in federal prison. So, both of these inens stas, again, very problematic from the perspective of pay to play and the worst case is actual bribery, when there is a quid pro quo established and clearly is a way to circumvent gift rules. That is a summary of what we know now, what we learned in the last couple of years of behest of payments and problems that can arise from them. The recommendations were making in the report are two. First we recommend that San Francisco create a rule prohibiting officials and employees from asking interested parties to make behested payments. Interested party, essentially somebody seeking to influence that official or obtain the officials action on something. And there are four types of people that we identify as interested parties. First, people who are parties to certain proceedings in the city. People seeking permits, licenses, contracts. We identify contractors and their affiliates as interested parties. So, bhaoem are doing business with the Officials Department, people who are directors of that contractor entity. Major shore ha ildsers of the entity, etc. We identify interested lobbyists who may not give gifts to officials so we believe that officials should not be able to make them behested payments and also discussed this earlier, restricted sources, we believe, are also interested parties. Again, these are people either doing business with the Officials Department or who have sought to influence the official or employee in the last 12 months. Notably the recommendation that were making would still allow behested payments to the city. So, if the official or employee were asking somebody and including an Interested Party to make a behested payment to a city fund, that would be ok. And that is in line with the controller has shown in their report that its really noncity accounts that are the issue. When its a account subject to all the controllers accounting processes and audit processors so we dont have the same dangers there with pay to play and selfenrichment. We believe this rule is important because it could serve as a basic guardrail on the practice of behested payments. None really exist at this time. Although gifts and contributions are regulated and defined certain amount of them as problematic and we prohibit them. We do not do the same thing for behested payments. This recommendation would still leave untouched the vast majority of fund raising. By looking at the existing disclosures in San Francisco, its pretty apparent that behested payments from interested parties are a nicer row slice of the overall fundraising that Government Officials do. In the last two years, weve only gotten 29 filings that represent 300,000 payments to nonprofits. Annual lieed, that is an average of 150,000 per yore. Not very much money at all. I would create an important safeguard and a guide post for officials to know that we cannot ask interested pears to make these payments. The other rule that we recommend is that officials and employees not be allowed to direct behested payments to organizations that are a source of income. Through that official or employee and that would include the official and employees spouse as well. Just under state law, spouse solve income is considered personal income. The reason is to prevent the circumvention of gift rules. Again f you cant accept a gift from somebody, it doesnt make sense that you could ask that person to make a payment to an organization that will ultimately pay you. That is an end run around the rules and it avoids the danger of pay to play and bribes as well. We believe this recommendation builds on the controllers recommendations regarding [inaudible] accounts. The controller recommended that noncity accounts come under the citys audit processes. And we believe that that means that if it means an organization is going to pay income to the official or employee, that means that its not an appropriate, noncity account for them to be sending behested payments to. So, that practice should not be allowed. So, in conclusion, what were recommending for todays meeting is, of course, that you be able to ask questions about this recommendation and about both recommendations and the review process. I hope that youll have a policy discussion about the recommendations and even though i recommend that the commission, assuming that you do agree with these recommendations, has a motion that essentially endorses the recommendations. The context is that point of views sort haney, as i mentioned, has have deuced legislation that contains a rule substantially similar to staffs first recommendation that city officers not be allowed to solicit behest of payments from interested parties. The commissions approval is actually not required. This rule is in a chapter of the campaign and governmenttal conduct code that can be amended by the board and acting alone. The vast majority of policy projects, of legislative projects, the commissions approval is required. Usually the recommendation is that you review the recommendations and that staff will then work with the citys Attorney Office to draft legislation. The legislation will come to you and your approval is required in order to move forward. That is not the case with this ordinance. So i think my recommendation envisions that if you were to approve motion endorsing some form of these recommendations, that then that would be direction to supervisor haneys office as to what your preferences are and hopefully he would follow those recommendations. And also that would be a good direction to me of how i can engage with supervisor haneys office and other members of the board on this legislation to further your policy determinations on this. However, obviously future agenda items could be agdsized. This could come before you again if you wanted that or you feel like you will have a consensus on what you think the best outcome is, you could communicate that through a motion and i will do my best with the board to carry that out. That wraps up what i wanted to present to you and im glad to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, pat. What i would like to do, because you do have two very specific recommendations for us to consider, aye like to take them separately so that we have a very clear and complete discussion about your proposal [inaudible]. City officials and employees from soliciting behested payments from interested parties which i think is something we have seen similar in the legislation that supervisor haney had initially introduced and then, second, take your recommendation that we expand our behest of payment regulations to include nots the city officials and those elected and appointed as well as employees by restricting thirdparty recipients of the i think how you would characterize this by saying that if a particular nonprofit was a source of income to either the employee or their spouse, that the employee would not be allowed to solicit gifts to that nonprofit. So, i want to start with the first one, which is prohibiting city officials and employees from soliciting behest of payments from interested parties. I see hands up from commissioner bush and chiu and im sorry i dont know who had their hand up first. Commissioner f you want to go first because youre sure. Thank you, chair. I had a procedural question and just from my own understanding. When the ordinance was initially passed it required a super majority approval of both the commission and the board of supervisors. And so now, however, we changes to the ordinance can be made by aprove al through just the board of supervisors and the mayor. How did that come to be . The reason is that and i assume youre tucking about the accountability arm. That ordinance contained provisions that affected both the behested payment rules which are article three, chapter six, which does not require Commission Approval and changes to article three, chapter two, which does require aprove al. So, stlins were elements that required Commission Approval, the ordinance itself required Commission Approval. This one does not blend elements to chapters. Its only in that chapter that does not require commissioner approval. So it is entirely possible then that the board of supervisors we can provide our input to the board of supervisors, but there is no they could or could not take it. That is correct. Yeah. And that is why the recommendation is still procedurally a little odd because its difference than every other policy project that weve done. But i will say that i have been working very closely with courtney mcdonald, a legislative aid to supervise source haney and she is here today. So shes prepared to talk with you and answer questions that you have. But thus far they have been very, you know, open and Responsive Partners on this. So she can talk about the supervisors plan moving forward with legislation. But i would hope that that relationship would continue as it has been. Thank you. All right. Commissioner bush, then, if you want to ask your question. I have a couple of questions. But before i do that, i want to congratulate mr. Ford for what i consider to be one of the best reports that i have ever seen come out of Ethics Commission. It covers a wide range of issues and it does so with details and examples from other jurisdictions. Kudos to you. Thank you. I will say that that thanks also due to all the folks that i cite in this. The Controllers Office, the f. B. I. , the investigative journalists. They did a lot of the leg work to unearth these things. It speaks well that you acknowledge others. How many other states have the equivalent of behest of payments . Do you mean regulations . I mean how many allow officials to solicit contributions for a third party, even from people who have business before their jurisdiction. I dont know. I dont know how many allow it. But what i do know is that there are a number of jurisdictions, both cities and states that prohibit the practice of asking for behest of payments from interested parties. Some of the examples are listed in the memo. The states in maryland, new york, new mexico and alberta and there are also rules in the fe ral executive branch and both houses of congress. Number of proposals that you have, the money should not go to an entity that pays them. Soish sorry about that. They also go for governmenttal purposes, not just to a nonprofit. In some case, we have seen elected officials hiring staff for themselves or buying office furniture. Being funded through behest of payments. Envision covering those situations as well . There is not a direct personal benefit. For example, the americas cup. I was chaired by the president of the rec and Park Commission who was overseeing property that was going to be involved in the americas cup. The mayors decision at the time. It highlights what i think is a really tricky part of this, which is where the public official has some degree of control over the funds. So on the one hand, we want to aed dress situations where that control leads to selfenrichment, which i think is the core issue. But still allow instances for the official to be involved in worthy nonprofit causes, Civic Projects like you mentioned in the americas cup. Looking for staff or fortunate irn ishing government facilities. I think the distinction that i tried to draw here is when the organization to which the behest of payments are growing is actually the city. Versus when it is an independent thirdparty organization. Be it nonprofit or otherwise. The reason being that the official would not have full control. Anytime you have going through the city, the Controllers Office is ultimately in charge. They have processes in place to ensure that the money is misappropriated and that it is documented. Etc. This is spoken about some of the gaps that exist in current law. One of gaps that i see, certainly legal as i understand it, to seek behest of payments and go to a nonprofit and do not register as lobbyists. And so as an Advocacy Group, they approach the same elected officials. To adopt policies that favour their industry. And that certainly happened with a number of indices that exist in this city. So there may not be a personal financial benefit but you are, in effect, fertilizing an existing structure that turns around and, with those resource, advocates official actions and by law we have said that groups like that do not lobby. How do you cover that . That is a classic example of corruption in the city. To me that speaks more to the first recommendation that if an organization or person were attempting to influence an official, that would make that person a restricted source under existing law and prohibit them from making a gift. How would you know they were attempting to influence the person . Because since theyre not a lobby, they dont haves to disclose who they meet with. Who knows how much theyre spending to do that. That is exactly right. Persistent sources are not always identifiable through public documents. Its true. Its true talking about lobbyists and clients that are have documented lobbying contact, that is very clear to see and why we focused on the end of report. But there are instances where people attempted to influence Government Officials or xwraoeps and that is not subject to an existing disclosure. That would be highly fact dements and essentially something we would have to educate people about, of how to know what constitutes a restricted source and never to accept gifts nor ask for behested payments from such people and we would have to factor this into our Enforcement Divisions of how to detect and penalize that conduct. Well, im hoping for a full loaf and not a half loaf when i comes to these issues. Can i interject here because i want to make sure that were really clear about the different categories of the people asking for who theyre asking and whos receiving it. When you were talking about these various nonprofit organisations whose Nonprofit Mission is to influence government, that is also their activitis are under our constitution recognizes the abilities to petition your government for redress, to engage in public discourse, about policies. So, were not saying that, you know, were we have a problem with the fact that these organisations engage in policy discussions or contact supervisors about their problems with the ordinance or something. What were saying is i think what i hear you saying is that if they are attempting to influence this is where i think we also need to get clear. Because what were proposing is changing. Right now it is lexed officials. Weve added commissioners and now youre proposing to add all employees who file form 700. I think by aeding a ul of those potential people who were subject to this rule, and then broadening i totally understand anyone who has as a, quote, Interested Party, as a contract, has a pending permit application, that that employee is involved in. What i dont want to do is create rules that are ambiguous, where were nots seeing perfectly legitimate engagement in fundraising for nonprofit organisations of which, for example, can be many schools and hospitals. We want to encourage people to support in our community. So, lets just be really clear about that. In terms of restricted sources, including persons who have sought within the last 12 months to influence the legislative or administrative action of the employee in question, when you say legislative action, so if you have whatever, a Nonprofit Organization who writes a letter to the board of supervisors and says i really hope you find these resources for p. P. E. , for Grocery Store workers or whatever, those are that doesnt mean that, you know, that entity wouldnt be allowed to that somebody who was an employee of the city would be ahowed to support that organization who made that request. I just want to be careful as we expand the skoem of this, that were not unnecessarily capturing people who are engaging in perfectly legitimate activities. To answer that question. So part of the benefit of kind of to keep backing this rule on to existing rules like the restrixed service rule is we benefit from all the regulations, advice, etc. , this has been developed on those rules . There is an issue that youre talking about that says that the following shall not be deemed an attempt to influence an office or employee. One of them in the list is oral or written comment that becomes par of the record at a public hearing. That is not attempts to influence legislative action that makes you a restrictive source. So we would read that directly into this rule as well. That would mean that just by giving written Public Comment or oral Public Comment at a hearing, that would not make you a restricted source. It would have to be something more direct or something that is not public. Ok. And right now when folks i mean, right now this rule applis to elected officials and bores of governance and by expanding it to employees, what do we say we have . 3600, Something Like that, form 700 filers. Who answers those questions . So before i send out that letter to all my friends and family and ask them to buy raffle tickets for my kids schools fund raiser, who do i check with to make sure that, you know, my kids school is not seeking a permit for, you know, new building or whatever. Just to clarify on that fact pattern, i wouldnt matter whether the school was seeking a permit. This rule would not prohibit you from behesting money to an Interested Party, but it would prohibit you from soliciting money from the interested pear. What you want to look at is whether or not the people you are asking to make the payment are interested parties. So for that, you would want to ask the Ethics Commission and contact us and we would be producing compliance tellser and helping to educate employees and officers about how to go through that inquiry and also the City Attorneys Office is always resource as well. There going to be a list of every entity that is a contractor . Maybe there is another exception. The other exception is that applies in certain circumstances. If you do a general solicitation to a certain number of members of the public at large and, as opposed to a phone call to some particular specific Interested Party, then you are not subject to the constraint. That is right. In the code, that is called a Public Appeal. And the fact pattern that you are describing would probably be a Public Appeal. If you send out enough. Solicitations. Id have to look to see what the number is. If you ask enough people at the same time, it is a Public Appeal and it is not considered a behest under the code so that would aply here as well. Ok. And then finally, if this amendment does extend to the 360 filers, im assuming that is an m. O. U. Issue that requires meet and confer. It does. And then yvonne lees question is railroads regarding the source of income ban, you proposed adding spouses to the ban. Any legal reason not to expand the probative list not to be immediate family members, spouse, children, siblings, parents . So that will be actually now that i think about it, that will come up when we talk about your second recommendations. So, a imgoing to go back on the recommend diagnosis prohibit city officials and employees from sewly sitting behested payments from interested parties with the definitions that had outlined. Are there any other questions or comments about that particular recommendation . And i see hands up but i dont know if that was from before. Do you have any questions about that particular item . With that, i ament going to jump to the what well do is talk about each one of these separately and then ask for Public Comment and then ask for a motion after Public Comment is closed. Or maybe i should ask for a motion before we go to Public Comment. On the second one, on the behest of payments that is an entity that is a source of income for the official as commissioner lee inquired would also be the official and their spouse or also potentially immediate family members, sibling, children, parents. This would prevent sewly sitting behest of payments from any source the an entity that is the source of income for the official or the official spouse. Defining officials including elected officials, members of boards and commissions and Department Heads, employees as all form 700 filers and income means any economic interests, reportable on form 700. I noted in the start. In your contacts with other state and local government, you do regulate these kinds of precipitations that there are a number of them that do restrict the recipient of behested gifts. Or behested payments. And im just curious who in those circumstances if you know, what is the universe of people that that rule applis to . One just to put it all out there, one of concerns that i have, having been an attorney for a number of commissions many my career in the City Attorneys Office, we have a citizen form of government. We have literally now probably 100 commissions and numerous commissioners who, because of the way that the charter divides legislative and executive power between the board of supervisors and the mayor and the commissions, we have a lot of commissioners who whose spouses do work for nonprofit organisations. And in my experience, they are clearly some of the most ethical and beneficial donors to the citys Public Engagement by serving on these commissions. I am, frankly, worried about the idea not that these people whose who themselves are, you know, executive directors of nonprofits and whose spouse may be a executive director of a nonprof. Clearly i agree that they shouldnt be able to solicit contributions from a restricted source. [please stand by] [please stand by] without knowing what the supervisors are going to propose and the public testimony at the board, i myself, would hold back on making that recommendation until we hear from folks. Were not getting lot of Public Participation in this meeting. You have a stakeholder groups that are following what were doing and what were recommending. I dont know if theres an opportunity for them to have gotten the agenda and really understood what the recommendation is. Thats my set of concerns about the second piece of it and now im going to look and see if anything has any comments or questions for you as well on this part of it. I think you mentioned the question from commissioner lee. I can answer. The reason why i limited the recommendation to only the spouse of the employee, under california law, only the spouses income is considered the income of the official employee. When i file my form 700, i report my spouses income. I dont report any other family members income. Thats most likely a feature of californias Community Property law that i have a Community Property interest in my spouses income. Half of that income is my property. I tailored the recommendation to that. One because theres no illegal interest in the spouses income and also because from a compliance and enforcement perspective, to have that income already reported on form 700 i think its really crucial if the official employee has that documented, its easy for them to know that this is the source of income for me. They have to think about their brothers income and child income, it can get very complicated for them. I did not include that. I would argue not to the same extent as it would with the spouse. If i can chime in. There are issues here that are not theoretical but based in the fact. We have had elected officials who created a nonprofit and put their own political consultant as executive director who went out and raised funds from entities. Shouldnt you cover naming a staff member who is going to be paid from this nonprofit . Its another way of providing a stipend to the staff member. Second thing is, when an appointee official is asked to chair something, theyre in position to say no. They are pretty well coerced, if they say no, they may lose sitting on the commission. Yet, they are soliciting money from people who may have issues before the city. We see both of those things happening. We saw it with the super bowl l. We saw it with the San Francisco city hall centennial. We seen it with the conference of mayors meeting in San Francisco. All of those were onetime nonprofit set up by the mayor and by his appointees and staff. Its not any secret to the people of San Francisco that this is how the game is played here. For us to pretend its not played that way, not addressing it is wrong. In my view. I like to understand better under the proposed rule of prohibiting officials and employees from soliciting from interested parties. Taking your example of whatever, the americas cup, this would prohibit or for that matter, the Mohammed Nuru investigation. This rule would prohibit city officials elected or appointed and employees from soliciting from interested parties from the ecology or other entities that have contracts. At least on that point, im going to assume that somebody is going to be prepared to make a motion to recommend that we move forward with communicating that Commission Endorses that change. Commissioner bush, your point about who the im trying to think, on the americas cup, if they put people from the city in charge of that i guess it was a nonprofit they educated, just the ones behested, its not just restricted source. Are you saying they shouldnt be able to behest payment to a nonprofit if the mayor controls the nonprofit. Im trying to figure how you would articulate the regulation that would address the concern that you have . Theres couple of ways getting at it. One will be to say, they cant solicit contributions more than 5000. We have some cases where a party was contributing 500,000. One case actually 1 million. It doesnt have to be a contractor. It can be like wells fargo loss of lobbying the city not to divest itself but using wells fargo as an investment bank. Thats not a contract. Thats a policy question that was going on. Same thing with waterfront properties. They want to build highrise market rate condo on the waterfront, they gave several hundred thousand dollars during this process. Tough to you have to write it in such a way that it will take someone with legal skill, that its clearly intended for a public good and not simply for the politicians good. Chair ambrose this once again in a lot of ways comes back to the top. We wouldnt if we had a clear culture where where it was understood that there was no pay to play or favoritism to the money interest who your favorite charity, then we wouldnt have to be writing new rules to fix it. I hear what youre saying and im not sure how you direct that. I havim cautious about overg the word charity. If you have nonprofits that provide services to low income people or services in the community, they are providing direct services. Thats different than being an Advocacy Group. Like spur, for example, is an Advocacy Group and does not do any services. Unless you want to count their research project. Otherwise, they are not a Service Oriented nonprofit. In some jurisdictions, i looked at in the past, they do make a distinction like in los angeles, where the payments cannot go to groups that do not provide services to low income people. Chair ambrose really just to low income people, not people who have other kinds of disabilities . That seems thats the way theyve written their law. On the other hand, the fbi is in the middle of investigating behested payments in los angeles. It may not be a perfect solution. Chair ambrose okay, im a little bit the mayor in los angeles established mayors fund which brings in millions of dollars a year. Its probably one of the wealthiest entities in los angeles. It exist to fund things that the city does not fund and the mayor wants done. Chair ambrose im just looking, commissioner lee, is commenting about many nonprofits, direct Service Advocacy organization such as you pointed out. I think thats one of the alternative ways of looking at this. Having really strict rules and having certain waivers. Then you have to start parsing it out and describing the standard of review for determining when its okay for somebody to solicit donation because whatever, the general consensus is thats a Good Organization and a legitimate solicitation as for those in interest not direct Service Oriented organizations, some people feel very strongly say, for example, one of the things im thinking about are former controller Public Utilities commissioner Ed Harrington has recently been on the board of green peace. Cares greatly about climate issues across the world and probably strongly advocating donations to address global warming. Thats not a direct Service Organization. We do not want anyone in City Government to be soliciting behested payments from restricted sources. Weve seen from the indictment that has a particular negative task to it and that theres no anyway, i think we have consensus on that. In order to move forward, i want to ask if we have motion and actually, i do want to you just check and make sure commissioner lee. She did say that she thinks that she agrees that direct service and advocacy Nonprofit Organizations should be subject to the same rules. Thawhat i want to do, we still e a heavy agenda. I will take a break after we get Public Comment. I want to see if we have some motion. Do i have a motion do i clearly understand that commissioner lee position is that direct Service Organizations and Advocacy Groups should be treat thed the same . Chair ambrose she did say that specifically. It should be the same in terms of being a recipient. You take a group like spur, its a nonprofit. Its an Advocacy Group on various city policies. It also has its chair or executive director acting as a campaign manager. In fact, three committees theres a Cross Connection there that raises a certain level of questions i would think. Chair ambrose spur activities as a nonprofit and whatever, the engagement in land use and related issues in their educational gathering. I dont know what they are doing now in covid. Its separate. Their executive director may be a very political person and have a job thats sort of interesting. Executive director of spur. I dont know how they can have that much time in three ballot measures. That seem like something spurs board should be looking at. Theres all kinds of advocacy. Not just spur. Every Industry Group in the city that is an Advocacy Group that supports them. You start getting into the Union Organizations and their nonprofit arms, etcetera. If you say you can if youre an employee of the city, you can on the solicit a gift to nonprofit thats a direct Service Organization and not an entity that gauges in political advocacy, thats a pretty restraint on that persons political engagement, whatever their choices might be. As long as we all agree they cant ask anybody whos got a decision pending before them or their organization. In terms of restricting the source, i think thats what youre talking about, im talking about the recipient. Not the source. Chair ambrose thats what i meant. If youre saying as a city employee, you cant solicit a gift from somebody whos not a restricted source to a Nonprofit Organization, unless they are engaged in direct service. You can certainly say that. I have a problem being that legislating that kind of constraint. I think that people, one of the ways people engage in their political life is by supporting organizations often Nonprofit Organizations that represent their interest concerns and views. I dont want to drag this on forever. Im struck by recalling, behested payments that went to sister city committees from sources that otherwise could not make a contribution. It Sister Cities Committee used the money to pay for the mayor to make trips overseas. Thats one hand washing the other. Theres no way around it. Chair ambrose to be clear on the disclosure front, i think that exposing whos been solicited and who the recipient is, its illuminating to see the detailed disclosure report that mr. Ford included. It was a list of whos who in San Francisco world. It does allow you then to raise the kind of questions that youre raising about wheather or not there is people taking advantage of loopholes and enhancing their position in the world through the behested payments. Question is, goes back to at the top, this is a question of legislating, ethical behavior. Theres no restraint associated with these kind of regulations. Theres nothing to prevent these people from getting money to the city. Why dont you have somebody give it to the city and the city then allocates the money. They dont want to have to go through the process of seeing a budget and accountability for it . The americas cup use some city money and private money. Why dont it all just go through the city . The city has the board of supervisors has to approve anything over 5000. It does not interfear with anybodys ability to do that. Chair ambrose im not talking about the americas cup, im just talking about im using it as an example. Anyway you see my point. Chair ambrose its not the second piece of this that would get to that. Were not saying that the mayor cant put his or her spouse in charge of the americas cup nonprofit and solicit gifts to them and source of income. Youre talking about with respect to the first restricting sources. Im still struggling how would you articulate where there are political or other advantage. You can define, you cant solicit money nonprofit that is source of payment to the elected official employee for their travel expenses. You start having to go through that whole litany to define those circumstances beyond just you cant ask for it. Im going to go back i dont think this is the end of this conversation. I think were going to take this in layers. I want to see whether or not we have Public Comment in the queue. I want to see if we have a motion in support for i guess i should ask quickly, pat, did you have any further information or comments that you want to make following this discussion before we ask for a motion . No. Other than just to echo what you just said. Part of the reason that ive separated this project into phases is so that we can continue to learn more and react and develop subsequent phases in the project accordingly. Just echo that this is not the last opportunity. Chair ambrose with that, i do want to see whether or not we have a motion to support the recommendation for the first item solicitation behested payments from interested parties as mr. Ford outlined in the staff report and with the understanding that this wont preclude us from augmenting our recommendations with respect to either the definition of interested parties or any exceptions to the solicitation of behested payments. Do i have a motion on this first piece of it . Nobody is ready to move this part forward. Commissioner bush you had your hand up. I dont know if that was from previously . I think that we should allow pat ford to communicate to the board. Thats really all were doing here to communicate to the board that we do support at least at a minimum, this rule that we should restrict not just the elected officials but city officials and employees from soliciting behested payments from interested parties, interested parties defined as the city contractor, people soliciting permit licenses, people submitting proposals for a contract, registered lobbyists. With the exception being that these officers and Department Heads im assuming employees will be able to solicit monetary payments. I would make that motion that we allow him to communicate to the board, supervisor member whos initiating the legislation that the commission does think thats a good idea. May i add a friendly amendment to your motion . Wellworn phrase that we often see. Its to say what you just said, including but not limited to. That allows us to come back and revisit things. Chair ambrose okay. W[dog barking] we recommend the following steps including but not limited to. Chair ambrose okay, i will accept that friendly amendment. That will be my motion. Commissioner smith . Commissioner smith at some point, it sounded as though we were simply asking pat to give this concept of our approval forward and then commissioner bush started talking about a motion and an amendment and now it seems as though you switched to a motion. Im not sure if youre tall making a formal motion that requires a second and if pat understands what the motion really is. If you are simply asking us to approve pat going back and saying that we, the ethnics commission, approves this concept of restricting behested payments, etcetera. Would you clarify that for me please . Chair ambrose fair enough. Frankly, we wouldnt necessarily have to make a formal motion and have a roll call vote in order to give our feedback to staff. I think in fairness to him, he wants to know when he engages with the supervisors, about what the position, Ethics Commission is, the clarity about support. I think what the motion is, with respect to his recommendations and the staff report, the item, the first item solicitation behested payments from interested parties, that our authorization to him is that he may communicate that we support these rules but we are not limited to further recommendations regarding the solicitation of behested paymented from Interested Party. His legislation will be amended and there will be public hearings. Well bring this back in december for further discussion. As things stand now, we would authorize him to say that if we have the votes for this, we have moved to endorse this set of recommendations. Is that clear enough . Commissioner smith thats helpful. Pat do you understand . I think, this will be helpful to me and to the board to have some action from the commission to base their judgment on. Commissioner smith i will be willing to second that motion as stated in this last exchange. Chair ambrose im going to hold that motion. We still have to get Public Comment. I need to i want to get both of these up. The second recommendation is solicitation behested payment to an entity that is source of income for the official. This would be this is not in supervisor haneys current legislation but this would be recommendation that officials and employees would be prohibited from soliciting behested payments from any source to any entity that is a source of income for the official or the officials spouse. The officials include elected, members of board and commission and Department Heads as well as employee who are form 700 filers and income means any economic interest reportable in the form 700. Do i have a motion with respect to this recommendation . None that i see. I already been clear that im not ready to go forward with this levelful recommendation until i hear a lot more in the Public Comment realm from people who themselves or spouses, whether they be employees or commissioners, provide some feedback about what that would mean for them and therapy engagement in civic life. Im going to ask ronald to please determine if we have Public Comment in the queue. We are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. For those on wait, please continue to wait until the system indicate you have been unmuted. We are public discussion on the motion of agenda item 6, discussion on possible action on staff report of phase one government ethics and conflict of interest review behested payments. If you have not done so, please press star 3 to be added to the Public Comment queue. Youll hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. We have a caller in the queue. Hi. Thank you commissioners. This is debbie from the San Francisco Human Services network and association of about 80 San Francisco health and Human Service nonprofit. I want to commend the commission to address the recent corruption scandal. Three years ago, we engaged with this commission around behested payments process that looked at elected officials and the commission and the board ultimately adopted a disclosure law rather than a ban. We see a process where our health and Human Service nonprofit with being caught up in something where we are not the problem. We continue to urge a careful nuance approach that is necessary to ensure that we dont hamstring the citys ability to support its nonprofit partners who are providing direct services and Affordable Housing particularly in the middle of a pandemic. The report that i just saw for the first time today, it would propose a major expansion of restrictions and we dont have a specific position. I think it needs a cautious look and we look forward to the ongoings discussion. The devil is always in the details with these things. What happens with Public Appeal, can an official be on the host committee. What about nonprofit boar boardf directors who will be classified potential parties when they are private citizens with motives to have volunteered their time and energy to support a nonprofit. Im alarmed by this proposal to broadly describe as a restricted source anybody, any private citizen who expresses the point of view to an administrative official. That can be a letter to your supervisor or to Department Head. This seems extremely broad and ambiguous, i would urge this commission to take your time to really think these things out. Im encouraged by some of the nuances coming out in the discussions today. Thank you for that. We want to urge caution and not running full scale ahead to adopt extremely restrictive measures that can have unintended consequences. I want to say that our ethics laws are becoming more and more complicated and urge the Ethics Commission staff to reach out to contractors and apri provide trn and written material to help nonprofit contractors so they dont fall into details of these laws. That will also help tremendously with compliance. Thank you. Chair ambrose thank you. That was helpful. We are checking to see if theres any more callers in the queue. Please standby. There are no more callers in the queue. Chair ambrose with that, Public Comment is closed. I will ask you to call the roll on the motion that we had. I want to add, i did appreciate the comments from the person who just called in. I think it is something that we and the board are going to look at. We long been saying we need funding and resources to do more training and if were going to layer on more regulatory requirements, then its that much more important that we are able to help people understand what the rules, why they are there and how to comply with them. More reason to take more funding. With that t please please call the roll. Could you restate the motion please . Chair ambrose okay. This would be a motion to authorize Commission Staff to represent to members of the board or public that we recommend at minimum including but not limited to the set of recommendations as we may have further refinements going forward, that city officials and employees are prohibited soliciting behested payments from interested parties. This would include city elected officials, members of boards and commissions, Department Heads, as well as employees who are form 700 filers, interested parties are going to include parties and participants involving permits licenses and entitlements for use and administrative enforcement, city contractors and im not going to define all of them. They are written in the staff report. There are three categories of city contractor who have existing or pending or submitting proposals for contracts. Registered lobbyist and then finally alridgee all restricteds which includes persons who sought within the last 12 months to influence the administrative action of office of employee in question with a side note to the person who just commented that doesnt include people who wrote to the board of supervisors or commented public hearing. Finally point five in the staff recommendation, theres an exception to solicit monetary payment to establish city gift fund under the administrative code section 10. 100. With that, please call the roll. [roll call vote] motion is approved audiencely. Chair ambrose i will take a 10 minute break so we can all eat something. Get up and stretch your legs. We do still have some fairly substantive matters coming up. Ill see you back here at we are now life again. Chair ambrose i did want to add since im the voice for commissioner lee, she did have a comment at the end of the last item that we should reach out to the Nonprofit Community and understand better what the implications of these rules are for the many nonprofits who do contract with the city and that she would be willing to help with that outreach. I know youre planning on some further stakeholder interested person engagements as part of the priority process. Keep that in mind shes available to support outreach efforts. Just trying to get my place on the calendar that was item 6. Im going to call item 7. Discussion and possible action on the monthly staff policy report including consideration of the policy prioritization plan. Once again we have patrick ford here to present this item. Thank you. Thank you chair ambrose. I will keep this short and sweet. The two ongoing policy projects are the review of the citys conflicts of interest code and government ethics laws. The last agenda item represents the bulk of the work thats ongoing right now on that project. Now that youve communicated your policy decisions, at least for the time being on that item, i will be engaging with supervisor haney and other members of the board as this item progresses. I will keep you updated monthtomonth as we go. I will communicate with you chair ambrose on that so you are apprised of the progress on that. The other projects right now is in its final stages. This is bian annual revie bianne form 700 file. We reviewed that as a city every two years. Each department reviews the separate list. We have a meeting yesterday with half of a dozen or more employee bargaining units. There were number of questions about the changes from p. U. C. And airport. The Employee Relations division at d. H. R. Is working those departments to answer the unions questions and were going to have another meet and confer session december 2nd. Were hoping to answer any outstanding questions at that meeting. At that point, the ordinance will be heard before committee and then go to first and second reading of the board. Were still targeting end of this calendar year to have that ordinance approved. The policy prioritization plan is attached here. Its agendized for action here. You may take whatever action you wish also i think im operating under the assumption if no action is taken, i will continue to work on this conflict of interest code project as the main policy project at this time. That will involve working with the board, promoting the behested payment legislation and as that progresses, assuming it progresses, then i will be begin phase two which will be looking at gift rules. That will follows essentially the same profits here. I would have interested person meetings engaging stakeholders there and outside the meeting, having meetings and phone calls and etcetera. Doing research, engaging with Research Institutions Like Campaign legal center on this last report. Talking to other jurisdictions, etcetera, then that will be assume rised in the report with findings and recommendations. Definitely feel free to give me whatever feedback you have on the progress of the plan. If i can get no further instruction here at this point, thats what i plan to do. Thats all i have to say. Im glad to answer any questions. Chair ambrose thank you for that. I see yvonnes hand up. Im not sure if that was from the problem yes, she just took her hand down. I will ask the commissioners if they have any comments on the policy prioritization plan presentation as it stands today . I have a related question. Pat done an excellent job, as you have done since you joined the commission. Maybe director pelham will get in on this. I hope you will be getting some help soon. I dont know if you have any ability or update on where that stands in hiring someone to help you in this work . I will leave that question for director pelham to answer when she talk about her executive director report. There are some positive Development Comes down the pipeline soon. Ill wait for director pelhams report. Im glad to hear that help is on the way. Me too. Chair ambrose commissioner bush . Commissioner bush thank you. Mr. Ford, when you do the conflict of interest review, i would urge you incorporate the language that comes from the state. For example, one of the state provisions says if youre a member of a volunteer group thats unpaid and on the board regular contact with people who have interest before your group, that needs to be disclosed. I dont know that we have any place where thats being disclosed in San Francisco. I like you to take a look at what the restrictions are from the state from how we might incorporate that in any disclosures for San Francisco so people dont have to jump around from one site to another. Thats one point. Second is that i know youll be looking at the Public Finance report and what happened with that. I like to suggest that in this report, sense its coming out in march, which is about the timing when were in the midst of the subject, we take a broad lens to this to see what are not just the Public Finance but Everything Else from independent expenditure committees so that we present to the public and to the mayor and board, a fuller picture of what is being spent to influence city decision makers. That might provide sufficient information and impetus for augmenting our budget at that time. I would suggest that you do that. I will send a list of the kind of issues that i see percolating out there. The world has changed so much since we started these rules. It used to be we got contributions from contractors. Now we understand people seeking permits. People are seeking legislative changes. Like for example, what is required in elevators going to highrises. Thats a big issue for building owners and managers. That doesnt show up. At least we can acknowledge that theres a bigger world. Thank you. Chair ambrose do we have further comments . What were saying to you, mr. Ford, carry on. Well continue to engage with you on both the policies and the prioritization as things evolve and develop that will take you on the right track and keep working on it. Looking forward to it. Chair ambrose before we move on, we need to ask for Public Comment. Is there anyone in the queue who like to comment on this matter. We are checking to see if theres callers in the queue. For those already on hold, please wait until the system indicate you have been unmuted. We are currently on public discussion on agenda item 7, discussion possible action on monthly staff policy report including consideration of policy, prioritization plan. You have not done so, please press star 3 to be added to the queue. You will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. Standby. There are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose Public Comment on item 7 is now closed and im going to call agenda item 8. It will be the discussion of monthly staff enforcement report. Were going to ask jeff pearce to present. Thank you. Thank you chair ambrose and commissioners. Ill tend to keep remarks brief here. Thii can report that we have opd three new investigations. A month ago, you seen that the district Attorney Office pressed interest in one of the three investigations. Added to last month investigation pool is one more. Each the matters we reported on last month has aged by an additional month. We have added a third, which is very fresh, five days old on hold as request of the district Attorney Office. Apart from that, i would note that, theres not a lot of movement on the accounts that are before the bureau of delinquent revenue but couple of highlights on that update. One is that you seen that the superior court pushed back a number of hearings that have been scheduled on accounts that belong to the commission. All the members of the commission appreciate that the courts are significantly delayed as a result of the pandemic. Hearings that have been scheduled for the spring have been pushed back to the fall and then the second thing to highlight from that update will be that the bureau has adopted a kind of softer approach to collections during the pandemic. Partially in response to the economic fallout that has risen from the coronavirus. Youll have seen on the update an indication from that office when shelterinplace order is lifted, they tend to consult with us whether we might wish to move forward newly on a number of small claims actions try to collect on accounts for the bureau. Apart from that, im happy to field any questions that you might have. Chair ambrose i see a hand up from commissioner bush. Im not sure if that was from a previous item. Commissioner bush im taking it down. Chair ambrose i have a quick question. In prior election years weve seen considerable uptick during the election process of complaints that come in. Im assuming thats also happened this time around. I see in the report on your docket update, just looking at we have of lot less in november 2020 than we had in 2019. That was as an election season for us because of the mayors race. How would you compare . How is your inbox doing in this period . Anecdotally, youre right that we do generally get more complaints during an election season. What we have seen during this election, i think its a departure what weve had in prior election cycles. In the last three months, period, roughly the 90 day period leading up to the election when late contribution and late expenditure reports are due, we have received just 13 complaints and among those, fewer than half are arising from the Campaign Finance arena. Weve gotten in this 90day election period only six Campaign Finance complaints. Weve got equally as many complaints arriving under the government ethics ordinance. I cant fully account for why that maybe true. Part of it may have to do with the process improvements that we implemented beginning last fall where as one example, if we know from the complaint, we will not have jurisdiction over that matter. We dont formally add it to the docket, we just consult with the complaintent and advise what they should be. Apart from that, fewer complaints. Im not sure why that maybe. Chair ambrose i was just curious what the future holds based on that. Were going to we still have the agenda ahead of us with director report in closed session. Any other further questions . I will ask the moderator to see if we have Public Comment on agenda item 8 . We are checking to see if theres callers in the queue. For those already on hold, please continue owait until the system indicate that you have been unmuted. Please press star 3 to be added to the Public Comment queue. You will have three minutes to provide your Public Comment and six minutes with an interpreter. Please standby. There are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose Public Comment is closed. I will move on and call agenda item number 9. That will be a discussion of the executive directors report an update various programmatic and operational highlights of Ethics Commission staff activities. Director pelham off the floor. I have several brief highlights i want to touch on. We planned for two brief presentations or demo from staff. If that is your preference, moving forward, i wanted to take a temperature if you like to proceed with, happy to do that. The first i wanted to highlight following the november election cycle, were almost wrapping up our Public Financing process. There are claims that can be submitted following election. As of november 9th the candidates who participated in the program and qualified for the program qualified to receive Public Financing for this election. Commissioner bush mentioned in the last item that Public Financing report. Were very interested to look at that process comprehensively when we get those january 31st reports in that reflect the entirety of the calendar year activity. Public financing is a method to achieve some very strong Public Policy outcomes for governance in San Francisco. Looking at other factors, well be very helpful and interesting to do. Well look forward to providing more information in that report as you suggest coming up in the spring. Following now, the bulk of the Public Financing work has been completed. The audit staff will return back to focusing on audit. I wanted to clarify on the audit website, publicly financed candidates from the 2018 audit cycle, those publicly financed committees have now been audited. All those audits are posted on our website. Thats there for your information. The auditor will be returning back to the items that have been pending, 2019 publicly finance candidate audit. Theyll be starting and laying more ground work and steps in place to respond to the b. L. A. Recommendation. On that point, my report noted that we would be hearing there will be a scheduling of the b. L. A. Report before the board of supervisors committee. Yesterday we had indication from the staff that the Government Oversight Committee is likely to schedule b. L. A. Audit for discussion on november 19th in the morning. Well make sure that you get information about that. If that is actually on the schedule for next week. Im happy to provide some good news on the front regarding our hiring. Since the last Commission Meeting, we were able to meet with our counterparts in the Client Services team over the department of human resources. Very productivive meeting. We walked through various processes that are possible to expedite hiring. Given that we have a pressing programmatic constraint and budgetary constraints we submitted a number of r. T. F. All the vacant positions to the Mayors Office. Today i heard word that weve gotten the green light to proceed with hiring for the first of those positions, which is the investigative position and the Enforcement Division. With expedited prioring process, were on track, assuming we get other positions green lighted in the next few day. Well be on track to post those positions by the early part of december. The hiring process will be an expedited one. We look forward to being able to proceed with hopefully having folks in chairs the first part of calendar year 2021. Its an ambitious process but one that we appreciate. It has been a primary focus for me over the past month and for Staff Leadership Team to get those positions ready to go. Thats good news and we look forward to keeping you informed about that. I did provide a bit of information. We have started to put together research and assess a bit more about the city wide integrity fund. We are reaching out to our friends at the Controller Office to meet with them in the coming day. We also have identified if they got a certain model. You may have heard in the earlier discussion from the Controller Office, when the prop c was approved in 2003, the City Services office was established using a fixed percentage of the annual budget. Were going to be exploring what their experience has been in mechanics of that going forward. Let me just pause there. I know there are questions that you have. Im happy to answer those. We did also, want to provide a bit more information as to the form 700 filing project. We did provide slides that give you an overview of the project. It was a comprehensive set of work thats under way both if term of planning and process and outreach that well be working to support. We want to take the opportunity with information provided by the compliance manager to put that information in front of you and walk through as time permits. The various dont components oft project. Weve been doing work with our employingcolleagues at san frann data. We have new visualization tools to look at Campaign Finance information. Tyler field is available for a brief demo to walk through that as well. We wanted to make sure that you have that information and let me just pause to see if you have questions for me. Chair ambrose commissioner chiu, you have a question . Commissioner chiu thank you. In regard to the upcoming meeting with the board of supervisors, is that going to be in conjunction with the b. L. A. Team that conducted the audit . If so, is there an opportunity to caucus with them or on our own to emphasize their recommendations around funding and resources. In a nice way, remind them that the current budget approval, we asked for these things and they were supported by this independent third party audit. We fell short in this year. For the next budget cycle, which is can kick off any second now. I would hope that we can count on their support for devoting the resources necessary and critical to supporting this work and allowing us to staff up to be able to field the team necessary to not just tread water but to make progress, that we have the Mohammed Nuru investigation and uncovering all sorts of problems here. Theres a big role for us to play. We cant do that in the absence of resources. Commissioner chiu, the short answer is that we anticipate that the b. L. A. Auditor, will be on hand to present the report. I was asked to be present to answer any questions. Im looking forward to do. Weve embraced the recommendations contained in the report, not least of which is the funding aspect they recommended. Im very much looking forward to having a conversation with the committee about the work thats under way and response to b. L. A. Findings as well as the work we know thats ahead of us. I think its important to underscore with auditors the proof is in the pudding. We need to show and demonstrate that we have the capacity. I think were in strong position to be doing that. Commissioner chiu we can suggest as a way to give an alternative to think about that. For those discussed this previous meetings, devoting a portion of the budget from the department of public works, department of planning, wherever the hot spots are, if they could fund the work, we wouldnt have to go back to the general fund. Its a common technique used in the corporate world and i dont know if its ever been done in San Francisco. It will be an alternative that they can consider. Chair ambrose commissioner bush . Commissioner bush director pelham gives her presentation and discussions with other groups as well. I think we need to look at other Funding Sources besides just a carving. I was thinking to remind people that the city had library set aside thats part of our city budget. We have citizens general operations bond oversight committee, that gets a percent of all bond money. We have a requirement in the charter for police staffing. We have requirement in the charter for fire stations. I think you might draw or the expertise of Ed Harrington who oversaw many of those things, to see what he might have to add to give a broader patrio picturf options to providing resources for the ethnics commission. Whether its addendum fee or all lobbying expenses as a premium. We have to monitor and confirm on those and rest of those things. We now have been unable to afford the annual audit of any lobby. Thats one example. Thank you. Chair ambrose thank you for that director pelham. Were going to tune into the Government Audit Committee hearing. Interested to hear what they have to say. Certainly encourage what the other commissioners as part of one of the items that comes up there is the question about funding for training and staffing and you can certainly convey that the commission continues to endorse Additional Support for ethics at work and our ability to do lobbyist, audits and etcetera. We will work internally and certainly working with the board to identify regular source of funding for what youre calling the city Public Integrity fund. Regarding the two items that yod staff prepare for our review. I really want to hear both the form 700 as well as the disclosure of information that tyler has for us. Im concerned about doing it now. Im afraid its going to get short rift. Were already five hours in this meeting. We still have to go into closed session and come back out and do two more agenda items. With the consent of the rest of the commissioners, if you could put those on the agenda in december, put them at the top of the agenda so they wont have to sit around for entire meeting while waiting to see whether or not well get to them. I really do think on both of those fronts, theres something that we would all appreciate and want to have some opportunity to inquire about. Is that okay with everybody else if we carry those forward and hear them as sort of separate presentations at the top of the calendar next time . Commissioner smith im in agreement with that. I think thats a very good proposal. Chair ambrose commissioners, thats okay . I agree. Chair ambrose with that, moderator, if you can see if we have Public Comment on the executive directors report, i would appreciate that. We are checking to see if theres callers in the queue. For those already on hold, please wait until the system indicate you have been unmuted. You have not done so, please press star 3 to be added to the queue. You will have three minutes to provide your Public Comment and six minutes with an interpreter. Please standby. There are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose Public Comment is closed. I will call agenda item 10. Discussion possible action for items on future meetings. In addition to the two items we talked about to hear from rachael and tyler on their presentations, do the commissioners have any other items they want us to entertain for future agendas . I see two hands up. Commissioner chiu. I see commissioner bush your lanhand is up. Can you speak to this item . Commissioner bush i like to raise the issue that we discussed briefly about the 2015 election and the outreach to those with City Interests to encourage them to make contributions and not to favor a different county as an example for our records. Not for any enforcement action but help us understand and the public understand how these relationships develop and create an infrastructure. Its hard for the public to get through. Chair ambrose these are materials that i recall you asked that the executive director share with the commission various news articles concerning allegations about political activity where city elected officials discouraged people from donating to particular candidates with issues concerning the possibilities that going to be official retaliatory action taken against those who didnt comply. You wanted to look into that as the sort of case study for really part of our conflict of interest and ethics code review. What kind of activities could have occurred and how do those get treated within the laws and regulations that we have. Without getting into the substance of it, this is not actually on the calendar yet. Were going to try and figure out how to address that with the appropriate notice and agenda. Are there any other items that folks like to see calendar in the future . Only thing i want to say, the kind of presentation that tyler is going to do it occurs to me that we have a lot of disclosure. Theres incredible amount of Information Available on the dashboard. Putting aside covid even without that, the world is moving to an online existence. We have lots of folks out there who care about political issues. We can see that with a number of people turned out for the election this round. Im not sure how many ordinary citizens know what information is available or how to get to it and how to develop in a way that its meaningful from a journalistic point of view. I like to see some kind of educational segment where not just us but through the recording of these meetings on sfgov tv. Theres just a short staff presentation, sort of highlighting the tools that are Available Online and how to access it and summary reports. I really do think, people can go in and clip those videos and share them with Community Say students at sf state and what have you. That way, short of our having an aggressive training budget, we can try and foster more public use of the tools that are there and the information thats there. Thats something we can talk about how you might bring some of that stuff forward at this level. With that, need to ask if you see if theres any Public Comment on the agenda items for possible future meetings. We are checking to see if theres calls in the queue. If you have not done so, please press star 3 to be added to the Public Comment queue. Youll hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please stan standby. There are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose thank you. With that agenda item 10 is closed. I will call agenda item 11. It relates to closed session item. In order for us to move into closed session, were going to need a motion so hear me out as i read this item. Then i know youve all received training on how were going to log out of this open session screen and log back in to closed session webex screen. Then we will come back to open session to report out any action that we took in closed session and then to conclude the meeting to adjournment. Hopefully everyone is comfortable with where to find that. With that, im going to read agenda item 11, which is discussion and possible action regarding probable cause determination for complaint alleging violations of the government ethics ordinance article 33 chapter 2 of the San Francisco campaign and government conduct code. Were going to invite Public Comment on any matters relating to this item. First, im going to ask if i have a motion to assert Attorney Client privilege to meet in closed session. Do discuss and litigation as plaintiff. If i can get someone to move that. Moved by commissioner chiu. Seconded by commissioner smith. If we can get Public Comment to see if theres any Public Comment this item to go into closed session. We are checking to see if theres any callers in the queue. For those on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicate you have been unmuted. We are currently on public discussion on motion of agenda item number 11. If you have not already done, please press star 3 to be added to the Public Comment queue. You will have three minutes to provide your Public Comment and six minutes when youre on the line with an interpreter. You wil will hear bell go off wn you have 30 seconds remaining. There are no callers in the queue. Chair ambrose Public Comment on item 11 is closed. We have a motion to assert the Attorney Client privilege and meet in closed session. Could you please call the roll . [roll call vote] motion is approved unanimously. Chair ambrose i believe we leave this meeting, so you get out of this meeting. Then go to your outlook calendar email and join the closed session. That is correct. If i may interject, just to let folks know, participants who are not going to be participating in the closed session, this session that were currently on will be put into practice session. Then with that, we will ethen return back once this meeting has started. You can stick around if you are participant and waiting for this meeting to continue. It will be in practice session. Chair ambrose for the commissioners, we actually have to leave this meeting in order to join the other meeting. Otherwise it wont let you in. You have to hit the red x and leave and then join the new one and well we are back in open session on agenda item 11. Discussion and possible action regarding probable cause determination for a complaint alleging violations governing the ethics ordinance article 3, chapter 2 of the government conduct code. The commission did take an action in closed session. It was unanimous vote to vat fithe determination of the executive director of a finding of no probable cause in this matter, which is a confidential matter, confidential investigation. I would seek a motion from member of the commission that we not disclose our closed session deliberations regarding this anticipated litigation aside from the disclosure i just made. So moved. Moved by commissioner moore. Second by commissioner chu. Second by smith. If you could call the roll on the motion not to disclose. The motion is made and seconded. Commissioner bush. Aye. Commissioner chu. Aye. Vice chair lee. Aye. Commissioner smith. Aye. Chairs am bro. Five votes affirmative and zero opposed. It is approved unanimously. Anything else we might need to do. Yes, we must disclose how you voted in closed session and if you would like to do that. More formally. We did take an action in closed session to ratify the determination of the executive director to endorse her finding of no probable cause in this matter. It was a unanimous vote in the affirmative to vattify the executive directors recommendation. Thank you. With that we do have to take Public Comment on item im sorry. First i am going to close item 11 and call agenda item 12 which is additional opportunity for Public Comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda pursuant to article 7 section 2. If any member of the public intend to offer Public Comment for the item dial in and enter star three. Wait a minute. Never mind. I am going back one. This is actually. We do have an additional opportunity for Public Comment. Any members of the public in the queue. After five hours my brain is fuzzing over. We are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. If you are on cold wait until the system indicates you are unmuted. We are currently on public discussion on agenda item 12. Matters appears or not appearing pursuant to article 7 section 2. If you have not done so press star 3 to be added to the queue. You will have three minutes to provide Public Comment, six minutes with an interpreter. You will hear a bell go off for 30 seconds remaining. Please stand by. Will are no callers in the queue. Agenda item 12 is closed. Public comment is closed. I am going to call agenda item 13, adjournment. Commissioners a motion to adjourn the meeting . I am sorry. I thought we had a chance for commissioners to offer items. We did that. I started reading that. Remember and you suggested that we do the 2015 election. That was item 11. I was just getting started. Okay. There will be future opportunities for that. You can call me or the executive director anytime with suggestions you have. Now we are seven minutes shy of getting out of this meeting in less than six hours. If i can get a quick motion to adjourn this meeting and a second we might be able to that would be a first from commissioner moore and second from commissioner smith. Call the roll on the motion to adjourn. You are muted. I am yakking away. Yakking and yakking. Commissioner bush aye. Commissioner moore. Aye. Commissioner moore, chair ambrose. Aye. Five votes in affirmative the motion is approved unanimously. So the motion the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much. Happy thanksgiving. We will see you back here on december what day is it . It is a monday. It is december 13th. I am doublechecking right now. Monday . It is on monday. Earlier this year. We had modified to a monday meeting at the request of the Commission Due to year end planned schedules at that time. December 7th . We have the 14th at 9 30 a. M. I am glad i asked. I did not recall that we had movedded to a monday. We will see you on december 14th. Thank you so much. We came to seven straight about 10 years ago. 7th street about 10 years ago. The environment is huge. It is stronger than willpower. Surrounding yourself with artists, being in a culture where artists are driving, and where a huge amount of them is a healthy environment. You are making it safer. Push, push. That is better. When i start thinking, i see it actually sometimes, i do not see it, but when i do, it is usually from the inside out. It is like watching something being spawned. You go in, and you begin to work, excavate, play with the dancers, and then things began to emerge. You may have a plan that this is what i want to create. Here are the ideas i want to play with, but then, you go into the room, and there maybe some fertile ideas that are becoming manifest that are more interesting than the idea you had initially set out to plan. So there has to be this openness for spontaneity. Also, a sense that regardless of the deadline, that you have tons of time so the you can keep your creativity alive and not cut it off and just go into old habits. It is a lot like listening. Really listening to watch what is going to emerge. I like this thing where you put your foot on his back. Lets keep it. Were your mind is is how you build your life. If you put it in steel or in failure, it works. That works. It is a commitment. For most artists, it is a vacation and a life that they have committed themselves to. There is this notion that artists continue to do their work because of some kind of the external financial support. If that was taken away, artists would still do their art. It is not like there is a prerequisite for these things to happen or i will not do it. How could that be . It is the relationship that you have committed to. It is the vocation. No matter how difficult it gets, you are going to need to produce your art. Whether it is a large scale or very small scale. The need to create is going to happen, and you are going to have to fulfill it because that is your life. Supervisor ronen good morning, everyone. The meeting will come to order. Good morning and welcome to the november 16, 2020, meeting of the rules