meeting. let's put it this way. when i see city salaries going up, and i see all kinds of meetings being canceled for whatever official reason you want to give, including junk ets. i would also like to remind people that you get paid for showing up, you don't show up. you should not get paid. and let's put it this way. is it a coincidence in the last year or so that we have had plenty of committee meetings being canceled while it is a certain extent general knowledge that these meetings have been observed closely. is that a coincidence? thank you. >> thank you. and is there any other member of the public who would like to speak? seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues, i don't know what your thoughts are, but let me share with you kind of where i am. you know, i appreciate i think

that the presentation from mr. hanna, i think that he is an earnest guy that wants to work with the community. but it does raise questions for me since we are talking about off sale of hard liquor that we have not seen any community out reach. and out reach to the district supervisor. i understand that when what you have said that you are not aware that there was a certain expectation of that and we as a city going forward need to do a better job of making sure that applicants know that. but, i do think my preference would be to provide a little bit of time for you to do that out reach before an off-sale license is approved. and you know, i don't know, how much time that would be. but, i think that it is

actually a good thing, not only for us, and for the community, but also for you. because, again, doing that out reach in the end is something that helps the success of your business. the other thing that i would say for the record and i want not only my staff but the clerk's office to note this, going forward we are not going to schedule any item a license application unless there has been some out reach done to the district supervisor because if that has not happened, the chances are that in fact, we may end up having to continue the item anyway. so i just think that in the end, that does not serve us and it does not serve them. so i hope that the word goes out to anyone who is thinking of moving or presenting this type of application that at a minimum talk to the district supervisor because the district supervisor will make sure that that individual does out reach

to the community. supervisor mar? >> yeah. i'm supportive of continuance as well. but i wanted to thank mr. hanna for your patience as well. i know you have followed all of the procedures, but i think that it is really important to check in with the district supervisor. i think that even your comments that add up to a good area across the street from the palace hotel. but inspector van cal mentioned that the broader area is a high crime area with double the calls as defined what a high crime area is. and the fact that there is a college nearby. but i don't know if there is residentses for the college as well. the academy of art university. but i do see that you have got yelp reviews and i am looking at see maps to see what else is around you. it does not seem like there is an over concentration of places that sell hard liquor as well. so i mean i would take all of those into consideration besides the opportunity of our

colleague. is it district six? >> so it would be supervisor kim's office. >> yes. >> mr. hanna i don't know how much time you will need to do this out reach. i think that it can be done, you know in a very short period of time. so that we can bring it item back and in the near future. so colleagues, could we have a motion to continue to the call of the chair? >> moved. >> so we have a motion to continue to the call of the chair. and again i would encourage you mr. hanna, if i were you after the meeting just stop by supervisor kim's office to set up a meeting and use whatever opportunity to talk to the residents. so we have a motion without objection. >> thank you. >> mr. clerk is there any other business before this committee. >> that concludes today's agenda. >> thank you. meeting adjourned.

>> good evening and welcome to the regular meeting of the san francisco ethics commission and he will begin by taking roll. >> commissioner studley? >> here. >> khi, liu. >> here. >> commissioner hayon is sick

and not able to attend. >> as a result, we are going to defer item number five, we think that it is better to have the full commission here for the election of the chair and vice chair. the first item on the agenda is public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda that are in the jurisdiction of the ethics commission. >> the next item on the agenda is discuss... i am sorry. >> good afternoon, i'm peter war field director executive director of la bore users and

if you could identify the agenda with respect to the public comment. you have under item three and four, a number of items subitems, so i wanted to ask what your ground rules would be for public comment. is there three minutes for each item, for example, 3, a, 3 b, or is it some other rule that you should in mind? >> and we will open that up for views from my fellow commissioners. my thought was that we would take public comment after each subitem. >> that is my understanding. >> that makes sense. >> okay. >> thank you very much. >> you are welcome. >> the next item on the agenda is discussion and possible action on matters submitted under chapter three of the

ethics commission regulations for violations of the sunshine ordinance. three a is regarding ethics complaint month 0 no, 03-120402 and the complainant is ray hartz and the respondent herrea. and we present them with ten minutes and provide the respondent ten minutes as well and we provide the complainant with a five-minute rebuttal. >> i see the complainant, mr. hartz, is the respondent here? >> yes, here. >> okay. >> mr. hartz, ten minutes. >>

>> members of the ethics commission ray hartz, director of san francisco open government, i will be using slides and so we may go back and forth here. throughout this i want to consider something that equinis teaches and that is willful ignorance of what ought to know is a mortal thing. 67-16 reads in this last sentence any person speaking during a public comment period may supply a brief written summary of their comments which shall no more than 150 words be included in the minutes. i think that is a pretty clear reading of the language and i think that most people so far have agreed with my interpretation. but we will get into that later. now the city attorney has added some things and the good government guide and memo and says that the summary is not

part of the body's minutes or for its accuracy and the minutes may expressly say so it may be included to the minutes and may reject the summary if it exceeds the word limit or not an accurate summary of the public's comment. the speak's public comment. memo from your staff sort of viewed this as one particular incident alone and if you look at it that way you might come to one conclusion, but asking you to look at it in the context. after a year of asking public comment be changed to accurately reflect the public comments by speakers and have that denied by the library commission i took to the sunshine task force and on january 25th, 2011 i received a letter of determination, 10054, from the library commission

that they stated that in the minutes means in the body of the minutes. that is what the law says and the reading of it says that and that is what is ruled. >> in the case that we are actually talking about, which is the second case on here, which i then took or i asked for the library commission discussed it and said can we do this and mr. herrera said you can and the city attorney said that it is okay and they decided to discontinue and disregard the order of the task force. i then brought the case against specifically mr. herrera and under the facts and findings of fact and conclusions of law, the task force stated specifically that the task force further noted that the statement should be in the body of the minutes to prevent the

public officials from unlawfully abridging critical public comment. >> at that point, and i made dozens of points before the library commission for which he extended and i asked you to look at the law and read the law and determine what it means to you and look at the who decisions that have been issued by the task force saying that in the minutes means that in the body of the minutes and stated why they did it. but the only thing that the library commission wanted to ask is can we ignore the finding? because the city attorney says that we may do something, can we continue to ignore what the task force has said on two occasions and official rulings and directed us to do?

you might make an argument that they were saying that mr. hartz is asking one thing and the city attorney may do something else and that is one choice, by the second order, there was a clear decision. shall, we simply do what we are doing because the city attorney has said we may do it, as opposed to what we have now two declarations from the body, who is by law, determined to be the ones who decide what this ordinance means. their choice was to advice the library commission let's keep doing it. the questions they never asked is should we ignore the finding? in other words, we have two findings now, one is against the library commission and one against the city lie braeer an and both of them state in the minutes means in the body the minutes and they then continued and failed to ask,

why do we want to ignore the finding? and i think that is the key question here. why did at the want to ignore these findings in my position having experienced this for the last two years, is that they did not like what we said and they wanted to keep it out of the official record. and when they couldn't do that, they wanted to marginalize it by putting it as an adeda and putting it like a footnote and saying that we are not going to voge for the accuracy of all of this which i think was prejudicial. >> and so we go back to the time line and when they continued to do this, i took the city attorney to the task force. and the city attorney's office tried to defend their good government guide in memo and the task force clearly on december 14, 2011 more than a year ago said that we have made

this very clear, we have interpreted the ordinance which is our job to read that in the minutes, means in the body of the minutes. addendas do not apply. in fact they issued a letter to agencies stating that that if another case is brought to us where the 150 summaries are not in the minutes we will rule against you. and here we have another decision point where the city librarian said i don't care what they say i want to keep them somewhere else other than what the law says they should be. i have another case there, ray hartz verses the public library, in that the public library found luisherrera in violation of withholding public records and this has been referred to the board of

supervisors. >> what i am saying is this is a consistent pattern of behavior. this is not just one time in this one instance where he said, oh,, well you know, la, la, la. it is a continuous pattern for two years or more where he said, i'm not going to follow it. i don't care that it is a choice between a legal document that i have received on three occasions telling me what the proper thing to do is. i'm going to ignore that and go with what it says we may do. i would challenge you, to ask those second questions. why did the library commission and mr. herrera choose to ignore these findings? >> why did they want to choose to ignore the findings?

very frankly, i think that any person has a good, safe basis to reconsider previous decisions if they get something that has changed the equation. if i get an order saying, library commission is in violation, i need to look at that and decide whether or not i wanted to just stick my feet in the ground and drag them. when i get one against myself, finding me in willful violation, do i want to just stick my feet in the ground and drag them? when i get a third one saying that the city attorney's advice is not accurate, do i want to stick my feet in the ground and simply drag them? and i would submit that if you asked those questions, which they have refused to ask, to get to the point where you realize they don't like what we are saying, and one the only person and this is something

that i find extremely eggregeous in this whole matter. mr. herrera as a city managal employee covered under this ordinance, choice to put his employees, sue black man, who is a direct report although she works for the library commission and others in a position where they had to ignore these situations and directed them to continue to do something other than what was clearly directed to do three times by the task force. how much more willful could someone be? i guess, you could force me to take into superior court or federal court, since this is clearly a constitutional issue protecting political free speech. and say, oh, well, if he gets an order from a court, then i guess he is going to have to do it. mr. herrera has dealt with me

on all of these matters in totally bad faith. >> the respondent? >> good evening, herrera, city librarian, we have a memo a packet that was presented to you today. i am going to keep my statement relatively brief. but to say that the library commission has followed section 70-60 of the sunshine ordinance which requires that any written summary provided by a speaker of no more than 150 words may be included in the minutes. the commission also has followed the good government guide and the city attorney has advised the policy bodies that because it is not part of the official minutes adopted by the body it may be included as an

attachment or an aden um to the minutes and there is a city attorney stated june 4, 2011 as part of the packet that we provided for you. >> the library commissioners included the 150 word summaries submitted by mr. hartz as addendum and which each summary was commenting on. they are not separate attachments but follow the agenda items in the same document. despite this, the sunshine ordinance task force has filed willful failure to include the 150 summary in the body of the minutes. >> the library does not agree with the findings of the sunshine task force and continues to assert that the preparation of the library minutes follow the law. however, following the lead of the ethics commission in the modification of the own minutes, the library commission has adopted similar modifications to the minutes, in other words, we are

incorporating into the minutes. you can see how we are going to follow the modification. therefore the library asks that the ethics commission find that the city librarian luis herrera did not violate the sunshine ordinance as to the allegations and also to have the library commission secretary sue blackman in case you have further questions, thank you. >> mr. hartz, rebuttal? >> commissioners, this is the same argument that he has been presenting for the last three years. the city attorney says we can do it. and the bottom line is why do they want to? why were they so determined forcing me to go to the sunshine ordinance task force on three separate occasions

delaying, delaying sending miss blackman to answer when mr. herrera was the one calling the shots. and mr. herrera did not have the integrity to show up and say to the task force here is why i am doing this. i think that speaks volumes. i think that it speaks to the fact that if i am doing something which i probably know is questionable, i certainly don't want to go before a body who might ask me why are you doing this? i have repeatedly and so have other members of the public asked mr. herrera and the library commission, why are you so determined to stick to this action? and they refused to even discuss it. the only thing they discussed is they asked mr. herrera can we do this, and mr. herrera says, the city attorney says you can. but the city attorney did not say you can, he said you may. it was a choice. i made a conscious choice to

exclude these statements to put them some elsewhere. they put them somewhere else because of an addendum it is less likely that someone will read them, it is less likely that someone because they are taken out of context willfully understand them and the relationship of the comments to the other comments that were made by members of the library commission, the city librarian or other members of the public. and mr. herrera wants to make it seem like, well, we did all of this stuff it was a pulling teeth exercise, first they would not put them in at all then they put them in as an addendum and after two and a half years of going back and forth we are finally agreeing to do it right and we want you to just ignore the fact that for two years we did it wrong.

as far as i can tell the document that you have been presented this is the first time that they have included 150 word summaries from other members of the public. for a while they included some of mine, but didn't include others. so it was like, mr. hartz gets special treatment and his go in the body of the minutes, but these other people can be addendaed. they keep changing their position and changing what they want to do and what, you know, what the requirements are and at no time have they made any decision at the library commission stating that the example that you have is their policy going forward. so basically, as far as the reality goes, they could simply go back tomorrow and change

these right back to where they were and very frankly having dealt with mr. herrera for the last two years, and actually having public records withheld from me, had him drag that out for 18 months, finally having to go back to the task force and having them rule it, yes, you did not follow the determination and you still withheld this and we are going to refer to the board of supervisors for action speaks pretty clearly as to his approach to this. he did not like what we had to say. the library commission did not like what we had say. if if they could not shut us up, and i will remind you this was the same library commission where you voted to recommend to the mayor that the president be removed for silenting public comment. well that kind of taught them a lesson that they are not allowed to silence public comment but if they can

marginalize it or depreciate ate they are determined to do that. the simple fact that they have now after all of this time decided to provide you with an example that really has never been discussed at the library commission and mr. herrera has constantly raised one thing he has constantly raised the idea that i don't get to determine these things, the library commission does. and yet now we have these minutes, which are the library commission minutes and he has changed them without any discussion with the library commission. he talks out of both sides of his mouth. >> i thought was to take public comment and then for the commissioners to ask whatever questions we might have of mr. hartz and mr. herrera? is that an acceptable procedure for the commission? >> public comment?

>> good afternoon, chair hurtado i'm patrick and here as my private exercising the first amendment rights to free speech. it is troubling, mr. herrera gets up here and talks about 150-word summaries, i believe that the language in the sunshine ordinance that if you submit 150-word written public testimony to be incorporated without being summarized by anybody. submitted in 150 words and have you to publish it exactly the way that it is submitted. you are here to enforce provisions of the sunshine ordinance. you are not here to allow good government guide to supercede, trump, the sunshine ordinance. there are many things in mr.

herrera's good government guide that are not worthy of being used as toilet paper. you will see the parallel to the problem mr. hartz is encountering with the good government guide similar issue in your next agenda item and mr. wooding's case in which the good government guide also contains material on page 89 that is not worthy of a public rest room. page 89 of the good government guide says that departmental destruction policies for material that remains on back up tapes or analogous paper records that the department may

have lawfully discarded but may be found in the city-owned dumpster, these are the public records act that would be separate. and the sunshine ordinance requires to search the trash for such records that is pure nonsense, the back up tapes are there for daily use, speaking as an experienced secretary, i know that almost every secretary in this city understands from the get-go that if they lose a document, it can be pulled from back up tape. if they inadvertently delete a document, a memo or a draft version of a memo or a version of a document going through a revision cycle. the secretary inadvertently is a human makes an error an