residency, since it was a written complaint. also, i would like to find out what really happened with regards to the infamous tony hall witchhunt. things like this should not be allowed to happen. i think that when there is transparency, people, in a certain sense, know that they're not going to get away with it. in regards to getting away with it, even the famous coach joe paterno cannot get away with it and not talking to police peter i am sure if there was an active watchdog agency, he would have done the right thing in long time ago. unfortunately, he decided not to do it. so i think we need to set an example for future san franciscans, and also because san francisco was supposed to be a leadership city, we should send out the word that it is not just the fbi that puts the bad guys in jail.

we need cooperation from watchdog agencies like the ethics commission, and they should be doing their job instead of handpicking the cases and, in a certain sense, offer protection, in my opinion, to other cases that they choose not to hear it is so i think people like joe support this, and i am sure in the but of all the, i am sure most people would support it. because when you have that here at the commission that protects everyone, no matter what their politics or personal beliefs are, so i think something like this is way past due, and i think that everybody should support it. because it protects everyone living in san francisco. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you very much. is there any other member of the public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, we have this before us.

i have a motion. president chiu: i want to thank you for moving this forward. i carried a similar policy with regard to our entertainment commission, and it really helped to move the conversation along there and focused in a lot of the dialogue in a good way. i would like to add my name as a co-sponsor to this. supervisor campos: we have a motion. thank you for your co sponsorship. we have a motion. we can take that without objection. again, along the same lines, whether it is through this ordinance or a different form, i do intend to move forward on defending with the sunshine task force. please call item three in four together. >> item number 3, hearing on the 2010-2011 civil grand jury report entitled "continuity reports reviewing the state of prior recommendations." item number four, resolution responding to the presiding judge of the superior court on the findings and recommendations

contained in the 2010-2011 civil grand jury report entitled "continuity reports reviewing the state of prior recommendations." supervisor campos: thank you. we want to welcome the foreperson of the civil grand jury. thank you for being here. good to have you again. the floor is yours. >> thank you very much. this is our last occasion to appear before you, so i am sure you'll be glad to get rid of us. supervisor campos: not at all. >> as you know, the grand jury selected topics every year, and it may choose to, in addition to investigate of topics, to follow up on topics from previous years. that is basically what we are here to present today. hr, 90 -- our reporter follow- ups to topics from previous grand juries. i am glad to hear that the recommendation of the 2010-2011 injury on the ethics commission hearings been televised will not

necessarily need a follow-up from the next jury. that is a good thing. this jury chose to follow up on five other reports from previous juries. i am going to let mr. plant -- mr. flanagan's speak. >> good morning. i was the chairman of the continuity committee. as has been mentioned, the continuity committee is composed -- this report is composed of five sub reports. as i have only been allocated 10 minutes. i hope i can enjoy the committee's indulgence to the presentation run-over by three or four minutes.

the first report that want to talk about is the handicapped placard report. this section of the continuity report reviews the current status of recommendations contained in a report issued by the 2006-2007 civil grand jury for the disabled abuse or overuse parking. in the interest of time, my remarks to two dollar figure it's cited in a letter dated -- from the san francisco mta to the civil grand jury. the first figure is $19.25 million. eight represents the annual loss of revenue to the city resulting from the exemption of vehicles with disabled placards from posted time limits and paying parking meter rates for on- street parking. 44% of that amount is due to

fraudulent use of handicapped placards. in order to remove the existing financial incentives for motorists who fraudulently used disabled placards, the 2007 report recommended that the san francisco 28 request the city of san francisco's state legislative delegation to hold hearings on blue-collar abuse and consider updating the issuance and use. four years after agreeing with this recommendation, san francisco park has finally come out with a document entitled draft summary or proposal to improve the sensible parking. the key proposals are instead of unlimited exemption from posted

time limits, it would reduce the exemption to at least four hours. san francisco mta proposes to major all parking spaces in commercial areas. secondly, instead of a complete exemption from paying parking meter fees, it proposes to limit the exemption to low-income drivers would be entitled to at least 50% discount on posted me to rates. in its report, sf park consider proposals are based on the best practices of the cities. i urge the members of this committee to carefully review the report on best practices in title accessible parking practices and laws in other jurisdictions, issued by sf park in 2009. it will clearly show that the minimums that sf park are

proposing here for more accommodating than those in assisting in the majority of service. unlike the case of new york city and other large urban areas, sf park is not requiring drivers to be recertified by a city assigned physician to qualify for discounted prepaid parking cards. if these proposals that we are continuing to pass and gradually enacted into law, it would three additional points about this report. the report fails to identify who will certify, register, and provide oversight of the more than 90,000 adults in san

francisco who would qualify. secondly, one would have to be rather naive not to at least acknowledge the possibility that drivers who are not disabled are never the west securing disabled placards from health practitioners. the report does not indicate any oversight over health practitioners. the process will be a very lengthy one. in the interim, there's no mention of any initiatives to strengthen the mta's woefully inadequate placard fraud protocol. this leads me to the $8.4

million mta estimates its losing annually due to disabled placard fronaud. 2007 report called upon the san francisco mta to train more parking control officers. it is asserting its aggressively combating this by increasing the number of officers from four to 11. astounding as it may sound, 11 out of 260 are authorized to

request certification of disabled placards. sf mta justifies its current approach on the grounds that the sensitivity that handicapped drivers must be observed. however, as outlined in sf park's best practices report, other states have found that the first priority for legitimately disabled persons is the availability of designated parking places. in exchange for more designated parking places, disabled drivers have agreed to stricter enforcement of disabled parking regulation. while containing some interesting ideas, even a cursory reading of this document shows it was thrown together in considerable haste in response to the civil grand jury's reports. i fear, allowing san francisco

mta to finesse its way through this hearing. this leads me to one last point that the board of supervisors approved and the mayor signed an ordinance establishing a disabled parking review panel, as authorized in the california vehicle code. pending approval by the state legislature, stricter disabled placard laws, only a disabled parking review panel can ensure that this issue remains in the spotlight, and that in the interim, the san francisco mta implement a robust placard fraud enforcement protocol, including the use of all parking control officers, as permitted by the california vehicle code, as well as some form of oversight for

medical practitioners who are certifying the issue of disabled placard says. s. let me leave you with two thoughts. because the san francisco mta has not fulfilled its pledge four years ago to review existing laws dealing with disabled placards and bringing them into line with other urban states, every year, the city is forgoing $20 million in revenue. because the san francisco mta has chosen not to adopt a vigorous enforcement protocol permitted by the california vehicle code come every year, san francisco is losing in excess of $8 million in revenue due to the disabled placard fraud. the people of san francisco have not been well served.

the second report i want to discuss is dealing with pension. the author of this report, unfortunately, is of broad and cannot attend this meeting. i will give a rather cursory review of this. anyway, this report looks at two recommendations contained in the report, "pensions beyond our ability to pay" issued by the civil grand jury. the first finding dealt with the practice of pension spiking. spiking is defined as instances when an employer's final compensation is increased before retiring, causing the increase in pension amount. in the prior report, the civil grand jury defines this as a salary increase of 10% or greater in one of the last three

years before retirement. based on pension records supplied by the police and fire departments, the jury found evidence of an increase of over 10% salary during the last three years of service in 10 out of 47 fire department employees, or 21%. the corresponding figure for the police department was 10%. the mayor's office, fire department, and police departments all denied this practice occurred. i can suggest that the members of this committee examine the examples contained in our report and draw their own conclusions. the report also recommends that the salary increases during the three years before retirement that exceed estimates currently at 4.5% be reviewed by the

comptroller's office and the employee retirement system. for its part, the employee retirement system says it is un necessary, as it is already taking salary increases from the last working year into account. currently, 9%. and in determining the liability associated with these increases. my only remark is -- one might ask whether the difference between 4.5% and 9% is an oblique way of admitting spiking is occurring. the second and last recommendation deals with the city's $4.63 billion health care plan unfunded liability. the report points out that even under proposition c, it will only apply to new employees

with existing employees not required to make contributions until 2016-2017. the jury recommends that the mayor and the board of supervisors' budget and finance committee should develop a temporary remedy. until their retirees' health trust funds can cover the expense, thereby avoiding the negative impact on funding levels for other city programs. finally, just a few words on the third issue, which is -- in a 2008, 2009 report, it was recommended that they should work together to ensure that the

go box's annual report is presented at a hearing annually. and that disappearance should occur within one month of the publishing of the annual report. at the request -- the comptroller's office is currently discussing with the board of supervisors and mechanisms for arranging presentations to the board of supervisors of the annual reports. i do not know how much i went over. supervisor campos: thank you very much, mr. flanagan. colleagues, any questions for the civil grand jury? ok. thank you very much for your work. again, to you and to all the members of your committee who worked on these items. now, why don't we hear from the staff? if we can hear from the head of the department of human resources. >> thank you, supervisors.

what i would like to do is comment on a couple of the recommendations as to the pension issues that were raised. first, and this is basically reiterating the responses we previously made, although with the passage of prop c. first of all, as noted by the presenter from the civil grand jury, i would not concede -- spiking is kind of a euphemism. it is true in police and fire that people earn more in the final years of employment. that's because those of the people whom we promote. we promote othem because they ae

experienced people. i'm not sure what the civil grand jury had in mind as to how we would manage that. the salary increases that people are receiving hand that i have reviewed in the civil grand jury materials have to do with the fact that they are moving to a higher rate of pay. we are filling a position. those individuals are getting a higher rate of pay with those positions. however, several years ago, the board moved with a charter amendment to single -- the last two final years, averaging the final compensation. with the passage of prop c, it's the final three-year passage. to the extent there is spiking or what ever you want to call it, it will be less prevalent. mayor did or not, individuals final contributions determine their tension.

that has been addressed. i think three years is the standard people are moving to statewide. the other issue was the retiree health-care contributions. i just noted this morning that the number of people, or the percentage of city employees on whom's behalf contributions are currently being made by them -- that is, employees hired since january of 2009. we have something like a 5% turnover per year. if you were to sequester out those individuals and their retiree health-care obligations, you would see that the normal cost for them -- they are fully funded. the fact is that people like me, who were here before january of 2009 are not contributing. on the advice of the city

attorney, we moved to look at begin negotiating contributions. that continues to be an interest of this city. in prop c, have done several things to fund our liability to health-care obligations. there will be a quarter percent per year required of employees and matched by the city for active employees. that is all in prop c. in addition, we're hopeful some of the changes in prop c as to what we provide in retiree benefits, will likely reduce our costs going forward, as well. also, start attacking the

unfunded liability. for example, under prop c, people who left the city before the improvement of the pending health care coverage availability -- people left the city but when on to other careers will not be receiving the benefit which was improved after they left. there is a fairly significant savings associated with that. i do not believe that contemplated by the civil grand jury. we have a fairly controversial change in the structure of the health service board, which we think will yield savings. it's very hard to say how much. by having more balanced decision making bodies on the board, we think the city's interest as to making weiss financial decisions in its purchase of health benefits will also show long-

term benefits to us. i think that the big challenge that we all face and most public agencies in california who have retiree health benefits are not finding them at the levels that would retire the obligation within 30 years. that continues to be the case for san francisco. in 2007-2008, when we passed the first prop b, we determined we probably would need to set aside 15% of salary per year. that is something we are not doing. i can see the comptroontroller s here. supervisor campos: thank you. any questions? a lot of things have been addressed in prop c. thank you, again.

>> thank you. supervisor campos: we can now hear from our controller. >> good morning, supervisors. elaborating on a number of the comments on pension and other post employment benefits. i just wanted to add, from my perspective, it's important to acknowledge that challengers remain as the city works towards addressing longer-term retiree health care liabilities. an estimated current liability of $4.3 million over time. that's a snapshot moments in

time given the payroll on that day that liability will grow year over year as wages escalate. to give a sense of what that increase will look like, absent any change during the last four years, the $4.3 billion would have otherwise grown to $14 billion in 30 years, as we jayws inflate. proposition b significantly reduced the rate of growth. given the changes, that $14 billion in projected liability is now projected to grow to approximately $8 billion. approximately $6 billion in projected liability reduced as a result of that ballot measure,

but a significant gap will remain. prop c takes steps in the right direction of moving to pre- funded model home. it's a model that would reduce city cost over time. the steps taken in prop c r first steps and will require for the first time for those of us hired by the city before prob b had taken place, that the contribution from the employee's and the employer will likely need to be hired to meet and fully pre-fund the plan. to shift today to a fully pre funded retiree health system would require us to set aside about 15% of payroll. a very significant change. employers generally treat these issues over many years. that is a significant shift. we've provided recommendations to the mayor and the board. many of which have been partially implemented. we will continue to provide

advices. supervisor campos: supervisor thank you. colleagues, any questions? before i call for the mta, i want to say that i think it's important with knowledge of the very important role that the civil grand jury played in highlighting the importance of dealing with the pension issue. a lot has been said about the work that a number of elected officials have done, whether it is supervisor -- or the public defender, but the civil grand jury did play an important role in highlighting this issue. i think the city is indebted to them for bringing this to their attention. now we can hear from the mta. >> good morning, supervisors.

we also want to thank the civil grand jury. we verreally believed the disabled placard frauneeds to be better addressed. the mta's evaluations program has evolved over the years as we learn more about our parking. initially, mta had agreed with the civil grand jury that an independent review panel was necessary. having done our best practices study and our outreach, we believe that the independent review panel is not only administratively burnham some, but we also believe talking to the disabled community that they do not want to have another step for the have to come and demonstrate their disability. what we are recommending, the solution, is double