responses. i know that ed has only been there for a short amount of time. i thought it was very enlightening, the presentation. and also a caution to members of the grand jury on your report. and making sure that they are factual as well. we have looked at the location of certain companies, you don't knowledge of the fact that this is phase two of the line. it is getting to be a controversial topic at that point in time.

with the findings and recommendations in front of us, and i would vote yes or support a motion with the exception of recommendation number four. supervisor campos: that is a motion by supervisor farrell. we don't need a second. president chiu, any comments? president chiu: i am happy to second that, the only comment i would make is in regard to 3, lowering expectations from muni's performance. the mta could find a more. i would set that as an amendment

to the recommendation. supervisor campos: i will be supporting that motion. what this does is highlight the fact that even when you may not agree with some of the specific findings, there are parts of that report back and be very useful. and the things that we are agreeing to are finding that deal with the adequacy of the service that is being provided by the mta, recognizing the financial problems that the mta as the system faces. i think that those kinds of findings and some of the recommendations being made our recommendations that would be wise to pay attention to. i would also echo comments with respect to the response.

i thought the illustration by the civil grand jury said a lot, because the statement in response from the mta was not something that provided a lot of information other than some sort of conclusory remarks. i know that he is working very hard to work at some of these issues that there is an honest assessment. if we can take that without

objection. >> i just want to confirm the your agreeing with the findings and recommendations, it is what you agree with. supervisor campos: we are agreeing with findings 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, and 12. we are agreeing with every recommendation except for recommendation no. 4. thank you. motion passes. thank you for coming out. thank you for your work. please call the next two items together. >> item number four, hearing on the 2010-2011 civil grand jury

report entitled "whistling in the darkly " the san francisco whistleblower program. on the findings and recommendations contained. supervisor campos: if i may ask for, as people are exiting, to quietly exit so we can proceed with the rest of the business before the committee. sorry for the interruption. >> item 5, responding to the findings and recommendations in the 2010-2011 "whistling in the dark," a whistle-blower program. >> first of all, before i introduce this report, i want to thank you for your comments on the relevance of the grand jury. the gentleman that made that

comment, my blood started a boil and it was difficult for me to sit there quietly. clearly what happened here today is an example of the relevance of the civil grand jury. the fact that there was a lively discussion on both sides, people could disagree na, and respectful manner, it is what the civil grand jury was meant to be. the jury wrote a report entitled "the sleeping watchdog. to present the report is the chair of that committee. thank you. i wanted to make one little

correction, it was the sleeping watchdog. i had the honor of serving on the 2010-2011 civil grand jury with 18 other san franciscans that deeply care about this city. i want to start out by saying that the concept of open government is an encompassing term for various things such as increased transparency, responsiveness, which of taxpayer dollars, fraudulent activity and accountability. our investigation into the whistleblower program over several months clearly indicated that whistleblowers are honest people that are forced to become

islands of isolation. the whistleblowers find a little solidarity, especially in the workplace. what they do find most often is a loss of employment or demotion. as stated in the report, san francisco's whistleblower program was in need of an overhaul. there should be mechanisms in place to protect whistle-blowers for the highest magnitude possible. months of investigation has shown confidentiality does need -- on occasion for the alleged wrongdoing.

additionally, we also have 364 complaint cases out of 804 complaints submitted to the two- year period of 2009 and 2010. members of our committee, the detailed spreadsheet from which each of these 364 complaints were carefully examined. all of our committee was well acquainted with each complaint and the tracking numbers attached to them. he states that the grand jury pose a complete review was based on a small number of cases. unless you think that 360 is a

small number. our calculations show that of 364 complaints received, only 36 were actual complaints. and at a couple of comments. he does not reflect in has, that members were in contact with him during the investigative process. he suggests that most of our interaction was with the whistle-blowers' themselves. our interaction was primarily by e-mail. it should also be noted that only after the civil grand jury was well into its investigation

of the whistleblower program, that the policy and procedures manual would be updated after five years and there were few benchmark studies being done, but only during that time as we began the investigation. the responses that he concluded that we interviewed five whistle-blowers. nowhere do we state that we interviewed five individuals. and we reported on five of the whistle-blower incidents, but we spoke with many more individuals. we also listened hugh examined -- to examine and glean facts. the civil grand jury labored to find the controller's office program and the positive aspects of the program.

we found a number of contributing factors. lack of follow up with whistle- blower complaints, failure to update marketing materials, the fact that complaints were sent to departments that were alleged with wrongdoing. whistle-blowers better have little -- seemed to have little faith in the program. and the oversight, it has been far more complacent than expressed by the comptroller's office. one note of optimism, recent appointees show prospects for battle -- better whistleblower oversight.

change cannot be achieved without cooperation. we hope that whistle-blower reports would be put out for the public. supervisor campos: do we have any questions? we will hear from the comptroller's office? and we have our comptroller. >> ben rosenfield, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. i would start by thanking the civil grand jury for their work. also, the focus on the whistleblower program, we take

issue with a number of the findings. once you get past some of those issues, and the methodology with which to conduct the report. it does make a set of recommendations for the program's improvement. i would run you through the recommendations, those that we agree with, and as auditors and ourselves, it is part of this process. the thoughts for improvement, you need to keep an open mind regarding what they tell you and where they make reasonable recommendations that will add value to the effectiveness of what we think is an important program. as a whole, the report includes

15 findings and 15 recommendations for the program. we take issue with some of the findings and the tone of the overall report. we think the recommendations themselves off for a shared view that, frankly, between the team that acknowledges both the critical importance and does make recommendations that are in line with our overall efforts to enhance the program, and of the utmost importance, maintaining and protecting -- these programs are only as effective as employees and contractors are comfortable coming to them to bring forward allegations of wrongdoing. in the program design, it is at the epicenter of what we endeavor to do. the civil grand jury makes a specific recommendation that

focuses on program independence, transparency, and oversight. the adequacy of the tracking system we use, program outreach and education, leslie, of critical importance, retaliation. of those recommendations, we are in partial agreement with eight of the 14. we disagree with 4. two of them are outside of our jurisdiction. recommendations that we agree with that are either implemented is well under way, the general obligation bond oversight committee is not a review board and per the charter serves as overseer of the program and provides advice on

the running of the program. we have had several hearings in the last two and a half months regarding the report. it has formally adopted a set of changes that will continue to enhance the government's advice that that body offers to the program. there was a liaison to the program since the inception in 2004, that individual has served to privately review complaints, walked through our investigation, but the more recent steps that we concur with involve the appointment of to liaisons' rather than a single individual. more formal work to define the role of liaison in terms of case sample in.

and, hold quarterly reviews in public session going forward. historical practice has been to have at least an annual review in a public session, so it was not as if oversight was not occurring. they have adopted these steps to improve government going forward. the report recommends tracking numbers be a side to all cases. we agree with this. the exception to that, if you file a complaint on line or through the 311 system, you have a tracking number that allows you to determine what the current status of your case was and ultimately what the finding was. the one exception to this is simply when someone leaves us no way to contact them. we see -- which received

anonymous complaints. in those cases, it was impossible to recommend, but in most cases, we believe we are complying with the suggestion. the report correctly points out the importance of outreach and education for city employees regarding the importance of the program and the opportunity to bring forward complaints under the program. this has been a focus for many years. since deprogram's inception, we have sent to all city employees , four times a year, communications through their paycheck stub regarding the program and reminding them of how they can file complaints. more recently, we have worked to augment that by incorporating sessions in orientations for new

employees. it includes a segment on the whistleblower program and we have incorporated that into training for supervisors. and we have been working to develop more targeted out reach to make sure employees are aware of the program and their ability to bring forward complaints. lastly, we will continue to update the benchmark analysis regarding how the practice is allied with other jurisdictions. benchmarking was conducted at the time of the initial program set up. we will work going forward to continued to benchmarking questions regarding the mechanics of this program against others in this day and the country to make sure that we remain in alignment with recommended practices and dominant practices of other places.

the recommendations that we are in part agreement with where implementation is ongoing or under way, we think we partially agree with pieces of it and are working to implement. the civil grand jury recommends changes to the tracking database. the offer for recommendations here. we agree with two of those sub- recommendations involving combining a piece of tracking activity that we currently do in the database. we do disagree with one of the recommendations, several here that have already been incorporated in the system allowing investigators to cut and paste females into the body of the system itself.

the report offers some practical recommendations to improve the web site at with think the current web site is readable and usable. the vast majority r 3311 and offered practical discreet recommendations involving his examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. and other changes that we are under way without. we do agree with the general recommendations that it is always a challenge regarding communication to the whistle- blower themselves during the course of the investigation. the current system we have been using as antiestablishment involves the assignment of a tracking number. then that tracking system has had limited information

available about the complaint during the investigation at the close of the complaint regarding what the findings were. we were working to enhance the level of reporting. an individual would be able to ascertain if we had signed the investigation to other party. and the following the close of an investigation, there will be a general summary of our findings. lastly, the grand jury makes a recommendation, it provides high level summaries of cases that we have closed as examples of the activity that we have had come

in. this public reporting has been limited and it is typical of most whistleblower programs. it is limited because it allows someone to hunt for the whistleblower and retaliate against them. we have seen examples of reporting from other jurisdictions, we think it balances this need -- >> what is different in those jurisdictions from what we are doing?

>> there are high level statistics available, what the program activity was light. where the variants happens is how specifically you report -- it is fairly typical. it is then to provide investigations of what happens. it is not a list of all the investigations. >> what do they provide more than that? >> at the moment, we are updating the annual reporting requirement to incorporate enhancements that come from san diego. of all complaints that were

sustained during the last year. with this recommendation, we will provide summaries of all the investigations we do and not just jews continues as examples. >> from my perspective, what is happening right now with respect to the board of supervisors? >> at times, the board has called for hearings. we would welcome that if this committee is interested. we're hoping to have this revised public report for the last fiscal year. looking around, we see places where enhanced public reporting has happened.

including a public finding is illegal under california law. california cut create a set of rules to run these programs. the rules are designed to insurer limitations the public disclosure that might breach the confidentiality of the whistle- blower themselves. the specific recommendation is not possible under state law, but the theme of this recommendation is in line with our thinking about enhancements of public reporting. there are four recommendations that we disagree with in the civil grand jury's report. of the 14, we do not plan to employment a recommendation that the office should conduct of investigations internally, limited only to our office.

this has not been a practice of any other whistle-blower government program we are aware of. it is not feasible for our office to conduct each of the investigations for each of the complaints that come in any given year. the practice is when complaints come in, cases where another entity has jurisdiction, we refer that to those places and let the whistleblower and of the case has been moved. and where there is not a chartered conflict, we raised the risk with the severity of the complaint to determine how we will investigate it. our typical practice would be to refer to a department and ask them to investigate and report back with findings. examples would be misused of city vehicles.

it would not be practical for the investigators we have allocated to this program to investigate each of these complaints. but we have a response come back to us and review it for adequacy. the high-risk cases that -- the processing is to conduct the investigation ourselves or to conduct at in consultation with an expert in a given city department. where often teeming with the department of human resources or with the city attorney or with other specialists. we maintain contact with those investigations, but it is simply not practical to conduct all of them ourselves. >> i understand that what you're saying makes a lot of sense. at the same time, i can see the point in theory