charter in that in that regard. but, of course, i'll leave to you how you expend your resources and develop your priorities for the next years. supervisor chu: thank you. and then a question to severin. with regards to the usage of the hours that we have here, we've got, you said, about 1,000 hours left to the end of the current calendar year. so the motion that we potentially could take today, would you suggest that perhaps this committee could consider prioritizing project a, b and c and depending on the refinement of the scope of the actual work, it might be less? i'm just imagining, for example, with the m.o.u. component, there's pieces of it that we would like to move forward with that could be beneficial to the d.h.r. team. but there's probably a portion that wouldn't be useful until later on when we get closer to negotiations. perhaps what we could do is we

prioritize project a and secondly project b. if hours work out, this is how we would like you to spend your 1,000 hours. would that be something that would work? >> that would work, yes. supervisor mar: let's open this up for public comment, then. is there anyone from the public that would like to speak? >> good morning, supervisors. my name is douglas and i've lived in san francisco for 58 years. i would like to thank this committee for holding today's hearing. i think when we talk about audit schedules, one of the biggest supporters for bure rat crick audits is me, especially in the wake of the city of bell fiasco, which i spent many

hours studying lately. i would like to offer a suggestion, since supervisor chu did note that there were a certain amount of hours still available on the schedule, that there should be a follow-up audit for 2003 san francisco general hospital financial audit. i'm sure mr. rows enfield is familiar with that audit. in the way that bond money is being used and is such an important source of money for the general hospital, i think it's only logical to have the financial audit be done immediately, so this way we would know what the strength and weaknesses in the performance of certain departments at general hospital, including my own department, which was thoroughly scrutinized in the 2003 report.

also in "the examiner" this morning, it did note the upcoming departure of mitchell katz. and i think it's even more important that with his departure in january that his successor, barbara garcia, have as much information as possible in regards to what is actually happening on the operational basis at general hospital. let's put it this way -- in any hospital there's going to be a certain amount of waste, but based on the budget restraints in san francisco, i think it is so important that we try to keep any wastes to a bare minimum, especially now that the bond money is starting to be used. i think this committee should follow the example of the health commission, as the health commission has been very vigorous lately in trying to determine what has been happening at laguna honda hospital in regards to the use

or misuse of the patient fund. things like that are only possible in regards to whistleblowers that spoke out at laguna honda hospital, and i think it's very questionable how the two doctors have been, in my opinion, vigorously mistreated, even though they, so far, have laid out facts that haven't been disputed. and i guess everybody is going to await the final outcome of the investigation done by the health commission. so tied to this audit schedule, i think it's only logical that since the department of public health is the biggest user of general fund money, that we ought to do a follow-up of that 2003 financial audit of general hospital, and i think just by following the same methodology in that report, it would cut

down on the hours. and let's put it this way -- if the hospital was well run, then all of us would be proud of the good results. and if it isn't well run, i think we owe that as a service to all the citizens that we get what is the possible shortcomings at general hospital. my final comment is to remind this committee that all citizens basically hold our elected relationships to certain standards. and i think that there are three ideas that everybody needs to keep in mind as they do their duties as elected representatives. the first one is obstruction of justice. the second one, dereliction of duty, and third of abution of power under the color -- abuse of power under the color of

authority. i think those three ideas are very evident at the city of bell. and then, like you say, we don't want that to happen at any other jurisdiction, especially in the bay area. thank you. supervisor mar: thank you. anyone else from the public that would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. i'd just like to thank ms. campbell for looking through -- i think, coming up with criteria , but looking through audits from 2002 to the present, also identifying city programs that are costly, inefficient and have failed to achieve program goals as criteria for selecting these very narrowly-tailored audits, and lastly, looking at important programs and audits and projects that are important to the board of supervisors. and the process, my understanding, is after it comes through this committee, then we pass it on to the full

board for discussion. and i think this would come -- would this come in the next meeting on october 19, if we pass it out of committee? >> if you were to pass it out of committee today, you'd have to prepare a motion on the audits that you wanted in the -- and the priorities. so there's not a motion pending before you today, so you would actually have to create that motion in this committee and report it out to the boards. supervisor mar: great. questions or comments, supervisor chu? >> questions or comments about the assessor's project. >> the proposal talks about evaluating the staff and performance of the assessor's office. in fix, the hiring of the new positions. it also talks a little bit about the assessment backlog. from my previous experience, it seems like being able to

evaluate the assessment backgrounds is a fairly easy task to be able to accomplish through the assessor's office, to know what the change in ownership has looked like, what the potential new roles would look like, what the staffing is doing. so can you just provide a little bit of feedback about where the budget analyst could have added value to that information? i know with our budget going forward, we've always consistently looked at the assessor's office and whether or not there's backlog that we can clear to help with revenue. it seems like it's been a very quick turnaround to get that information. so do you have some thoughts about that? >> like you're saying, supervisor, our office in some of our regular reporting to the mayor and board of supervisors do report on backlogs pending in the assessor's office. and we know as a matter of fact that the assessor's office has worked down significantly pending change in ownership. for example, property tax bills over the last three years from

the boom. that's one of the reasons why our taxes have remained relatively strong, even though values have fallen, as ms. campbell said and as we've talked about a bit, between our offices, our office did complete an audit a couple of years ago that did have recommendations across a host of the areas that are outlined here. the mayor and the board have provided resources to the assessor's office to follow up on some of those issues. so to the extent that the budget analyst is following up to review implementation of audit recommendations, i think that would be helpful, have positions been hired, have funds been used and allocated to meet gaps that we all agreed were there at that time? i mean, fundamentally, i think that's probably the best use of time and money here, given other reporting we already have in place for some of these other items. >> can i just add that from ms. campbell's previous presentation, it seems that the hiring of four new positions during the 2009-2010 budget

cycle for the assessor's office was expected to result in the collection of an additional $17 million in property taxes? so the analysis would be kind of, did we meet the goals, and were those four positions cost effective? supervisor chu: that's correct. supervisor mar: so without -- i think we closed public comment already. any other comments or is there a motion, colleagues? supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell: are we going to -- i mean, this is about almost $2,000 worth. so are we going to start prioritizing that right now? is that what we're going to start doing? because i would certainly like us to look at revenue. so all of the audits dealing with revenue for me i think are extremely important. the city's advertising revenues are important in all of those.

the naming rights. anything that can bring in money and how, if it's coming in, where it's coming in, i think we should do. supervisor mar: so that would be the advertising and -- supervisor maxwell: i guess the one that's the project hours, 440, evaluate the costs and benefit of the city's advertising policies and practices. i believe that's -- supervisor mar: supervisor chu? supervisor chu: thank you. just a question for severin on the advertising analysis. the project scope to be to evaluate our consistency with policy and what departments of doing. but a lot of the contracts may not be up to be able to renegotiate certain things, correct? >> on the existing contracts, that's correct. yes. but another piece of it, to the extent that the controller isn't doing this except for looking at m.t.a. and clear channel would be to look at what they're doing in terms of collecting revenues on those

contracts and looking at the contracts specifically. supervisor chu: ok. supervisor mar: i would just like to add that the assessor's office project also, i think, is about efficiencies and revenue as well, and i think that would be a key priority, i think. and then as martin grand and our controller mentioned, perhaps the more intensive labor m.o.u.'s and project, that that's going to be stretched out over time as well. but i think i would agree with supervisor maxwell that the priorities are revenue and efficiencies in the budget. supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell: supervisor -- i would just like to see that as the controller laid it out.

see if they respond to -- >> that's correct, we would be very specific to that. supervisor mar: supervisor chu? supervisor chu: with regards to next year's calendar, i know the list you provided included a number of other topic areas that were not included in your presentation. that has no bearing. so some of the ones that would be interesting for me, i think, as you start to think about your work plan beginning for next year would just be a little bit of emphasis on thinking about how we can best understand our healthy san francisco program. i think the program is a great program. but to really understand the benefits of it and how we would be able to track and monitor that program is going to be important, in particular, because of all the federal changes that we might be seeing. i know that's not going to be part of the 1,000 work hours. that's just not enough work hours for that. and then the other one is just

about parking taxes and how we collect them. i think that's an interesting topic. i know the controller's office -- there was a recent audit that took a look at our city-owned parking lots. what does it look like citywide with not city-owned parking garages, how do we collect taxes there? that's interesting for me as we start thinking about revenue in the next year. if i could, colleagues, just for your thought about how we might think about prioritizing at least the rest of this year. because we know the budget analysts will be back fairly soon to talk about how we're going to go beyond december. maybe we can start to prioritize a few. i think the c.b.d. one is interesting, but maybe that's a lower priority in terms of some of the things we've talked about, which is efficiencies and revenue. perhaps what we can do is prioritize on the advertising. we can say that we would like the budget analysts to revise the scope to not include all the things that are currently

laid out in the advertising proposal that we see here, but to concentrate not on the closings, but what our collections have been. so probably the work hours there would be reduced, i would imagine. the other one -- the second one i would recommend is on the m.o.u. i think that being able to work with d.h.r. or to direct the budget analysts to work with d.h.r. to figure out the components of the analysis that would really be helpful in their negotiations heading into a year and a half or so, that might be useful, how it is that we spread our premiums, what the best practices and premiums would be. maybe they can come back -- you can come back with a conversation with the d.h.r. to tell us about what those areas would be and to reduce the scope of it. so we probably would still be within our 1,000 limit. and beyond that we can say the assessor's backlog would be next. but as supervisor maxwell said, let's concentrate on the implementation of the previous recommendations.

would that work? supervisor mar: supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell: now, are we also looking at evaluating the city's oversight of naming rights? are we looking into the naming rights? i mean, that is revenue and i don't know whether -- supervisor mar: i think that should be included. supervisor maxwell: i think it's important -- maybe they're not coming up, but they may be coming up in the future, so we should have some kind of a policy, i think, in that regard. did we include that? supervisor mar: ms. campbell? >> let me just clarify it. to the extent that we look at contracts, you only want us looking at contracts in place, which is advertising, naming rights or contracts that are currently in place, is that correct? that's one of the priorities. and the second priority would be to the extent that a naming rights agreement might be coming before the board at some later dates, what's some of the things you would want to know to be looking for, like what that structure should look

like, so you would know what to look for. supervisor maxwell: i'd be open to that. supervisor mar: to supervisor chu's suggestion about the healthy s.f., i'm looking at my notes. tangerine brigham from department of hub health testified, and i believe the controller may already be cog a regularly scheduled audit of the assessed health plan, is that correct? >> to clarify, they have a grant from an outside consultant to look at that program. supervisor mar: ok. but i definitely agree on the revenue item, the parking on revenue from different parking properties for the city. i can't remember which one that was. but items that are revenue-generating or reducing inefficiencies in the budget, i think those should be prioritized. so i support the suggestions

from supervisor chu. supervisor chu: so to clarify, for the 1,000 hours that we're talking about, why don't we prioritize, number one, let's say the advertising and our collections on current advertising contracts, and then, i think, generally sort of the structure we should be looking at as we think about naming rights and other things that might be coming up. and then the second one would be on the m.o.u. and labor unions component, if you would work with d.h.r. to revise the scope to something that is more meaningful and useful in the short term. supervisor maxwell: supervisor, may i ask you a question? when you say -- i mean, exactly what are we talking about? are we talking about the specialized premium pay and the standard pay and specialized over time pay? supervisor chu: i think the budget analysts would have to go with d.h.r. and see what would be useful to look at. i think premium pay is one area. maybe not all of them would be

useful, and whether or not the application really gets the benefit that we think we're getting for paying that premium. but since d.h.r., you are an expert at our pays, i would hope that you would be able to advise us and also work with the budget analysts to come up with a scope that is lower and that is useful. and then the third would be the assessor's backlog, but only looking at the implementation of the previous audit. so that would be the third one. and then i would just simply leave the c.b.d. off for a minute, because i think that already far exceeds the 1,000 hours, and perhaps what we can do is have you come back at a later time with some of the other ideas, which would still include the c.b.d. and other aspects that we were not able to cover in the first round of 1,000 hours, and then the parking tax as well as what we might not be duplicating under the healthy san francisco program. supervisor mar: that sounds fine with me, too. supervisor maxwell: yeah, because i need add little more clarification about the healthy

san francisco. you mentioned that they were having a grant to evaluate it. and then you all were doing something. you've hired an external auditor. >> we have a lot of work going with the health department, not specifically around healthy s.f. we have hired an external reviewer with specialization that's doing a third-party review. there is a third-party review occurring. supervisor maxwell: so it seems to me that maybe what would be appropriate is to have a report on that evaluation and what's come of it, some of the suggestions or whatever. supervisor mar: is there a time when a preliminary report might come out, so that we could schedule it in g.a.o.? >> neither of us is certain of the time, but we can check and report back to you. supervisor mar: ok. supervisor chu: just to follow up on the healthy san francisco piece specifically, i can also talk to tangerine brigham from

the program to find out what the total scope is. if there are questions that directly impact the city or the board's decision-making that aren't covered by that, i can bring that back to you. supervisor mar: ok. so i think we have pretty good direction from supervisor chu and maxwell's recommendations. sounds like it's unanimous. so there's a motion without objection we prioritize kind of the remainder of the year and a little bit of a kick-start of next year's audit schedule. do we need a more formal motion on this at all? >> i think because we have -- and correct me if i'm wrong, we've got a hearing before us, so we can either continue the hearing to the call of the chair for a later time and direct the clerk to prepare a motion that indicates those priorities. supervisor mar: so without objection. miss stokes, any other business before us? >> no, there are not. supervisor mar: meeting adjourned. thank you, everyone.

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