report or i tried to on the table, i noticed if we could go to the display, i noticed there seems to be a hair on the top copy, which i tried to brush off, and was unable to do. so, i went to the second copy, hoping that what looks like a hair would be not there. but, i found as you can see from this copy and this several others, that what looked like a hair on the cover, was present at all of the copies that i could see. and so i asked myself, is there some significance to what looks like the hair or maybe the nose of an airplane, it seems to are lacking windows for the pilot to see out of. so i would like to inquire whether that is a part of the report and what if any significance it might have for

the public to understand because if it has significance it is a code that i don't understand. >> thanks very much. >> commissioners? >> i appreciate the humor mr. warfield. we will make sure that the final copy is a clean copy. >> you make sure of that mr. st. croix? >> i will. >> thank you. >> so any further public comment? >> all right. our next item is performance evaluation for mr. st. croix. and we need to decide whether or not we want to go into

executive session. >> executive session for the evaluation of mr. st. croix. >> is there a motion to go into private session? >> i move that we go into private session. >> second. >> all in favor? >> public comment? >> of course. >> commissioners ray hartz director of san francisco open government, and i do believe that these should not be in closed session, they ought to be open to the public so we can see what your directions to the directive are and how well he concludes in your opinion his job. wonlt i like to be a to be a fly on the wall in this closed session. my real feeling is that neither executive director st. croix would want the documents produced in the closed session to be see the light of day or the public to it overhear the discussion. i am certain eb that the

(inaudible) intended, and has for many years evaded any real enforcement of ethics in the city of san francisco. one only has to look at the public record to see that year after year, after year nothing changes. and city employees, elected in the appointed officials does whatever they want without fear of repercussions, what we need is a valid initiative is to change the appointment of them over the commissioners of who they over see to direct the elections of the citizens of this city, the only way that we are going to get ethical oversight of other bodies is to make your positions elected by the set sens so that they don't have a private ax to grind. you are all appointed by various city agencies over whom you hold hearings. and surprisingly, and in every case you find them not in

violation. and if someone looks at it, and actually looks at the public record, you see that is the case. and i want to make it very clear that the sunshine ordinance and while it does not require you to respond to any comments of the public and i noticed that whenever i make my comments, you always make funny faces and things like that but nobody ever responds. >> silence gives consent, i really see nothing in the last three or four years that i have been watching this ethics commission that has done anything, any single action, any group action, any collective action, that has made this city more ethical. but that has made the city officials more responsive and more likely to produce public records and to allow the people to speak in public forum and nothing. and if you are satisfied with

serving terms on these bodies and having at the end of the time, produced absolutely nothing, and to be satisfied only with the plaudits of your fellow commissioners and absent any positive remarks, from the public, who are the receipt of your actions, then so be it. >> peter warfield, executive director of library users association. regarding the performance evaluation for mr. st. croix, i suppose that he has already written it for you. but, to the degree that you or any member of the public or the press have the ability to think independently, and to come to conclusions independently and

to take actions independently, as otherwise have noted and myself, too, his actions seem always to diminish and disrespect the public interest and the law. and his methods of and he is a very intelligent man and his methods are at times down right dishonest. and i will take as an example my own recent experience with a complaint that library users association brought to this sunshine ordinance task force. they found in our favor and forwarded it, the determination the order of determination to you. what happened? mr. st. croix wrote a description for your benefit of what the issues were and right from the start asserted that it

was a complaint from an individual peter warfield against another individual who happened to be the public relations person at the agency who had never had anything to do with the case whatsoever other than come in to represent the city agency at the sunshine task force. multiple times, in that case, from the sunshine ordinance task force from our complaint, it was very clear, our complaint was a library users association complaint against the arts commission. that is what the order of determination said etc., etc.. i will not go into how many times and how many places the complaint and the order of determination and the descriptions that were included with the material that you got from sunshine task force asserted that. but, mr. st. croix found that it was a complaint by an

individual against an individual and therefore, very substantially or substantively, you would follow a whole select of rules that were different from the rules that you would follow were it against the agency. and that was fundamentally dishonest and at the very least inaccurate. and it completely tilted the whole procedure as well as the out come, so that there could be no effective action taken and that i think is something that you should take into... >> thank you mr. warfield. >> thank you. >> yes, thank you very much. and of course, step the corporate read do not give money to the library or accept the money from the friends of the library. and it is restrictive enough to use the one public comments on

four separate items i hope that you have taken a look at mr. grossman's latest lawsuit and it tells of a very interesting story. and mr. grossman tries to obtain his rights under the sunshine ordinance with respect to mr. st. croix. and treat it not only with the complete incompetence about the underlying issue but no attempt on mr. st. croix to learn what the issues are. and in fact, treats the entire controversy with nothing but arrogance as a self-defense. of course, mr. grossman got a sophisticated law firm and a high powered law firm to take his suit because not only is it

a dead bang violation, but of course, there are attorneys fees that us taxpayers have to pay for. this is repeated time after time after time after time. we are almost put in a position now, of looking like we are unkind or we are inhumane and we want to start our sentences with poor mr. st. croix. but, unfortunately it is not about mr. st. croix. when you say that you respond to an automatic defense of st. croix, and every other department in the city says well, the ethics commission is just as bad, you know? we support our administrator for matter what, you know? the ethics commission does the same thing. >> in fact when you say that it does not matter, that mr. st.

croix is incompetent, and at least, he reacts with the irbegans and with refusal to learn the issues, that says that the ethics commission itself does not matter, and when you say that the ethics mission itself does not matter, you send the response bltd and accountability in the city government does not matter. and to send that message is not a message that san francisco can afford. and you need to start over, and send a message that you hold your director responsible, you have to get a new one. and send that message now, it is finally time. >> thank you. >> commissioners? >> call the question? >> the motion. before us, is do we want to go

into executive session for discussion of mr. st. croix's evaluation? >> moved. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> thank you. the motion passes. we are going >> we are back in open session. and at this time, we need to make a decision on whether or not we are going to disclose any aspect of the evaluation of the executive director. >> do we have a motion? >> discussion? >> i think that we probably do not want to make personnel matters public. in general those are private universally, i would say, and i think that we agree with that.

>> i will make the motion that the ethics commission, not disclose its closed session deliberation for the public employee performance evaluation. >> second. >> discussions? >> all in favor? >> aye. >> we need to do public comment. >> public comment? >> there is no public here for comment. so we will move to the vote. all this favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> unanimously passed. >> i think we will move to... >> july minutes. >> well, no, also your... oh, yes, the minutes, sorry. >> approval of the minutes of the july meeting since we did not meet in august? >> were there any corrections

or admissions to the minutes of the july meeting? >> remind me again, do i vote if i was not there? >> you have to. >> okay. >> i move that we approve the july minutes as written. >> second. the motion. questions? there is no public comment. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> the minutes are approved. >> executive directary report, mr. st. croix. >> i just want to do one highlight about the attachment to the ed report on the open data, and this third party report about how expanded the excessbility and user

friendliness of our campaign finance and other align data are. and this is a good testament, to the city and of course, to the ethics commission, and making information easier to be available. to the public. and not just to reporters, but to everybody who is interested and to point out that because of the easy access, there is more interest than ever in the information that we have. and in the charts that we are generating that we did not have the capability before makes it much easier for the people to understand and comprehend. and so the user rated is increased at a rate that we can appreciate. >> and you know it seems like the public is really benefiting by this and because the people can report on the data easily because we may not necessarily get a lot of credit into the work that we are putting into it and it does allow the public a lot of access and information about the campaign information,

particularly as it is happening. >> and it is going to keep getting better. >> yes. >> what is this publication? >> this, open innovation. >> and the company or the builder that builds the software for the city's data system, originally did a safe, a case study, on the commission's use of campaign finance. and as a follow up to that is doing a new quarterly magazine, to publish the results of the work that they do with various entities including the city of san francisco, to help make people aware of these enhanced capabilities. >> so this is a technology publication. >> yes. >> that goes to perhaps, the tech industry? >> yeah. >> and is this their own? >> yeah it is their own. >> but they get it out there.

>> and the thing, you know that i just mentioned too that we have had little blurbs here and there in chicago and new york and other city publications about these dash boards that people use and people like them and so we get a lot of people asking us. >> and i mean if it is an in-house publication, i think that it is a good story and it is something that we can use to promote have other publications and other media or reporters. so that people know what we are doing. >> and i would certainly advocate that. >> yeah. >> and i do think that some of the work that is getting out there, and earlier this year, the chicago ethics commission is looking for an on-line filing system and they looked all over the kointry and told us that they thought that we had the gold standard. and so, people are you know, doing the research, and stuff, and the results are showing. any other highlights on the

executive director's report that you would like to point out to us? >> no. >> any questions about the executive director's report this month >> i don't have a request about the report, but you know there is not... and i wanted to talk about the training. you know, this professional development is so important and it is such a high priority at least for me and positive resource center. and i... was there ever a training budget? was there ever a line item for it? >> yes, there was. the best practices and >> we had a training budget and it was never significant. and most of the staff that the members of the staff were attorneys, and have to give them credit and so they, they pursue the trainings that they need to do, and through a combination of our budget and the city offers when they will pay for those sort of things so they do get regular training, the city offers some pie

quality training for all of the staffers and auditers and folks on the occasional basis, there used to be a lot more and used to be a lot more management level training but again with how bad the budget has been, city offered the opportunities, and were fewer and the shared cost, went up. so it diminished some of our opportunities. but we do, send the staff for training when we can and seven our it got gets regular training and he finds quality stuff and that is the kind of thing that he benefits from and just helps to improve all of this. >> how specifically thinking of the one in canada for you. and >> that would be... >> logical that we would be sending our executive director to. >> and if i can go i will. i just, figured out that we figured out that we can hire the staff that we want, so we just kind of have to see what

is left over after that and plan accordingly for the year. >> if we can make that a priority we will. >> are there any items for future meetings that you want? >> all right, where are we with, i know that there is the proposed legislation lobby, and the legislation with (inaudible) and chiu and i know that there were a couple of community forums that were had, one with specifically with non-profits i know and a few others. and hearings. and yeah, i can answer that. we are in the process of revising the lobbyist ordinance, the one that was introduced based on some of the feedback that we have had on from the non-profits and other organizations so it is an ongoing process. i don't know what the... i don't know, right now, when, we will be reintroducing a second

draft, but it is, we are actively working on it. >> great, thank you. >> in view of the fact that there are no members of the puic here, we have no public comment on future agenda items. >> before we adjourn, can i this has been a rough evening on the staff and mr. st. croix. and at least on behalf of myself as one of the commissioners i hope that the staff did not or does not take the criticism to heart because it is not the way that any of us feel or know what they are really doing. and one of the thoughts that i held as if we can come up with a some method to get the word out better to the public, and

us and not leave an answered, the accusations that were being made by some of the members of the public that this commission does nothing and that the staff does nothing, and that you are trying to exempt yourself from the ethics commission oversight, because i think that they were all unfounded and unfounded comments. and thank you, commissioner renne, well put and i think that we all heartly agree with what you have just said. and we want to congratulate you, mr. st. croix, for the hard work that you have done. >> thank you. >> and also, to you specifically not take such comments when they are so negative personally, nor to heart. thank you. very much. >> do i hear a motion to adjourn? >> so moved. >> second.

>> all in favor? >> aye. >> the meeting of the ethics commission is adjourned. until next month.