in the m.o.u. meet job needs,dy a quick review and i think the controller's office can run a detailed list of all the different premium pay codes. it would take time, they didn't have it immediately available. there are premium pay codes. if you have -- are in this job classification but work in this location, you get extra money for that. supervisor maxwell i understand. without getting into detail that's what my feeling is. things like that. that's what i remember we were talking about. things that were archaic. i'm just concerned about when i see some of the other things like uniforms and tuition and reimbursement where it doesn't cover a lot of employees, because certainly d.p.w. doesn't necessarily do that. and some of the other ones don't. it's almost like, we are targeting who? and is there a problem there? and that's just my concern about

it being -- it's kind of more spread than i remembered. i did remember us talking about all of this stuff. >> last you spoke specifically about premium pay and requested i come back an look at the m.o.u. in general. but in terms of process, because i think i understand your concern we'll come in and say she's guys get this money for tuition reimburse. it's a cost to the city but it might be a benefit to the city. i put together this work plan, what we have to do is kind of look at everything and go in and see what it means. we might say, this is a good thing. and come back out. our goal is not to find each and every thing to be a reduction. our goal is to find where things are out of date or they create sort of a misallocation of resources or inequities among different job classifications and different people working different departments. for instance, paid parking, the city has a transit first policy.

do they want to provide free parking to employees? to a nurse working night shift at san francisco general, yes, they might. the question is what is the criteria? what is the specific instances? i understand your concern. we're certainly probably not going to come back and say firefighters shouldn't get protective gear. i don't think that's the goal of the audit. supervisor mar: supervisor chu. supervisor chu: thank you for pulling it together some additional details. just on i think a little bit of what supervisor maxwell was talking about, i think part of it when we were talking about it last time was the concern about the duplication of work, potentially that would be easily found at a department like the controller's office who could easily run a premium pay schedule and show how departments are spending their money. i think what could be valuable in this analysis is whether or not that premium pay actually works for the type of function we are talking about. and one very good example of

that is something that we have dealt with with some of the issues around the visstation, nguage access issues. tation, and particular the fact the city pays premium pay for language still but how are we utilizing those employees? are we gaining a benefit that we are -- we believe we would be receiving from pay it? -- paying it? i think in terms of the work you srñ%ikir so much uq whether or not the amount and premiums connect to the type of benefit we think we should be getting. supervisor maxwell: i do, too. when i saw the phone calls and i see uniforms, that's very !.fqv different for me than what we had originally talked about. >> supervisor maxwell, we can also do a very quick look at that. if there's not an issue to be followed up, we would not follow up on it. if it's a phone call because it wasq&ñi required, we would not more than that.

supervisor mar: what's the estimated number of hours for this audit? >> let me just -- there are more pieces to this. total estimated hours would be 1,000 because of looking at the m.o.u.'s city wide. let me go to the other pieces because i was trying to bring together several things. one of the other pieces would be to look at the impact of automatic pay or benefit increases. ñi creating in our recent analysis of the m.t.a., we actually had a0t that by guaranteeing the t.w.u. members a certain level of pay it created an incentive or disincentive for them to actually negotiate over other work requirements. we actually on that level. we would look at provisions and look at where salaries, for instance, link to other jurisdictions. one of the things we found maybe not so much in san francisco but

i have seen this occur in other jurisdictions where 9-v say, this group has to5#v get the sa percentage increase in pay as &xz other 10 counties. well, that's fine except if your county is already at a higher pay scale than the other counties and you're giving them 5% and everyone else is 5%, you may distorting what -- what the pay should be for that position. o#ijeqst too. salaries mean to other m.o.u.'s to the extent that that happens where you are linking positions and responsibilities that aren't linked. that would be something to look at.ffñiñfi one of the other pieces would be to look and evaluate how provision conformso7oó to state federal laws. %ñût:wiw3 like minimum staffing requirements. workload requirements. overtime, sick leave or disability leave. how do they conform to what's required by state and federal --

also probably local audit except san francisco does8 on the books for these things. we do have concerns about some of the minimum staffing requirements or budget. we have recommendations in the sheriff's department. when we did a staffing analysis about some of their m.o.u. provision that is were making it hard for them to appropriately staff their units.7e that's an issue. supervisor mar: i could see how that would be helpful as the department of public health faces more and more cuts, the staffing levels that are mandated by the state would be really helpful to look at, i think. >> i believe at this point the nurses contract is in conformance with the state requirements, but we would take a second look at that. the other one to evaluate the equity of benefits. because each bargaining unit is a separate negotiation process, you will see things enter into some and not others that could

perhaps increase -- make up differences in benefits provided to city employees that aren't necessarily wrarnlted by the -- warranted by the job. so we would look at that. in the final piece, this actually might get a little bit to some of the tuition reimbursement questions you had, which is to evaluate the actual funds set up by the m.o. u's. the controller's office -- supervisor maxwell: you manage these funds. >> in d.h.r. we simply look back at those funds. the balance. how they are used. if there's issues there. if the controls are appropriate. those comprehensively we would see this maybe perhaps being 1,000-hour audit. as we go in and look at the issues, we would prioritize where we would focus our efforts. supervisor mar: supervisor maxwell? supervisor maxwell: do you know how many funds there are set up and under what circumstances? can you give us an example of

what you mean by a fund set up by an m.o.u. >> definitely tuition reimbursement funds. i'll let ben talk to the others. >> good morning. ben rosen field, controller. the vast majority of our labor contract have setaside fund within them typically for tuition reimbursement in local 21 the city commits in that labor contract to setaside, i believe, 250,000 annually that can be drawn upon for local 21 members as approved by their management for prescribed purposes. for professional development training. so we have these little accounts required on each of our m.o.u.'s to facile at this time professional development for our employees. different amounts in each m.o.u. with different restrictions given the object paekings -- occupations covered by that m.o.u.

supervisor maxwell: most have a certain amount. if the amount is $250,000, each year you have to make sure that that amount is there. you don't have to add to it -- there's not always -- there's just that amount. >> typically it's an annual requirement to setaside a certain purpose for that bargaining unit. sosñy6q $250,000 annually in th example i just gave. supervisor maxwell: even if it's not used? >> typically there is an allowance in the m.o.u. if it's not used that balance rolls forward. for the most part these are -- accounts are used and there's typically more demand for the accounts than there is funding in them typically. not always. >> i do want to give one example where we also want to look at the language. we addressed this in budget this year is the firefighters had a touchdown 50,000 set aside for a fund for recruitment. but there was going to be no recruitment this year. we were able to work something out where that money was

returned to the general fund, but there wasn't any kind of automatic language that said if you are not recruiting can this money be returned to the general fund. those might be some issues to address. supervisor mar: that's 1,000-hour project. it sounds like it's a whole bunch of different peepses of it, too. -- pieces, too. supervisor chu: remind me how many hours we have left for this fiscal year in terms of hours? >> for the fiscal year? our budget is on the calendar year. so we would have maybe about 1,000 hours left, maybe less than that at this point because we have taken on some other work for the budget and finance committee. between now and december, perhaps about 1,000 hours. however the budget's on a fiscal year. so going into january, work can

follow into january. supervisor chu: we have about 1,000 hours through the end of this year. through december. ok. >> just one final project i want to talk about. i just came from the budget and finance committee yesterday so i haven't really done a lot of work on it. but an issue came up in the budget and finance committee on community benefit districts that are being looked at sort of one by one, but city departments if they are located geographically in that district do pay for the community benefit district. there was certainly concern, maybe paying in an amount that isn't readily apparent to the community. so we were asked to come back and look at this. i think this would be a pretty small project. the controller's office evaluates the total cost of the district to the city, but it is an a.a.o. we do know how much each of these assessments is.

the controller could quickly run a report on what the costs are. i think whereas the work would be, would be a little bit more sort of evaluate what the city departments get back for paying that cost. supervisor mar: that sounds like a good audit and project. miss campbell, for the 2011 calendar year, in the last meeting you said you wanted to get started on a number of other projects as well. you're recommending these for the end of 2010 and then also to begin part of 2011, the projects that you just described? >> that's correct. these are specifically the ones that i was instructed to go back and do more work, more detailed work plan for. on the list that we provided where we sort of looked what we had identified as areas, there were two other projects on there we thought we believe are still

opened projects that would probably be worth looking at but haven't done any more evaluation of. supervisor mar: let's total number of hours for the project you laid out? >> all of these, i'd have to do quick adding, about 1,950. if were you to accept all of them. supervisor mar: ok. i appreciate the detail and kind of taking the closer look and you being sensitive to supervise ors chu and maxwell's concerns. and proactive goals of better efficiency but also not taking something away but making it more equitable and eliminating waste and inefficiencies and bringing it up to date as well, it sounds like. mr. rosen felled -- rosenfeld. >> one quick point. i know the committee's trying to determine how to allocate limited hours here. i know our office in working through our audit plan for the

year as do others, we like to see audits completed at the moment in time where they have the ability to effect a change. that ultimately that's the end goal. and one of the unique circumstances to think about for this year, especially for this calendar year, is the fact that the vast majority of our m.o.u.'s are closed. we have m.o.u.'s that are closed not only for the last nine months of this fiscal year but for the most part with a couple of very small exceptions for the entirety of the next fiscal year. to the extent that the last audit is really going to make recommendations that require changes to m.o.u.'s to implement, the audit will be complete well in advance of any time that the city would be able to implement any change. so if you're trying to think about what you want to get done this year and think about for next year, m.o.u. provisions are not going to be one this city will be in a position to make change two even if they are obvious recommendations to push forward in the next nine months.

supervisor chu: a question on that, maybe a question that would work with d.h.r., as a controller was talking about in terms of the timing, even though we might not have contracts opened immediately, we would be able to negotiate different provisions for, given the timing of the findings we might get through the end of the year, how would that work towards your negotiation schedule? for example even though we are not expecting to open m.o.u.'s at this time, could it be beneficial to have that information to begin that thought process around where we might want to see changes? >> good morning, supervisors and the chair, martin grand, department of human resources. on an issue by issue basis, i think some of the issues referenced by miss campbell, the data would be fresh and would be -- what i would identify concerns of the board would want to raise or make recommendations on. others maybe less so.

and again we have -- it's a very fluid environment in some casings, word processing premium that's an example in which -- we sunsetted that. had negotiated that out of the contracts in the last round in 2006. the issue of -- wellness payouts is another provision which has been negotiated out of the contract. so i think we would need to work -- carefully with the budget analyst office to make sure we weren't looking at issues which have in some sense been solved. and then there's some issues which are probably things can change and have changed quickly. we have much less use of the -- some of the travel pay provisions just because we have had less training funds available for employees. some of those would -- the data could be stale by the time we

get to the bargaining table. by and large i think you could identify issues which we would be able to address in time. supervisor chu: when is our most -- most of our contracts coming due around what time? >> we have the bulk, the vast bulk of our contracts will expire on june 30, 2012. and then we'll be negotiating hopefully multiyear agreements a s which won't expire until june 30, 2013 for the fiscal years 13 and 14. supervisor chu: potentially an alternative would be if we are expecting to be at the bargaining table in about a year and a half, there would be potentially some of this information that could be useful that wouldn't be stale for that process, then there might be others we might want to hold off on for a later time. >> right.

that's correct. again i would just want to echo what miss campbell said in her introduction which is that the charter the mayor directs d.h.r. to carry out the negotiations being confird for developing proposals, very specific that's under the charter the mayor then sends the contracts back to the board. so what you are talking about is making recommendations to the mayor's office to direct d.h.r. to carry out. i would just want to make that understood so we could certainly look at the data and having conversations with the budget analyst's office. we do meet with the boardrrwáñ closed session prior to every round of negotiations and during negotiations. le 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