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tv   [untitled]    August 14, 2011 12:30pm-1:00pm PDT

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departments delaying responded that has rise to the level of san it is unacceptable at this point? there's not a reason behind it, changing the head of the whole department, i understand that, especially if you are saying they are being responsive. that is great. that is what we want. are there any department or audits you have done that we need to be aware of that are not being responsive? >> so far, no. i can generally get all of my responses. sometimes it takes a little push, because like everyone these individuals are busy. i am pretty adamant about getting responses, because we do take our work serious, and we are interested in helping with good government and accountability, and we do feel we need to be accountable as well. we do work hard at that. if i do find difficulty in getting what i need, i have a department head that is very
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responsive and is always open and easy to address and get what i need. supervisor campos: one of the reasons we are holding these hearings is so that the public, at the department's know that going forward the government on an oversight committee will be monitoring recommendation so that we will know and have a public discussion about who is doing something or not doing something. >> i would like to make one last note with regard to mta. it is a large organization, and one of the things i do appreciate about that organization is they do have someone as a permanent liaison. even when there is that change as we are experiencing now, that individual has been very responsive to us. that has been very helpful. supervisor campos: this is a
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full-time position dedicated? >> the supervisor has many other things they're doing. it is not only audited by a city department, they have mmany federal and state of its they do as well because of the type of work in construction they are doing. this person is one piece of the individual's job. but it is a contact person that keeps consistency. supervisor campos: think you. why don't hear from the perspective departments? -- thank you. why don't we begin in alphabetical order with the airport commission. >> good morning. my name is wallace tang, airport
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controller. ias mentioned by the director, for today's meeting i will brief you this that is on the six open items. the first one, the compliance audit of air canada, the open item has been completed, and we have received a follow-up review and audit from air canada. airport and air canada have figured out the exact amount of underpaid fees, and we have already billed them and they have already paid us. that should close this item. that one is done. for the second one, for audit -- a concession audit of the smart cart, and the open item is more like an ongoing implementation, so those action items are in
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progress. for the third one, a shuttle bus contract company audits, as the audit director mentioned, we are in the transition at of ending the current contract with shuttle buses, and that contract actually is expiring with the extended option on december 2012. we are in the process to work on our request for proposal to come up with the new contract. we are expecting to have the new contract be active starting july 2012, so in the process of developing the new contract we have been intending to incorporate the recommendation as stated in to the new contracts including their recommended provisions in terms. that one is in process.
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the next one is the aircraft landing data audit. this one is thought of it on the current -- this one is audits on the current billing system regarding revenue accounting, lending, and fees and how we account for the activities. a couple of the outstanding open items in the report is relating to documenting the policies and procedures, and we are in the progress of working on that. also, we are in the process of moving into phase ii of the systems implementation. through this system implementation progress, we are agreeing to implement the recommendation as stated in the report as well. the fifth audit, the concession audits of bank of america, at
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this contract is expiring in the middle of august, which is next month. we intend to plan on incorporating the recommendations as stated in the other report when we extend the next 1-year option, effective august 16 come 2011. the last audit, which is related to the rendering of the secretary's office at the airport, we have concurred most of them. the couple open items as relating to strengthen the segregation of duties and a more clear definition of the rules and responsibility for the cashier at office. office has hired a new manager, and she has been in the process
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of implementing the recommendations. overall, the airport has observed and -- all of the recommendations from this report. so basically i would say we're making good progress in terms of implementing that action recommended by the auditor. any questions and comments? supervisor campos: i do have a question about the cash handling audit, which was done in december of 2009. so you are actually implementing the one recommendation previously the comptroller said the airport has decided not to implement a recommendation because of staffing issues, but you are deciding to do that? >> yes. supervisor campos: that is great to hear. no more questions. thank you. why don't we hear from the arts commission.
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>> good morning, supervisors. my name is rochelle axle, acting director of the arts commission right now. i am happy to have an opportunity to talk to you about the 2007-2008 audit pertaining to the cultural center. just a quick overview, that this lawyer that audit was done, 200720078 was a particularly challenging year for the cultural center and the director of 20 years suddenly passed away. there was quite a bit of transition in leadership going on at that time. on it was well timed because it provided a great opportunity to look at what issues were so that when the new director came in in october 2008, she could really focus on making sure the problems were tended to directly. the only outstanding corte
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opened recommendation is item 19 on our on it. we have attended to it. it is an issue of contracts being unclear in terms of staff people in contractors. again, with the new director coming and she put together a new procedures to make sure there was no conflict or double billing in any way. at the moment there is only one person come at the building manager, who is is that person. that person also is a curator for the day of the dead. that is the only contract they hold the job responsibilities are utterly different. we have been very diligent about all of the 19 recommendations and have met them. if there is anything we were not diligent with a might have been getting back to the comptroller's office to let them know. supervisor campos: thank you very much. any questions? thank you for following up on
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all of these issues. thank you for being here. human-rights commission. we have here the executive director. >> thank you for having this in hearing from the human rights commission. we have two outstanding items we but like to address. before that, i want to also comment that we're working with the comptroller's office on other audit. we have requested to audit its in addition to the annual audit. one is on the bond program, and one is on the 12 be equal benefits. we have implemented 100% of those audits, and we think it has improved both systems substantially. also, as a footnote, many of the items and audit that have erred in corrected it referred to paper handling, referred to getting copies.
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under the commissioners leadership, we are in the process of implementing elations. in addition to office of work- force development for the local hiring provision of and that is being -- that should go live in september. once that happens, many of these forms will be obsolete in reducing the paperwork flow. as to the specific outstanding items, one is that conducting regular visits at the airport. we have developed criteria. we have now supplemented it yet. -- we have not implemented it to get. as you know, we oversee contracts from had ceci 0-- hetch hetchy.
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sometimes the smaller contracts are more difficult to monitor. and that is going into effect immediately. number eight is looking of roles and compliance guidelines. we have a draft completed now. -- number eight is looking at roles in compliance guidelines. we're also going to review rules, because we have had disagreements with contract and departments on the efficiency and legality of rules and regulations. some of the rules we will be comparing and referring directly to the administrative code. otherwise we will characterize as best practices. we will probably be bringing some recommendations to the board, specifically to supervisor chiu, to look at
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rules and regulations and determined which one should be codified. supervisor campos: think you. -- thank you. supervisor campos: you have said a number of your reports that help to alert the public as to how many businesses within your contacting rules are being contracts that are san francisco businesses. you had promised to get to our office a number of the reports to put out in recent quarters. i still have not received them. >> we will certainly check on it. >supervisor campos: i think it is time to have a quarterly hearing. >> we would love to do that. on all of these contracts, they were audited on august 6 and every single one met or equal.
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>> with respect to recommendation of regular visits to construction sites, from what i understand going forward, if you have established a system, a process to do that with the very limited resources you have, so that will be addressed that way? >> that is correct, supervisor. we do not have the capability in our department to monitor every project since we oversee hundred and several billion dollars' worth of contacting in the city, but based on the size of the contract and the where it is located and based on the risk profile we determined risk profile would be on previous performance and contractors. other items might go into it, and then we will schedule visits. and supervisor campos: in the controller's presentation, they
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note that at least in your response you indicated you only had one contract compliance officer. >> we actually have to there now. but we have had substantial turnover of staff. right now we're at 41. the mayor's office, based on the budget, we of 36. of that we have currently on -- of that we currently have four on leave. supervisor campos: i think it would be important to have a discussion about whether or not additional resources are needed, because we are talking about many contracts, lots of money involved, and i think that the kind of oversight we're looking for in the end pays for itself. >> i agree. i have to say we have had excellent discussion in relation to the mayor's office.
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they work with us, and we are happy with what we of had. as all city departments, there are staffing constraints across the board. supervisor campos: great. thank you very much. why don't we now hear from the department of public health. >> good morning, supervisors. and the deputy financial officer. greg seth, cfo, is on vacation right now. as was noted, there was one item where we are in disagreement, so we will certainly take a second look at this, and see if possibly we can come to some sort of compromise on how to approach this recommendation. supervisor campos: if i may, -- there is a disagreement, so
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where do we go from here in terms of the issue that was raised? >> thought item we disagreed on was assessment on the state of the gift fund. the observation was to look at the summit annual basis instead of quarterly. we will certainly discuss this with the cfo and see if we can review the item. >supervisor campos: what is the concern with doing it on a quarterly basis? >> good morning. i am the deputy chief financial officer at the hospital. they are suggesting a quarterly assessment to make sure there is enough funding for patient use. since the balance is still pretty high, we think without any further donations to the gift fund, with current balance we should be able to cover
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expenses for at least 10 more years pertaining to the spending levels with past history. we do not feel we need to do the quarterly review to see if we need to be able to budget or limit the use of the gift fund. we currently have a process in place. we do quarterly reporting of the expenditures -- on the donations to our commission. we do look at the quarterly. we do not think we do an assessment to determine the limited funding expenditures. supervisor campos: maybe this is a question for the comptroller's office. what is different from what the comptroller's office is recommending than what is currently happening, because from my perspective with the comptroller is recommended -- recommended make sense. it seems to me a quarterly assessment is a reasonable
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thing. i think keeping an eye on something like this more often is better, but i do not know what the difference of opinion is. >> it is the way it was worded in the recommendation. we are doing the quarterly of you rigid review. -- we are doing the quarterly review. supervisor campos: if i could hear from the comptroller's office. -- comptroller office. >> can you these restate what the process is. >> we do report to our commission, to the gc jcc, the
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quarterly spending and donation, and also the difference sup gift fund balance for the end of the quarter. >> i think what occurred in the audit was over a six-year. eriodperiod we found there were 640,000 more than was brought in by the fund. what we're not saying the fund is potentially going insolvent, we're saying due diligence on the quarterly basis. we're asking you to say what is coming in the door, documenting the process, and what are you spending and is inappropriate? and where are you documenting the process. so when we do come in on that we can see what the trend this and that you're clearly aware of
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dollars in an dollars out from a quarterly basis or annual basis. while it may be a quarterly recommendation, if there is something they can implement that is feasible or a like way to mitigate any concern, we're fine with that as well. supervisor campos: think you. going back to the department of public health, what is wrong with what the comptroller's office is recommending? >> i think we should definitely review this and discuss it with the cfo. i think if necessary we can meet to discuss this. i think we will definitely follow on this issue. supervisor campos: if you can't please come and we will keep an eye on it. any other questions? why don't we now go to the maunicipal transportation agency. >> good morning, chairman
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campos, and members of the committee. there are a couple of audits and recommendations that are we are working on an up made very good process on both of those. one is regarding the missing tickets. the second one is regarding distinguishing how many are weekly parkers in monthly parkers. and we have been working with japan center corp. since this is a lease responsibility to the corporation. the corporation hired operators. we have been working with the different stakeholders. not only that, we want to make sure the same issues are addressed throughout the different facilities that the mta manages. we have six different corporations, and we're having dialogue with the non-profit corporations as well on a couple
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of issues. what we've done specifically over the past year is redirect our own audit program internally for this that those two particular garages and do daily collection and ticket audits, just like the audit staff will do. and we also came up with specific facilities and management -- management regulations, and they were issued last month for consistent regulation. these regulations to make the operators responsible for daily ticket auditing and how with a mixture that the issues are very well taken care of. we are also in the process of issuing new management contracts over the next six months. we will make sure that when the contracts are forwarded to the new operator they also
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understand obligation in terms of the specific recommendations. i am free to answer any questions you may have. supervisor campos: colleagues, any questions for the mta? thank you very much for being here. now the police department. >> good morning, capt.. >> i am captain party need from office of administrative services. -- capt. pardeni. i am sure the most burning question in your mind is why we have not responded to this report. the good and that is i got involved with this at 4:30 on tuesday. we're working with them now. working with the comptroller's
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office is how we were able to take two of the line items off of the report with documentation that was on there. i was assigned to this tuesday. what i did is i brought three individuals that i identified as the persons most knowledgeable about the issues brought up in the report. with the significant amount of change there has been in the department between the chief leaving an interim chief and the new chief, these individuals are relatively new to their assignments also. i cannot give you too much information about why things did not go smoothly and that correct the -- did not go that smoothly. what i can tell you is looking at the initial response that was made to the comptroller's report, many of the issues were addressed. some of them are still in the process of being addressed, and there is a few we did not agree
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with. when i looked at why the initial response was that we did not agree with making that change, i found there was an alternate procedure are ready in place so it would have been a duplication of effort on some of those tasks or it was going to involve disposing of hundreds of the stockpile of cards that record over time, when we had an alternate electronic procedure we could move forward with. there was an alternate procedure that used the people soft hmr system. that is what i know and have learned over the past 36 hours. i have these three individuals that if you wanted to go line by line or had a particular issue we wanted to talk about. we're working with office to close of the gap on the timeline. i will be to get the information conveyed and bring them up to speed on where we are with this
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recommendations and changes. supervisor campos: over the past president chiu has a question. supervisor chu: what i continue to hear our explanations and excuses and more explanations and excuses, but no answers as to what has been happening in a proposal as to what the plan will be to figure out how to at least stay with in an overtime budget. my first question is, who has been responsible for overtime within your department? i understand you have just been put in your position over the past few days, but what was the plan, given we have had significant overtime costs come into was supposed to be dealing with that? >> overall it was coming through the chief's office. the chief financial officer with -- works with the chief of police to address the issues and see where we of spikes in
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overtime and evaluations are made to determine our they absolutely necessary, what measures can we put in place to avoid using some of this? in reading the initial response, the report that i read from the chief from last year talks about the fact that from fiscal 2007 to 2008 until the projected 2011 budget, there appears to be a 71% reduction in the use of overtime. it is pretty substantial. supervisor chu: could you talk about the controls you will be putting in place moving forward? >> i can bring up the lieutenant from the legal division manages this and can probably identify many of the states that have already been taken that led to the significant reduction. this is eric montero from the
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legal division. he is in a similar boat that i am in that i provided him with the spread sheet and the department's initial response, he did review, and i believe he has been in charge for about a month. who worked on these because there are a couple of who worked on these because