Welcome, eugene. From sfgovtv. Public comment will be taken on each agenda. Please line up to speak. You may submit Public Comment writing email to myself the rules Committee Clerk at victor. Young sfgov. Org. If you submit Public Comment viaemail it will be forwarded to the supervisors and included as part of the file. You may send written comment tuesday city hall, 1 dr. Carlton b goodlett place, 244, San Francisco california 94102. Silence cell phones and electronic devices. Items acted upon today are expected to appear on the board of supervisors agenda july 9, 2024 unless otherwise stated. That completes my initial announcements. Thank you, please call item 1. Item 1, Charter Amendment first draft to amend the charter to establish the position of Inspector General in the Controllers Office to provide that the Inspector General nominated subject to approval to authorize the initiate and lead investigations regarding potential violations of laws or policies involving fraud, waste, abuse, or misconduct to expand authority of the Controllers Office to issue subpoena and authorize the execute search warts to the extent permitted by state law at an election held november 5, 2024. Thank you. President peskin, would you like to present the item . Thank you chair ronan. Thank you for scheduling this as the first of the Charter Amendments that the rules committee is considering for the November Ballot and let me just start by thanking the collaborators in putting this together, starting with my staff,inate, who did a National Search of best practices and looked at models from cities around the country and consulting with leading academic experts in the field. Let me thank the Controller Office, greg wagoner and members of his team who had a hand not only in doing audits and running the Whistle Blower Program pursuant to the charter for many years, but also authoring a number of Public Integrity reports under the leadership of the previous controller recollect , ben rosenfield. Let me thank the City Attorney office for help and collaboration as thought partners in drafting this Charter Amendment. Let me just start out with the obvious, which is, government relies on trust, and the erosion of public trust is an erosion of government and our ability to do what government is supposed to do, and the last number of years have been really quite shameful as a number of high profile Public Integrity scandals have thankfully been uncovered and as somebody who dovoted the lion share of my adult professional life to governance and good governance, it has been devastating and eroded public trust, and these are not new occurrences. The occurrences have gone back long before i was elected 24 years ago. While i thank the federal bureau of investigation and the u. S. Attorney for rooting out corruption in San Francisco government, i think it is time that San Francisco have the mechanisms in place to clean our own house. We know that in the last half dozen years charges have been leveled against over a dozen people, many of those charges have lead to convictions, including of course the highest profile case of former Department Head, mohammed nur rurks and it is time to stab the role of a Public Integrity unit and in doing our research, we relize the Gold Standard is the Inspector General, and most American Cities already have one and San Francisco is probably the city most in need of one. This ballot measure takes the best aspects of the strong Inspector General model recommended by leading Public Integrity experts in practice successfully in dozen major cities. It is clear mandate, public accountability and independence. It puts the role within the Controller Office in order to harness best practice and streamline them with existing functions building on what works at no additional cost to the taxpayers, because the Controllers Office already enjoys a set aside with room in it for this position. I have a little presentation and if i could ask my staff, nate horelto come forward, we can run through this very brief power point, which you will bring it up. The Inspector General can we have thethank you. Thank you, victor. The Inspector General would be appointed by our independent controller, i think we all recognize and acknowledge that the Controllers Office is truly a nonpartisan independent office. I have personally experienced that under three controllers. That is a position that is nominated by the mayor and approved by the board and the controller would have the power to appoint this person subject or to nominate this person subject to the approval of the mayor and majority of the board. That individual would not be subject to Civil Service and as i said, would be funded by the previously created set aside. Lets move to the next slide. As to expanded investigative powers. Give the broad anticorruption mandate to receive complaints and investigate, expand the controllers and inspector jen polk subpoena power to include contractors, lobbyist and anyone seeking contracts, grants, loans, permits, license, tax incentive entitlement or other from the city. Expand the subject of whistle blower complaints to include contractors, lobbyist and above mentioned permitees. Grant powers to execute search warrant which are allowed under state penal code section 830. 13 and codify duty to cooperate for City Employees. Requires and cooperation and information sharing with the between the Inspector General, with ethics, the City Attorney, and the District Attorney. Many of those mechanisms already exist in the charter today and f. 1 06. Dual reporting to the board and mayor twice yearly by Inspector General. Internal accountability through required reporting by Inspector General with local enforcement entities, ethics, the City Attorney and District Attorney who receive referrals, as well as the ability for the Inspector General to hold public hearings. And then the next series of slides, just compare us to other major American Cities, new york, chicago, washington dc, new orleans and los angeles and you will see that San Francisco right now does not have, but this would give us broad subject jurisdiction. It would allow to initiate our own investigations and you will see that virtually every other city ther has those powers. We have ability to accept anonymous reports as most other cities and already have whistle blower protections as do most other cities. If you compare the powers, we are the only city that currently does not have broad subpoena powers in that mandated position, and we are one of most cities have the power of search warrants in a Inspector General position. We currently do not have dual reporting requirement, which every other city that we compared to already has. The same with public reporting. And then if you go to independence, removal protections, thes would provide removal protections as well as given the set aside budgetary protection. That is this high level summary of everything that provides other cities have. My staff worked closely with several Public Integrity experts and consuted with cities with Inspector General positions including Jennifer Rogers claumia law center for advancement for Public Integrity and they and others recommended the strong ig model as the Gold Standard. I like to take a minute to address the concerns raised by staff at the Ethic Commission and point out i believe important factors. The Ethic Commissions requested a clause be added to this Charter Amendment that would explicitly state this new Inspector General not be able to investigate the two sets of laws enforced by the ethics commission, political form act and campaign conduct code. The problem is it would scale back the Current Authority provided to the controller, even more then the charter currently has. The reality and this is specifically called out, the charter currently and very intentionally does not wall off ethics and District Attorney or the City Attorney. They have overlapping authority now, and depend on effective cooperation to function. This is how it would continue to function with empowered Inspector General in the Controller Office and exactly how the works in the other model jurisdictions we closely looked at. There is always some overlapping authority and always up to ininvestigative and enforcement agencies to cooperate and collaborate. The charter already gives the controller ability to [indiscernible] suggested language would take away that ability. If you look at section f. 106, and our City Attorney can confirm this, the controller shall have there duty to perform regular oversight of the city contractor procedures including developal eing modeling criteria, auditing compliance with City Contracting rules and where appropriate investigating cases of alleged abuse or conflict of interest. That is in the current charter. F. 107, subsection a, sub1, the controller can investigate any complaint unless they are subject to ongoing investigations by ethic City Attorney or District Attorney and states the controller impede or delay a investigation. That is already in the charter. However, well intentioned the overly ridged carve out will do more harm then good. Investigations may start in one place and end up somewhere else asthy unfold may uncover different types of conducts in areas of law. Instead of referring a investigation the moment there is a possible ethic violation, this gives the Inspector General the flexibility to work cases for high level enforcement if they deem that the best course of action, and again, ethics in writing already has the ability to assert that controllers investigation would impede or delay an investigation. When considering changes to our charters important we not be overly prescriptive. Instead of setting each jurisdiction behind a wall we should see adding to the investigative capacity and there is plenty Public Integrity work to go aroupd. Round. Finally colleagues and coordination with supervisor walton to avoid confusion, this Charter Amendment also specifically calls out that the current ig position in the Sheriff Office be called the sheriff Inspector General, so there is no confusion. And i am available to answer any questions and would be delighted if we could continue this item to your next meeting, because we are meeting and conferring with the Municipal Executive Association this afternoon. No problem. Supervisor walton. Thank you so much chair ronan and thank you president peskin. Just wanted to say thank you for coming up with a strategy to try to distinguish the difference between the office of Inspector General for the Sheriff Department oversight board, and that body. That was the only question i was going to have and i appreciate the work on that. Thank you. Thank you supervisor. Supervisor safai. Thank you. Thanks supervisor peskin for this work. I want to add a few words to this. I neglected to thank you for your early cosponsorship supervisor safai. Eme polk deeply offended, please remove me as a cosponsor. Just joking. [laughter] thank you. No, listen, i think any of us that worked in this building and been on the board for the last 6 or 7 years, but particularly the last 4, it has been very discouraging to see the level of corruption that prevaded city government. Multiple Department Heads, multiple commissioners, multiple front line staff. To see people taking money that was intended to improve Small Scale Community projects and buying products and selling them on the internet to enrich themselves, having friends and family active false employees to enrich themselves. It literally brought a cloud over the gurmt and there are so many wonderful City Employees in the city and county of San Francisco that literally dedicate their life to making this city what it is and one of the best cities in the united states. But this is something that has gone on too long, and part of the reason i put my name as a cosponsor is because we need a position at this level that has the power that this is proposing to investigate. One thing to have a hotline, and people whistle blow, another thing to have the investigative powers and the subpoena powers to call people in as investigations begin and information is brought. I agree with supervisor peskin, often times you dont know where someone will end up when the conversation begins so we done want to limit in any way. I think this is a step in the right direction. I think we have a duty to rebuild public trust, and ethical behavior begins with us at the top. The leaders of this city, and so, im very strongly in support of this. In many ways, this was long overdue, so i believe that the voters of San Francisco deserve the opportunity to weigh in on this, make the adjustment and the charter begin to restore trust and also insure that the public employees, people that are the front line workers, those that work in these departments, their moral is impacted. I have spoken to them. They feel discouraged in all of these departments that this corruption has prevaded. They feel discouraged and wept to restore that. We want them to understand we are here to support them and make a real ly strong step in the right direction so thank you supervisor peskin and im happy to be a cosponsor of this. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues i wanted you and the public to know that i did take the Ethic Commission letter quite seriously. I talked to both president peskin and City Attorney office about it. The crux of the concernstheir concerns are, there is basically too many cooks in the kitchen, and i dont necessarily agree with that. I think right now we have you know, really responsible adults who share jurisdiction over several matters and act like professionals and get in a room and look at their limited resources and decide who will take the lead over a particular type of investigation and i think adding one more leader into that discussionit is from the same office that already is in the mix, so it is not radically changing in many ways what is already happening right now. And then, you know, in talking to City Attorney gibner, the way he explained it is, it would really require sort of a out of control person in this role who really just cant get along with others, or wants to make a name for him or herself. Really doesnt cooperate and goes above and beyond their duties. I said in that case, we have more protection in this regard then if there was a rogue da or rogue City Attorney or rogue controller, because in this case, the controller could just fire this person if they got out of control. There wouldnt have to be a recall or election in the future. I really dont agree with the contents that letter, and years ago, when i worked for supervisor compos, i worked on public advocate piece of legislation that shared similarities to this and always thought it was a good idea. I thought having a City Employee whos at the leadershipthe number one job is exclusively to look and become a expert and truly understand what is happening in the city to prevent fraud and corruption, it makes a lot of sense. The City Attorney has a lot of responsibility. The