>> and so, beginning at our next meeting, commissioner hur, you will be presiding, and you will be second in command once again. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> and for me, it has been a lot of fun. and i have certainly enjoyed it. and found it very educational. to say the least. >> and if i may say, how much i have enjoyed working with you. >> i enjoy working with you mr. st. croix. >> okay, so, we have an issue before us, regarding existing and potential litigation, and it is and it has and it appears on the agenda and we will need to discuss how we want to move forward on this. i believe that the commissioner hur, that you want to say something? >> yes. before we begin this agenda item i would like to move to

recuse myself because one of my law partners represented mr. haki and so i don't think that i should be involved in that. >> i move. >> and i second that. >> discussion, commissioners? >> any public comment on commissioner hur's request to be recused from this discussion? >> hearing none. i will ask for the vote. all in favor of allowing commissioner hur to be recould youseded from this discussion say aye. >> aye. >> it is unanimous and we will allow you to be recused. >> thank you. >> thank you, madam chair.

>> so, essentially, mr. st. croix and perhaps our representative from the city attorney's office, do you want to explain what we will be looking at? >> so, and i am going to defer to the city attorney in a moment. this is again, like last month sort of a unique situation it is not a process that we have gone through before. but this is not the same as last month. so, it will be necessary to go into closed session. the city attorney and the deputy city attorney will explain in a moment. so first we have should amotion to go into closed session and perhaps words from the city attorney and then a vote. >> do i here a motion? >> so moved that we go into private session. >> i will second. >> and any discussion?

>> public comment? >> do you want me to comment before or after? >> yes, please. >> my view is that we it is necessary to go into closed session, the basically any question that, so just as a bit of back up, you know this was, these two settlements, the city attorney's office and sort of took the lead in negotiating these settlements both with mr. yaki and mr. grijalva and all of the litigation occurred in the context of the settlement negotiations with mr. yaki. and so basically any questions that i could be asked about how the settlement occurred, the process of the settlement and it could not be disclosed. in the public session. >> and so for that reason, i think that we have to go into closed session.

>> and one question, and i believe that we can discuss this openly. when this is has been brought to us by the city attorney's office. but it certainly is something that falls within our jurisdiction as well. but when something is brought simultaneously to the ethics commission and the city attorney's office, as i understand it, then we have... i don't know if it is... >> normally... >> if it is just a process? or if we are bound to let the city attorney's office take over? >> there are occasions when we have done the joint investigations but generally speaking when there is a complaint filed in two places we tend to defer to the higher authority, mostly no resource and issues, but that has been our regular process. >> and this fell within that boundary? >> yes. >> i think that for

explanations of the public as well, that even though the city attorney brought it, we are going to be talking to the city attorney as our lawyer as well, in this closed session, so in order to protect the attorney, client privilege that any individual or any body has. we have an obligation to protect and keep it private and so going into the private session is to make sure that we as litigants don't wave any attorney client privilege and it is not anything to keep any information from the public. it is something that we have to do as litigants if we are going to have attorney client privilege, which we want to enjoy as litigants in any type of a situation. >> as anyone would want. >> yes. >> lawyer client privilege. of course. >> any other comments or discussion on this? >> public comment? >> ray hartz, director of san francisco open government. this will be a closed session

and all members of the public will be asked to leave the chamber. i would insist that mr. hur be asked to leave the chamber also, he has already recused himself based on the fact that his law partner is representing the party and some of your discussion might give him privileged information that could be passed on to his law partner and the party to the case. and i think that it is only fair that if he is not going to be involved in this case, the appearance that he is not being involved in the case would include him leaving the chamber. >> the fact that he is recused from this means that he will leave the chamber. >> no, but this is... >> you had a concern and i addressed it. >> this is a standard, he will be leaving the chamber, that is the protocol. >> and so, any other public

comment? if not, do i hear a motion to... >> we do have a motion. >> yeah. okay. sorry. >> can we have a vote on that motion? >> all in favor of going into closed session? >> aye, aye. >> okay. all of us in favor? >> and commissioner hur has been recused and is leaving the >> the commission has adopted both settlement agreements and to remain confidential on the

other matters in the closed session. >> i so move. >> second. >> any discussion? >> all in favor? >> public comment? >> hearing none. >> call the vote. >> all in favor. >> aye. >> the motion passes unanimously. >> commissioner hur, you will rejoin us. >> thank you. >> so, did we just announce? >> yeah. >> yeah, so the commission has announced that it has adopted both settlement agreements. that discussed in the agenda in the attachments. >> very good. >> madam chair, may i say one thing? >> certainly. >> i just want to also add that for the record, that i was walled off from this matter

within my firm for the matter. >> thank you, we appreciate that. >> all right. >> minutes? >> from the last meeting? >> if you have reviewed them, are there any changes or corrections that need to be made? >> i have a correction. at page 2, of the minutes, and in regard to the discussions relating to miss ellis, the third full paragraph down, where it states an unidentified member of the public stated that miss ellis caused many problems if her community of bay view hunter's point shs she stated that her community does in the receive any benefit and that mis ellis should not have become an administrator, my correction would be to that last sentence, she thought that miss ellis would be good for the community, the lady did not

say that. everything that she said was critical of miss ellis, so they definitely did not make the statement that she thought that miss ellis would be good for the community. >> if i recall i believe that they said when she was new she thought that she would be good for the community but it turned out not to be that way. >> the way that it is characterized here it has her making a statement saying that they thought that she thought she would be good for the community. >> i agree. >> that mischaracterizes the tone. >> we will review the taped record and fix that. >> okay. >> any other corrections or changes? >> any public comment on the minutes? >> commsioners, ray hartz director of san francisco open government. i only on these minutes want to comment on item number 2.

first i want to acknowledge dr. derek hur for all that he did and continues to do to raise the ethical level of city government. what dr. kurr endured sends a large and clear message for the employees of the city, don't report wrong doing and don't trust the whistle blower program and don't trust the people that you work for who are doing the illegal actions that you are trying to report. follow the example of this ethics commission and just look the other way. the ethics commission handles of this matter at best was incompetent, my personal opinion it was nothing less than the collusion with other city entities to cover up wrong doing and illegalties. the final out come, not one city employee was held accountable. they took retribution against dr. kurr and fired dr. kurr and did not give him three quarters

of a million dollars because he was treated well. the only losers in this whole evolution were the citizens of san francisco, who ended up paying $750,000 in a lawsuit, and god only knows how much in legal fees to bring this matter to a conclusion. my question to you is, if this is the way you chose to handle it, what the hell are we paying you for? >> i myself have experienced coming before this board, you have even heard items where you had a conflict of interest. deciding matters against me, that if you had favored, taken my side of it, would have found yourself in violation of the sunshine ordinance. so what you did is you just basically said well we will find this other person not in violation and that way we are what our executive director off the hook and that was one of the 16 cases that i showed you earlier, that was referred here.

the bottom line is, i don't know you, as individual people, and i am probably sure that you are a nice group of people as individuals. but as a group, you are a collective disaster. and i will keep saying it again, not one of you ever answers and i think that members of the public think that sometimes it is because you don't feel you need to, but the bottom line is, what in the hell do you do to make this city a more ethical entity? you don't, you know, the people... want to go to take another job, six weeks after they quit the city job and you say, sure, go ahead. and you know there is not much that you do really that helps this city. and at least, there are people like dr. derek kurr who are willing to take the heat and take the actions necessary to actually do something. >> thank you. >> any further discussion on

the minutes? >> do i hear a motion to approve the minutes as corrected by commissioner keane? >> so moved. >> corrections. >> okay. >> all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> aye. >> and the motion passes. and mr. st. croix will make a note of that correction. >> yes. >> all right. >> and on the report i want to point first two typos on page 2, under section revenue report, where it says 0.65 percent, and it should just be 65 percent. in that paragraph before the xhart and where it says 0.62 percent it should be 62.5 percent. and i apologize for those typos. and last month, commissioner keane asked about the bdo

referrals. and i just want to give you an update on those first one and two have already been litigated. and in favor of the city. and the bdr is conducting collection efforts at this point and the third one, will be, is set for the litigation but has not come to court yet. >> okay. >> and then, i just wanted to make sure that the commission knows because of the comments that have been made, statements of economic interest and the section seven and i don't have a comment on that but under the state law, we are allowed to assess late fines for people who violate, but we have no enforcement authority over form 700 and their constant, the ethics commission can cannot investigate or take action on those, we have to defer them to the state. >> so we can levy five, and i don't understand. >> when the people file late, we can levy late fines, but if

people falsify the documents, and don't report the things that they are supposed to or refused to file and that is out of our hands. >> okay, that is all that i have for today. >> any questions or comments? >> well, interest to the hear about and you look at the variance, particularly your actuals compared to budgets and under the lobby that was a significant variance in our favor and at least on the budget. and then under campaign consultant fees, we budgeted for 18 kind of okay with that and that was okay. so talk to me, a little bit more mr. st. croix about the lobby fees that we, they jump so quickly. >> and we were able to, we only budgeted for 27 and it is 53. and are they or is it just because it is a particular year?

or if it is an election year? and is it just because more people have identified that because there is more enforcement and more folks feel the need to register as lobbyists in. >> or else, i would say, if you are going on, like you do the budgeting year over year and you look at what the past was and you put in a conservative number in there. and we are already with only two months into the year, or however far we are in the year. >> 7 months. >> we are 53, but we budgeted for 27. >> yeah. >> so that is great. >> but i was just wondering if you saw some kind of... >> go ahead. >> i don't know when the budget for that or this year is fixed, but last year, we had a significant increase in the number of people who were registered as lobbyists due to various efforts. everybody has to register in january and reregister and that

is why that increase happens in january, usually you will see the first six months of the fiscal year be low and all of the revenue hits in one month and i believe that the budget is being revised up due to the number that we expect to continually register who has the increase. >> and i think that there are more people lobbying because of the lobbyist changes and the lobbyist ordinance that were made and more people are lobbying and more people are registering and many of us don't have to and many of whom report no activities but i think that people are more cautious. >> there is proposed legislation that is there. >> but going back a couple of years, we did a fairly big upgrade of the lobbyist ordinance in terms of requiring additional reporting requirements from quarterly to monthly filing and going all electronic filing too and i

think that all of the electronic filing seemed problem matter for the people in the regulated community but once they were introduced they decided it was actually a benefit and made it easier to file. >> that reminds me of a proposed legislation that was sent to the board of supervisors, where is that? >> go ahead. >> it is still being amended and there is i think that it was last like april that it was sent and there is a committee meeting tomorrow, and before the gao. and then, so basically the revision process was kind of well under way and we are hoping that it will come to... or that we are hoping that we can make significant progress in march >> any idea when it will actually be finalized and the board will vote on it? >> i would hope, i would hope at some point in march but i am not sure, yet. >> any other questions?

>> comments? >> any public comment on the executive director's report? >> commissioners, ray hartz, director of san francisco open government, there are two items that i would like to discuss, item two where we see that everyone has finally learned the sunshine ordinance to you is a pointless exercise. i will look at these from month to month and i see the number one again and again and i will be honest with you that i can't help but wonder if it is just one complaint that you let sit there and they get hit by a bus and make it go away. the second is item 7 where i would like to ask a question, what do you train the city employees about the responsibilities and i may be incorrect in what i just heard from the executive director, but what he said was if the city employees file statements of economic interest and they commit perjury and lie there is nothing that you can do about it. is that what you tell the city

employees when training them on filling out the sri you can put down anything and purger yourself and so there is nothing that we can do about it so go right ahead? i previously showed herrera's false filing for 2009, 10, and 11, and as you saw, herrera filed statements under penalty of perjury where he claimed that he received nothing of value and the revised form showed that he received thousands of dollars from the friends and then proceeded to lie and say that he received nothing. what makes this most agregus is that two years of public records disclosed that he or the public library has any document to show where $60 million raised by the friends in the name of the public library between 2000 and 2013 went. >> nothing. >> the friends came in and gave

a report they never asked me questions about, and said that we gave you, 750,000 this year, and it turns out that it was not 750, it was half of that because half of the money, of the 750,000 were directed donations, and restricted funds that they could not do anything but turnover to the library, so out of the 6 to 6 and a half million dollars a year the friends raised, the library got $375,000. sounds like a real good deal to me but the interesting thing is that i knew that from looking at the filings they did with the state attorney general. the library commission would have you believe that we are bookkeeping errors as opposed to knowing and willful violations of the law, they had meetings and illegal conversations and issued a press release saying that they supported mr. herrera even though he had committed perjury

and then when someone said what you just did was illegal, they said, well, we will withdraw it. and they act $as if they thought that he was too stupid a department head, too stupid to know that thousands that he was getting were reportable. >> thank you. >> any other comments? or corrections or changes to the executive director's report? >> anything that you want to add mr. st. croix? >> thank you very much. and i think any items that commissioners would like to bring up for future meetings for discussion? for consideration, mr. kean e. >> yes, madam chair, i am going to make a motion for our next meeting in regards to one of the matters that we did the last time, the matter having to do with juliet ellis.

i have informed that the puc, gave miss ellis something like a five-day suspension. and we have accepted a stipulation in which she admitted to some fairly important and agregious corrupt conduct in my opinion, influencing a government decision in which the official has a financial interest, so my motion for next time for discussion is going to be that we recommend to the puc, in light of her admissions, contained in the stipulation, that she did indeed commit these violations of influencing a government decision in which the official has a financial interest, that we recommend to the puc that she be terminated. >> is that something that we

need to vote on? >> you can't, this is a discussion item only, that is for the in-coming chair to take under advisement when he and i plan the next month's agenda. >> thanks. >> dually noted commissioner keane. >> anyone else? >> and any public comment on matters appearing before the commission, or not appearing on the agenda? >> actually, you have to have public comment for items for future meetings. >> okay. >> comments on the matter for future comment? >> again, ray hartz, director of san francisco open government, you know what i would like to say on future ago agenda that you would actively solicit impute from the citizens from san francisco about what they would expect you to be doing and one of the things that you don't see on tv is that i and one other person are the only two members of the

public that bothered to come tonight, i think that most people after a while they come to these meetings and look at what you do and watch what you do and listen to what you say and make a decision that is just not worth their time or energy to be here. and but they would like to see you from you, in my opinion, is that you would actually give them some hope that you intend to raise the ethical standards in san francisco government, from my percent, anything and everything that you do is based on some hidden agenda, given to you by your political masters. your political appointees. and each of you and each and every one of you answered your appointing authority, and rather than to the citizens of san francisco. and as far as i can tell, your existence is worse than meaningless, because it sets up a false hope that a citizen of this city who has a problem with this city can come to you and get assistance, when all that they are going to get is a long drawn run around where you

cover the back sides of the people they are having a problem with. this body does everything when it is in its power, in addition to stand in the way of those who we try to clean up the city. and i watched dr. kurr go through what he went with you and all the man was trying to do was say that there were people at the department of health that were stealing money from the patient's funds and using it for their own purposes. something illegal, something immoral. and what you did is you just treated him like dirt. and i think that sends a message to every employee of this city, that if you really see something wrong, and you think that there is somebody to turn to, to get help from, gets again. the whistle blower program will screw you, and the ethics commission will screw you, i will give you this the sunshine

task force will, listen to you and give you an order of determination but they will send it here and you will dismiss it. you are here to protect the city employees from the citizens of this city that is all that you are here for. now, i think that the citizens probably expect a lot more. but in reality, that is all they get. and if you think that i am just a nasty old man and unpleasant old man, you ought to sit home and watch yourself on sfgtv you don't do much of anything, you come in here, and you have a meeting, and you go through the motions, and at the end, this city is just as bad a shape as it was when it started. >> thank you. >> mr. hartz, i am not sure why there are not more people here, but i would note for the record that you spoke by far, more than any member of the commission did tonight.

and many times. >> any further public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on our agenda? >> okay. with that, do i hear a motion it adjourn? >> i move that we adjourn. >> second. >> all in favor. >> aye. >> aye. >> thank adjourned. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hello and welcome to this presentation. i'm san francisco purrs since

that time we've helped people clean up their criminal records. we created this to help you understand how this worked. we'll plan or explain all the steps. after watching this program you'll know what to expect after completing the process. hi, there are i'm deputy and i'm part of the clean slate team. the first thing we will need to know whether your despicable to have our convictions dismissed can't be on parole or currently charged with a crime or serving a sentence and it must be from san francisco. while your colleagues will get