important issue, this was not trivial matter. the individuals involved in this correspondence and this lobbying back and forth are important individuals in this city. this is not the kind of correspondence that one deletes because it is of no value as a record. one deletes this information to conceal what it contains. mr. wooding said that there is a bigger issue here. the bigger issue is one of ethics. now, this matter can be reduced and narrowed down to a technical, legal point. that will make it much easier to dismiss this case as virtually every other sunshine case has been dismissed.

but, this is an ethics commission. it would be nice if there were a professional emphasis here. even so there isn't. it would be good if once in a while the ethical dimension of the behaviors that you are hearing about would be considered rather than just be loop holes and technicalities of the law, thank you very much. >> thank you, very much. >> it looks like people are lining up. >> i am sorry. >> good evening, commissioners. my name is nancy wo rkul >> mr. ginsberg is guilty of

willful disobedience of the sunshine ordinance, he is a attorney and he knows not to use a smoking gun at a computing, not only he is adept, he has motive for his actions. he absolutely did not want to a discussion about a controversial decision made by him to be aired in a public forum that he could not control. he knows how to use his influence as a general manager of rec and park to intimidate people. he and others had every intention to cancel or change the format of the planned discussion of the golden gate to be held at the common wealth club, any e-mails were instantly deletes not because of the deep commitment to the record retention policy, but because ginsberg knows that the sunshine law requires disclosures he is not stupid. had it been true that the destruction was implementing the policy and this should have been stated to mr. wooding at

the outset. the disclosure that there were once e-mails but they were indeed destroyed according to regulations would have led to the next requirement in the sunshine ordinance which is to assist in referring him to someone who could help him with his records request. miss gong should have referred him to the department of technology did recovering the deleted e-mails since her technology staff could not help. let us not kid ourselves mr. ginsberg attempted a cover up of an ill advised attempt to influence the private entity to have a open panel discussion about the development in the famous park and wanted to use his position to exert power over the public who were exercising their first amendment rights of freedom of speech and assembly. the sunshine act and the brown act were created specifically to facilitate people and helping people to find out such misuses of power by trusted officials there is nothing innocent about erasing these,

he is guilty as charged. the regulations for violations of the sunshine ordinance calls for you commissioners to consider all of the relevant circumstances surrounding this case, he must consider his motive in his actions to destroy the evidence. the code of ethics the commission requires that you set the highest standards of conduct. including the appearance of propriety of the operation of government and to assure public confidence in his governing institutions. i am holding you to this code of ethics today and awaiting your decision that will assure the public that we should have confidence in our city government. thank you. >> steven warfield and i am not familiar with the details of the case nor am i a party to it. but i must say that i was taken

aback by mr. ginsberg the dog ate it defense. first of all what parks policy was he following? if indeed he claims that he was following it i think that you should certainly ask under what policy was he destroying these documents? and i should back up and say that i support mr. wooding's request and position as many of you other folks previously have said. i would like to read to you section 67.29-7, correspondence and records shall be maintained, section a. the mayor and all department heads shall maintain and preserve in a professional and business-like manner, all

documents, and correspondence, including but not limited to letters, e-mails, drafts, memos, invoices, reports and proposals and shall disclose all such records in accordance with this ordinance. >> that does not allow for the dog ate it or it was not important enough document or some such reasoning. i will read it again in fun, it is one sentence. 67.29-7, correspondence and records shall be maintained, section a. the mayor and all of the department heads shall maintain and preserve in a professional and business-like manner all documents and correspondence including but not limited to letters, e-mails, drafts, memo,

invoices, reports and proposals and shall disclose all such records in accordance with this ordinance. thank you. >> good evening, honorable commissioners. it is a honor to stand before you, i have watched you on tv quite a bit and i appreciate your dedication, i know this is not an easy job. you know on a good day. my name is susan dumont and i am a person who is actually been successful in getting a sunshine violation against reckation and park in 2010. so having had that, it was the order of determination was issue to them that they were in violation, it is clear that under phil ginsberg they knew exactly what the sunshine task force was all about, what their obligations were and he is an attorney and we know that he knows what he is doing here.

it is most egregious to me that in the city of stfrancis we are paying people to deceive us and i hope that you folks will do the right thing tonight. this was deception from the beginning to the end and the e-mails luckily that george wooding has put together for you and i think that you can see from george wooding this is probably not where he would like to be tonight he has a family and he has other needs and interests. we all would like to be someplace else. but this is important. this is our city. this is a democracy. and you cannot let a few people with other interests take it away, and abuse us. the public trust is being abused by rec and park and i hope that it will stop here. thank you very much. >> this reminds me of the

missing 11 minutes from the nixon case. >> unfortunately, for mr. ginsberg, unfortunately for former president nixon there were back up tapes. when the sunshine request came in, the designated custodian of record had an obligation to search everything for the requested records. the suggestion in the good government guide that they are trash is just nonsense. if you look at the act it defines the public records as any writing containing information relating to the comment of the public's business prepared used or retained by any state or local

agency regardless of physical form or characteristics and the writing includes, among other things every other means of recording upon any tangible thing, communication, representation, including letters, words, and any record there by created regardless of the manner in which the record has been stored. the fact that the custodian of records did not look through to see if they had been saved is a violation in and of itself. and the fact that mr. ginsberg has been able to get away with it is a flagrant violation, thank you. >> good evening, my name is

jamie quak and i know george because we are delegates for the san francisco neighborhoods. and i know him as a person who spends a lot of time on matters concerning the city. he personally volunteers to research different issues and writes long articles in the newsletter for the coalition. and he hold him in high esteem that i have hold a lot of comments about the articles that he write and also he is held in high esteem that i personally nominated him for the excom committee and when the first vice president position came open he was nominated for the possible and now he is the first vice president of the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods. so i just wanted to say that he is a person who really loves san francisco and dedicates a lot of personal time to informing neighborhoods about the city. thank you.

>> good evening f, my name is studo and i also was on a coalition of san francisco organization for over 45 organizations. i don't... come to this commission, but i am interested because of this in this case, mr. wooding has explained to the coalition members and readings about all of the details going on with rec and park and some of their, well, healthy, has changed from serving the public good and now, raising the revenues at the expense of having to park for the public. and now, in hearing about this case, it seems quite obvious,

now, the sunshine task force, they have come to a conclusion and they are volunteers and i don't think that they have any tax to grind and came up with a conclusion, that the sunshine ordinance was violated. clear by, and i cannot understand how their findings could be over turned. in some cases what is it? you need (inaudible) the red bean bag and asked for a instant replay. the replay could only be... the judge could only over turn the evidence that there was a mistake that was made.

and i can't say how anyone could come to that conclusion, in this situation. you know, there was a violation, and this thing about they did not keep the records. well, it says, clearly, that this is a piece of information and e-mail that should have been kept and that the sunshine ordinance supercedes policy and the rec and park should have kept the e-mails and produced them when asked. one more thing. this is to me, it seems like a cover up, you know and water gate it was not just a crime it was a cover up that was the bigger problem. and in here i see the same case and i see the cover up. and i think that if you allow this to go through and slip

through, the public confidence needs to be, you know, in order to have good government you got to have people who believe in the government and you people, certaining the city as a ethics commission you need to come to the right conclusion, don't let the cover up be rewarded. >> commissioners, ray hartz director of san francisco government. and i like to reiterate and agree with the comment of a lot of the other speakers, which is as it does seem that their policy in the department is one of everybody decides whatever the heck they are going to do and does whatever way they want to do it and then the department feels no responsibility at all to try to correct the mistakes they make because they have not got clear direction. the rbd staff, the parks and recreation should not be

allowed to unny laterally decide employee by employee whether they will delete the records and not follow the sunshine ordinance or the brown act or the california public records act. and also like to make a comment on mr. ginsberg's request that you find in favor of what the staff has recommended. well, he is going to say that, because every single time a case comes before you, the staff recommends no violation. even in cases where they have a clear conflict of interest such as my last case, because there was a finding against this body and your executive director for violating the same 150-word summary problem. and he saw no problem at all saying that there should not be a violation which basically results in a case if we find the violation against mr. herrera, mr. hartz may be back here trying to get a violation against me. and he saw no problem with that. none at all.

and if i recommend no violation, and we could say, precedent has been set and the case comes before me we could say that i did not violate the law either, i think that is very, very convenient, basically you can't have someone giving you advice which you rely on totally and they are unwilling to be honest about the fact that they may be affected by the decisions that you make. and a simple fact that you say, oh, the city attorney can interpret these laws, the other bodies like the task force even though the law specifically says that they are the ones to interpret it, can't, is real hypocracy >> interpretation is allowed and then there can be different opinions, you can't say that the task force can't interpret

it if the city attorney can. the task force can add to it but the city attorney can. >> even though in the law it says that the bodies to do it, and yet, the city attorney who has absolutely no right to do it, can do it not with a legal decision, but with simply writing a memo. >> good evening, commissioners my name is katherine howard i was one of the panelists at the common wealth club and i am member of the friends of the music club and the presidential alliance. i am a architect and i have been involved in park reservation it started with saving the trees in gold on gate park, since that time i have found it necessary to keep an eye on various projects planned for the park.

golden gate park is really the prize for those people who see park land as free land for building their pet project from the proposed 1915 world's fair expocysing that would have wiped out the park to the freeways that were going to be built through the park. >> the soccer fields are a development. it could remove 7 acres of grass and replace it with artificial turf, it will add over 150 lots of sports lighting right next to the ocean beach, it will be on until ten every night of the year, ruining the wild life habitat and the beach experience for those who come to view the sunset to sit by the fire or gaze at the stars. lack of transparency regarding this project was evidence from the beginning, it was presented to the organized sports community of a full six months before there were know public hearings. public comment at city hearings as you know is limited to 3

minutes compared to the unlimited time given to city departments. what was needed was a place dedicated to free speech for a qualified panel of experts to discuss the complete picture of past, present and future threats to golden gate park. >> i was frankly appalled when i learned of the e-mails written by the rec and park department. i had suggested this panel discussion and by doing so, i had exposed respected professional panel members to personal attack. and i am shocked, i am really shocked that members of our city government, try to stifle free speech and to have this panel discussion canceled and denied that they had tried to do that. >> all that we were asking for was 50 minutes, to present our love of golden gate park. we are very grateful that the common wealth club stood by its principles and let the expert panel hold this discussion.

>> i recommend that you go to our website ssocean edge as in san francisco, dot org and view the presentation and judge for yourself. >> free speech and transparency are vital to open government and must be preserved at all costs. thank you. >> >> commissioners, juddy berkowitz president for the association of san francisco neighborhoods. i would like to point out that mr. wooding is an investigative reporting and investigates with depth and accuracy. i urge you to up hold the findings and decision of the sunshine task force and the recommendation based on that to find the respondents have

violated sunshine ordinance session 67.25.26,.27 and.21 c. >> and site them accordingly. this follows, the private event was organized at a private venue. the government gets wind of this, private event and finds it threatening. you succeeds to change the private event. the private event coordinators sunshine the government for the documents that they used to change this event. it, the government... after they were sunshined, the government says that it has no records. the complainant changed those records from a third party.

when confronted by these records, the government changes its tune and says that it has, they were there, but, they were deleted. so, if you believe that they actually deleted them, or not? if they were actually there, when they were sunshined or not? is beside the point. the point is that as so many others have made or have pointed out, is that there is a violation, please find them guilty and site them accordingly, thank you. >> i am bruce wilf and i am the

associate chair of the task force there were a lot of comments that were made and i am not going to repeat them. but one that was mentioned is what this department relies on with regards to records retention and that is their own records retention policy which is contained in your package. and now, in it, it specifies the specific section of our city code, which is administrative code 8.1, now since there is kind of a feeling that you must determine whether the task force is determination is valid or not, let's go straight to the law that actually governors what the retention must be. and that also includes the sunshine ordinance. now, under 8.1, if you notice on page 2 of the retention policy, in category 4, it states in the first sentence that documents and other

materials that are not records, quotes, unquotas defined by the administrative code in section 8.1 may not be retained, but 8.1 does not say anything about not being retained it says that everything must be retained. and that it must be according to 3 different categories. they are specific, they are current records, and there are storage records, or permanent records, there is no such label as essential records. so, a lot of what you see here in this records retention policy is embellished when you read that administrative code 8.1. and i would strongly ask you to refer to that and apply what is going on here and what was said to be or needed to be retained or not. and now, there is a question as to whether it public records with regards to city records verses, external records needs

to be retained, and section 8.1, after the end of section 8, let me see if i can find it we will just par phrase, it does specify that the documents that are pertaining to the business of the department. internal, external, it does not matter what form it is in, it is all pertinant. >> if this is a point to me this is the point that i would give me pause, i would say, if i don't know i have not read section 8.1 of the administrative code, i would continue this item, i would read it, and come back and then, have another discussion about it. i just feel that it is... it really speaks to this, i don't know who created this retention policy, but there are a lot of anomolies in it there is no listing like that there.

thank you. >> good evening, david pill pal and i am speakings an individual i was not a member of the task force at the time of this matter was heard. i appreciate all of the comments that the previous speakers made. i believe that bruce wo lf who spoke before me was most on point. and i agree with much of what he said. i would, refer the commission to the record retention and destruction schedule that is included in your packet, both part two, page 1 and 2. and the over all policy that proceeds the chart. i believe that the e-mails in question were improperly deleted and were more proply

characterized as core responsibility ans and not correspondence not requiring follow up. referring again, to the section category four, defining the no retention required records as not among other things and not otherwise required to be retained and not necessary to the function of continuity of the department and which have no legal significance that those may be destroyed and no longer needed etc.. and i will let you read that paragraph on page 2. i believe that the e-mails were in relation to the continuing matter, may or may not have required follow up but were in any event general correspondence. what is not clear to me, having been involved in this area of law for many years is what the consequences are of failing to adhere to the department's retention policy. i recall in 1998, or prior to,

putting the property g. amepdments on the ballot in 1999, there was a lot of discussion about what sections of the ordinance to amend and it was decided to only limit the amendments to chapter 67 to the sunshine ordinance, itself. so, that is why there is that new section that was read earlier that talks about the department heads maintaining records in a business like manner so as to not supercede section 8.1, of the admin code but to reinforce the notion that the departments needed to keep records that were required to be kept not keep phone messages from, you know, one spouse saying, you know, please pick up the milk at the grocery store. but, those things that related to the functioning of the city government needed to be kept in a business-lma