talk about the report rob b will be happy to answer your questions. thanks for your time >> can i suggest we invite the gentleman forward first. >> i was going to make that same suggestion if we've got public comment that is not specifically directed towards the grand jury are participants let's hear that and we'll get into the detail it maybe some interchange between the commissioners and speakers. >> good morning. members of the ethics commission. i want to make 3 points about the report. first my name is clinton cob.

i am, of course, a resident of the city and county of san francisco and a participant of local government for 56 years. and counting. i serve for 2 and a half years as the grand jury presiding judge of the san mateo county civil grand juries 11, 12, 2013 years ago i brought a lot of grand jury reports the first point this is probably as well written the court: well, analyzed as my grand jury committee report and grand jury report as i've ever seen if you haven't read it, it's understandable reading don't be deferred by the length.

secondly, i oppose the creation of this commission has history records because there was a day when the city attorney and the district attorney's offices between them policed the ethnical of local pub officials in san francisco. it's not necessary it's an unnecessary commission with a budget over $2 million which could be conserved or transferred to the zake or district attorney's office. the district attorney has speeding called the integrity

session that announced two-bit cases during the last fiscal year 2013-2014 but that's the repository of enforcement of laws. secondly, or thirdly, and lastly the essential recommendation of this report is get out of business. transferred to the fair policy fair practices of the state of california the responsibilities of this ethics commission i urge you to act if ways to implement that recommendation. >> thank you.

>> good morning. i'm tom. i want to compliment the grand jury for the report it's an excellent report. it seems like as the city is all pretense and no practice i strongly urge you to follow the recommendations of the grand jury report. i briefly looked your draft response it's a total ignoring of the recommendations of the grand jury. i stron ask you to adapt most of the recommendation by the grand jury. thank you >> any other public comment before we get to the gentleman from the grand jury?

>> good morning. >> good morning. >> i'm robert i was the primer author of this report yeah. i was the deputy foreperson of the grand jury as well. it's a lengthy report i'm going to try to sum up with a lot of the recommendations and finding of the report. in analyzing the situation with the ethics commission i think some of the points have been made by the public speakers and we see this kind of responsibility for enforcement and feel the by itself enforcement tools lies with other entities we feel the ethics commission both the staff

level and at the commission level should be more engaged and encouraging transparency in government we have a large operation endeared towards transparency now we know of some possible problem areas but this is the the thrust of what you should be doing. with the commission itself we want to emphasize the importance of forward-looking on policy. we emphasis a report that's not been prepared in recent years possible never analyzing the shortcomings of the various laws administered we think a wonderful vehicle into both to educate the public and user in

the overall environment with campaign finance and government ethnics. we've addressed the finding and recommendations both to the commission and to the executive director some just to the commission and others to the executive director many to both because we see different rolls for the commission and for the executive director. we see the commission as a policy body sometimes, it can be legislative you proposes changes in the laws sometimes your judicial in a sense but you're more you have the boarder policy roll for the staff is administering the laws and dealing with things on a day to day basis. we said expect the views to be a

little bit different when you take a broad view versed day to day problems. in terms of some of our proposals we aim to get the ma usher away and make our life easier in some ways in terms of letting euphoric on those broader policy issues. so we, you know, recommend things like having an independent hearing officer on the sunshine complaints so you get a clear record and act more directly and to have a commission secretary, to interface between you and the public to organize your agenda, to potentially get our own attorneys separate from the city

attorney. and to potentially work through committees a little bit more so some members can focus on some topics more than others and when the full commission is meeting you can get a narrative on policy issues. we also recommend moving major enforcement acts to the ftc we think its important to get away from potential influence by people in the city. it's just didn't makes sense to have the people accepting your budget in one form or another being the people you're trying to enforce the laws against. that's the general thrust i can speak to independent items this is what with your trying to

accomplish >> any commissioners have any questions gentlemen? >> mr. chair was we later on go through our discussion of local response to the grand jury whether at the time, we, call the gentleman and ask him about various things i have a number of things i could use his help on rather than - bombard him with a bunch of questions. >> i think that's a good suggestion what i will say as we go through the draft responses one at that time, time i think probably under the rules i have to ask for public comment each time i want to but i want to

hopefully limit the public comment to somebody who is specifically wanting to address that particular recommendation rather than some general public comment about how ineffective this commission is and we're just a bunch of hired hands by folks in san francisco but limiting that to the discussion and i would so i will encourage the members the two members of the grand jury that are here they'll hopefully respond if you've got some if the commissioners have some questions they want to ask. >> i'd be happy to answer further questions. >> thank you. commissioner hayon >> i'd like to echo what has been said it's a very, very well

written and understandable document i really appreciate the thoughtfulness and time and effort. i think you took our job seriously we need to pay attention to our recommendations. we may not agree with all of that with every one but all of them need to be discussed and looked at it. so i appreciate your efforts thank you very much >> thank you, commissioner. >> mr. chair. >> any other public comment? commissioner keane >> yeah. i wanted to echo what commissioner hayon said as well in regards to the report itself. i think the report is an excellent documents shows a lot of work work and the senator said it's highly readingable and

very much a set of instructions that many of which we should follow in regards to the civil grand juries roll during the course of any career having been an assistant dpw department head of a depended for years there were two times my department was the topic of civil grand jury reports each time each department is looked at by the civil grand jury there are a couple of responses that sort of incity council's occur one the defenseness that automatically takes place their krisz us they're saying we're bad therefore we have to reopened in some way to show they're wrong. i think that that is a totally unproductive way to address

something like the civil grand juries effort in my efforts in this situation that's not how i'm going to address it. in regard to some of the comments that were made preliminary related to our proposed draft i agree with the comments the draft itself i'm going to ask it be substantially modified there is in the draft some of the semidoctrine i've talked to be defensive and take on the grand jury about seismic things the grand jury is said that's totally unhelpful i'm sure you'll agree much of your recommendations are things that we can agree and should agree on others we'll have discussions

about the manner but for the most part i want to commend all of you for your work it's outstanding. the citizens of san francisco owe you a great debt and i as a member of this commission and i'm sure the other commissioners appreciate it very much. >> good morning commissioner. i'm richard knee a former member of the sunshine ordinance task force when i served 4 years. recently my replacement was finally appointed a few things first of all, i'm understanding on your response to finding representation number 12 you say the ethics commission director will have staff notifies all the departments to remind officials

and employees to follow the posting requirement to insure that the postings are easy to locate on the departmental website. you're going to have your staff notify the staff to look at the posting what if they don't what's the ors there. on recommendation on our responses to recommendation 20 b of the appointment of a hearing officer you point out there no mechanism in the sunshine ordinance to do that i will encourage t you to consultant with the city attorney. that being the case it certainly worth examining. finally going back to our

response to finding one f you say the budget process is the primary told them of the ethics commission to the city. maybe it is but there is also the appointment time process your appointed by someone in the city an elected city official who's activities your duty bound to oversee there's an attachment. >> any other public comment? hearing none i will commissioner keane you made some strong comments you disagreed with some of the staff recommendations so

i guess we'll start with the recommendation in response to the finding and recommendation number one. do you or any other commissioners have any comments suggested changes? >> i have yes mr. chair yes and go ahead. >> the finding is that the ethics commission the finding by the grand jury is that the ethics commission lacks the resources to handle the major enforcement cases goes ton to include examples of misconduct. i mr. chair, i would strongly recommend that we not use the language in our response whereas, to that finding number one we say we disagree.

and for one thing what we have been saying many times in regard to this commission and this commissions resources and the ability to handle many of the things we want to handle we are hamstrung because of the lack of resources. and in regard to where we respond to this finding it is almost like someone is living in a parallel world rather than addressing something different and what this commission has been saying all along first of all, the grand jury cited no instances where there's is clrtsz where the ethics commission failed to act due to a lack of resources. i think it's eir respect whether

the grand jury came up with specifics or onerous burden of proof on their point where we failed to do something we should have done. we generally acknowledge among ourselves at our meetings we need nor investigators we need more staff and resources. so to rather than to say in our findings we disagree and take the grand jury to task for saying you haven't cited any specific cases we haven't done our job i'll ask we agree with them and change it and say 55 that the ethics commission lacks sufficient resources sufficient resources to handle its work.

and i will stop there rather than going into my of the things having to do with specifics and split hairs in the types of cases that can and can't be handed. for us to say anything other than the fact we don't have sufficient resources would be disingenuous and would be against our interests at budget time when we approach the city and ask them for resources. so to put it in the form of a motion or vote on it later than i would just move that in regard to our response to it finding one a we agree to the extent that the ethics commission lacks sufficient resources to handle all i have its work. and i would - should ii would do

that as to recommendation one a should i continue with the rest of my observations on one >> on one. >> mr. chair. >> your comments were specifically i think decorated to how we respond to the recommendation. >> yeah. >> and the recommendations reads the jury recommends a contract with the fair police. >> - we agree that the ethics

commission lacks sufficient resources to fully handle its job. >> but that's not what the finding a we lack resources specifically to enforce to handle major enforcement cases and that's where i think the

disagreement no disagreement we need more resources but i'm asking and my concern is that i'm not ready to concede since i've been on the commission we've refused to handle conflict of interest and violating campaign financing because we didn't have the resources. and mr. chair i don't think that's what haven't one a says it did not accuse us of not handling the cases i've talked about it says we lack sufficient resources to handle major enforcement cases that's a global statement to whether or not we have the sufficient resources. it goes on as examples to include those what kinds of

cases they're talking about misconduct or conflict of interest or violating post employment restrictions that and say we haven't done our job many handling those cases. as i read it, it just says we don't have sufficient resources to accurate handle it it doesn't say we've let any go by the board we may have i don't know it's saying in terms of of the resources we have now they're not sufficient to handle our work generally and our work generally includes the specific matters that are listed we should agree with that. if for nothing else it give us ammunition to approach our budget with the city in regard

to saying we need more resources in order to effectively handle those cases >> any other commissioner have comments. >> so i think later in the report we do mention the fact there is one unfunded investigator i believe it's specifically base we lack the resources to hire that other investigator so in many ways it could fly both of them can't be true we either lack the resources or we don't there's an open position of an investigator or an auditor because there's not funding to support that. so that said i think we do lack the resources and i guessed the question would be, you know, there is a nominal way in which

i do business if you're saying to me that in your work chart all your positions are filed your stating to the city and to the public you are running at optional mall level but if you're work chart it vacant it's because it is unfunded. and i think that's what we have here we lack the resources. now how that is written in our response i think we'll need to talk about that but the fact is there's a position. >> commissioner hayon. >> where to begin. i guess one way to address the grand jury report is to go through each single finding and

each single recommendation line by line that's fine i'm not opposed to that but i would like to recommend my fellow commissioners there are much larger policy issues that have been recommended here that we need to address. so whether or not we agree that we lack resources or don't lack resources i don't think is the important issue we need to address and the grand jury has brought before us they're making strong representations about how to handle policy, how we should work with other agencies and whether or not we should even exist or doing the bulk of the work assigned to us those are major issues we need to discuss thoroughly and we can certainly go line by line by i personally

would like to put my energy into the much large policy issues that have been recommended here. >> yes. >> my name is larry bush a member of the civil grand jury that worked on the report i'm speaking in this capacity specifically to a the first point it refers to resources not financial resources it's try you have lacked legal resources for example, when you made the findings the misconduct of the library leader you lacked the finances it take action against the commissioner on the department heads do be under the pressure view of the commission for example, a legal resource if you didn't act on a conflict of

interest or ordinance violation secondly, if you go back to our records for two years the ethics commission executive director sent outliers saying they wouldn't go follow-up on the seven hundred form filings there wasn't enough funding to take care of with the fact they didn't file their 7 this was for 3 years and finally there's a letter saying you no longer need to provide accident ethics commission with reports on contracts that's an important conflict of interest issue but there was insufficient resources at the commission to review those things so the commissioner own records said you lack the resources to do the jobs assigned by the voters. >> thank