>> welcome to the san francisco

board of supervisor meeting of tuesday, may the 14th, 2013. madam clerk, could you call the roll? >> supervisor avalos, avalos present. breed present, campos present,chew present, supervisor cohen present, mar present, tang present, wiener present, yee present. mr. president, all members are present. ladies and gentlemen, could you please join us in the pledge of allegiance? could i

madam clerk, are will any communications. >> i have no communications. >> if you could read or consent agenda. >> these items are considered routine unless a member on thes. >> would anyone like to sever any of these items. seeing none, roll call vote. >> chew i, cohen i, farrell i, kim i, supervisor mar i, tang i, wiener i, yee i, avalos i, breed i, campos i. there is 11

i's. >> those ordinances are passed and approved. >> item six is an ordinance recognizing small business month in may 2013 amending the planning and building codes to waive fees for the month of may for improvements /-fpt . . >> this ordinance is finally passed. >> this is an ordinance authorizing the settlement of a lawsuit -- the wireless association versus is city and county of san francisco. >> roll call vote. >> chew i, cohen i, farrell i, kim i, mar i, tang i, wiener i, yee i, avalos no, breed i,

campos i. there are ten i's, one no. a: /ord >> ordinance is passed. >> purr >> any discussion? roll call vote on this item. >> chew i; cohen i, kim i, mar i, tang i, wiener i, yee i, avalos, breed camp i.

therare 11 i's. >> this ordinance is passed next item. >> this is a /orbd /tphapblgs regarding the health code to raise patient rates charged for mental health services. >> this is passed on first reading. >> item ten, award in 71 thousand in salaries and reappropriating 71 to overtime in the public utilities communication division to support the department's projected increases in overtime pursuant to 9.113. >> why don't you call 11, 12 and 13 which have to do with similar /ord /tphapblgs. ordinance.

>> and approximately 42 million in capital improvement program projects. item 12 is an ordinance reappropriating for overtime and uant to section 9.113 the chart r -- is item -- number 12 is sub to [inaudible] 16 million in existing waste water capitol improvement budgets adopted by the public utilities commission. >> supervisor farrell. >> thank you president chew. i'm happy to answer any questions. these items came through in finance committee last week, but item number 11 -- we need to continue this. so if we can separate it out.

so however we want to do that procedurely but i can make that /phoebgs motion and continue to june 18 meeting. >> let's take item 11 and continue that item to june 18. is there a second to that? second by supervisor mar. can we continue without objection. without objection shall be the case. can we do the same with 12 and 13? that shall be the case. item 14. >> this is to valued at 250,000 from the open society foundation for the grant period of january 1, 2013 to june 30, 2015.

>> this resolution is adopted. >> this is to accept a gift of design services and furniture valued at approximately 26 thousand from various donors. >> super /sraoeutz supervisor avalos. >> i feel very uncomfortable about being in the position of approving to accept and expand [inaudible] when i feel that there's been advice that our city attorney has provided to our district attorney and the district attorney has not followed. the district attorney said he's got conflicting advice and i understand that's what he feels is important to him, but feel

supporting this without the district attorney fulfilling both advice from e d the city rneyas well. w at'si most appratth measure and just want to let you know gues.

>> at 500 dollar maximum so i'm curious if around that set of rules is that, for example, if the board of supervisors set up a furniture account that was administered by a third-party that any set of entities could do nate to that account. i'll give these examples today 'cause these are some of the ordinances for leases in front of us today so clear channel could finance 5000 dollars, millennium could donate 5000 dollars. is that something that's allowed within kind of our local gift rules. by state law, this is fine, but what of responses to

your question, supervisor. there are a number of dien disclosure requirements under both state and local law that apply when a department receives a gift. local law, the sunshine ordinance requires that the department post a report about the gift on its website. the department has to produce a report to the board every summer that will come due in first week of july. state law requires that if the department receives a gift and that gift bestows a personal benefit upon an officer or employee of the department, the gift is either a personal gift to the employee that receives a benefit, or the department can file a public report stating that it received a gift, that

that individual received a personal benefit of the gift and that another person in the department decide who had would receive the personal benefit of the gift. that's a state law requirement. an example of that is if the city attorney's office received 500 dollars to send someone to a conference and they decided to send me, we would file a report saying we resied the do nation, john got the benefit even though it's city business and then whoever made the decision to send him. the question that's been raised in the budget committee discussions, and i think this is raised to your point, is whether furniture used in a particular person's office bestows a personal benefit.

the fair protocol practices commission, which is the agency that oversees these laws, has issued written advice in the past including advice to the mayor of san francisco indicating that when a gift is given to an office that supports -- say in our case the mayor's car used for city business -- the city car that the mayor uses, or when a gift of art work is given to a community college and then placed in the college president's office. even though those are gifts that are used for city business and go to city property, those bestow a personal benefit on the mayor who is driven around in a car or in the college president in which the art work sits. based

on that advice our decision is that when the city receives interior design services that is used for a particular person's office, the gift is either a gift to the individual particular person whose office was redesigned, or should be reported on the form 801 consistent with state law. in response to your question about what the board could do -- the board could create a fund that individuals or third-parties donate into and a non board member would be designated to decide how that money is spent, whose offices will be furnished. if there's ten thousand dollars in the funds and the clerk decides that llars will be spent on a new

desk in supervisor kim's office, then kim benefitted from it and avalos decided who would benefit. so that's a very long answer to your question. you also mentioned the ftcp letter that was circulated this week. a member of the public filed a complaint with the ftpc against the district attorney. the ftpc indicated they will not pursue that complaint. our advice will continue to be that you must either file the 801 or treat the gift something to you

personally because the ftpc has decided not to pursue any enforcement action against the district attorney in this case, the letter is not the type of published advice letter on which we rely from the ft bepc usually in getting advice. >> can we pass this acceptance of gifts based contingent upon the submittal of the form 801? >> the decision whether to pass the resolution or not is a policy decision for the board and you can take that into account. the fact that you can decide for any reason that's been discussed to support or oppose the resolution. >> could we amend the resolution to say the passage of this resolution is contingent upon the receipt of

the form 801? >> you could. i think that may leave a bit of about when the district attorney's office has been authorized to accept the gift. if you do make the resolution contingent you might want to put a timeframe on it such that the resolution is approving the department's acceptance of the gift, if the form 801 is filed with an x number of days, and if no form 801 has been submitted to the clerk for inclusion by that time, the gift is not accepted. it's kinda funky and i /tkpwelsz guess i would recommend that if you're inclined to go in that direction, that you continue in that.

>> overall i imagine that our district attorney wasn't intending to do anything that was unethical and i understand the need for furniture,th in your own office or in a portion of your office -- say the domestic violence unit. i think it's great he was able to find other resources to pay for that outside city dollars. it's been my understanding for my office that if i'm able to solicit funds for my furniture, that i am limited by our gift laws or by my cam -- campaign account holder rules. as long as the third-party account is administered by a third-party member, we can do the same. if that he -- that's the way our rules are set up, then -- i

think the long term, i would want to have a conversation about that 'cause i think that if the board was to set up a third-party account that was administered by another non elected member of this board and a whole variety of entities were donating to this account, i think there's an appearance of influence on the board if we know our furniture, our laptops are coming from these entities, i think that's a problematic appearance. if the city attorney's recommendation is that the form 801 be submitted, i think that makes sense and just in order to be consistent with that interpretation, that would be my thinking, but i'm

open to hearing what other members of this board would have to say on this item. >> i have a quick follow up to that. /tkpwepbl, again, this is not an easy question for many of our colleagues, but my understanding is that this issue would not have come to light to us if they had not put this on the website. this is a state law issue upon which you opine that the da should have done something differently from what he did, but ultimately the district attorney chose to move in the direction that the ftcp said the items did not convey a personal benefit and the investigation was closed. and

i looked at different factual scenarios are fairly fact specific. is it fair to say that in this specifics of this case -- the ftpc -- they are the ultimate -- >> a few responses to your questions. i do not know exactly at what point the district /toerpbl attorney spoke with the ftpc or what advice he received, nor do i know what exactly triggered this gift becoming public. i know there was a newspaper article about it. i don't know whether that was before or

after the district attorney posted the information on his website or the form 803, but in terms of our advice -- one other carification. our office treats as confidential our conversations with officials about ethics issues. so i know you mentioned the district attorney had conversations with our office and i -- >> i understand you provided general advice that laid it out. >> so what i said in response to supervisor kim's question is our general add advice on this matter. you're