reasonable accommodation coordinators in every city department. and so that employees do have a disability can go to those coordinators and request accommodations and also, any types of systems that they may need such as dragon speak, or anything else that might assist them, again, to retain their position. and in addition to that, i would like to mention that the city and county of san francisco because of our efforts in this area was recently recognized by the department of rehabilitation as being the employer, or with the employer of the year award. and so i think that this speaks volumes as to what the city has been doing in reaching out to applicants and also to retaining employees with disabilities. with today's hear is about rule 115, so i would like to provide a little bit of history regarding rule 115 n1985, there was a ballot measure that was called proposition a and it was

to amend the city charter so that the qualified individuals with disabilities could answer the city workforce outside of the competitive merit process, the goals of proposition a were to provide increased employment opportunities for qualified individuals, with disabilities. and two, to allow the departments to fill the vacant positions with qualified individuals. and three, to increase the diversity of the city. and now turning the page on the overhead, and i am continuing with the bullet points in my presentation. so proposition a was approved by the voters and the charter was amended and a new civil service rule was implemented, i think that those are my notes. and but any way, was implemented and that was civil service rule, 34, that later became civil service 115, which is what we are speaking about today. and civil service rule the title of it is rules related to

the employment of persons with disabilities. and so what are the requirements of civil service rule 115? >> and it will allows for the applicanted to be appointed to permanent exempt positions and entry level classifications and it is important that i stipulate right here, that when we say entry level positions, that disnot mean that these are you know going to be court positions only, for example, or secretarial positions, or positions such as that, we actually are referring to the first level of a position in a classification. and so for example, in my division, equal employment opportunity, we hired an attorney through rule 115, and so this and be, engineer, or attorney and at the highest levels we can appoint the individuals through rule 115.

and so, also, those individuals served a one year probationary period as a permanent exempt employee and they are evaluated every three months and at the end of a year, of successful performance, we are converted to permanent civil service status. and so that those and the criteria for rule 115, and so how successful has the city been with rule 115? in implementing rule 115, i am happy to say that we have appointed over 224 employees to the positions within the city utilizing rule 115, of course, we believe that more can be done and so we welcome the opportunity to meet with our cbos, and so that they can advise us as to whether there are any barriers that are keeping their clients from applying or being selected by the city and county of san francisco. and we also believe that with working with them and also, we are hoping to have a recruiter in our budget that is in our budget and if the board of supervisors approved our budget

and approves that position, then we can do more in reaching out to our cbos and we can do more in facilitating the communication between the cbos and our hiring managers in the departments. we can do more as far as attending job fairs, and making this a more productive and successful program. i would also like to recognize the department of public health, who has been very instrumental and successful in appointing individuals through 115. most of our city departments have utilize the rule. the other thing that we are going to be doing in order to continue improving our processes is that we have spoken with carla, with the mayor's office of disability and she is going to be attending our hr professionals meeting, this happens once a month and we invite our human resources professionals from all of our city departments to attend that meeting so these are the individuals who are critical to the hiring of employees within our department. and so carla has kindly agreed

to come and speak to them and to discuss employment how to employ persons with disabilities what we need to do, to effect that. more successfully. in addition to that, we are also going to revitalize, what we had before, in 2010, which was advisory panel, and the advisory panel was composed of cbos from the community and the disabled community but also included micky the director of human resources and others, and also johnson who is the director of the civil service commission and we want to work with our community partners to find out what we can do to continue to be successful in the area of recruitment, and retention, of our disabled employees. the one thing that i would like to bring up though, that the city and county cannot do, and that is to have carve outs of positions for the disabled

community this has been one of the items that was brought up before by the task force and we have been advised that ta would be a discrimary process because we would be limiting the positions to only one type of employee and we would not be able to, you know, appoint anybody else to those positions so that would be discriminatory towards everybody else. in addition to that, another question was that we also identified hiring goals and again, we don't believe that we have the authority, we also don't believe that it would be legal to establish a hiring goal. and we all, know that we have proposition 209, and proposition 209 does speak to any type of hiring goals, or quota, etc. and someone may bring up the fact that the federal government, recently passed legislation, with a hiring goal of 7 percent. but it is interesting to note that that hiring gel is specific to contractors. and it is not to the federal government. and i wonder, i am not sure,

but i wonder if the reason for that is because it would be deemed discriminatory by employees and all right? and then the other item that i would like to say is that we cannot survey our employees or applicants regarding a disability, under the advice of our city attorney and that is an invasion of privacy and even if we were to stipulate that it was voluntary, the question would come up, who is going to have access to that data, because someone has to have access to the data if you collect it. and so there could be a presumption then, later on in litigation, that that information was used and a no one selection process and increased the liability to the city and so we don't want to conduct a survey of our applicants or employees regarding do you have a disability. in fact, some of our employees who are disabled were not hired through rule 115 and don't identify themself as as being disabled and so the data is only as good is what is given to you and we don't believe

that everyone will identify who is disabled. and as we know, under the ad, triple a, most of us have some type of disability. so, thank you very much, for giving us this opportunity, and we look forward to working with our partners. >> let me just ask if there are any questions supervisor yee? and we are joined by our president, david chiu as well. >> thank you, supervisor mar. thank you, linda, for presentation. quick question, the 244 employees, that were appointed, >> yes. >> what period or length of time does that then happen? >> so, the majority of those employees were appointed from the beginning or the implementation of rule 115. and that was from 1985 through 2002. and i want to remind myself, and everyone else here that in

2002, we had the dot com bust and so at that time, the city was retracting as far as employment, and we were not only retracting, we were laying off employees and so there was also the same happened with the recruitment, and appointments of the individuals under rule 115. >> so, if you were to take, just the period that you just named, 85 to 2002, >> yes. >> was there a pattern of how many people were appointed each year? was there an increase as you were ramping up? >> you know, it is interesting because it actually took off a little bit slow. so for the first year, we know, we had a few appointments and then after that, it really picked up and in 1987, for example, we had, you know, 21 appointments and in 1990, we had 46 and so it really took off, right? and we had a lot of

appointments and then, again, we have the dot com and it stopped. and the number of appointments were much more limited. and smaller numbers from 2002 to the present. >> so given that it was sort of getting better before the dot com bust, were there things that the people learned that made it more successful, you know, as you were wrapping up? >> i believe that it was through education of our human resources professionals and letting them know about rule 115. and also, reaching out to our cbos regarding that process. and i will say that it is also important to note that in 2006, we used to have someone in my division in eeo, who was passed with reaching out to the cbo and working with our hiring managers. and in 2006, we lost that position, again, and you know,

through budget. and so, we have not had someone who has been dedicated full time to this effort. and so, that is why, we would realize that we need a recruiter, and we have put it in our budget so that we can start that process again. and be more active in that arena. >> was that, or was there a d a recruiter during the... >> there was a decline in the number of appointments after that. >> 1985 to 2002, was there a recruiter? >> i am having difficulty hearing you. >> 1985 to 2002, was the staff that was... >> yes. >> that is correct. >> thank you. >> so, before i let president chiu speak i will just say that as a member of the budget committee i think that your recommendation for the staffing that the adequate for strong recruitment and equal opportunity for the people with

disabilities that should be a priority. and if you could get that un. and i would like to acknowledge the work of the advisory panel and group and i know that a number of speakers, and others will speak about that experience too and some of the recommendations that you have already gone through. but in explaining the history of the numbers of the use of 115, and how we might raise awareness through your monthly human resource professionals meeting that karl l johnson and others will attend and you are suggesting that an advisory panel, reestablishing an advisory panel and it is good with dhr, but also with the community based organizations. >> right. >> i want to thank you for presenting for the presenters and we want to see if president chiu will make some remarks.

>> i want to thank supervisor mar as well as advocates from the seniors and disabled communities to come to this important hearing and i want to make sure that we are implementing civil service rule 115. we now in san francisco are blessed to have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and we are leaving too many communities behind and in particular, with unemployment rates, for individuals with disabilities nearly twice that, of people without disabilities. and with the fewer folks, with disabilities being counted as unemployed, because more than the leading labor force, permanently and with the reality that over a third of all individuals, the people on incomes based on government assistance have disability. and we need to do more. and one of the interesting things that we know about our disabled community is that when we are working, they are more productive in the workplace and they have a lower turnover rate and i think that we need to do everything that we can to move this forward. and i am very open to a number

of the proposed solutions that have been put forth around staffing and with the proposal around the disability coordinator and i do know that there is some question around whether we can set the san francisco hiring goals for people with disabilities and i am open to considering that if we can do it in a legal and constitutional way and my question on this topic is certainly after prop two, we are not allowed to set the quota or other factors to establish, to establish, certain requirements there is nothing that will prevent us from taking in the voluntary information and tracking that. could you address, what we are allowed to collect, and what kind of data we can track verses what it seemed to me from you to be possible, objections to why we can't move

forward with certain kinds of goals. >> so the federal law does allow us to track race and gender and does not allow us to track sexual orientation. >> that would be a violation of privacy. >> for the commission appointments we do track voluntary data around sexual orientation so that we have a sense of when someone wants to identify as part of the lgbtq community, and so how does that distinguish from what you are talking about. >> i know that from the advice of the city attorney, we do not ask applicants to identify the sexual orientation and we do not track that. we don't have that, and even for our race and our gender,

that is voluntary. and we are allowed to track it because we do receive federal dollars and as a result of federal dollars and transportation dollars, etc. we need to provide statistics to the federal government specific to race and gender, if you are tracking it and it is voluntary and i am sure that you are tracking it or you have a conversation with the city attorney regarding that. i know that our city attorney is telling us not to track that and not be asking for that information. >> it might be interesting to get all of those attorneys in the same room. >> exactly. >> i think from my perspective, if we are talking about voluntary self-identification and maybe i will ask our deputy city attorney if you have a perspective on this issue. you know, if the goal is to increase these numbers, it is hard to achieve that goal if we don't know where we are. and is there a way for us to understand that? >> deputy, city attorney, i am actually not familiar enough with the advice on this issue but happy to circle back with

you and dhr after this hearing. >> all right, right. right. >> so there is also gina, genetic information act which also prohibits us from collecting any information regarding a disability that is tied to genetics. >> okay. >> and that is a federal law. >> okay. >> you know what? i think that what is interesting about this conversation is that the community representing the people with disabilities is asking us as a city to consider tracking and at least monitoring on a voluntary self-identified way, and so if there is a way for us to consider that i am open to it. >> sure. >> obviously given the constrictions of the constitutional and legal challenges. >> we will be happy to continue that discussion as well. >> i just want to thank you for the presentation. and the point from supervisor yee's question of the use of rule 115 over time, it does seem like resources to staffing

positions, within the dhr, are critical to that we can begin to use the rule, but also other tools for employment for people with disabilities. and then, we are going to be in a hiring boom as well. >> we are. >> and some will talk about and so right now it is a critical time and i think that reestablishing an advisory panel is critical to deal with the 2909 questions and the community pretty much demand thating we track so that we understand the problem and but to put our heads together to try to figure out how we might gather that data, for the potential goals, and benchmarks so that we could start to use rule 115 and other rules like we were doing in the 80s before the down turn in the dot com bust. >> right. and i do want to clarify that our recruiters are going to be recruiting not only and reaching out to cbos from the disabled community but we are going to look at under representation in the departments where we do receive

the federal dollars and doing reach out to females in certain departments because we are under represented and under represented of asians and other departments and classifications and under represented by latinos and we are going to be doing the recruitment for every population, in the city. every group. >> and i know that david chiu laid out some of the data of the discrimination and barriers to people with disabilitis in employment but it is hard if we don't have any data or way to show that the disparities and the under representation, but so, if the advisory panel could think of ways to gather that data. >> right. some of the data that we could gather is simply the individuals that are referred to us, from the cbos and how many of those individuals are successful in having employment getting selected for employment, with the city. i mean, that, that would be very easy for us to track, if you know, they had the numbers of who they sent to us and we could keep those numbers as

well. i mean that would be one way, i guess. >> thank you so much for the presentation. >> thank you. >> and the next speaker is carla johnson from the mayor's office on disability with a few personal stories i hear. >> thank you so much, supervisor mar, yee, and it is good to see you too, supervisor chiu. i am carla johnson the director of the mayor's office on disability and i really want to thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today on this topic, but i want to thank everybody in the room today and all of the members of the disability community and the advocates that are here to share their own personal stories along with mine. your introduction comments were very thoughtful. and this is an issue and i am going with the people with disabilities is an issue about equity and i know that we are going to be hearing a lot of statistics today, but, one of the important statistics is that people with disabilities

are one-third as likely to be employed as people without disabilities. and as we know, with the labor statistics, those numbers are usually kept on the people that are still actively looking for it, because they have not lost hope of an assignment. and statistically, also, the people with disabilities are much more likely to be in low earning positions. and nationwide, 52 percent of people with disabilities earned less than 25,000 dollars per year verses 38 percent of the general population. and employing people with disabilities is also really about dignity, and it is about getting people the opportunity to be financially independent, and also to have meaningful week for the city of san francisco where they have the opportunity to do so much good. employing people with disabilities is also really about a cultural shift and it

is seeing the people with disabilities as having the abilities and being a little bit more blind to the disability and normalizing issues that surround, reasonable accommodations. and last of all, employing people with disabilities is really about a civil right, because one of those important markers in that time line, is a passage of the americans with disability act in 1990. and entitle one of the americans with disability act is specifically about rights for people to be employed as well as obligations for employers on how they work with their workforce. now, our office, the mayor's office on the disability, and we are the city's over all ada coordinator and we were tasked with enforcing another part of the ada title two, which is access to government services, programs, and facilities. and in that work, we work with really all of the different departments city wide, who have

individual ada coordinators, and part of what those department ada coordinators do is make sure that their programs and their services are accessible and so we are talking about making sure that when someone comes to a service counter that they are able to communicate with these staff, and also to receive the information that they need in return. but, we also work with the ada coordinators who work on some labor issues. and wanted to refer back again to title one, because in the city's structure, when we look at which department or agency is responsible for title one employment issues, that really is the department of human resources, and of course, we heard today, from linda about their role as they enforce employment policies, and more specifically, rule 115. one thing that our office can do is lead by example.

and i will share a story about our recent employee out reach. as a department head, i am both a person with a disability, as well as employer of people with disabilities. and so, when i was in the recruiting mode for some recent appointments i looked very closely with my department of human resources staff some might say that i micromanaged the process. but i wanted to be sure that i was copied and aware of all of the communications to make sure that any potential applicants would understand the full nature and extent of examinations and interviews. and so that they would understand, if they would need to ask for an accommodation, exactly what accommodation that might be. in our out reach, i also made sure that we notified many of the different disability advocacy groups because that was really the pool that i was drawing from, those were the people that i really wanted to hire.

so, our office has much to offer and you heard linda mention our offer to be part of the meetings with the human resource managers, and i really look forward to that opportunity. one of the things that our office has done, very well, in the past is training. and i think that we have much to contribute with that. i would like to close my comments today with actually my own personal story. and i started working for the city. and i was with the public, and that moment, and something that changes your life and what happened is that i had industrial injury, and as i think about it today, it is still kind of brings us you know, those welling of emotions, but what happens with my industrial entry was that i was no longer able to perform these essential job duties of

my classification as a carpenter and so a year after my injury and after i completed my different surgeries i resurfaced and i approached my department head and in talking to my department head i let them know that i am ready and able and it is time to come back to work and i gave the department head a listing of different jobs that i felt that i was qualified for, and that i was able to do, as well. with my disability. lucky for me, my department head was very savvy and he was aware of the rule 34 opportunity and so, this rule 34, which is what later transitioned into rule 115, i was able to be placed in a new job classification, one that i met the minimum qualifications for and that was a building inspector and i was able to use my construction skills, now to supervise the work of others instead of performing the work myself. over the years at the

department of building inspection, i became a senior building inspector and a chief building inspector and a deputy director, and now, i am a director of the mayor's office on disability. and so i really feel that my experience was rule 34, which became 115. and it is really makes me a poster child of how this important tool really can contribute to bringing qualified people with disabilities into the workforce. but, in looking at that tool, being again, a carpenter always at heart, i recognize that it is only one tool in the tool box and that the other tools then, our city needs really is to be always working with the individuals that we have already, to give them reasonable on commendations, so that they can be placed into the future positions and they are set to do the good recruitment and good training and good hiring, i offer my services and i thank you for the opportunity to speak today. >> actually, miss johnson,

could i just ask you how you found out about rule 34, which later is called rule, 115, that dpw, department head did your department head know about it? or how were you connected with the rule? >> that is a really good question, i did not know about it beforehand. it was when i had the conversation with the department head and the department head had invited his director of human resources to the meeting. who was very much familiar with it and offered that as a solution to our problem. >> and thank you for being a poster child as well. >> thank you very much >> it thank you. >> the next speaker is jennifer jonston the director of the civil service commission and thank you for being here. >> good morning, thank you very much for having me. i was only recently included in these conversations, so i apologize that i am not entirely up to speed on all of

the issues. but, on behalf of the civil service commission, you know, miss simon gave a presentation on service rule 115, we have a policy of equal employment in all aspects of employment opportunities. and promotions. and we certainly encourage the use of and the advertisement as it were of rule 115. and i did also want to say that the authority for rule 115 however is in the charter and i believe that one of the recommendations is to amend rule 115 and i think that would be some of what is being suggested would be inconsistent with the will of the voters and violation of the charter in terms of the merit system requirements. but beyond that, i am also happy to join the conversation to brain storm on ways that we can improve upon a recruiting individuals and the commission also very much supports the request for recruiter, and in fact we would endorse the request for three recruiters,

because it sounds like they will have a lofty goal and i am happy to answer any questions that you may have with respect to rule 115. but it is something that is codifie in the charter, 10.104. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> and the next speaker, is anya casey, who is the employment coordinator for our california department of rehabilitations. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you. i am so happy to be here and thank you for this opportunity to speak to the issue of rule 115. and it is obviously everybody is here in the spirit of good will and thank you for your leadership around this issue. so, i work for the state of california, or the department of rehabilitation. and our job is to help people with disabilities to transition back into