february, the commissioner voted unanimously that this particular type of practice of a pending written statements to the end of the minutes is acceptable prior to that in 2011, the commissioner reached the same conclusion. and it is continues to be the advice of the city attorney that is an effective practice. >> we would like to hear from the complainant? mr. ray hartz. >> i assume that i have ten minutes. >> ray hartz san francisco open government what changed from the time that this was heard back in february? for the benefit of the commissioner who was not here,

this is what we are talking about, section 67.16 of the minutes and any person speaking during a public period may supply a brief written summaris for their common, 150 words and shall be included in the minutes. and i would ask each of you especially those of you who are attorneys if we were in superior court under oath and someone says what does in the minutes mean to you? what does it mean to you. >> the city attorney seems to think that it means all of this stuff, the summy is not part of the body of the minutes or, and it may state oso. >> it may be included as a attachment and they may reject the summary if it exceeds the word limit or is not an active summary of the speaker's comments. this has never been a choice about following the direction

of the city attorney, it has been a direction about choosing what you want to do. and using the city attorney's advice to justify it. the sunshine ordinance task force and its finding original finding, 1154, said, under findings of fact and conclusions of the law, the task force further noted that the statement should be within the body of the minutes to prevent the public officials from unlawfully abridging unwanted or critical public comment, which is specifically impermissible under the brown act and the sunshine ordinance. what has changed, well, last time we had three cases 10054, in january of 2011, and then we had 1154 and, then we had 1171, specifically against the city attorney saying that the task

force disagreed with him and found him in violation. and now one thing that i would like to point out is that in your staff report the followings, it was listed. >> to quote, to-date, the task force has not issued any policy advice to city departments regarding compliance of sunshine ordinance, section 6716 and on the website the task force directs users to the good government guide as a legal reference. that is false. here is a letter issued in 2012, may 17th to be exact to the city attorney explaining all of the reasons why the task force disagreed with it and here is a memo dated the 18th of may to all city departments saying very clearly, why the task force took its possible, what it intended to do and stating that if you come before us and say, attaching when all of the stuff is there we will fine against you. and they think that they need

to do so. including against your body and your clerk of the board. they have never had a standard discussion as to why they want to keep my political free speech and my comments in a public forum out of the official record. all it talks about is does the city attorney say that we can do this yes it does and good, let's do it. you have never had discussion of 150 word summaries and you have never discussed why they want to keep them out of the official minutes and why you want to put your interpretation

of what i say in there and deny me the ability to put in what i feel is an accurate representation and i have dozens and dozens and you can read my summary that bears no resemblance to the summary and many of them conflict and contradict what i said and that is why i fought so hard for this. has this been adopted?

the answer was no, but will we intend to do it? >> and his answer was no and then she asked do you intend to do it and his answer was yes we are in the process of doing it. they have still had absolutely no discussion and they have not changed their policy, and they have simply disregarded their policy, and placed arbitrary the summary in the minutes and there is nothing to keep them from tomorrow just reversing that. i don't think that he gave a coherent answer and mr. renne went on to say that felt that all city bodies should follow this policy and he would consider it a willful violation if they failed to do so. but what they have done is exactly leave themselves in the position where they can simply go back and start leaving them out of the minutes and they can

get the addendums just as they have been, what has changed? absolutely nothing. now, last week, mr. st. croix, your executive director appeared before the compliance and the amendment committee in the case involving him and they asked him. is this a policy? no, it is a accommodation to mr. hartz. you are going to put them in to please him. >> they asked him, is there any policy on this? no. there is not. is there anything in writing? no, there is not. and so basically, there are last question was so you are telling us that you can basically just then go back to what you were doing before and mr. hartz will have to go through and fight the battle all over again?

>> they are deceitful people and lieers and it is a matter of public record, for years they have been coming before the public and lying about the financial dealings of the friends of the san francisco public library. and that group has raised it since 2000 more than $60 million in the name of the public library and the citizens of this city and the tax payers of this city and the library commission has come before the public and allowed them and talked about how wonderful this is and but if you look at the actual public records, some of which mr. herrara does not want you to see and has withheld and that is referred again to the board of supervisors you will see, there is absolutely nothing on which they could base any sort of a statement

that it was a good deal, out of the 60 million the library got 3.75 million, not very good. in fact it is not any of the money actually raised it was taken out of reserves which they have spent down to the tune of $20 million. >> here is the good government guide and part of this says, oh, i am sorry. the wrong thing. on page 131, bodies must afford a fair hearing before them. central to a fair hearing is the principal that the decision makers come to the hearing with an open mind prepared to hear both sides and to decide the case on the merits of the

evidence presented and the governing law. and since all of this goes on the basis of the good government guide, i would like to read you a sentence from mr. herrara's introduce to the latest good government guide. >> so please be prudent, understand that no publication can substitute for the careful consideration of the application of laws to specific conduct. very frankly, the only thing that they have been interested in the last four years is keeping the comments of the members of the public with whom they disagreed out of the official record and summarizing them and sensoring them. >> thank you, mr. hartz. >> now, we would like to hear from... >> i am sorry?

>> the library. >> library commission? >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners. i will be brief. i am sue black man and the library commission secretary and as you know we did hear this previously on february 25th, not these exact minutes, but very similar minutes and similar finding. and at that time, the ethics commission found that there was no violation of the sunshine ordinance, and since that time, the library commission following the lead of the ethics commission, in the modification of its own limits has adopted a similar modification to its minutes. and we adopted that beginning in january of this year. and so since that time, the library commission has adopted all of its minutes with this new set of policies, i guess, and where the 150-word

statements are included within the body of the minutes. there is no reason policy on how to do the minutes other than what is in the sunshine ordinance and the good government guide and we have followed that accurately and we do not agree with the findings of the task force, and we come to assert that the preparation of the library commission minutes follows the law. mr. hartz said that we have not had a discussion on the policy of the preparation of the minutes. but i am directed by the commission, by the president of the commission on how they want those minutes prepared. and i believe that the adoption of the minutes in the new format has been their approval of going forward of the new policy. thank you, miss blackman. >> five minutes, for rebuttal.

>> people those these things around loosely saying that the library commission has adopted this new policy is untrue. they had a discussion, several years ago where the discussion was that we have a 150 word thing and it is included in your packet a legal memo, it is not a legal memo and does not meet the clarifications or requirements of what is considered a legal opinion, it is simply someone sat down and wrote a little paragraph and all that he did was quote the good government guide. and yet, they tried to represent that as a legal opinion when there is no law included in it at all. now, they come here and try to represent the fact that they had changed their policy, when the only policy that they have

ever discussed was can we keep these an addendum and the city library saying that the city attorney says that we can. >> basically the city librarian is violating their own established policy in disregarding it. and if they can do that, what would keep them from simply 6 months from now, saying that we are not going to put these on 150-word summaries in the minutes any more we are going to put them as an addendum and make me fight the fight all over again, the bottom line is as i have said before, i have been looking into the finances of the friends of the san francisco public library and we are talking 50, 60, million dollars. and they come before the library commission, and they present documentation which is taken at face value but if you look at it as a financial person and i have a agree in business management and a master's degree you can't tell a damn thing from those records. what they do is they come in and say that we gave you 750,000, what they don't tell

you, is 350 of that, 325,000 of that money is restricted funds that they have no choice but to pass through the library. so what they actually give, is 375,000. so they raised between 4, and 4 and a half million a year. and they spend between two and two quarter million out of the reserve and what the library gets is 375,000. now, i provided and i have a petition before the city attorney's office asking for the documents and where they have been withheld. and they are, they just told me today that they need longer than the ten days that the law requires because they are looking at hundreds and hundreds of documents which have been withheld and they need to get them together to produce them. and those documents fall into the two categories one are documents that will show that there has been absolutely no oversight for these tens of

millions of dollars by the library commission or the city lie braeer an who have come before the public and said that this is a wonderful deal when they have nothing on which to base that. the second thing is that they were legally required documents that were agreement signed by the executive director of the friends and the city librarian saying that there were things due on a quarterly basis that he does not have i call it don't ask don't tell. don't tell us what you raise td don't tell us us what you did with the money and we won't ask you. at the same time, he has been accepting 36,000 on average a year and in fact this year it went up to 40,000 worth of gifts of travel, accommodation, registration, fees, etc., none of which has been reported to any body.

not the controller's office not the board of supervisors and it has not been posted on the website. and i think that they have put the library staff in the position of being in violation of potentially in violation of both state and federal tax codes. because they accepted these gifts of traffic accommodation, registration, fees and were never given any information as to whether or not there was a tax liability and i'm in the process of putting this record together to send to the franchise tax board and to the internal revenue service and hoping that i can get a pay off as a whistle blower. >> it has that i have 24 seconds. >> okay. >> more importantly, i want to bring this to light. you cannot have a position of public trust come before the public and tell them that everything is fine when you absolutely have no idea whether it is. and that is what they have done, it is a betrayal of the

public trust and a betrayal of the fiduciary responsibility. >> commissioners? >> questions? >> >> yes, mr. hartz, i have a few questions. >> all of the subject matter of the complaints are all sets of minutes that predate the session that we had in february 2013. are they not? >> yes, but that is not the point. >> okay. but that is what you are saying that we should find that their failure to include in the minutes as you define it, rather than attaching them to the minutes, that should be a willful violation, that is what you are contending on what the task force are contending.

>> how many years do you have to do something before it is obvious that it is willful? >> i am just saying that... >> yes, it is what i am saying, but what i am saying is after repeated findings you continue to ignore it, could he do it for ten, 20, 30 years. >> he knew what he was doing he is a smart man and he knew exactly what he was doing. >> and he did it on the basis of what the city attorney told him. >> no he did it on the basis of what he wanted to do to suppress public comment and use what the city attorney said which was refuted by the task force if you read the fafk force, it says that it shall give the directors to the bodies and agencies about what the law means and not the city attorney and for some strange reason you want to take the city attorney's right to interpret it as he sees fits

and override the task force that has a legal right to decide. >> i would say that they both have a legal right. >> where does it say in the law that the city attorney has the right to interpret the sunshine ordinance? show me in the ordinance? >> because he is the attorney. >> where in the ordinance does it say that. >> it specifically says that the task force has the responsibility. >> i am not going to argue, we made the decision back in february. >> i know. >> so long as the library adopted the policy >> they didn't. >> wait a minute. adopted the policy, that is that they prepared the minutes and included the statements in the minutes... >> you are changing the terms. you said that mr. herrara was asked, are you going to change the policy, his answer was yes and i reviewed that today and ha is what he answered. have they changed the policy? no they have not and just as long as they do something that

is okay. >> i am saying that if he goes back to from my point of view, if he goes back to attaching the 150-word summaries to the minutes, rather than including them in the body of the minutes, i would be prepared to say that is a willful violation, as long as he continues to put them in the body of the minutes, there is no violation. >> and you make a joke of the process. i have spent three and a half years fighting this case and now we are going to get here and you are going to give him the option of simply saying, well, mr. hartz is frustrated and we are going to leave him in a position where we can go ahead and do it and make m mr* hartz go through the same damn process, what a laughing stock you are. >> i just don't understand the issue. >> please explain to me number one, as simply as possible.

you stand up and you have comments and you have a written version of your minutes. >> what is wrong with those comments, simply being an addendum and this is a general question, to any commission hearing or any commission meeting minutes? >> here we are going back to what was discussed before the sunshine ordinance task force on multiple occasions, all seven cases. and it is the fact that they take your comment, which is exactly, which is an accurate representation, my representation, just... would your representation of your statements be more clear than the representation of someone else made of them? i think that most of you will say yes. what they want to do is take my 150-word summary which is exactly what i said and put it somewhere else and substitute in a body of the minutes,

exactly what censorship. >> you are saying that your written comments are edited by the library commission? >> no i am saying in the body of the minutes where the citizens read the minutes. >> they put what they say that i have said. >> they have changed what you have said and edited it. >> yes. and here is a footnote and if you want to know what he said go look on page 10. >> but this is an issue that faces every commission in this city. you know, most commissions don't include testimony, such as yours, within the body of the minutes, but rather as an addendum, are you going to go to every commission... >> i take exception to that. >> your ethics commission includes it in the body. >> the library in the bod y >> the police commission in the bod y the arts commission and mr. renne at the last hearing we had in february said

specifically i think that all city bodies should... >> yes. and i think that we are in agreement on that. but you now just said that the library commission is doing it. so then what is the problem? >> because it is arbitrary, my political free speech cannot be what bureau crat decides, and i will not go before the body that i work for and have them discuss it and make a decision, i will do it on a whim and that is what mr. st. croix did. you have not had a discussion about the placements of these? he decided to stop thuting them in and put them in the body and portray it as an accommodation to me. >> commissioner studley? >> in my view there was no violation here of 67.16 because the library commission included the 150-word statements in the minutes. and in my view, in the minutes includes both in the body of

the minutes, and in the addendum. one thing that i pointed out the last time is to me, a numbered document from one to... >> it is not your free speech. >> excuse me mr. hartz i'm speaking. i think that we have raised two completely separate issues here. these complaints before us, relate to whether the inclusion of the 150-word statements in the minutes is a violation and we have to affirmatively find if we think that there was a violation. the commissioners may not all agree with me that the addendum is perfectly satisfactory way of accomplishing the statutory responsibilities. there is a separate issue that you commission have raced that is not before us and that is

the responsibility of a city body that is required by law to maintain minutes. and under 67-16, the sunshine ordinance requires the boards and commissions to record minutes for each regular and special meeting. our minutes characterized what i say, they are not the same as the transcript. the minutes are something else. and they summarize what each of us says. and that is different from the inclusion of the 150-word statement that allows the speakers before the commissions to be absolutely clear about what they want to say. the commissions that have been criticized before have done both they have carried out the responsibility under 67-16 to record minutes, not to record transcripts that is a separate obligation but to record the minutes in which they say, what happened at the meeting. if there is a complaint, that

those minutes are not being kept appropriately by any commission that will be a separate question. that is not on the floor before us right now. and on the matters before us, it seems clear to me, that the library commission that these complaints do not carry weight and there is not a violation of 67-16 and the 150-word statements have been included without any editing and without change, there is no question on the record before us about whether they have been revised shortened tampered with or otherwise reduced from what was presented by the complainant or anyone else. i think that it is a simple matter and i think that we should act in a way that follows the decisions that we have made in the past on this issue. >> thank you, commissioner studley. >> may i respond to that? >> mr. hartz. >> why are they fighting so hard to keep these summaries

out? >> what is it thatvy to say that they don't want heard? i'm not just fighting this for my own sake, i'm fighting this for the sake of any citizen in this city who has gone before a public body, made a statement and had that statement either deleted, sensored, misrepresented and the sunshine ordinance offers an extra layer of protection. and what you do in each of these cases you say that even though the body who is legally charged with deciding these cases has found a violation, we are going to ignore what they have to say, and never having looked at any of the evidence involved. and say that they are wrong. >> thank you, mr. hartz. >> commissioner hur you have a question or a comment? >> i was just going to say that i, concur with commissioner studley and i would be prepared to hear public comment and vote. >> i would move that we make a

finding as suggested by commissioners. >> i would be happy to make that motion. and then we can have public comment on the motion, would that be helpful? >> yes. >> i believe that the motion is that the commission, find a better way to articulate this. the commission finds that the city library did not violate the sunshine ordinance as to all allegations referred to by the task force because the 150-word written summaries were included within the minutes as required by the sunshine ordinance and under section 677-hp 16.

any person shall provide a statement, and this is the responsibility of the secretary of the clerk to take down and i appreciate you commissioner studley for creating the distinction or outlining the distinction between a transcript and minutes which is to summarize all of us that is the role and the responsibility and the job description of the secretary and the clerk and it says that you were a