the city. gets a lot of attention, a lot of scrutiny so it might behoove either -- the sunshine ordinance task force perhaps to really sit down with you and some members of your staff to discuss what is -- some of the issues you're faced with particularly when you have requests for information and for documents, so i don't know if that's something you want to approach the sunshine ordinance task force or perhaps during public comment if there is someone here from the task force that would like to comment on that, but i think these things can get a little murky depending on definitions or how the rules are interpreted by employees of a particular department. >> currently we're consulting with staff within the city

attorney's office. >> yes. have you talked with director rahaim about the appearance tonight if. >> yes. he's aware of it. >> and he's aware that the sunshine ordinance task force made a finding against him that he violated these ordinances. >> yes he's aware. >> did he tell you any reason why he wouldn't come before us and give us his view of why we should not up hold the sunshine ordinance finding of him having violated an ordinance? was he busy tonight or was this too insignificant to speak to? >> no. it was my respond to

come and represent the planning department and i would represent any other staff person but frankly had had little to do with the sunshine request of mr. ringel and your investigation whether he violated or not the ordinance is that. he doesn't directly supervisor the people collecting the information or respond to mr. ringel regarding the matter so the way i see it there is no violation against the director except that he oversees a lot of departments with a lot of responsibilities. >> but the record right now as you're aware and comes from the sunshine ordinance that he did violate the ordinance and the question is are we going to sustain that or do something else, so given the fact there has been a finding that the director of planning of the

city and county of san francisco violated ordinances relating to open governments and providing materials under the sunshine ordinance do you think it might have been -- not have been appropriate for him to come before us and told us why he thought we should not sustain this? >> well, again i am here on his behalf -- >> i understand. >> and we respectfully disagree with the finding and we agree with the recommendation provided to you by your staff so -- >> is he busy tonight? >> i don't have his calendar sir. >> okay. >> commissioner andrews. >> two points and i may need the deputy city attorney to chime in on this, so was mr.

mr. rahaim name's added by the task force after the respondent i see it listed in the complaint and after and is that appropriate? do we need a discussion about that? you need to have a name to it. you need a respondent's name. it was after the fact name of the department head because he's responsible. i believe the other folks are listed in there and that's that piece and there is one other thing i want to get to but i think we should take this first disbltd referral from the task force is exclusively on the question whether director rahaim violated the sunshine ordinance. the proceedings before the sunshine ordinance task force focused on the question whether the other employees of the planning department violated the task force. i don't know there was

an adjudication of whether the question of rahaim violated the ordinance. i don't know why they a judidated the question if other employees had violated the ordinance and the referral was exclusively on this question, but nevertheless the question before you is whether director rahaim violated or not violated the ordinance willfully, so it requires either personal involvement or if there's circumstantial evidence you could deduce he was involved or not involved that's what you have to consider, but the question whether his employees violated the ordinance that is not before you. it's relevant whether it relates to whether

director rahaim violated or not violated the ordinance willfully. >> we have been here before and a referral and i am seeing a audience member that referenced it and appropriate referral and now we're having this conversation and arguably while interesting and has bearing i'm not sure we're getting to the overall cause of this situation which i want to get to after we talk through this. >> right. i can only tell you that i don't know why it was that the task force didn't either adjudicate the question whether director rahaim violated the ordinance or refer to you the names of the people that violated the ordinance. i don't know the answer to those questions. i can tell you what the commission is sort of confined to tonight is just the

question of whether director rahaim either willfully or not willfully violated the ordinance and the question of appropriate or inappropriate referrals is in some ways a broader discussion. >> yeah. well -- let me say this. this the second time this has come up. now the city attorney as i understand it advises the sunshine task force. is that true? >> there is a deputy city attorney that does. i don't know what -- >> and the sunshine task force identified the three individuals involved and conducted their investigation and had those three individuals come before them. they made a finding and it seems to me that it should have been incumbent upon the

city attorney to tell them look the issue you had before you was not directly to the department head mr. rahaim and if you want to send a charge to the ethics commission -- not only on these individuals involved who violated, but you should give mr. rahaim an opportunity to appear before and you testify why he shouldn't be know responsible and charge to the ethics commission and then we could deal with it. now this is the second time we have been told -- well, because the referral wasn't by the right party, and mr. rahaim has had his due process, which i agree with in a sense, but it's frustrating to the sunone was

doing its job and comes up in this forum. >> i hear you. i can't speak to the question because i don't know whether the advice was provided to the sunshine ordinance task force with respect to the referral. and whether maybe it was provided and the advice wasn't followed or maybe the advice wasn't provided. i don't know. sounds like you -- >> deputy director. i sympathize with what you're saying and in the same boat. we get the referral and someone different from the underlying hearing. we tried in this instance to give effect to the apparent intent of the sunshine task force and a hearing with respect to john rahaim. i would note and the

investigator is catherine is more familiar with the facts than i am, but it does indicate that deputy city attorney there at the task force did sort of advise them that in fact they shouldn't be naming director rahaim as the respondent because that wasn't the person subject to the underlying hearing at the time, so faced with this situation and we are faced with this frustration and we thought take it as provided to us particularly given the last case that we had here and what we thought was the intention of the commission, and so we named -- we had mr. rahaim named as the respondent per the request of the task force. >> commissioner keane. >> yeah, mr. chair as is reflected by my colleagues'

comments this is very disturbing now. we now had this twice. it's almost like a game that comes to us in terms of someone has violated a particular ordinance, a very important ordinance. a few months ago in regard to the park and rec with mr. ginsberg and some others, and we were told we could not have any kind of finding against the head of park and rec because it was the under lingses that did the work in the violation was and now we're told that in regard to planning department -- excuse me, the sunshine ordinance task force they were advised by the deputy city attorney at the time that they should pursue this with the

underlings rather than mr. rahaim and now they were told well, no you should have been did it with mr. rahaim. this is like lucy and the football. >> [inaudible] >> sorry about that. >> let me -- but i want to pursue something further. i think we have enough evidence here and mr. rahaim violated the ordinance and it can be based on a willful or non willful violation. there is evidence to sustain a non willful violation given that we have in the record tonight that mr. rahaim is the head of this organization. he has one midlevel supervisor between him and these

underlings who do these tasks. they report to the one midlevel person. we have been hold that mr. rahaim will discipline them if they do things that are in violation of any kind of ordinance. therefore implicitly i think we can make a finding in regard to this whole chain of activity that mr. rahaim was in deed involved. he was the one in charge. he was the one giving the orders. he's the one ultimately responsible. it's his department. we see that an ordinance has been violated so rather than slink away like we did a couple months ago and we have the wrong guy here. i don't think we can accept that. i think we have to make a finding that someone is responsible and the responsible person is the head of the organization and that is mr. rahaim. since we have an

admission that the ordinance was indeed violated by his representative. that admission comes from the representative here tonight and i don't think we should drop this. we wouldn't be doing our duty to the citizens of san francisco in terms of telling them that we take seriously the fact that a particular department when it's told to turn over materials that the sunshine ordinance and the open government act require them to turn over that they just blow it off as was done here in a number of situations and if they blow it off -- well, there are a bunch of hearings that will occur by different departments, by the sunshine ordinance task force, by the ethics commission. there will be lots of words expended but nothing will happen, no consequence so i

think when we finish up with the discussion tonight we should have a finding mr. mr. rahaim violated this ordinance. >> >> i just -- chairman i just wanted to build on commissioner keane's point which is simply this and i agree. i think this was a clumpy and ilelegant referral that has us talking about not the substantive component of it but as i heard it recounted in the department there was untimely responses to the submission for the request for documents. you have to have a culture of accountability and in mr. -- is it mr. ioma? in your recounting of you said you felt everyone felt they were doing the right thing so there was no reason for mr. rahaim

should be involved and in fact if there is an agreed assumption we're doing it right at some point the accountability works the way up to the top so whether the referral was made properly or not if you change the culture of an organization you start at the top. that's my argument to move forward and i support commissioner keane's recommendation, but for me the more substantive piece is, and i don't know there needs to be this. the question beforehand was asked if there is a similar request put forward from this point on is there a trigger mechanism to slow down the administrative process so that the person requesting records clearly needing these records and documents for their particular interest in the project -- is there any mechanism and any way -- has it

happened -- has a precedent been set and a project is slowed down because you haven't fully given information over to what would be just a person requesting information or possibly someone who was an opponent of the project in the department? have you ever heard that? >> actually not that i am aware of to the point you made. i'm not aware of any process being halted because the sunshine request hasn't been fulfilled. having said that there is an appeal process by most commissions and administratively to that matter to afford anybody due process. >> so when mr. ringel recounted when he got his documents and in a couple of cases and at least how he recounts it passed due

dates where he could have submitted. do you know that to be the case? do you know if some of the cds were released to his possession? . >> certainly the last ones but they were emails not substantive to the matter. my understanding since i adopted this matter is mr. ringel's request were specific to correspondence and emails, and so when it went to the sunshine ordinance task force it was referred to them because one of his family members' emails was not included in the correspondence provided to the records request, and we would contend it's just a non substantive email. in fact i haven't seen it so i can't speak to it. that was the crux why it got to the sunshine ordinance task force. >> thank you. >> can i ask mr. ringel a

question? as you stand here today are there still documents that you believe that the planning department has not delivered to you. >> absolutely. >> what are those -- >> they complied with the lasted search that he mentioned and the fourth cd i was given and after six hearings knowing there was a referral to the ethics commission it was pending and they were warned that it would be that exact same search but not for the deleted emails, all emails, anything held within the custody of the planning department was my request, and i understand -- i'm not a political person. like i only registered to vote which is weird but i never thought my vote mattered and i want to preface this i don't understand the politics but i understand the ethics commission and the relationship with the sunshine ordinance task force. it seems

to be strange. because they didn't want to send the case here. i asked them to so there was accountability on behalf of those at the planning department and our faith in government is there is accountability and responsibility and after six hearings with the sunshine ordinance and quite a long process i can tell you that he was given notice. absolutely. he sent whoever was in charge of sunshine ordinance complaints to the first hearing and to the second hearing and that was accompanied by the acting environmental review officer sarah b jones and because i was concerned on time because i needed the files by the last administrative hearing they told mr. rahaim or thomas de santo mentioned earlier they were to come to the tac -- what is it? >> [inaudible] >> compliance and amendments

committee and everyone agreed it would be the next wednesday, the procedural notice and they told him so mr. ionin didn't show up at that hearing and he was taking over lulu wong's position and acting agent for mr. john rahaim. he knew about it all along so the order went to john rahaim. he was in receipt of it so to say he wasn't given notice or ability to be heard wasn't the case at all. he cheese people to hand. >> >> handle it and they didn't handle it at all. this is john rahaim. this is from the bay guardian of last year. planning in san francisco is a blood sport. he's talking about war here. the war was to push the project forward and deny me -- >> my question is what

documents double haven't been produced to you at this time? >> well, the search terms weren't completed in their intriernity. the closest was the second cd i was given but put [inaudible] avenue in quotes which means has to be [inaudible] avenue and only return those documents but who spells out avenue. it was so minimal. if they returned the search terms in the entirety this would have been settled but now the project is approved. these are my records request to view files so it wasn't possible i missed anything. i was there a lot, at the planning department, and i needed to keep track of what was going on. here is a letter after the second compliance and amendments committee -- no, the education outreach committee, where i made this request of the names they

needed the files for and what the search terms were and what the search period was because they were trying to say nothing before 2012 because the servers -- they changed email servers but you migrate your old accounts and i had proof of that from the log file and there were searches prior to 2003 in that log file, and so none of that was making sense. they were trying to keep these specific documents. this is not like a gross negligence of the planning department. they don't know how to comply with the requests. i talk to a lot of people and "i always get what i want" so that means there is nothing to hide in your case and this is how they deal with it because i was informed anything post of the sunshine complaints i would have had to make another one for the months prior so in this letter

this is request for immediate disclosure and bear in mind, and i am relying this to him for an urgent reply. nothing. i don't hear from him at all. mr. ionin was adamant to the sunshine task force and missed the first hearings and we have given everything. here's an example of the non substantive email and in the packet. my first email saying you have the supervisor, the direct supervisor on the cover of the mitigated declaration so that was later revised and wasn't taken care of so you have a error on the information and they can't produce that email and they won't produce that email and this is from the hearing. supervisor kim, two things i am concerned about. one, i am

concerned that you don't keep with the file every piece of communication associated with the matter. the clerk of the board is required to keep it with the file. i know the technology exist s and the planning department is capable of that. that concerns me. here is me to l u.d lu wong. can you have an it search it and the planners weren't complying and this is how we went through six emails. i emailed him before i knew who he was and they got the message back then asking for a continuance of the hearing because i couldn't get the case files i needed so there was plenty of notice. he had plenty of opportunity. these are emails and compliance and after exhausting all of these

measures and deprived us and the neighborhood association of all the public records we needed all along. >>i think we heard enough from you on this question and understand your position on it. >> i have a question though. >> yeah go ahead. >> i am understanding the timelines. what documents were you looking for or what are you still looking for that you need? >> it would help me greatly to have -- by statute i need everything that was given and so i'm having a hard time still getting all of the information. i am getting information through bits of discovery from the city attorney assigned to judicial review but i believe there is more because he's not returning that search properly either and i have to make a motion for log files. i mean it's really like a game. >> okay. what do you think you're going to find that is

going to be beneficial to your case or your argument? presumably you're against this project or you have concerns about this project, so what is it that you don't have yet that you need? >> i have for you copies of the emails i got last week after your report says mr. ringel believes has gotten everything. i was surprised and i spent hours talking to her and pages. these are emails date stamp friday the city and county of san francisco that the project went to the mta. we were told it didn't. that reporters request for information -- i could have contactd that reporter -- i mean this is definitely public information. >> so you're still looking for information that's in the files that can support your argument for your point of view on this

project? that's all i am trying to get at? >> there is a projigz in the california environmental quality act, public resources code that says the information dition closure provisions are so central to ceqa that a violation of them is to be considered a violation of ceqa even if a different outcome may not have occurred. >> so -- >> that's important to me. i wanted to come here because i believe you are the ones -- they are reluctant and eight to nine -- which is that group and over the six hearings they changed their mind and the more noncompliance they saw and the order of determination they saw and mr. rahaim has knowledge of that and it would help to have something -- they didn't comply. >> where is the planning process now that this project has been approved? i am sure

you could file an appeal. i don't know. >> [inaudible] >> point of order. >> you cannot raise a point of order. you're not a member. >> i cannot? >> you cannot raise a point of order. >> i'm asking a legal question. [gavel] >> you're not allowed to ask why -- >> the sunshine ordinance says you cannot ask why he needs it. >> i don't mind talking about it though. >> fine. i don't need to know that then. >> no -- >> but the project has been approved at this point by the planning commission? >> i went through every administrative possibility and i am here today with you and i thank you for the continuous last week. last week i hurt my foot from skate boarding and couldn't be here and was in the hospital. i would have been on crutches. it was pretty bad. this is so important to me and i am trying to correct something

-- yeah, i shouldn't have gotten this involved with it but the case file should have been right the first or second or third time. i don't know how many people are referred to after six hearings. they would have been had a seventh if i wasn't at the end of my rope and i would have been in court and all i am asking for is proper review for my neighborhood but when there are shadow studies and not discussed it's not innocent. there is something they were trying to hide and they hid it. it's emotional to me because it's a really long road. >>i think you had more than enough time. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. any comments? any motions? >> just one last comment and then i will have a motion and that is i think people of san francisco owe a debt to you