>> good afternoon, everyone. welcome back to the budget and finance committee meeting for the board of supervisors on wednesday june 19, 2013. we'll continue with items number 3 and 4 from the recess we just took. up next we'd love to call our civil service commission and ms. jennifer johnson. who i should add is coming in from maternity leave just to present to us today.

>> good afternoon, jennifer johnson, executive officer, the civil service commission. i'll start off with an overview of our departments and kind of clarify what it is that we do, and just briefly review our very humble budget. so, the purpose of the civil service commission is a charter mandated entity and it's charged with providing qualified persons for appointment to city service. essentially the commission's responsible for establishing, regulating, overseeing and serving as final arbiter of the city's merit system. so you understand the relation between the civil service system and dhr we are essentially the legislative judicial branch and dhr is responsible for undertaking the rules that the commission establishes for the merit system.

and i would just like to note that our merit system was created in 1900. it is actually the oldest merit system west of the mississippi and it was essentially created in response to mass fraud and corruption in city government. so, to give you a perspective. the commission's mission is to establish, ensure, maintain equitable and credible merit system for public service employment. the commission's goal is to consistently provide the best qualified candidates for public service in a timely and cost-effective manner. and i'd also like to point out our equal employment policy which permeates through all of our rules, it is the goal to provide fair treatment of applicants and aspects of employment without regard to membership of protected category and [speaker not understood]. that's essentially what merit system means. the civil service commission is a five-member commission appointed by the mayor and approved with veto authority by the board of supervisors. it is an independent commission by chart of the mayor prohibited

from intervening in the civil service commission's matters. the civil service commission department staff itself, we are a small staff of six individuals. i've listed them here for you. and just to give you a better perspective on what exactly it is that we do, the commission's authority and responsibilities of the civil service more et system include but are not limited to the authority, purpose, definition organization of the merit system and the civil service commission itself, the establishment of policies, procedures and rules governing the merit system and there's a huge list there. i won't bore you by reading them out loud. and then, of course, merit system oversight and that entails inspection service, and that's under the charter we have the power to investigate and into complaints and allegations of merit system violations. commission staff endeavors to take those within 0 days and we actually receive quite a few of them, over -- generally over 120 a year. last year we received 127 of them. and just so you're aware,

anyone can make an inspection service request. that's unions, employees, members of the public, departments, fellow employees, members of the board of supervisors. and we also have a general power of inquiry and audit program. each year we conduct a number of audits. part of our audit program. generally we do seven audits a year. next year we've increase it had to eight audits. last year it was focused on assuring compliance of civil service commission rules, policies and procedures with respect to examinations of employment processes. this year we're looking to ensuring that individuals apply for their appeal rights and departments are adhering to discrimination resolution and investigation procedures. then, of course, the commission hears appeals of decision or action made by the department of human resources. the executive officer of the civil service commission or the director of transportation if it's an mca service critical position. the commission received 64

appeals last year and they resolved 66 appeals in fiscal year 2011-2012. the commission also reviews proposed personal services contracts. that's when departments want to contract out services that arguably potentially be otherwise provided by civil service employees. and the commission determines whether or not the circumstances are unique enough to warrant such contracting out. then, of course, wage setting responsibilities, including the compensation and benefits for members of the board of supervisors and other elected officials. and then finally, the employee relations ordinance administration. so, we hear unfair labor practice charges for employee groups. they're not covered under the [speaker not understood] brown act. in addition to questions regarding bargaining unit assignments, management supervisory confidential designations and so on. then with respect to the commission's budgets, our budgets primarily devote today supporting our personnel costs. i've included there what our current budget is as compared

to what we're requesting for the next two years. there is a slight increase and they're primarily due to projected increases in employee salaries due to negotiated contracts as well as fringe benefit costs. and we have recently discussed the mayor's office and agreed to an adjustment to our budget prior to this year every year we were starting off with a deficit. so, this is just realigning our budget with the realities of what our staff costs are. we have no expected changes to the fte calendar for the next two years. at this time we do not intend to request any increases. and we're not projected to have any overtime costs over the next two years. and i think that summarizes the presentation. if you have any questions or comments, i'd be happy to answer them. >> colleagues, any questions? comments? aside from appreciating the short presentation. >> i speak quickly, i know. >> okay, thanks very much, ms.

johnson. we don't have a budget analyst report for your department, so thank you for being here. >> thank you very much. >> okay. up next we have one more request out of order and that's for our district attorney to come forward. i know mr. [speaker not understood] is here so why don't we start with the da's office. >> jennifer put a lot of [speaker not understood]. i want to make sure i'm very quick as well. first of all, good afternoon, everyone. i want to begin by thanking kate and mr. [speaker not understood] for the work they have done with us as well as the budget analyst and specifically olivia. [speaker not understood], did i pronounce that correct? thank you. she has been great in working with us. and as soon as we made our presentation, [speaker not understood]. our mission is public safety, working with all of our communities. we deal with prevention, education, and obviously with

enforcement and as appropriate, very quickly, a budget overview. as you can see the two-year cycle here, 12-13 to 13-14. there is a difference of about 9.94%. that's mostly driven by the supplemental provided by the board concerning domestic violence. also has to with some budget increases. as you can see for 13-14, 14-15, that's actually 0% which is about $198,000. looking at the fte count, what we see is that there will be a net increase of 12% for this year. again, this is -- some of this is driven by the supplemental we received recently concerning the monthly violence. and you can see actually in the following year, there will be a 1% reduction and that's [speaker not understood]. here's the sort of the annual -- the major budgets changes.

1. million is the annualized funding for the nondomestic [speaker not understood] that were approved to the supplemental process. there is about 1.6 million of readjustment. $2 41,000 is an inchrysler in facility rental costs and that's the -- our satellite as well as the bernal street. and there is the replacement of vehicles that were required by city ordinance. so, we're replacing 12 vehicles. major initiatives that we're involved in, the creation of the db unit which was in part by your support. we're getting ready actually to get that unit rolling this month. we'll be inviting all of you actually to our opening. another thing that we started this year is we started with a d.a. staff. it's the beginning of creating metrics in the system to look

at performance to assess areas where we can approve upon not only in terms of productivity for our office, but also want to think we're really pushing into becoming a lot more sophisticated by the way we apply our prosecutorial resources, identifying neighborhood-based problems, trying to put the efforts where we can [speaker not understood]. i think some of you may have heard we started a secure smart phone initiative. it was a problem i noticed last year. we have had tremendous amount of increase in violence and robberies here in the city that are cell phones. it is really a national epidemic. and myself and the attorney general from new york started to work together and we have been working with the carriers and the manufacturers in order to create a safe user experience for people that are using smart phones. another thing is that through your help a year and a half ag we started the alternative sentencing planner and it is a

process doing extremely well. we diverted people that could have gone to state prison in, in the appropriate cases we have [speaker not understood]. and generally we're looking at a population between 18 and 25 to 26, prosecutors looking at one they could send to state prison. and we're working with [speaker not understood] we actually look at the circumstances of the individual, where the community support is, what kind of services we can provide and for the safety of the community what makes sense for the individual, we'll often divert that person to a different place. we have been working aggressively with one of the counties that has been taking the forefront of state realignment and, again, just reformation of the criminal justice system. one of the things that we're starting to work and having conversations concerning is the relocation of [speaker not understood] justice, facility are totally inadequate for our office and we're hoping to begin to have that conversation.

as you can see, our department over time spending, we were budgeted $85,000. we actually probably spent about $70,000 and that's driven primarily by our das and investigators and attorneys do not get overtime. mostly of them are working in excess of 60 hours a week. many are working [speaker not understood] hours a week. they are not receiving overtime. you can see the reduction has been steady for the last four years. culturally appropriate services is an area the office has spent a great deal of time dealing with this, starting with community victim services around various communities. we now have four off-site that we work and we work out of bay view, tenderloin, mission, chinatown and we continue this process. every one of the centers, by the way, has bilingual personnel. there it is. english, chinese, we also maintain a hotline that is a

24-hour-a-day line that now has six different la was. in addition to that we're continuously engaging and outreaching all the various communities. ~ language we now have a newsletter and annual report and we have copies we'd like to share with you in the future. they are now written in spanish and chinese as well. and we have advisory groups that now total -- we have asian pacific islander, we have african-american, latino, gay, women, youth, middle eastern group, middle eastern muslim arab, and we're now getting very close to starting one with the jewish community. we also convene regularly round table discussions with the media to make sure that the message and the mission of the office is being publicized in those communities. and that pretty much completes the presentation and i'm available for any questions you may have. oh, one of the last things, we looked at the suggested budget

by the budget analyst. we agree with three of the areas. there is one area we do not that we are very close to it and we really feel we'll be able to reach an agreement by next week. >> great. thank you, mr. gascone. colleagues, do we have any questions or comments at this time? thanks very much, mr. rose. why don't we go to the budget analyst report: , please. >> mr. chairman, members of the committee, page 70 recommended total [speaker not understood] 13-14 of that amount, 276.38 are ongoing. [speaker not understood] savedings, still lou an increase of 3.8 million or 8.9% of the department's budget. 14-15 our recommendation total [speaker not understood]. of that amount 207,5 04 ongoing and [speaker not understood] one-time saving and we will be happy to work with the district attorney in the ensuing and we can report back to you. >> thank you, mr. rose. colleagues, any questions for mr. rose on the da report?