official misconduct. commissioner studley: i think your points are very well taken. the potential abuse is real. i look, though, at the way the voters developed and amended this, and think they did not mean to create a very specialized and narrow tool. i look at the fact that it says "any wrongful behavior," when there are other words that could have been used to talk about degree of wrongful mess. and it falls below the standard of decency. they could have said "well below" or "egregious." i take that as saying something about the voter expectation that

we were setting a high bar, and that they wanted to create an effective tool, and balanced the risks you werei creating a series of protections. that is where this cannot be effectuated by the act of a single officer. it is not just the mayor acting alone. there is a three step process that i think is important as a series of checks and balances, different rules and different kinds of expertise. there is no doubt, and the public has made this point many times -- there is a significant investment in time, in attention, in disruption, in risk in doing this instead of something else, that is a high

public cost of trying to maintain the standard set by the public. we may become more official -- more efficient if this comes up again. i think there is also a lesson in this that a mayor would act very carefully in using this tool, because there are extra- legal considerations -- public reaction, press considerations -- that would also mitigate against overuse, or at least suggest caution. i will cut to the chase. for me, i would find official misconduct under option two. i think there is significant relationship between the standard and the duties of the office. i may be reading the case a little bit differently, but it is partly the same with commissioner liu.

when i said the law was different than it was, it means the addition of part two must mean something, or the voters would not have revised to add it later. there you are. commissioner hayon: i am willing to support option two, a somewhat more narrow definition, for the reasons you have advocated. i appreciate all of the thought and effort you put into the thinking behind all of these options, commissioner hur. it is a formidable challenge, and you have been more than up to the task. as a layperson, some of this can get a little bit market for me. with this definition, i do see

that there is a relationship to the duties of this office of sheriff, and also that it is behavior that falls below a common standard of decency. domestic violence is something we take very, very seriously. just because it was not the most extreme form does not mean that it is not domestic violence. the sheriff is the head of a law-enforcement agency. i do not think the sheriff should be an example of reform to justice -- reformative justice. the sheriff should be someone who follows the letter of the law, someone we can all emulate. i would certainly feel that this

has been violated. chairperson hur: ok, i think probably -- i appreciate the views of my fellow commissioners. i appreciate also that i am clearly in the minority here. i think they are very informed and wise use. i will say one thing, in response to commissioner studley. you are right. the language is all over the place. it could be interpreted as the people wanting to be broad. one reason i think people did not want to be so broad is because the power it gives the mayor to suspend an elected official without pay while this entire process goes on, i think,

is pretty in store -- pretty extraordinary. we might become more efficient, going forward, but it is still going to be disruptive. i want to protect future mayors and elected officials from a provision i am concerned will be too vague to be applied. but i think we have pretty much settled whether or not official misconduct occurred. i think the next thing we should discuss this is what our next recommendation should be, and whether the recommendation will include a request that the sheriff be removed from office or not. i am going to put you on the spot. is that within our purview, to make a recommendation of official misconduct and whether approval is appropriate or not? >> the charter says the ethics commission should make a

recommendation as to whether the charges should be sustained. i think that is probably open for interpretation, as to whether there is two elements of that. whether there is a finding of official misconduct, and whether that could result in removal from office, although a finding of official misconduct, the tractor seems to presume, would result in a removal from office. being a lawyer, it could go either way. you certainly would be within the charter to make a recommendation that the charges be sustained, and leave it up to the board of supervisors to decide if they agree with you, and what the penalty is. if you want to make a recommendation to the penalty, i

think you are within your right to do so. commissioner studley: the page goes on to say that when any city law provides that the violation of the law constitutes official misconduct, it may subject the person to discipline and/or removal from office. that addresses a very particular circumstance. when a violation of law includes within it a determination that if this ever happened this would be official misconduct -- as to those, it says discipline and/or removal from office. is that the only reference to a range of different results? even if it is, might we import it to say removal from office, or -- up until now, suspension without pay is not mandated.

the mayor could have suspended with pay. does this give us authority or a reminder that if, in those circumstances, there is a range, should we consider that we can recommend a range, if we find official misconduct, apart from this mechanism which is inherent within the law, expressing the violation? >> i guess i would read that sentence as applying to a specific violation of a law that provides that a violation of that law equals official misconduct. the section that gives the mayor the power to do what he did in this case gives him the power to suspend and remove. not necessarily to suspend for a limited time, or to do some

lesser -- impose some lesser consequences then removal. there is another section that provides for automatic disqualification from office, but i am not sure that really informs you here. commissioner liu: i throw this out just for consideration. the charges are that he be suspended, based on engaging in official misconduct. the charges and asked that the board of supervisors, upon a vote, sustaining the charges, that the sheriff be removed from office. i am not sure the charges contemplate that we determine the ultimate penalty.

that is for the board to decide. chairperson hur: i almost read that as suggesting that we should make a recommendation as to removal. anything they have to sustain seems like it should be something we recommend on, although i think it could be read either way. >> it does say that if the board sustains the charges, the officer shall be removed from office. perhaps we are just parsing words. it may be, theoretically, that you think there is a realm of official misconduct that does not justify removal from office. that probably also means you should not sustain the charges. recommending sustaining the charges, it seems to me you are recommending removal from office.

t(chairperson hur: are you sayig that we could find official misconduct and recommend the charges not be sustained? >> before tonight, i had not thought of it as a two-step inquiry. before tonight, i thought you would pass that recommendation on to the board and the board would decide whether to sustain the charges. the charter says that if the board systems the charges, the suspended officer shall be removed from office. i am trying to square that with the inquiry you are talking about. i feel like we are trying to pound a bit of a square peg into a round hole. >> commissioners, with all due respect, i think you are over

complicating your requirement. it says you will make a recommendation to the board on whether the charges will be sustained. that is all you need to do. we recommend that they will be sustained or overturned. i think it is that simple. commissioner studley: i appreciate that, but they were a package of charges. there was a charging document with a number of provisions that a mere thought supported suspension without pay. we have found one out of the half-dozen or so. we have already made it more complicated, in the sense of saying that instead of finding all six, if that is sustaining the charges, then we did not. we found that five or so, some of them quite serious, we did not even find fax 4, let alone

official misconduct. -- we did not find facts for, let alone official misconduct. having done all this, i would prefer to say something to the supervisors about the actions they might consider, rather than simply say we found one, and you, the supervisors, have only one choice. there was a big difference between what came to us and what is going forward for us. commissioner liu: are you saying we should specify the recommendation that charges be sustained as to certain counts only?

commissioner studley: and what meaning we think that might have, and i have some thoughts. i will pass it forward. chairperson hur: i am just trying in my mind to square it with the automatic removal if there is a finding of official misconduct. maybe you can claim what you have in mind. commissioner studley: give me a minute to think about it. one is that -- one strand is the automatic removal if the supervisors agreed with us. the first half to reach that, or fail to act within 30 days -- they first have to reach that, or fail to act within 30 days.

but there were members of the public who said, and i found this -- it got me thinking in a variety of different ways when they said it is unfortunateq tht this has come this far. commissioner hayon said something similar. you do not see more of this because people take action. the resolve things with their supervisor, or they resign, or somebody works out something to protect the interest that is at stake. wheat, i think correctly, did not think we had the ability to try to negotiate a solution, but the supervisors might feel that they could. i am torn here. i am balancing several different things. i do believe there was, under these terms, official misconduct. i think the domestic violence

issues raised here were serious, and the responsibilities of the sheriff for domestic violence are important. at the same time, so is the decision of voters to choose somebody for an office. they said, once we vote, we have only this very extreme measure, the recall provision, to allow us to go back and say we have new information since the election and want to do something different. they created another pathway for a different kind of reason to recall that they wanted to have in place. i am wondering whether it is worth reminding the supervisors, and maybe by just talking about it, we remind them, that they have alternatives. if we think that one charge is different from the whole set of charging provisions, here.

i am trying to work this through. i am not positive. i do not have a fixed picture. commissioner hayon: we need to send a written recommendation to the board. when i have their proceedings, my understanding is the ethics commission will have an opportunity to make a presentation, however short. perhaps that is the time to refer to some of these other issues. otherwise, i agree with mr. st. croix. i do not think we should complicate it further. i think we should make a simple recommendation. from what you have said, the charter, if they find -- if they all vote in agreement with their recommendation that the person

is guilty, automatically, that person is removed from office, correct? >> if after reviewing the charter, the charges are sustained by not less than 3-4 of the board of supervisors, the officer shall be removed from duty. commissioner hayon: that seems pretty straightforward, unlike some other parts of the charter. chairperson hur: when commissioner renne raised this two-step inquiry idea, i like it in part because one of the difficulties here is that in some ways the sheriff was a guinea pig. if the charter provision was so difficult for us to parse, in

some ways, it does seem -- it gives me some pause for him to be removed, based on a provision that we took quite a while and had a hard time deciding exactly what it meant. but i kind of think you are right. i am not sure we have any leeway to do anything other than sustain or not sustain the charges. did you have any further thoughts on the matter? commissioner renne: we could address the question of whether or not we think that the mayor exercised his discretion in

filing the charges and in proceeding in an unreasonable manner. t(as has been pointed out, it is either the charge of official misconduct is sustained by us, on our recommendation, or it is not. commissioner studley: but if four of us are inclined to believe there was official misconduct, doesn't that and validate the mayor's action on at least that one provision, that there was a basis, that he had found the same result that four of us would also see there was an official misconduct element?

i have always thought this was a going forward issue. once the mayor put it in our jurisdiction, in our lap, it did not matter what or why he did it, for this process, that we should be looking at the merits , and looking forward at the consequences, and not questioning how it got here. iñilp thought commissioner hur t it in a very crisp way the last time he brought it up. for the completeness of those who are not burdened with 15 inches of documents, there are two elements. the commission transmits the record to the board of supervisors, with a recommendation as to whether the charges should be sustained. after reviewing the complete

record, the charges are sustained by not less than 3/4 of the board of supervisors. if not acted upon within 30 days since the receipt of the record, the officer showed be reinstated. the board has somewhat more complicated options before them. the have to either vote by 3/4 or better to sustain the charges, in which case, the officer is removed. but if they do not act at all for 30 days, the officer is reinstated. did i say that right? there is a real crossroads for the supervisors. chairperson hur: i am not sure there is much we can say.

we should have a written opinion for the board. i am inclined to vote as to whether to sustain the charges. in summary, one proposal could be that we draft a summary opinion, essentially, of the bases for the vote to sustain the charges. one option is for a member of the majority on the commission to draft thatlp. subsequently, we could either simply adopt it as a summary --

we have summarized the proceedings previously without having to vote on them and ratify them. if this document is more in the form of an opinion, we would probably want to come back, have a look at it together in another special meeting, and then vote to adopt it. do my fellow commissioners have views as to which of these potential options for written summary or opinion would best suit the situation? commissioner renne: would it be sufficient to just transmits the transcript to our discussions and our determination, without anything else? chairperson hur: that could certainly be done. i think it makes the job of the board harder, because there is a lot more to read.

anybody else? what do people think about the proposal? commissioner liu: that is what i was envisioning, but were you envisioning, in terms of a written summary, how we came out on the findings of fact? chairperson hur: i think we would want to explain to the board exactly how we interpreted the statute. i think if they receive this transcript, it will be difficult for them to determine what the basis was. obviously, we are deliberating in public, which is highly unusual, if you are adjudicating the matter. i guess i worry that the new

ones of the arguments that have been provided -- the nuance of the arguments that have been provided would be lost if we sent them a 500 page transcript, with 300 pages before-- pages today. commissioner liu: the salian findings would be the specific findings of fact, how we came together on that, and what we decided on the two options? chairperson hur: i am envisioning something very summary. these are the facts we found support the charges. this is how we interpret the law. this is the application of the that is one possibility. another option would be one that has more detail, and would provide perhaps even -- i guess

more detail as to the bases of the>> had to the parties have vs on this? >> while we think about it for just a second, many people have talked about the passage of time and getting to the point where those supervisors can initiate their consideration, i change would be just for all concerned. i also want to think about how that relates to the presentation by the commission to the board that we will make. is that the opportunity to make some of this clear? it may not substitute for a riding, but it could complement its. do we have anyway of knowing

whether the supervisors will want to inquire about the representative commissioner that takes the part or all of us at that point? >> is the risk of a representative or even the entire commission, frankly, appearing in front of the board had having a substantive discussion about our findings? gosh i thought that was expected? >> maybe you can explain the board's expectations? >> of the board of supervisors had a meeting with discussed the procedure they intended to follow when the matter gets to them. it is my belief that they expect to have a presentation of up to 10 minutes from the ethics commission. and certainly have the sense from them that they were expecting to ask questions of the representative