>> good evening and welcome to

the regular meeting of san francisco ethics commission february 23, 2015, calling the roll arrest commissioner hayon commissioner keane commissioner andrews and chair commissioner hur has been excused item 2 on the agenda public comment on matters powering or not appearing on the agenda within the jurisdiction of the ethics commission anyone have my public comments before we move to the next item hearing none i'll turn to the third item a presentation by san francisco stanford university students regarding their campaign finance project for the 2014 election

and welcome and look forward to our presentation. >> thank you. >> you can come up. >> yeah. >> steven macy the technical officer want to take a moment to welcome christopher's and jeffrey they've been interning from the b matters of admission project at stanford university and look at the laws of the data we collect and data and visiontion software we use in the office in the past two months able to produce data visualization on the november 2014 election i don't want to take away if from their presentation but the work they've been able to do in the past two months is very

expressive we we've been very lucky to have them. >> thank you. >> thank you. can you hear me, i'm christen thank you for the opportunity to suspect with about our project what we'll be showing you tonight a data visiontion and data project that analyses campaign data from the 2014 election cycle previously you'll landmarked did do not on the website in realtime so leading up to an election you can see who the largest contributor are we wanted to do this year once the end of the year filings in the beginning of 2015 to get the full aggregate data and do or in naturals on the spending cycle

we'll be showing you a productive of what will have you ever had your deposition taken about going live on the ethics commission website in a few weeks the data from san francisco's on data portal with the finance data i'm going to pass it on to jeff who will talk about the specifics of the project. >> hello. thank you again for having us i'm jeff as christen mentioned we took the data if on san francisco on data we've used a data visualization called tabla that allows us to create a story with chapters and section that tells a story of what will happy in 2014 in the campaign finance data so when we started to look at the specific sections that

encoop lasts the story we're going to try to tell in the sections they include the first total spending in 2014 it also i should note within the city and county of san francisco 2, 3, 4 addition to the assembly race there was specifically within the kunlt jurisdiction from the alliance additionally the types of contributors and there's 15 of those who are the largest contributors and the resent of those and the lobbyist consulate data and the political parties and the pack general committee data welling we get a good sense of whooped in 2014 cycle and eventually we will be hosting all 9 story that has chapter and

sections of story and i'll pass it over to christen with the productive. >> thank you viewing and i will be going back and forth the first is total campaign spending giving me a moment i'll get this centered here we found nearly $25 million was spent by ballet data committees in particular this doesn't include the june primary election in november and the circumstances a.a. are proportional to dollars spent this is $22 million that was spent by committees an positions who is one positions that have one and instead of saying winning elections we'll say position one the expenditures that are opted o opposed those

are expenditures was 22 admission and losing walking was that million dollars this doesn't include the vicinity direct spending together and all san francisco elections as well as the statewide city elections with the visualization you can interact with the data we'll drill down and look at how much was spent specifically by candidate committees over $7 million was spent by candidate committees to oppose them the green kshlgz recognize the size with opposing campaigns for positions that one you can click on the circles and get a pop up table below that shows

you specific details of the expenditures so in this case those were expenditures expenditures to oppose commitments those were two committees that opposed david chiu and one that opposed jane kim this is how to manipulate the finding and the money on those committees the sail visual lay out what's important most of the money was spent i guess kev you can say on elections that had the intended outcomes and 3 times more money was spent on ballot measures than on committees which is interesting so you can also click on those and look at that more closely on 7 details about how the money was spent so you get o could

look at specific measures to either support or oppose them and the expenditures made that's a snapshot i'm going to pass it on to jeff now. >> thank you so with this section ms. package has been looking at the total contributions for the contributor type and chops sorry about that we're connected to the. internet right now so this is in realtime sorry about that arrest those are infrastructure previews this is showing you can see the top is a bar that shows the total spending in 2014 and the different colors represent the

types of contributor and you'll notice other generally includes corporations and, llc types and the yellow or orange indicates individuals blue is committees and then red which you can't see it is so small our small contributor committees both is interesting one can basically look at this and see you'll see the bubbles change each bubble representatives a contributor and scan over and see information about 3 and to go back if the initial section which kind of electricities to why this is a contributor to the information there are out layers for example other others we see f c, llc american beverage

association it contributed about $9 million and see see individuals and so what's kind of exciting you can dive into the cat those are bar charts on the right and that's individuals - the bar chart on the right can show the recipients but those are ballet measures we see a pretty clear trend of what is the being spent that i contributor workplaceith that. >> we look at the expenditures on consultant and we found over $12 million of the $25 million i

mentioned was spent on consultants either to support or oppose specific ballet measures or candidate so looking at the first visual the large circle represents measures and 88 percent of the expenditures on candidates was 12 percentage here being to support the candidates in fact all of the candidates were in support whereas the ballet measures what is what to support or oppose we'll see a further visualization and the activity dratted the activity if you click on the bubbles you'll look at the bar gravel here and what i did i aligned the location

outcome similar to what i showed in the did the expenditures have the desired effect did it matter to spend money on consultants we see the layering e by and large the measure e if you look at it closely the rest of the story i'm not going to show the other measures when you look at candidates, however, it was really 50/50 in terms of whether it was consultant spending that helped said candidates and quickly to show you some more of those this is a list of consultants and click on them with information on a pop up table which candidates give the money and what that money is spent for i'm going to turn it

over to jeff he'll talk about lobbyists. >> so, yeah so this is one of the sections in the chapter about lobbying and we've seen here a word cloud in i minimal you're familiar with the word cloud essentially each words hepatitis e represents how often a contact from a lobbyist made an association it becomes clear to the user which people are being lobbied so if you choose one for example, housing and property and tax on the left hand the official news cannot the lobbyist firm and in fact, the lobbyists clients we'll see a independent picture in the blue that says whether or not it was effective lobbyist contact

or when a wasn't in the outcome we start you know it is constructing an interesting picture when is happening and effective. >> okay. we analyzed did activity of the political action committees i'm not to show you a few fidelities if we get it online there is more we are showing you this is information who gave to political action committees and what they gave at the top we have timeline from january to december and what was interesting you see in may a peak in contributions before the june primaries and one in october before the

general election this timeline is interact active you can click on it by clicking on it you'll activate the bubble graft down below that shows you everyone that gave during that month that you clicked in the boo timeline while click on the names in the bubble graft and so more information about who gave for example local 2 is a union so you have individual names those are union if you look at something like that committee for a bright future you see a variety of corporate donors this is for political activities over time and drill down into the specific individuals is having given to them there's information in the analysis about what those political action committees are do go with

the fund they representative interests information about contributions to committees so those are further detailed if you click on a bar gravel they've see the action committee how much so hopefully this will be a sfraurd a straightforward to see exactly what the action committee is doing. >> and the last section our analysis about our central committee and we couldn't make a decision without this map this is a map we created and it is different pie charts represents the contribution amazes to the different county committees specifically democratic and republican central committee and san francisco green party reason why this is kind of fun

to look at we can see based on the mapping the outside source of funding going going into the central committee and see and - also sorry i didn't mean to interrupt right now you can't see but there's a map on different states from oregon colorado and texas so users could a zoom other and in that's essentially what had we have to show you and this is going to be solid if i had out.

>> this is a productive if you have questions or comments about how this can be improved additions, deletions, or changes. >> very previous presentation any of the commissioners very specific questions. >> i'd like to echo what the chair said this demonstrates on numerous amount of work on our part you've covered a gigantic survey of information and pulled it you'll together and wonderful comprehensive way that is very beneficiary for our staff and when we go is to the meat and potatoes of what they do on an everyday basis and to the public who want to see who's doing what and whether something is on the level and this is role a big

contribution to city government and so i want compliment you have one general comment you've covered all this stuff is there anything that you take away from this is you would say was something really dramatic that hit you that just you can - you'd want to highlight more than imagine. >> i couldn't help but notice how much expenditures on measure e to really work everything i didn't mention this in the analysis you'll see that when you look at live but there were $12 million spent on campaign consultant activity this year and in previous elections illegal leading up no more than two or $3 million so 3 times greater than that's an

aberrations next year but we don't know and until that happens so i do so some interesting trend every year deepening what the hot bums are. >> one thing i want to say about the analysis but the process really be able to see the information out there this information is already public but the public didn't have necessarily the tools of how we put this together this is how important it is and also one thing we've noted as we were working you think from work the consultant a data that is actually manually entered electronic tylenols is so important bus it allows with the electronic filing we wouldn't have been able to do this i wanted to note that, too.

>> commissioner keane. >> when is this going to be online and use be able i did public. >> within two or three weeks i'll say you did visuals really make it easy for anyone to understand and that is so powerful so your work is greatly appreciated and fantastic. >> thank you and i also wanted to thank the students for moving this forward. >> commissioner andrews. >> christen and jeffrey this is wonderful this helps me, i'm visible what was interesting when you got to the work cloud and their maybe more than that will or that will be shared or analyzed you can see clearly a benefit to spending money on a

campaign i wanted to see if there's a more strict definition around the work cloud the may the record show o more education around a person's reaching bigger group some campaigns if need a lot of money but got grammar education or the word or the concept uses more in i were to driving a campaign that was around a particular issue i'd time to know is it better to educate and direct my dollars around the creation point or go down another road of ads or creating an argument to it or what is the benefit. >> you're giving me a great idea for another analysis we

have information about the vicinity expenditures so of that is here i didn't show it we could look at the amount on independent expenditures was it on a phone bank or advertise advertisement it has not been done yet and very interesting. >> let me ask you a question once you get online and start getting new information as the season of election the election season is going how much time is that going to take to somebody keeping that updated it is great you've volunteered and your donoring your time how big a job to keep it up to date? >> that's a great question and

i have a great answer essentially you can incredulous e embed this into the ptal and use the data we'll embed on t a website that's the ethics commission website and link that to the actual data that is coming in nightly i think for almost everything nightly it takes one day to be updated, however, the information which i kind of mentioned earlier the information entered manually that will it will be adorable. >> so some staff employee has to be doing that. >> yes. a staff member will you know have to mainly input it or, you know put in a mechanism

for electronic filings whatever it is determined by the commission. >> any public comment. >> a i'm larry bush from friends of ethic i have a question about drill down the information if you're trying to search for who a donor was an over of a company it's not easy to do we don't use standard language is there my interest on the part of the committee in standardizing the categories of employment that hass someone has to make that search easier, and secondly, do you show where the donor lives to see x amount of

donors are living in the community or that couch and the third thing whether or not a donor is employed by a nonprofit or in the case of a ballot measure is a candidate thank you. >> any other public comment? the question raised by mr. bush is what i have information is there as far as the donor in our database >> we do have information about the employer and job toilet of donors however those are on fields they're not boxes you check you're absolutely correct it's not standardized i look to try

to see if there's a relationship between certain types of employment a tendency to give to certain candidates but it difficult to put together a maintenance of at this point. >> and i'd like add i guess from some the locations maybe on there i guess you want to raise the question ever who you want to place people's independent addresses. >> my commissioner have any other questions thank you for your presentation and the worked and look forward to that going active thank you item number 4 on the calendar

discussion and possible action on public finance report after each election cycle involves this the staff makes a report to the financial program another this meeting the staff will present a report on the 2014 election who is going to make the presentation on blood of staff. >> this the deputy director and this summarizes the election data it took place in 2014 this is a subset of the data that you just heard about so in 2014 the size even numbered in the supervisorial addict were on the ballet and the incumbent was involved initially of the 17