couple of different ideas in regard to the next incoming health commissioner. i've done a lot of reading lately regarding the long- running dispute involving jason garza and the dph bureaucracy. the next incoming health commissioner should limit it a duty to figure out once and for all this -- to satisfy this long time user of services. he still feels he has been manipulated unfairly. i think the bureaucracy should be able to reach some sort of compromise with mr. garst said -- garza. that -- maybe she will be able to figure out the proper, is. i would like to say that the next incoming health

commissioner should be sufficiently independent from the mayor's office. i have heard different speakers here mentioned they moved from one commission to the other end as an average public citizen, it makes me feel little uneasy. kind of reminds me in the business world where board of directors in a certain sense serve different companies and the kind of manipulate the situation. also i would like the next incoming health commissioner to issue a written statement opposing retaliation against department of public health whistle-blowers and the reason why i say that is because i have firsthand experience in it and i would like to mention upcoming court cases and clout -- involving laguna honda hospital. supervisor kim: thank you. >> david schneider.

health care is an extremely important part of human-rights. i want to say two things briefly that is perhaps a little beyond the scope here but within your general topic. one is that i was reviewing some of the oral arguments of the supreme court recently on so called obamacare. i was shocked justice kennedy asked the most pertinent and salient question. heat cramp in terms of single payer health care. i think he said, "why is this administration not more honest about what is going on?" i think there was a 50-50 chance that strangely enough, justice kennedy might have been prepared to sustain single national payer

health care in the u.s. the second point is, i think it would be good for americans to know who, a -- tommy douglas of canada is. voted the most popular and significant canadian of all time. tommy douglas was a baptist minister, a socialist prime minister of saskatchewan and the author of canadian national health care. supervisor kim: thank you. is there any other public comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is now closed. supervisor wiener. do we have a motion? >> to move forward with a positive recommendation. supervisor kim: we have a second to this motion. i want to reiterate what i said.

i consider myself a part of the admiration club and i have tremendous respect for your life and work experience and all you do in terms of your advocacy and i am pleased the mayor has appointed you to the health commission, that you are willing to serve. you are just as committed. you felt torn about your work in that area and fitting that behind. i want to thank you for your service and continuing on at the health commission. you play an incredibly important role. someone who has not only been an expert and provider but someone who has gone to the system yourself and that perspective is so important to have on the health commission because we're really serving our communities and directly -- indirectly. it will provide that service and i am looking forward to working with you on a number of issues impacting our city. we will do that without objection. thank you. >> could we please amend

legislation? supervisor kim: ok. >> i make a a motion to approve the mayor's appointment of cecilia chung to the health commission and move that forward with a positive recommendation. supervisor kim: thinking. this commission has a slightly different process. we have a motion to appoint the mayor's appointment of cecilia chung to the health commission and we can do that without opposition. thank you. could you please call item no. 4. >> motion confirming the mayor's reappointment of malcolm heinicke, term ending march 1, 2016, to the mta board of directors. >> we do have mr. heinicke here. thank you for being here. we want to thank you for serving

on the mta commission and we're here to hear your reappointment to this board. >> thank you. it is good to be with old and new friends and i will hope to work with you going forward. i would be a mess of i did not thank mayor lee for the reappointment and his staff. as i am often in your chair listening to things like this i will be sympathetic and do my best to be brief and please hit me with any questions you have. following your outline, i will speak first to what i think are my most pertinent qualifications. my most pertinent qualification is in a daily muni rudder. since taking this position, i have moved away from driving. i take muni to work and take many here to city hall back and forth and what i am most proud of, i write muni on the weekends with my children who love it. they see it as part of the

adventure. they do not want to go if it is not part of the right. i am proud to be raising a new generation of muni writers -- riders and i hope that is somehting you -- something it will consider. there are some things you cannot understand and appreciate when you are trying to regulate an agency, if you do not use the agency. there are many examples, i will not go into all of those. for example, there were often earlier this year delays in the metric system. riders had no idea what was going on. working with the deputy director and others, we have put in an announcement system so riders can get updates. it allows me to identify problems that exist. one problem i see every morning that while that trend may be on

time, the caster station is flooded and people cannot get on. this is something i would not know unless i was on that train every morning. my second qualification is the fact that i am a sitting board member. this is not an easy job to learn. it takes time to come up to speed and i think i have done a decent job of doing that over the past three years. when cam beach was up for reappointment before this committee, someone commented that can have the knowledge and the will to tug on the writer of many to improve service. and want to be clear. i am no cam beach and we suffered a great loss when he passed. i am eager to continue to tug on the rudder to improve service for riders. the final qualification i might

put out there and this may cause you to question my sanity a little bit. i am optimistic. i am a rider and director. i am optimistic about where that -- the agency is headed. i look forward to continuing that profits -- process. i am willing to continue. my priorities for this term if you were gracious enough to senate back, taxi service. this is an issue have worked on as a texas commissioner and an empty board member. i suspect in a moment you will hear from several people and in this role, we hear about the industry from the industry. people have their own specific views, their own particular gripes, and many of them are often important and things that need to be addressed. my guiding priority as i have shared with some of you probably

on this issue is we have to remember the broader voices of those folks who do not show up at meetings. the 700,000 people in the city where visitors, citizens, who have won similar complaint. they do not complain about the drivers, the drivers are professionals. they cannot complain about cleanliness. that has come a long way. they do not complain about the fares although we did increase them to give drivers more equity. they complain they cannot get a cab when and where they want one. we need to fix that. there are several reforms i am involved with and i look forward to seeing those through with the goal of addressing service in the city. on muni service, i am interested in customer efficiency. the tep and brt and central improve. one thing i focused on is evaluating our service not just on some of the old metrics of

timely performance. we need to think of it from a customer based perspective. i will tell you i do not care whether the subway train is on time. there is enough of them that people do not rely on that. that is not true for some bus riders but we need to look at other factors like a bunch-gap problems and to go back to the caster station example. are people able to get on the vehicles even if they are on time or are they so crowded we need to reallocate resources? as a priority, and a point of pride, i am looking forward to working with director reiskin. if you would ask me my accomplishment for the first term, it would be my appointment to him. i am thankful to cheer on that issue. he is off to a running start. while we have to ask him tough

questions, we have to support him. he is a good man and i am happy to work with him. thank you to the committee. supervisor campos: thank you. supervisor wiener. supervisor wiener: thank you for your service and i can attest to your riding muni because i see a pretty regularly passing through the station and i am trying to squeeze on with 8000 other people. >> we were once late to a meeting and it was =-- we used the excuse it was a mini's fall. -- muni's fault. supervisor wiener: i share your optimism about muni. not only do we have great new

leadership, we have top-notch directors on the mta board to really get it and you are one of them. where muni is moving forward with tep. the agency is starting to move in the right direction on those basic issues. thank you for your leadership on that. i also want to thank you for caring and focusing on the tax issue. whenever one's views are and i know of yours and i have mine, for a long time after we merged taxis in to mta, it was neglected. you had muni as the hundred pound gorilla. sometimes my perception was the

agency was not sufficiently focused on improving cab service and sometimes even viewed our system as a way to generate revenue for muni. and so in the last number of months or a year or so, i do believe there has been a renewed focus within the agency on improving service. i know it is painful. and isi have many conversations with cabdrivers. it is a slow process. i want to thank you for caring about the issue and i know we have worked closely together. i think that has been tremendous. you have my whole support in your reappointment. i look forward to kenya -- to continuing to work with you. supervisor campos: thank you for being here.

i appreciated being able to speak to you in the last few weeks. one of the things i have to highlight is i appreciate the fact that you are a straight shooter. i think it is something that is important in these positions. i appreciate it more when people tell you where they're coming from even if they may not necessarily agree with you. as long as you have an uderstanding of what their reasoning is. let's talk about something that as you know, we have been working on for quite some time. that is the issue of free muni for use and there has been some discussion -- for youth and there has been some discussion of that. thank you for the step the mta took in making muni free for low

income youth. i do not know what is going to happen with that and that is under attack now but i want to th na-- thank you for that vote. can you talk about that issue and where you see the agency going forward on that issue? >> i start by repeating what i said two days ago and thinking you as a parent. -- thanking you as a parent. you took on that issue. i want to say thank you, that shared your caring for the issue. thank you for caring. and my approach to that issue which i try to make as transparent as i could in our meetings and the public meetings was this. we have a need that may have

existed with the -- that may have come into being with the elimination of neighborhood schools which we're trending back to but has become hastened with the elimination of the yellow school bus program. we have a need to provide transit for children, especially for older children who are more likely to be using muni on their own to go to school. that need came before us and was brought before us by you. crowded tea you prayed would not have had it otherwise. the goal there was to address that need, recognize the important role muni place in moving our children and students around the city while at the same time balancing that against an important financial and service impact considerations. i appreciate your comments on being a straight shooter. what i said publicly and said to you at the outset was if there is a way we can provide service for our children free of charge, reduced charge without making

serious economic tradeoffs to our overall budget and without having severe service impact, i will favor it. we got a report back from staff sank the modified proposal would have less significant trade-offs economically. would not impact director at -- reiskin's decision and we have not heard about what the service impact will be. it was the economic trade-off and the lack of information on the service impact that made me reluctant to support the full program. we are committed to exploring at to see if it makes sense. because we're in difficult financial times and we need that money to go after deferred maintenance. if we do not, the system will not only feel for our school children, they will fail for our parents as well. secondly, we need to be careful about service impact.

if the bus is on time and it is too full for a child and his or her parents to sit down, we have failed in service. this was my effort at balancing competing needs. we need to -- i am committed to coming back over time and see if we could better balance this trade-offs. >> i appreciate that. like i said, i think that some of the obstacles that were identified by staff have been sort of a moving target and the issue of maintenance is the latest one that was never really race before. i take them at their word. it is something which should be addressed. i appreciate the willingness to come back to this issue and one thing that i would simply ask is

that you join us in our efforts to make sure that we get the funding at the regional level, because we need the help of everyone we can get. >> you have my commitment on that and my commitment to work to make this pilot program feasible. something you and i have talked about and something i will work with staff on. >> i appreciate that. the families who are not -- who need it the most are not excluded. supervisor avalos: i have other issues i want to ask you about. to me, one of the things that is directly related to that is the issue of the work orders the mta has right now. we have a $63 million worth of four quarters. and we recognize progress has been made in the last year plus, but we need to be -- put some of

that in context. the biggest progress is now that when muni pays an agency money for specific service, most of the time, muni has a contractor and mou that outlines with that service is. that is not -- that is a good thing. that should be a very basic things that should be in place from the beginning. if the issue of whether or not there is access -- is an open question. we keep talking about the example of a motorcycle unit of the police department. we have members of the police commission here including the president of the commission and a number of commissioners. we want the motorcycle unit funded. they play a very important role. the question is --

>> did you just commit to fund them from the board of supervisors? supervisor campos: should muni riders pay for the entire program which is happening now? the totality is coming out of the muni ridership. there is a policy argument that muni should pay for some of it. it does benefit from the traffic controls and management and the congestion work that is done by the unit. i do think that the city as a whole also benefits from it and it is not fair to expect the muni writer -- rider to pay for the whole thing. you have as a board of an opportunity to make sure that you protect the funding that muni has, the limited funding muni has and i in my view, there is no reason why 100% of that

funding should come from the mta budget. i am wondering if you could talk about the issue of four quarters, where you are on that. >> i think it is important to know the fact that there has been heightened scrutiny on this. it began with this body. it was supervisor dufty when he was supervisor held the first hearings and helped increase my awareness as a board member and others. i know you have been vigilant on this issue. it has improved through the mou process as you have talked about, but that is a gradual change. what needs to happen is a discussion to make sure that everything we're paying for out of muni's funds, transit sponsored funds do indeed support the nexus. on tuesday, when we passed their budget, i have previously asked the director to look at and provide seven or eight things. i got a fair number of the things i had on my list. work order revisiting and the motorcycle officer work order was not.

we engaged in a discussion on tuesday. the director candidly said, this is an issue of balancing. i think he and i fully agree this is not a situation where the money is going down or rabbit hole. these are our police officers out there doing valuable services and we want that funded. i want that funded. the only question is where and when it comes from. the director was under the impression that a grander, larger citywide decision had been made that muni would pay for this. that may be the right decision. what i encouraged him to remember is we as an independent agency have a duty to which that decision on our own and we have not fully had that discussion about that were quarter and maybe some others. it was a high-minded discussion. the director took it very well and understood immediately and we will revisit that issue. i think that is a very good example where things in large part to the spotlight you have put on it, we will force a

discussion to make sure that something muni should be paying for completely. and if it is not, we're going to have to not just say we will pay for, we will come out of our body and engage with you all to make sure those services are paid for. procedurally as i noted, we could just refuse to pay. and force the issue. it could conceivably come to that. with something as important as our police officers, i think that should be a matter of last resort. we need to commit to over the next several months is a discussion to make sure there is that nexus and muni is properly paying for this which it may very well be. that is not a discussion we have had and the conclusion i am ready to reach. supervisor avalos: i look forward to that discussion. i hope it takes less than a few months. i think that is something that requires immediate attention. i hope that we engage in that discussion at all level of the

board of supervisors and we engage in that with the mayor. and to the extent that the decision was made that came out of the budget process, i do not know that there was an actual discussion on that item or the other items that are there. it is not an issue that we're going to abandon. is something we have to pay attention to. the maintenance needs, the service needs, they are not going away. they are there. we need to address them very quickly. the last question, my colleagues have questions also. on the issue of taxis and camps. i know we have not had an in- depth discussion about that. one of the things i have to say, i do worry about. i want to make sure that we keep in mind as we are moving forward with the various reforms that have been proposed, i think that

and you know the issue better than i do. i am relatively new to these issues. one thing that i do now is cabdrivers have a difficult job. it is not an easy job. it is one of the toughest and one of the most dangerous jobs you can have. one of the things that i have been bothered by and whether it is a perception or reality, is that there has not been enough of a recognition of how difficult that job is and when reforms have been put in place, the burden in my view has been put on the cabdriver. that i think has consequences for the customer. one example of that is the way that the credit-card charge has been handled. the reality of having

cabdrivers pay for that or cover the cost and we can talk about the specifics and the substance and merits of that. i do not think it is the right approach but it did impact the kind of service that people get because i have had experience where you get on a cab and you cannot use that. it cannot use your credit card. i hope that as we move forward with reforms that you do take in mind the interests and concerns of the cab driver. i think it is not as simple as having a solution that disproportionately impact one group. everyone has to -- their interests have to be taken into consideration. i look forward to working with you but i want to make sure that you understand that is one of the concerns i have had in terms of the approach i have seen. >> yes, that is totally

understood. i am mindful and proud to say when i give the basic statement about taxi service that i did at the beginning, the problem we do not have in this industry, there is no problem with the cabdrivers. that is something i have closely in mind. there will be kept in mind and the idea will be to create a better cab system for everyone. i believe that if we make the system better and more responsive, it will lead to more demand and we will have more opportunities for the cabdrivers to do as you point out, undertake a very difficult job, often for very limited pay and they need to be appreciated. i do my best. i always have that in mind. i do my best when i expand upon what the problems are in the