>> welcome. calling to order this meeting of the san francisco ethics commission on march 26, 2012. thank you all for being here. let me begin by calling the meeting to order and taking the roll. commissioner hayon? commissioner renne? let me note before we take public comment that matters related to the mayor's suspension of the sheriff that are the responsibility of the ethics commission will be handled and scheduled separately. they will begin with a preliminary hearing that will establish the rules and parameters for that process and the dates and times for those proceedings will be posted consistent with our usual advance notice requirements so, again, nothing tonight will relate to that topic but there

will be public notice as soon as we have the dates arranged with the relevant players. so, thank you very much. let us -- let me return to the roll call and note that commissioners liu and chair hur have been excused for tonight. three members of the commission constitutes a quorum to proceed with business. let me start with public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda that are within the jurisdiction of the ethics commission. >> yes, you probably reminded yourself recently a number of times but let me take this opportunity to remind you again, you have already found someone guilty of official misconduct by unanimous vote of this body. there was no contention that it was not related to the office involved. and, of course, it was willful misconduct in the chairing of a public meeting in an open session with the cameras on.

if the mayor is content to stand behind his appointees after they've been found guilty of official misconduct, why should you go to the trouble of determining official misconduct on someone else? if someone remains in their position, guilty or not guilty, what's the point? not only did the mayor do nothing but this library commissioner was reaffirmed as the president of her library commission by unanimous vote, ostensibly as a reward for engaging in the misconduct and getting away with it. actually, someone has been suspended -- someone else has been suspended based on the charges alone but the library commission president was reaffirmed after having been founded guilty. do you know what they call it when someone abuses the public, squashes those who rely on democracy and expect decency,

commits official misconduct and make fools out of the ethics commission? they call it leadership. those who run a private non-profit that depends upon ripping off the city of millions of dollars all came down to the library commission and complimented on her leadership and as i say, unanimously reaffirmed her in her position. what should we assume, that it's not important because it only harms democracy? the analogy would be if the sheriff was found guilty of misconduct and everyone re-elected him because he had the ability to crack down on those stupid domestic violence complainers. if the mayor brings charges against someone for willful misconduct and they are still qualified to serve in his administration, as i say, what's the point? there used to be a saying that

those are poor of guilty until proven innocent and rich are innocent even after proven guilty. apparently, our sheriff probably didn't know that he was that poor. i would suggest that until the actions of this body are taken seriously, you should refuse to act. if the mayor is not going to do his part, why should you do yours? i suppose the good news -- thank you. >> thank you very much. >> commissioners, as the previous speaker mentioned, this body sent this letter to mayor lee regarding jul gomez, president of the san francisco library commission, recommending

she be removed from office. on february 2 of this year, they re-elected her, again unanimously, only nominated her for president and i was at the meeting and made comments to which she took offense. [audio recording] [inaudible]

>> he's the center of the universe and he can say whatever he wants but this is civil discourse and he cannot say whatever he wants. i know 12 people who will bury him. >> that was ms. gomez saying she knew 12 people who would f -- bury me. [inaudible]

[audio recording] >> i apologize for the poor quality of that but basically what she said was if she could have, she would have thrown the f -- microphone with me and garroted me with the microphone cord and the following week she went to the san francisco police department and filed a complaint against me. she didn't sound very upset to me. she was laughing and joking with other members of the commission and the commission secretary and yet she went to the police department and filed a property

property -- police report which said she was in fear of me. >> good evening, commissioners. i've been before you for your last several meetings asking you when you are going to schedule a hearing on my two sunshine complaints that were referred to regarding official misconduct against your executive director, mr. st. croix. it's been over five months, going on six. when are you going to schedule a hearing open to the public on sunshine complaint 11-013 and 11-014. i've been here begging you to schedule that hearing. i deserve my day in court. as the previous speakers have testified, this commission had 18 willful failure and official

misconduct charges referred to it that you simply tossed out, did you nothing. then, jul gomez came along and you finally took action and referred her for official misconduct to the mayor, following your finding, i went up to her after the meeting and i congratulated her at being the first person in history that this commission has ever referred to the mayor for action. her response was to bend over, picking up her book bag and her jacket and she snapped her jacket at me trying to strike me with it because she didn't like my apparent sarcasm. i wasn't trying to be sarcastic, i was just offering her congratulations for being the first person to have been found guilty. since then, the mayor has done nothing and he knows and you

know that her behavior was on-duty behavior which, following the then airport commissioner, joseph mazzola appeal, an appellate court ruled that official misconduct can only be brought for actions related to one's actual job duties. so this commission has no business hearing any kind of official misconduct case against sheriff mirkarimi no matter how reprehensible his actions may or may not have been because they were off-duty behavior and it occurred before he was sworn in. it had nothing to do with his job duties. if you conduct some kind of kangaroo court hearing and the mayor hasn't acted on-duty official misconduct of ms. gomez

but you pursue off-duty misconduct against sheriff mirkarimi, you will be conducting a mockery of ethical behavior. >> good afternoon, i'm peter warfollowed, executive director of library users association. the previous speakers have spoken, i think, very vividly of the unfortunate and worse-than unfortunate behavior of the library commission president, jul gomez, at a meeting in which she shouted down a member of the public and prevented her from having her right to speak and make public comment under free speech and sunshine laws in the state and in the city.

as was previously pointed out, there were 18 referrals from the sunshine ordinance task force. this was a unanimous 6-0 ruling of willful violation and they sent it to you. you found that there was willful misconduct and official misconduct but for various reasons sent a separate letter to the mayor essentially recommending that she be sacked. nothing has happened of the sort. instead, as you've heard also, she was kept in office by the mayor's appointees, all seven of the library commissioners, and they unanimously elected her president, once again, after your finding, and she stays in position as library commission

president. her misbehavior was very clearly in the core of what she was doing as library commission president. she, as president, is in charge of running the meetings and the violation to the member of the public and to everybody, really, was core to her responsibility as president of the commission. others testified at the sunshine ordinance task force and personally that the behavior of shouting down a member of the public was so disturbing and distressing to them when they were in the room and i'm not talking about myself or any of the other who have spoken today, testified they felt truly intimidated and frightened to speak and did not speak at the commission meeting as a result of this behavior.

for your action to have absolutely no visible impact whatsoever on the library commission, no impact whatsoever from the mayor and an endorsement of the bad behavior by re-election i think is scandalous and raises serious questions as to whether and how you'll act in your upcoming matter. thank you. of. >>. >> is there any other public comment at this time? seeing none, i'm going to propose a change in the order of the next few items. when the agenda was determined, we didn't realize that somebody from the library staff was going to be here and out of respect for this person's time, we're going to move that item up now to deal with the final attention to the s.i.a. and then return to the random audit and public

finance issues that involve all of us. is that -- i apologize. the staff did tell me about it. i was of the view that it would not affect the public comment items. let's take the proposed amendments to the statement of incompatible activities for the public library. would you like to introduce this? >> at his last meeting, the commission initially approved the draft changes to the statement of incompatible activities for the san francisco public library and since that time, the city department of human resources, the ethics commission and the public library engaged in meeting, confer with the unions that represent the employees affected by the s.i.a., because we have

satisfied the meeting confer obligations under the law, the commission may now proceed to finally adopt the proposed changes and once they're finally adopted, what we will do is send them to the -- to the library and i'm happy to answer any questions. and donna marian from the library is also here. >> hello, ms. marion. do you want to add anything to the status report? >> i want to reaffirm that the library did have the meet and confer and received no objections. >> do the commissioners have questions for ms. angle or ms. marion? >> we stand as we left them at the last meeting. >> i'll entertain a motion on the proposal that's before us

now that all of the steps have been carried out and then invite public comment on the motion. >> i would move that we accept the amendments as approved at the last meeting. >> i will second that motion. >> thank you. any public comment on the proposal about the s.i.a.? >> patrick. i did not see in the library's amended statement of incompatible activities holding to position of commission president following a finding that the ethics commission found her in willful misconduct of the sunshine ordinance. one would reasonably expect that if ms. gomez was referred to the mayor for removal, for official misconduct, on duty, that it would be embedded in the s.i.a.

and that there would be some formal action taken against her. to the extent that there is not anything in the s.i.a. addressing willful misconduct on the job, the whole s.i.a. process is also made a mockery. you can't have library commission presidents attempting to strike a member of the public, that would be me, which you didn't do a thing about or lift a finger to follow up with the mayor, that the good ms. gomez was first found in official misconduct and then she attempted to strike a member of the public. that behavior, had i pursued it, could have been criminal, and

there's nothing in the s.i.a. that addresses potential criminal striking of the member of the public in city hall and allowing her to keep serving on the library commission. you need to go back to the s.i.a. drawing board and embed in every s.i.a. for every city department that official misconduct is automatically grounds for removal. >> yes, good afternoon, commissioners. i did appear at several previous hearings on this item. i'm sorry that i was not here the last time when it was initially approved because there are a number of objections i have made previously and i want to reiterate now. there's no department in this city where the private influence

is a greater problem and in fact there's no department that has greater pride in the fact that they are a public-private partnership. they have this idea that if the library would be required to follow the rules that the rest of the city follows that they'd be in trouble all the time. well, voila, that's exactly why they should have to follow the rules that the rest of the city has to follow. let me give you one small example. this is the private entity's report that they have to submit to the california attorney general, the private part of their private-public partnership is the friends of the public library. on the front page of this it says, did you receive any and funding from any governmental resource? no. if you turn to page 15, the

question is, "did you receive anything of value from a governmental entity without charge?" again, zero, zero, zero, for the past five years, they contend they've received nothing of value in services or facilities from the san francisco public library, which, of course, is nonsense. they use the facilities for all kinds of things. they sell naming opportunities, they gather books, they gather donations. what they get from the library side is this lack of disclosure. this is a scandal that a department like this is basically privately run, all of their policy determinations are this private entity and in fact this is the essential idea of

every con artist. it's called hubris. as far as they're concerned, responsibility is for fools. i hope you understand that these two things go together. if corruption were not synonymous with responsibility, abuse would not be synonymous with leadership. there's no accountability because they've got enough money to pay off everybody you could go and complain to and one of the places we can start is this statement of incompatible activities. make it as strict as the system allows. thank you. >> commissioners, ray hart, director san francisco open government. on march 1, the friends of the public library and i'd like this to remain on the overhead because i'll be using a number of documents there. the friends of the san francisco

public library issued this report and presented it before the library commission. and basically, this is what cuglean from the report of the they said they raised the total revenue by source of $3.75 million, they provided program support to library programs for $750,000, which leaves only $3 million unaccounted for. in addition, what they did not include in the report, which i got from this, which is an audited statement that the friends of the library are required to provide the city library in each year, was that they also drew down their assets by $2.22 million. that was not even mentioned. so basic leerks the friends spent more than $5 million and accounted to the library commission for $750,000, period.

now, this is similar to what they always do when they present this to the commission and the commission goes, oh, how wonderful, and it is a pattern that has consisted for at least the five years as reported by the friends of the library to charity navigator. i have repeatedly tried to get documents to look into this and this is a sunshine task force determination finding luis herrera, the city librarian, in violation of withholding public records because the only records they will release are what the friends say they gave and they have nothing they have produced to substantiate anything that the library actually got, whether in cash or in kind. so the library commission is not watching what they're doing although they're raising more than $5 million a year and spending another $2 million of

priorly raised assets, the library commission has no idea where that money goes and what they're spending it on. the only one who does is mr. herrera and because i'm talking about this, it relates to the statement of incompatible activities. mr. herrera, for one specific thing, gets over $35,000 a year from the friends to spend at his discretion. and he has provided no documents to show other than what he spends it on is taking people to lunch, paying for dues and other things and i've tried to get a hold of the city budget to see if the library actually pays. i find it hard to believe that we have the librarian of the year and the city budget doesn't include his dues for the national library association and california library association. something is rotten in the state of denmark and at the library commission and especially at the friends of the public library. >> hi. my name is catherine bremmer.

i'm an officer of the library chapter of ceiu, local 1021. i'm here to congratulate the library and our group for working hard to make this an agreement that the library workers could live with and that's my perspective on it, is that the library as you've discovered is a special place with special kinds of conflicts or investment with literature so it can be a problem but i thank you so much and thank everyone at the library who worked so hard for this. >> peter warfield, library users association. i think i also have come with some concerns but i don't think that you should make life easier and less accountable for a library that's already sadly lacking in accountability.

there are some cross-outs here. i just don't think that the conflicts that you thought were a potential problem need to be removed because here and there an employee or another may write a book or provide some kind of a service. the employees at the library presumably we hope and expect are well paid for their service and don't need to work for tutoring or educational institutions that provide services within the library and so on and so forth. if they do, let it be public and let it be excused publicly. i have a problem on page three with activities called -- item 2, activities with excessive time demands. if there's no clarity as to who determines whether those are ce