supervisor campos: welcome to the thursday, october 13 meeting of the government audit an oversight committee. my name is david campos. we're joined by mark carroll. david chiu is it about. it -- we're joined by mark farrell. we want to thank sfg staff for covering the meeting today. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> i would like to ask that all

ringers on cell phones be turned off. completed speaker cards and documents will be included as part of the final period items will appear on the october 25 board of supervisors agenda, unless otherwise stated. supervisor campos: i do not know if there is need for an overflow room, but something to be mindful of the. if you could please call item no. 1. >> item number one public hearing on the 2010-2011 civil grand jury reported entitled hunters point shipyard, a shifting landscape. supervisor campos: one of the responsibilities we have is to hear from the civil grand jury, and once again, i want to thank the members of the so-called grand jury. they are all volunteers who have taken the time to look at a number of issues involving the

city and county of san francisco, and i would ask the chair to please come forward, and again, we want to thank them for their service. good morning. >> good morning, again. my name is linda clarity. i was the foreperson of the 2010-2011 civil grand jury. i am happy to introduce to you a number of our grand jurors from that year who were here with us. they're all sitting on the back bench. we appreciate their work. i certainly do, and certainly on behalf of the citizens of san francisco, we thank them. in addition, there are several members that are here today better going to observe the proceedings. we're here to present to you our report on the hunters point shipyard. it is called a shifting landscape. i would like to introduce to you mr. perry surely, the juror who

chaired the committee. supervisor campos: thank you, and welcome to the oversight committee. >> good morning, supervisor. we had taken up this report as a continuation of previous work done by the grand jury. it is a project that is granted take a year. it will be 2017 before the navy has transferred all the land over to the redevelopment agency and its of corn to go back to see what has happened since. there is many different aspects to this. the environmental cleanup --

most of that work is left up to the navy, and we realize there is very little the city can legally do to monitor that. however, we want to remind the board of supervisors that there is the conveyance agreement between the san francisco redevelopment agency and the navy that was created in signing of 2004, and it stipulates that the federal government's will work cooperatively with the redevelopment agency to find out what is the best way to clean up. one of the major decisions to come is with personaparcel 2. the land at bayview was cut up

into sections. we have work to grade the area to prepare it for development, and throughout the whole process, there has been continual concerns. in order to avoid inappropriate behavior, i think the government agency, the redevelopment agency, should enforce conflict of interest guidelines. for instance, it came out recently that their work emails traded between the department of public health, epa, and what are that talk about how to best

deal with talking points related to cleanup on the pay-per-view hunters point. that highlights a problem here in that there is a little bit -- [unintelligible] [no audio]

supervisor campos: now that the report has been presented, simply ask the respective that the relative departments to come and respond to the recommendations. if we may begin with finding number one, and i do not know if it is the mayor's office or the individual department that will be doing this. >> supervisors, the morning. i am from the mayor's budget office. -- good morning. before i go to the individual recommendations and findings, i wanted to reiterate the mayor's position on this. the mayor was asked to respond to very limited portions of

this report. the very last recommendations, 6 and 7, but the mayor does believe hunters point should be our project model for redevelopment by local communities. redevelopment is a critical tool to help spur economic growth, and the mayor is committed to protecting foreign development projects, and he believes it is vital to the local economy to protect these projects. the mayor's office, the san francisco redevelopment agency and the work force development agency have worked together to understand the impact of the state solution off, and as the committee is aware, back in august of 2011, the full board unanimously adopted a resolution to comply with portions of the opt in law, and agreed to make annual payments to organize

redevelopment commitments. the mayor is committed to city resources to make required annual payments to the exact same entities under the law. with respect to recommendation 7, dealing with work force issues, i will let the departments that are here respond to the specifics of that, but one of the reasons why the mayor's office has went with the recommendation has to do with the feasibility. the shipyard project is not subject to local hiring ordinance, so work force development folks will address the specifics of why that is the case. i want to thank the folks up work force elements and department of public health for the ppreparing the city's response and appearing here today. take a thank-you. why don't we ask the department of public health to please come

forward. supervisor campos: thank you. the first finding is that the san francisco department of public health is not in compliance to keep residents informed of developments at hunters point shipyard. that the web site is not regularly updated, and the recommendation with respect to the finding is the department of public health should strictly adhered to its self-proclaimed pledge to keep the residents of san francisco apprised of developments by updating the project website on a weekly or monthly basis. >> thank you, supervisor campos. representing the department of public health. if i may, i would like to group our responses, they are related responses, but i will mention each one. in general, in looking at the recommendations and responses to items #1-4, the concerns were

about we were not properly sharing information, that there was conflicts of interest or confusion between departments that were inappropriately accepting funds and not implementing appropriate sort of ethics procedures. in general, we agree with the recommendations to provide the material and in force as expert requirement, but we would argue we are already doing so. we regret we monitor the navy cleanup activities. we maintain and reviewed data from all of the regulatory agencies. we oppose this information on our website and update the web site at least once per month. the website is public and working, and the public should have access to this information. in addition, we go to man the public meetings and hearings whenever requested. we disseminate information through community-based

organizations. the recommendation -- one of the recommendations requested us to review the navy's clean-up plans for parcel e2. there are several alternative plans. we have reviewed each alternative plan and provided a copy of the letter that we sent to the navy regarding the review. basically we reviewed those plans with regards to the technical completeness of the analysis and the appropriateness of the mitigation procedures to protect public health. we have done that. we're not taking as a department policy position as to which alternative to pursue. we support the navy and community in a public process to decide on collectively. we have a compliance program policy. we do in forced conflict of interest procedure.

in general we are already implementing this. we disagree with a number of points and a number of the findings in the report that we were not providing the information, not implementing conflict of interest protections, and we specifically disagree with the recommendation to not receive money from the regulated party. standard practice regulation involves of both receiving money from our regulator party to conduct the regulation. this is consistent with the polluter pays regulation, some think that the city in forces. more practically, good regulation would not be practical or feasible without a dedicated independent funding source. communication with the regulated party is also necessary. in many cases, the regulated party is required to gather and

produce information, and we need to get this information. we typically do that with licensed the environmental protection professionals. the fact that we receive funding does not mean there is a conflict of interest. staff did not get any benefit from either -- from issuing notices of violation. they did not receive any change in salary for not issuing notices of violation. there is no affect on staff from the implementation of their regulatory practices. -- it regulatoirregulatory prac whenever staff have not done the public felt duty, we have taken significant action. there are several cases where

we dismiss staff for doing this. i think our history would show we do rigorously enforced the procedures. in this particular case i think it is important to mention several lines of independent department of public health and other regulatory agency administrative and technical review occurred on the findings of individual staff who were implemented and funded to do this regard for work. my review was not paid by any party at all. it was done completely independently. that concludes my brief presentation. i am happy to answer questions either now or as part of a group question. supervisor campos: it would be helpful if week proceed with any questions and comments. i do have a couple of follow- ups. with respect to the website, the

grand jury says that the web website is not being updated and the department says it is. i am trying to understand the disconnect. >> i cannot explain the disconnect. supervisor campos: but you are updating the website? >> i personally use it and checked the web site. supervisor campos: with respect to the funding that comes from one alenar, i can see where the concern may come from. how does the reimbursement work? the one concern, in respect of of this situation, that i would have with any kind of oversight is that to the extent that reimbursement happens from the individual company, that that does not impact what is actually being provided. in other words, the

reimbursement in no way limits what you look at and does not in any way affect what ever objective independent judgment the department is making. and we have 11--- -- terms t funded externally for this work whose purpose it is to basically oversee all of the technical analysis of the site. it regardless of who was during that technical analysis. it is the apartment of public health that decides how much work is necessary for that, and essentially we build the redevelopment agency. the redevelopment agency is paying us, because in terms of where the dipper is coming from,

and i understand that the cost of the project of the elements are being paid for by the developer. whenever -- during this time of heightened 6 kirin -- concern about the asbestos monitoring, the department of public health asked us to do more to monitor the conditions at the site. we decided we needed to increase staffing, so we added a staff, and we decided more staff effort was necessary, and we said this is what it will cost. we were paid for this. there is no relation between what we find and what we get paid. we get paid what we are determining to be necessary to

review the documents and to monitor the regulations. supervisor campos: that means lenar does not have any impact on what you do and how you do your work? >> not at all. i supervise all look the work. i receive general fund reimbursement. i do not receive any particular reimbursement. i think any agency who does the work does this. that is another independent review with there is no link to funding. supervisor campos: i think it is good to put that information out there so people know how the process works. a final point. could there be a situation where they refuse to reimburse the specific amount because they object to whatever the scope of the review was?