commission occurring on july 25, 2016 will begin shortly. >> welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the regular july 25, 2016 meeting of the san francisco ethics commission. i will call the roll. commissioner keane, commissioner hayon, commissioner chiu. >> here. >> we are still awaiting an appointment for a replacement for commissioner andrews, so all present commissioners are accounted for. turning to item 2, public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. >> good afternoon, commissioner, charlie mark stellar, for the record, i just wanted to alert the commission to a very important post on the kqed

news website that i got over the weekend pertaining to linar corporation, and the developments that are occurring both -- at both locations in the city. there's a significant and new items that are being reported in regards to the three indictments that have come down, so i did want to alert you to that and if you don't have it, i can forward it to you. or to your executive director who will forward it to you, okay, i wanted to alert you to that important item. >> i'm bob plant hold, i just wanted to offer comment about what may be change tos the pending whisleblower ordinance that supervisor breed has introduced and because of their [inaudible] may not be heard in

committee for some time. our group, friends of ethics is suggesting that there ought to be added a requirement that there be mandatory training for all city employees. right now, department heads, certain levels of managers, commissioners have to get training in ethics and sunshine, the kurntd draft of the whisleblower seems to require that same type of training for the same type of employees. we're suggesting it's not enough and because you folks would help develop, monitor, proofread any training on the whisleblower legislation if it is passesed, i wanted to give you an awareness of there's potential changes. we're asking for this mandatory training because a lot of city employees do not know about whisleblower ordinance, about protection, about their rights. and because these training could be done online, we don't think it would

necessarily be burdensome. i want to give you a real-life example of why and how people may benefit from such training, on the very last night that i was on the ethics commission, after i left early for family reasons, a janitorial maintenance person stopped me in the hall of city hall and told me some things expecting me to follow through to file a complaint but that person wouldn't come forward, that person was afraid of job retribution. the claims the assertions made were disturbing, unnerving and yet that person did not feel empowered or safe in even asking anybody in that person's union, in that person's office for help or understanding how do i complain about this and it was significant financial misdeeds alleged so, this could be a real situation for anybody in all levels of

city government. you're not going to be involved in enacting the legislation but you may be involved in implementing k it, that's why i wanted to let you know of the possible change, to be more inclusive and more responsive to all in the city staff. >> thank you. >> any other public comment? >> hello, michael pe troll lis, iem here to address several matters, there's much talk these days about creating a public advocate here in san francisco. i believe that we do need a public advocate in part because of the failures of the ethics commission and whi say the failures of the ethics commission, i was here a few months ago to discuss a complaint i filed on february 24th, five of ago, i brought it to your attention in october, willie brown attend a meeting at the mayor's office that i obtained the sign-in sheet through a

public records request, willie brown did not list his organization on this sign-in sheet regarding the meeting he had in october about banking matters with the mayor. here it is five months later, i have not been contacted by any investigate torx i have come and discussed this complaint with you guys here, nothing has happened. why should i or any member of the public file complaints when after five months, nothing is happening about the investigations? nothing. the other matter i wish to discuss with you is something that's coming before you in july, it should have been on your agenda tonight and that is my complaint against steve kawa, the vice-mayor, it is found he is in direct violation of city records and retaining city records. he's been destroying his records. they put it in writing, the mayor's office put it in writing that steve kawa every two weeks was destroying his

agenda, so the complaint finally came from the sunshine ordinance task force to you, it was supposed to be on your agenda for july 25th, yet the may yr's chief of staff sent you a let e i also got a copy of it saying mr. kawa would be allegedly traveling today and not only that, they needed more time to consult with the city attorney regarding this matter. they've had months of consultations with the city attorney, who is also in this building yet they requested an extension. unfortunately, leeann palem on behalf of mr. renne sent me a letter staining the request of a continuance was granted and there is nothing in this letter fra leeann palem, the drektd toer on behalf of 2 commissioners is indeed steve kawa is out of town. did you question why the mayor still needs a whole other month to consult with

the city attorney about this matter? did you verify in any way that steve kawa is indeed out of town? well, maybe if we had a public advocate, we'd get some answers. it is not okay that you have delayed the steve kawa matter until next month. we need urgency from the ethics commission. thank you. >> thank you. alright, i'll turn to item number 3, discussion and possible action on draft minutes for the commission's june 27, 2016 regular meeting. any commissioners have any comments? if not, i have some very minor ones. on page 4, there is a reference to a number of

witnesses from represent us, and that should be caps for represent us, initial caps for the organizatione, and that's on both page 4 and 5. other than that, i have no comment. any public comments on these minutes? hearing none, i will consider a motion. >> move approval. >> second. >> alright, all in favor? >> aye. >> minutes are approved unanimously. turning to item number 4, continued discussion and possible action on proposal regarding a possible november 2016 ballot measure to restrict lobbyist gifts, campaign contributions and bundled contributions. and i would just let the

executive director palem update us where we are, although i think the memo and is the document that is are attached are very detailed and helpful. >> great, thank you, chair renne, i want to draw your attention and the public's attention to the amended documents, supplemental document that is we provides on july 15th when we first posted the memo railroading agenda item 4 with initial draft language as you requested in june, we provide both a june approach and a july alternative as you had indicated an interest in. we provided that on july 15th publicly because we wanted to circulate it as broadly as possible to receive as much public comment to enable a full discussion this evening. we received some public comment, we did some further revisions based on that and further examination of the language and so we had a memo that we circulated on july

22, i believe, let me just confirm. that has the revised language attached to it, so for purposes of the language that is the most current, they are labeled supplemental attachment 4, item 4, excuse me, supplemental memo attachment 2 and item 4, supplemental memo attachment 3, we will get these straight. conveniently referred to as the june -- revised june approach and the revised july alternative. we'll get the hang of it before the *ef wantoning is over so, we have the lang wang here t memo that was distributed with it explains how the two veers are similar change that is were made to both and they also indicate where the two veers are

different, so i'm happy to walk through that if that's useful to you or to the public or to take public comment or discussion that you have. >> unless other commissioners feel -- i think the material you supplied us with is very helpful and explanatory and i would be prepared to not require you to go through it step by step. >> i agree with that, mr. chair. >> likewise. >> i guess i'll ask, do any of the commissioners have any -- first, before, as i understand it, what we want -- what's on the table today is to come up with a final determination as to the proposed ballot measure that we agree to by the end of this meeting because of the impinging, we have to -- tonight either fish or cut bait. >> that's correct.

>> so, with that in mind, i guess i'll let the commissioners, any commissioner want to start commenting to either of the options that june or july as to -- which they may be inclined to favor or any suggestions to changes to the present drafts of those options? >> mr. chair, to get the discussion going, i would just move approval of the revised july proposal. >> which proposal? >> the amended -- >> the revised july alternative which would be item 4, supplemental memo attachment 3. >> i couldn't have said it better myself. >> do i hear a second? >> second. >> alright. i will first ask for --

before i ask for public comment, i have some comments about that draft and questions and possible changes, but i am in support of the july attachment, but if we could turn to that attachment.

a question i had first on page -- >> pardon me, mr. chair, could you position the microphone so it's closer to your mouth and in a better position, thank you, it is hard to hear you, thank you. >> i guess the first question and it is on page 4 where there is a question about controlled -- line 6 -- it says controlled meeting should have the same meeting as set forth in section 101.04, this code shall not include any state committees t question is what about committees that are set up to support the candidate but are not controlled by it? they are not covered by this? and is it the city

attorney's view that there are case laws that say they can't be covered? >> yeah, and i believe director palem had a footnote, i can't remember if it was the first memo or supplemental memo that addressed a extreme court case in 2007 which involved san francisco's attempt to place a limit on independent expenditure committee or committees independent of candidates control, and that was the plaintiff's move for a preliminary junction which the court grontbacker granted and we settled a case for a not sis cant amount of money, so based on that local case involving our own ordinances as well as case law in the ninth circuit and across the country, i think it would not be particularly legally defensible to include any limits on contributions to -- >> what's the rational of saying a lobbyist can't

contribute directly to a candidate but he or she can contribute to a committee that's "independent" but whose only purpose is to get that candidate elected? >> and i'm in one of those uncomfortable positions which i'm trying to defend supreme court decisions, but let me try my best. yeah, so going back buck vvalejo, the big supreme court case dealing with contributions versus expenditures and what are the constitutional bounds in placing the limits in what you can do in terms of this recording, different kinds of political mitt taoe, there was a distinction drawn between making contribution directly to a candidate or to a group of people, an expenditure committee that is operating independent of the candidate, and this is something that has evolved over time and you've probably seen numerous news articles about super paintings which

are independent expenditure mitt taoe, that there are ways to get around this sort of distinction, but for better or for worse, it is a distinction that exists in the case law that there is very little you can do frankly to regulate independent committee that is are not controlled by a candidate. >> okay, alder, then on page 5, i know that either friends ethics or represent us that brought -- that we should add on our definition of lobbyist, lobbyist firm, is there any reason why that can't be done? >> we did look at that question after receiving the public comment and one of the changes that we made to clarify that they can be caught up in the restrictions to some extent was to put in language that clarifies the aggregation of gifts and the aggregation of contribution, existing language that we have currently in our city

regulations with regard to contributions provide circumstances in which somebody who directs or controls a contribution by another would have those contributions aggregated with their own, so using that, we took parallel approach to include language in this revised version that would have similar result for gifts so, we thought that gets most directly tat question of the lobbyist firm may have gifts that -- or contributions for that matter that are controlled by the lobbyist, they would all be aggregated under this approach. >> >> then turning to page 8, this section starting on line 16, all campaign contributions of $100 or more -- it goes on. how is that even relevant if we said they can't contribute and they can't deliver?

>> under this approach, you may recall from the june meeting that this july revised alternative intends to create a ban that is narrowly tailored to the individuals of the office that is a lobbyist is registered to lobby, so assuming that the approach -- if that approach were enacted, there could be offices where a lobbyist is not lobbying and so therefore they would still have a disclosure requirement for any contributions that would not be banned under this approach. >> i wonder if -- i mean, because i read it and i thought, why is this here, and it seems to me that maybe to avoid ambiguity say unless otherwise banned, all contributions -- some language to that effect

saying this is applying only to that exception where they're making contributions to a candidate for whom they have not registered and lobbied. >> so, very good question, and i guess my -- or comment, and i guess in terms of drafting the measure, since it is a ballot measure and since it can be in some instances difficult to amend a ballot measure at a later date even though we obviously have something that addresses that issue, we did try to go through and in terms of drafting this keep our edits fairly light, we didn't want to edit unnecessarily to or if we didn't need to, while i certainly understand where you're combining from, i think it's best to not edit more than we need to and certainly there could be instances where a lobbyist would need to disclose a contribution if they're not banned from doing it given the tailored approach of this

alternative. >> [inaudible]. >> yeah, and certainly, thank you, leeann, we're going to have manual, forms, faq's, regulations and certainly the staff will take [inaudible] presumably from members of the public that will allow tlem to clarify any questions or ambiguity along this front. >> because when i read it, i thought, why is this here when what we're doing is banning lobbyists from making contributions, you're saying but there are some exceptions or they may not have registered for a candidate who they're lobbying, and if you're comfortable that it doesn't create sufficient ambiguity that somebody could challenge us later in saying we really didn't intend to ban them, alright. then on page 11 under

section 2.115, limits and prohibition, the gift prohibition. is there any reason not to say no lobbyist or lobbying firm shall make a gift? >> i think it's similar to what city attorney shawn was saying, we don't currently have lobbyist firms registered. we might have to create a definition for that and we thoigt that the most direct way to get at that was to use the aggregation rules that we saw similarly applied to contributions. again, i think it's a point well taken and it's something we would want to make sure we're clear about that those are examples where lobbying activities may be caught under this to the extent has the lobbyist is directing and controlling them. >> and then in line 23, the

-- it says no contact lobbyist. wasn't that intended to be lobbyist including both expenditure lobbyist? >> this particular prohibition is particular for contact lobbyist because it's an actual contact with a city officer. so, this is attempt frk this particular prohibition is attempt tog get to a contact lobbyist who misrepresents who they are, since expenditure lobbyists don't necessarily contact city officers, you know, they're making money to urge others to contact lobbyist, it's doesn't seem appropriate. >> i'm not sure what you're saying. >> i'm on line 23.

>> my apologies, yes, thank you. >> and it should be out, right? >> yes, my apologies, i thought you were talking about the next page. >> okay. >> then turning to page 12, line 8, there was suggestion made in some of the communications, either from friends of ethics or represent us about that we should have a prohibition on city officers soliciting contributions from a lobbyist. now, as i understand possibly in supervisor peskin's legislation on behest, that

provision is something na's being considered that would prohibit a city official from soliciting a charitable gift to an educational or whatever other institution it might be or governmental institution, but is there any reason why where we say that no officer of the city and county may accept or solicit any gift, is there any reason why we don't include -- including soliciting contributions to 501 c-3 organizations, whether they're educational, governmental or other purposes? >> i think it's a question of the place that we started from of having this focused on the type of personal

benefit that an official might have, either tlau campaign contribution from a lobbyist or a gift from a lobbyist. certainly to the extent that a lobbying firm is providing some benefit to some non-profit that an elected official cares about, that's a question that probably should be looked at but i'm not sure that it's only as to lobbyists, so i think on balance with approach this measure intends to take, it was narrower than getting at those issues admittedly, but i think those are issues that should be looked at in a broader context with others who might also be asking for those kinds of donations, being solicited for those kinds of donations. >> and as i understand it, it may be part of what supervisor peskin's legislation is looking at on behest, so i will drop that comment. on page 13, one of the

suggestions about -- was how they can circumstance -- circumvent it and we seek to solve it with a 30 day window, people circumventing changing their designation. is there any reason why we couldn't -- with we're talking about bundling, is there any reason why we couldn't make a complete prohibition on bundling because in many ways tha,'s the most egregious action that goes on is that collecting money by a lobbyist and then delivering it on behalf of a number of people and if we -- if we just had said you can't bundle if you're a lobbyist,

would we be in trouble? >> yes, so certainly as you recall from the last meeting, i believe you were the commissioner who proposed taking the targeted approach that's represented in the july revised alternative, certainly if we think that approach is ta tailored approach is appropriate for direct campaign, it would be appropriate for bundled contributions as well, from a constitutional perspective websinger are impacting people's about to make campaign contributions to certain officials and as much as you can make that targeted at the anticorruption concerns this entire scheme is getting at, the more defensible it is. >> i understand that on individual contributions that it's targeted, but if we didn't -- if we said on bundling because bundling is

much of a potential for corruption than the $500 contribution, and some of the testimony we've seen that some of these lobbyists bundle hundreds of thousands of dollars and deliver. if we say there's -- we don't want them to contribute directly to a candidate but we're going to allow them to bundle it to any candidate other than those for which they've registered, it seems to me we may be missing a chance, we may lose -- somebody may attack it and some court may say, you should have tattered your bundling, but i would be disposed to try and stop the bundling. >> so, the rational for preventing in this proposal, direct contributions to the

lobbyist to a direct [inaudible] that they're supposed to o lobby, we think that contribution will allow them to curry favor with the official, make the official more receptive to whatever the lobbyist is proposing or advocating for or maybe opposing in some instances. i think and correct me if i'm wrong, i believe that the commission's view on bundling is largely the same, it's not different in-kind, it's different in scope, that instead of simply talking about a single up to $500 individual contribution from a lobbyist, we should also be concerned about the corruptive influence of not my $500 check if i were a lobbyist but a fairly decent stack of $500 checks. clients, other people, interested parties and how that can also have a potentially corrupt of influence of the recipient of those bundle contributions, so we're getting at the same problem, it's the same problem but just different

in scope. it seems that if we believe for the smaller contribution it ice appropriate to taster and say that the ban should only apply to those officials, the robyn is register today lobby, we would wanted to maintain that parallel, we think that bundle contributions like an individual contribution paves the way for the lobbyist to have a more successful pitch to an elected official. >> alright, just a thought that i thought i would throw out. >> can i follow up on that? >> yes, go ahead. >> listening to chair renne, it makes a very important i think in regard to what we're attempting to do and just isolating, bundling on it by itself and saying this is something that is by its

very nature subject to a great amount of abuse and the whole aspect of political contributions not being limited too much as to be unconstitutional in regard to restrictions on freedom of speech that you've identified in buck lee harvester valeyo where you're preventing somebody from making a statement, i favor this person and you're preventing them from making that statement by making that statement but giving money to that person and you can't do that, you simply can't have a blanket kind of preventing of someone to do that, but we wouldn't be preventing them from making that statement or giving contributions to a person and therefore making that statement if we say, fine, you can do that but

you can't bundle. this is a mechanism that we've identified as something that is too much subject to corruption, big pay to play characters come in with a ton of envelopes from big shots and they bundle and they get special favors, so i think if we could and i'm not so sure we couldn't, in fact, as i listened to chair renne, i became more convinced that we could, if we could take bundling itself and have a prohibition relating to bundling, i think we might be able to do it and i think it might be something that we would want to do. so, is that too ambitious? >> i wanted to weigh in here as well. i understand the desire to

prohibit bundling out-right but what i'm wondering, what does the data show us from the bundling that has gone on in the past, who has it gone to and how much contact has been following the payment because in the absence of content, i don't know if lobbyist would bundle a large amount of money and contribute to the mayor's campaign and not follow up, how would they further their agenda or their client's agenda in the absence of contact? >> i did work with the staff to create the foundation for this proposal and we certainly did find some instances in which there was some bundling and then some contacts in a seemingly relevant time period. perhaps there wasn't always a close one to one connection

between a bundle contribution or set of bundle contributions and a contact but certainly there seems to be in some instances some connections there but going back to commissioner keane's point, you know, and i know the commission's well aware of this, that the purpose of campaign finance laws as per the supreme court is legitimate if they're seeking to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption, and what i'm hearing from commissioner keane is bundling is something that we want to prevent or avoid or impact but for an entirely different it seems like interest. and i would simply urge the commission to keep focused on the anticorruption interest that all these proposals we're working on our fundamentally geared towards combating. >> well, what i said was not

a concern about bundling different from anything other than corruption or the appearance of corruption, so i don't understand when you say that my addressing the aspect of bundling somehow i'm addressing it in a whole new way different than everything that we've been tattering so far, i think what chair renne brought up and what i followed with is something that is right in line with the whole topic of where we're going and that is addressing issues of corruption and appearance of corruption in campaign financing, so what did you have in mind when you just said that i'm addressing something different? >> and, you knower, i apologize if you misunderstood but if we're talking about a tailored approach here, weir talking about prohibited contributions or other fundraising activity from a lobbyist to an official, when that lobbyist is attempt tog

contact that official. that is the tailored approach that the commission arise at last month's meeting, that seems appropriate. again, if we think these contributions make the recipient of the contributions more receptive to a lobbyist, then the lobbyist otherwise would be, that the lobbyist has a leg up because they have made a contribution directly or have parented raent -- presented a bundle of couldn't bourses. >> i think you have limited what we've been talking about all along, if the lobbyist is bundling for the purpose of contacting the official, na's not any kind of limitation we've been talking about, we've been talking about if the lobbyist is bundling to unduly influence the official, whether there's contact or not, contact is -- i don't think is relevant at all. >> ix i'm a little bit unclear how -- with respect to most lobbyists, how would

you be influencing the official without contacting them, isn't that how you would be influences them? >> well, if the official knew whether you contacted him or her or not, you would be able to bundle together a lot of money and it would have come his way, that would certainly influence him, whether that official ever had any kind of contact with you whatsoever. the money was bundled and the money then got into your campaign committee's funds and the official knows, this is joe big shot who did this for me and joe big shot wants me to approve his paving over golden gate park so he can make some money there. so, i think i'll vote for that. isn't that -- wouldn't that be corruption in terms of a quick pro quo contribution.

but in the absence of contact, how would the elected official know that the lobbyist wabt wanted to pave over golden gate park? >> well, i think that you can get a message to someone in lots of ways without actually having a one on one contact with that person. clearly that's the more direct way, but if i'm a politician and i hear that someone has been responsible for an enormous amount of money to be placed at my disposal or through -- and has done it through bundling, even though i never met that pensioner i never will meet that person, i may tend to feel favorable towards that person with regard to later influence that's going to be put upon me for something that has to be done. i don't think contacting is really the -- somehow the

main test of this. are we -- am i talking parallel to something here? i'm getting the impression that from your looks that i'm more incoherent than i usually am? >> no, i wouldn't say that at all. i guess the question is that logic would apply to those who are also not lobbyists, so how are those messages sent and for what purposes and how far would you take a bundling ban? i mean, it does raise that question i think as well, but it's -- i think the assumption that this discussion has been built on is that these are folks who are either spending a lot of money to directly -- to communicate a message to elected officials to achieve a certain outcome even expenditure or from compensation through clients and when you remove the

communication piece from that interaction, i think it begs a question about whether there's a broader approach that needed to be looked at and whether the -- it just seems to commissioner chiu's point, how do you know unless there's some sort of communication about an interest and that seems to be one of the critical links in this puzzle? >> okay, i'm not going to beat on it. >> let me ask you, your alternative was setting a 90 day limit. why the 90 days? is there some magic? >> no, there's no magic to 90 days, i think in response to the concern that represent us had raised about whether there might be an intentional gaming to have system by people registering and then reregistering just solely so

they can contribute or bundle, it's in essence trying to create a cooling off period after there's been that interaction and an attempt to establish a relationship through a communication where money would then follow that simply because of the a de-registration. >> what's the impinging and when somebody has to file for an office candidate, how far in advance from an election? >> it could vary tremendously, for a november election would be early august, i think probably a lot more credible candidates probably take out their papers early spring, something along that sort, especially if they're seeking public finance for which they need simple additional paper work and evidence of public support, i think something like that. so, probably not quite a year out from the election but not too far from that would be

my guess. >> i'm just wonder ifing the date, if you moved it tout 180 days, half a year, the likelihood that somebody would try to game the system by discontinuing his or her contact with a city official with the anticipation that they're going the raise money more them and maybe you could put it at both ends and would be prohibited from lobbying 90 days or 100 days or that official after, i don't know. >> i think we had some discussion about the

preregistration concept so, the concern that people will give a lot of contributions and then register only thaf activity is done, i think that is fundamentally a part of a process where you are trying to tailor a contribution ban to communication that is are intended to influence a person and under that approach, i think it's madder to try to establish a preregistration ban of some sort because in fairness to anybody who's attempting to do that process, if they have not communicated to someone, what would -- why would we *f we say that -- >> if somebody saying after i'm going to lobby the mayor but then 90 days before they de-register, i'm no longer going to lobby and then raises a lot of money for the mayor and the next day says i'm going to lobby the mayor, we haven't done much, have we, at that point.

so, couldn't you -- you could put a restriction at the other end, couldn't you? >> certainly if i could respond to your previous question about why not go to 6 months so i guess 180 day, my general impression although i certainly would defer to the director on this, certainly within the last 6 months of a campaign is where you would think most to have fundraising would happen, six months out relative to a november election puts you in early may, mid spring which is fairly early on i would think in most candidate's cycles, certainly more it it comes in at the very end, if you want to extend 90 to 180, i can certainly understand that approach. >> and turning again on page 13 to the aggregation, that

is in there because of the fact that we're targeting the lobbyist in terms of who they've registered to lobby, in other words, one of the ago retailing of contributions is they can't make a contribution. >> again, there may be certain circumstances where they can't make a contribution but because there's no entity like a lobbying firm that's prohibited in making a contribution, if the lobbyist is prohibited from making a contribution because they're registered to lobby that agency, that individual, then if they direct and control the contribution of their firm, that would also be prohibited. >> alright. i think those are the only

comments. do any commissioners have comments? call for public comment on the motion that we adopt the july proposal as drafted. >> i'm bob plant hold, i'm a member of friends of ethics and yes, we support moving ahead with the revised july and i'll let you fill in the other 28 words afterwards. i wanted to speak specifically to the questions raised by commissioners keane and chiu from my own experience, so first off, with regard to section 2a -- 2.115 a-2 which shows up on page 5 about the restriction on soliciting, i want to give you an example aof why it's worthwhile, why it might be

beneficial. i happen to be in a car driving with somebody to an agency meeting outside san francisco, this person is paid by a major company in a major industry in san francisco. people would look at that person as a lobbyist, maybe official, maybe not. i was in the car, this person got a call from the mayor's office asking that person to raise a lot of money for a hirable sports event, fo*rnl gently no one heard me, but my ears were starting to writing because he was also been appoint today a commission, so is it possible to raise none for the supervisor or assemblymember or do you have to produce money in order to be considered for an appointment, so i'm suggesting there assist a benefit to keeping that provision in. with respect to bundling and

commissioner chiu questioned of what does the record show? it's pretty damn hard to find out if things are really bundled. i've gone to lots of fundraising dinners, you pay for the dinner and a portion goes to the a committee. i've seen people walk up and hand checks to somebodyfinger not to the candidate, there was one elected official who had a cousin who was on the central committee of a major political party, so people knew, go to the cousin and give the cousin the khe, so there's no formal record of whoever handed in a bunch of checks to that cousin. the campaign just records the individual khex, who gave it, would was their employer dollar amount, you don't know that joe big shot was the one who brought these but the cousin knows, so the record is hard to find, hard to verify, incomplete, that's why there's a benefit to keeping in a prohe bysing about bundling just because that does happen all too

often, if you really sit on the sidelines and watch these events. >> thank you. >> hello, my name's charlotte hill, i'm the communications director for represent us and the direct door of represent california which is our california state branch, i'm also resident of san francisco since 2011 and an advocate for mroit cal reform in america more broadly and i'm so pleased and grateful to see this initiative being considered for the november ballot here in san francisco and specifically the july alternative of the initiative which represent us fully supports. san francisco as you know has struggled in recent years with public corruption cases and i believe we have the opportunity with this initiative to put those abuses in our past and become leaders in the fiekt against political corruption, so i want to thank you for seriously considering the

lobbyist ban we've put forward, we greatly appreciate the thoughtfulness with what you've approached this initiative and look forward to working with you in the future to make our city's elected officials more responsive to the people of san francisco. thank you. >> thank you. >> hi, i'm morgan ache young with represent us and i wanted to thank you all for your hard work and echo charlotte's thanks on the thought put into this mesh yaou, we appreciate it and we're excited this is being considered for november and just to be respectful of your time, we have a lot of people here supporting and i want everyone to stand up and you can see everyone would's in support, friends of ethics and represent us, so people nr the community. thank you, guys. [applause]. >> hell lean graikbacker graik owe, i want to nang

the commissioners and the executive director for paying great attention to this and bringing forward a solution, [inaudible] it imposes a clear and more administrative rule and is more likely to with stampeder legal challenge than the june approach, california law indicates that ablaout *f laout laws in lobbying [inaudible] have been upheld, the july alternative by modeling state law accounts for this distinction t june approach while not a ban proposes to treat lobbyists differently, a likely free speech violation given current case law so, we support the july alternative, thank you. >> thank you. >> good eve anyones commissioners, debbie lur man from the san francisco human services network, i am speaking to a memo that i submitted very last minute

dated today regarding the proposed ballot measure, and i have a couple of point tos make, first of all, this is a good government measure and we do agree with its intent. the concerns we've raised have only pertained to a couple of situations which would have a detrimental impact on non-profits but no risk of undue influence, first of all, there is in the language of the ordinance an exception for gifts of food or refreshment and we want to say thank you for include hating in the ordinance, we hope you will accept the staff's draft language on that point and we appreciate it. secondly, we had asked that there be a restoration of an exemption that is in current law around non-profit conferences so that we can share information with public officials. it is my understanding today, i had a phone call from director palem clarify hating the state definition of gifts which is what is included in this measure does include

still that particular narrow exemption for informational conferences in sim pose ya, so my memo, i believe that concern has been addressed and so i just want to say that for the record as well, and those are our two most significant problems with the measure, so that is great news. i do want to make one technical point that i believe should be addressed in this measure and that relates to inflation. the charter of san francisco which list it is duties and responsibilities of this commission requires an annual adjustment of any kinds of limitation or disclosure thresholds imposed by city law or using the annual increase or decrease in cpi, i believe that since this is a ballot measure, it supersedes the charter which is older and therefore there would need to be language in here specifying that those duties and responsibilities are also part of this ordinance, and that's the

problem with ballot measures, things get set in stone. if you have a $25 food or refreshment limit in a few short years in san francisco's economy, that will only have a dollar value of $20 so, there should be a cpi adjustment made to that and i hope the city attorney can clarify whether the cheater does in fact apply here or whether something would need to be placed into the ordinance to ensure that the duties and responsibility and authority to make cpi adjustment tos the feature ins this measure would still be within your purview. thank you. >> thank you. >> that's c-3 6799 -- c-3 699-11. >> i'm david, i'm a member of represent us and i would like to very much thank you guy, thank the commission for taking into consideration this action to try and bring

some conference back to government, we formed our group about a year back, this is our first full reign trying to see how government works and how we can make our mark on it and attempt tog make sure that every person in the city of san francisco has an equal voice and no one is given preferential treatment because of the amount of money they can contribute, in what way and what manner and what rules they circumvent is important to us, we've been working to make sure that people's perception of government which is currently rock bottom both in the city and the state and nationally in terms of corruption and in terms of undue influence of money, we seek to curtail that, and we are very glad that you are helping us in trying to pass legitimate reform that is address this issue and helping turn the boat around and getting voters confident and excited about the direction that city government is facing. i would like to thank you from my heart that what you're doing is bringing a

lot of hope to us and we hope that you stay on the right course. thank you. >> thank you. >> good evening, commissioners, my name is jonathan and i'm a marital elections law attorney mere in the city, i have two minor comments to make with regard to the gift prohibition and the to the campaign contribution and bundling prohibition. reflecting on a comment i made last month during this meeting, i believe you guys should consider amending the gift prohibition to only apply to contact lobbyists as oppose today expenditure lobbyists, the reason for this is reflective in the kind of government purpose for passing this regulation, and that we want to ensure that those who contact city officials cannot curry favor with them through gifts, as i discussed before, an expenditure lobbyist is indirectly urging others to

contact in the public usually to contact public officials for purpose of influencing legislation. there is no risk of quick pro quo in this situation and corruption in this situation, i feel by having a broad definition of lobbyist for the gift prohibition, you may run some constitutional or legal issues in that respect. i can't see the reason for this legislation and i encourage you to look at that, if a small non-profit spent 125 thousand dollars to say contact your legislator, your sports supervisor about affordable housing, that should not have them have a gift prohibition, the state prohibition that applies to all local and state officials, i don't see much of a difference by limiting a non-profit to 460 versus 0. another kind of just very, very technical cleanup and i believe theses the purpose of law and i wanted to make sure that it's clear, with regard

to the campaign contribution prohibition, this is page 13, subdivision e, line 4, it says no lobbyist shall make any campaign contribution and it says if that lobbyist is register to city elected afflicting or have been [inaudible] in the past 90 day, expenditure lobbyists do not contact officials directly, they will never register to contact an official director, a small technical cleanup that miektd provide more clarity to the law, it's also more noting that there is a corporate ban on contributions in san francisco, so most expenditure lobbies cannot make contributions to begin with as well, thank you very much, i appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> hello again, michael petrelis, i would like to

see this move forward and i am really concerned that if the matter goes forward before the voters and it's approved, it doesn't make effect until 2018, that's what i'm reading in your documents, okay, and i think that is a reason why you need to move this forward now, you need to get it on the ballot for this november because by the time 2018 rolls around and these changes go into effect, we're going the discover that the lobbyist and some politicians have found new ways to get around whatever it is that's hopefully going to be approved in november, like many of us have been reminded in the past few days thank tos the hillary leaks of all these e-mails from the democratic national committee, the system is rigged, the system is rigged

against the public and when we have that as our philosophy with we're looking at what this commission is doing or wants to do and then the proposals that come from the supervisors, every step of the way and every person who's involver in your process is part of the system that is rigged. these changes that you're going to bring about, they're relatively minor in termser of bundling and funding and things like that and you know what it's also telling me? it's telling me that the supervisors are not doing their jobs, that they are trying to put this matter before the voters and again i hope it passes when the voters get a chance to weigh in on it but if we had the supervisors doing their jobs and creating the laws that

we need, we wouldn't be putting the burden on the voters to weigh in on what is going to be a pretty complicated issue i believe for the average voter, so you guys, i believe here at the ethics commission have to look at radically changing how you do business and that also goes for the supervisors and all their aids. they need to figure out a way to address our problems, modify the laws especially in terms of ethics at the board of sups and i hope we get to see that change happening very soon, thank you. >> thank you. >> hello, i'm alex kaplan, the policy directly with first national, i want to thank you for your time and devotion to this, the open process of crafting this

correctly and to give a big thank tos the staff who have done an enormous amount of work on this, i want also to do a quick cleanup of my own, page 12, line 11 televising assist a doubling up of the word less, it says less $25 or less per occasion and should say worth $25 or less per occasion, very quickly also i want to respond to the last two comments and urge the commission to retain and continue to apply the travel -- the gift pensioner especially travel gifts to expenditure lobbyists as well, the idea that an expenditure lobbyist who is in many ways augmenting their lobbying power to spend money to get other tos do lobbying for them could give a gift or a travel gift, a significant one, ask try to leverage their influence that way, i

think the -- especially from talking to voters in the city and the many represent member that is have shown up today, the idea that one trying to exert specific influence by content or expenditure on a city elected official is -- really blows their mind that that's possible, to the travel gifts as well. i would like you ask you to apply the travel gift prohibition earlier than january, 2018, talking with the director, the january 1, 2018 start date is so the staff and so the computer systems can take enough time to make sure the registration tailoring can apply, because the gift ban is purposely and rightfully not tailored, it applies throughout should apply relatively immediately. thank you. >> thank you.

>> good eve nonlinear, alana smith with friends of ethics, i want to join the core lus for thanking me for what you have done and call out the work staff has done to get this in front of the public enough so they could hear comments, respond to comments and show us revised language. it's made a big difference in terms of your final product and you can tell from the comments tonight that getting that kind of very good public process makes a difference, so i thank you for that and friends of ethics obviously thanks you for putting this forward. >> thank you. >> again, for the record, i'm charles mar ston, i wanted to say there's a caveat to the question of aggregate expenditure limits and i realize that question is a little off topic, but i wanted to explain very quickly to the commission that on july 11, 2011, you

considered the mckuchin decision and vote ted 4-1 to repeal our law, that was blocked at the board by a coalition that was formed called friends of ethics, and that's our origin and that explains why we are still here. i did want to say i left the room, that meeting was taped and i have strong opinion on that matter because i'm aware of other events that occurred with other commissions in the united states working with the bren nan center to develop legislation to be both constitutional and respective of local law dealing with aggregated limits, so it's not as black and white i -- even though

we were in fact sued, that would require a separate issue to be put on the agenda to be discussed so that we could get into the details, but i wanted to tell you at one point, i was planning to raise again the question of aggregate limits because there are constitutional ways for addressing the concerns of mchuchin, so i wanted to give you the heads-up on that. >> thank you. >> good evening, anita mayo, as i've testified before t proposed lobbyist relates changes are not needed. the current gift limit of $25 per lobbyists is so low that it cannot possibly have a corrupting influence on a city officer, notwithstanding

the foregoing, both versions prohibit lobbyists from making i any dift including dift of gravel to any officers, this is a broad prescription, it is not narrowly tailored and apply ifs the lobbyist will ever lobby a city officer . the proposed ban could prohibit the mayor or any city officer from attending city related meetings, if the city and bay area corporations are interested in bringing the olympicess to the san francisco bay area and a for profitbacker profit corporation discussed the olympics, city officers would not be able to eat during the luncheon or dinner meet ifing the for profit contributed as an expenditure lobbyist. with regards to contributions by lobbyists, the proposed revised june initiative would prohibit a lobbyist from making a contribution to a

city canadian kate exceeding $100 in an election cycle since the current $500 limit applies on a per election basis kh*s clear and straight forward, introducing a limit based on an election cycle basis will create unnecessary confusion, both versions of the initiative contemplate imposing limits on contributions to lobbyists to candidate controlled committees including local bat lot measure milt tees, imposing limit on contributions to lobbyist tos a ballot measure committee could be unconstitutional, regarding the ban on bundlings, the proposing ban is not needed since bundled contributions are subject to detail, disclosure requirements on the lobbying reports already. there is federal court precedents that a banning on lobbying and the green party of connecticut, the city court not only invalidate

add ban but prohibited lobbyists from soliciting contributions on behalf of state candidate and is reach thirsting conclusion, the court stated that "a limit on the solicitation of otherwise permissible couldn't bourses prohibits exactly the kind of expressive activity that lies at the first amendment's core". that is because the solicitation of contributions involve speech, to solicit contributions on behalf of a candidate is to make a statement "you should support this candidate not only at the polls but with a financial contribution. ". speech uttered during a political campaign requires the most urgent application set forth in the first amendment for these reasons, i urge you not to impose a ban on bundling of contributions by lobbyists. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you so much, my name is joshua strong mansion i'm

with artist of alliance with democracy as well as with represent us and i want today thank the commission and thank the staff for taking up this measure, and i really want to say i've heard a lot of comments, i came here in support of represent us and i come here in support of good government and i come here so that -- because we're in a time where our citizens as we said earlier, do not have the fullest confidence in our elected officials and in our city governments or our local governments to give us a government that we voted for and inspires us to believe in, to want to contribute to, making san francisco and making the bay area a place where everyone will want to come and live and raise their families, this is about restoring integrity to this process. now, i've heard many people come up here and talk about the various ban that is are already in place but obviously they're not working so one of the things i wanted to stress to the commission

and stress to the staff is enforcement. now, commissioner [inaudible] brought up a good thing, those are questions that you should know, we should understand how these laws have failed z. you should know why all these people are in this room. you have failed. the ethics law that is are currently on the books have failed. that's why we want this measure, we're not ta*ub asking for it out of the sky, it has failed so we are taking it upon ourselves as citizens would care about san francisco, would care about the bay area, would care about our future to say, look, whatever you had going on first, whatever laws barer policies or protocols that were in place, they have not worked. i am strongly if support of this measure going forward in july, give the voters a xlans to vote on this. it's obvious the folks that have been elected to involve this problem has failed so it's time for the voters to have our say on this. i'm strongly in support of this measure going into the july ballot and thank you

for giving us the time to speak and making our concerns known. thank you. >> thank you. >> hello, my name is greg [inaudible] i'm with represent us and i wanted to say one thing -- add one thing, i think there is a sense of urgency, whatever the language is needs to be worked out tonight so something can get on the ballot, whatever the little nuances with regards to language, at least something can be agreed upon tonight so things don't get pushed out to 2018. thank you, and thank you for all your hard work. >> thank you. >> hi, i know it's against protocol to come up again, i want today directly respond. i can't? okay, at all? alright, sore -- sorry. >> you're saying he couldn't if he used his three minutes

the whole time. >> not to say mr. kaplan didn't have good feedback t commission would be obligated to provide everyone in the room with a second opportunity as well. >> alright, any other public comment? if not, there is a motion presently pending and i take it that that grammatical error on page 12, line 11 where the word less should be deleted, i will call the question which is to approve the option -- the july option as presented by the staff, all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> opposed? alright, the record should reflect that it has been passed unanimously by four commissioners as required. and that we should now move

forward to see that it qualifies to be placed on the ballot in november. [applause]. >> thank you, mr. chair. i would just like to acknowledge that the city of san francisco and all of us owe a great debt to represent us. it's an organization said by you to have been formed about a year ago and the most refreshing thing to me is to see the vibrancy of a bunch of young people coming forward on good government measures. there are other organizations like friends of ethics and the civil grand jury and the rest of us who have been involved with it over the years ask have been talking

about this, but for the most part, most of those folks have hair like mine, so to see all of you is really great and i just want to thank you and encourage you the keep up the good work. i think you're an inspiring group. >> commissioner hayon. >> i would like to second what commissioner keane has said. the atmosphere in this room today is completely 180 degrees from the atmosphere when i first came on this commission, and i don't think this commission or its staff can do the proper work unless there is full involvement on the part of the community.

i am an average voter and oncern is that my concern is that we passed this and it will go ton ballot but i hope you will do the same kind of work to inform and educate the a*frmg voter. from my understand, it's going to be at least 30 ballot measures, in situations like that, the average voter just says, i'm voting no on everything, so unless there's a real major concerted effort to educate vote and he iser to get them to vote particularly on this ballot which is of concern to you, then i'm concerned we may not succeed. and also a lot of this is quite arcane, so you need to find a way to get the message out in a way that's really

comprehensible to the average person out there because otherwise they throw their hands up and say, okay, i don't understand what this is about so i'm not going to vote for it, so that is your challenge now and i think that's a much, much greater challenge than getting it on the ballot, but i wish you luck. i'm sure you can do it and it's great that it's young people who are engaged and we need that because otherwise we're in deep trouble which i think we are anyway, but -- so, that's another story, we don't need to address that, but thank you so much and it's a huge difference having so many really well informed and expert members of the public participating in the process, so thank you. >> and i on behalf of the commission also join in thanking all of you for working with the staff and i want to thank the staff who spent hours getting this

into the form, but for those of you who may be new to the pr kress, once this goes on the ballot, the first thing is there's a ballot simplification committee that meets to word the way in which the description of this is put in the voter's handbook and that's very important because that's really what people look at in the voter's handbook, so that when that meeting takes place, i urge you to be in attendance to help draft the language, there are five members and believe me, they are very dedicated but they're like your high school english teacher and they parse every word and they will spend a long time whether or not they can use this word or that word, and

either vice chairman keane or i and ms. pelum will be there, but to have some support behind making sure that we get that, but even more importantly, san francisco has hundreds of political clubs and the months of august, the last part of august and the month of september and october are when those clubs meet to either endorse or take a position against or for ballot measures, and they -- it's very important that proponents and supporters of this ballot measure turn out at those meetings to show the community the support because

under the laws of san francisco, if i go to those meetings or commissioner keane goes to the meetings, we can't urge the voters to vote for it. we are constrained from taking a position. all we can do is tell them information, what it's about, but we can't at the end of it say -- and we want you to vote for it. i know that may be ridiculous, but that is the rule, so that what's needed are people -- voters, people who can say after we may make a presentation at one of these community meetings and we advise them of the restrictions that we're under, but i mean, it should be obvious that we put it on the ballot and we can point that out but we can't urge them to vote one way or another, but you can, and the more people who show up at these community meetings in

support, the more likely it is that these organizations will support it, and when the ballot -- when the handbook comes out, it will show what organizations support it and it's very important, the more organizations we can have behind it and the less opposition and i think in this case where we ao*f had as much public input, the kind of opposition that there was to proposition c, even that, it passed by 75 or 78 percent, i would like to see this pass by 90% and show that truly the public is behind this initiative, so with that, i will -- >> before we move on from this item, as you may recall, the last time when we did

proposition c last year, the commission had a formal vote on who would be the spokesperson representative for the various political club meetings you mentioned as well as media inquiries and such about the proposed measure. i don't know if the commission want tos do it now since as you mentioned, a lot of the endorsement meetings are coming up fast and furious and the ballots committee meeting you mentioned is schedule today discuss this measure this friday, so a lot of naoez public arenas in which the commission or whoever the commission decides to choose as a representative will be asked to speak are coming up quickly, so i don't know if the commission want tos designate that spoe, person tonight. >> any commissioners, any comments? >> i think remembering back on c, the reality of what happened was that commissioner renne wound up taking on an enormous amount of effort in regard to going to all of o those meetings, you went to so many of them, and because what we did is we

formally authorized commissioner renne to be our spokesperson for these presentations, vice chair andrews also went to a few and there were two i think that neither chair renne or vice chair andrews could go to so i went to. my suggestion would be that at the direction of the chair, we all be empowered to go and explain this to any group that the chair might want it to be explained to, either for the chair to go or if he can't make it, for one of us to go, whoever he designates, mainly because he wound up just breaking his back last time going to all of them and taking the

pressure off of him so i would be glad to go to as many -- >> i appreciate that suggestion and i have a call for a vote on it, but i would add the executive director as also being authorized to -- >> i don't want to add to her burden, but i think it is important. >> yes, e *f i agree. >> and certainly i want to remind the commission that we can have those kinds of scheduling discussions following the brown act, xhaoun sauteing amongst yourselves about the substance of any presentations, obviously we want to remain very -- strictly observe the brown act and all its public meeting restrictions. >> right. >> do i hear a motion that -- along the line of what commissioner keane said? >> moved. >> i think under the bylaws,

i'm authorized as a spokesman and the sense of the commission is if i can't go or if i want to assign it to somebody else, i can assign it to any of the other three commissioners. okay. and i appreciate that because i will tell you, there are times when there are three or four meetings a day or at night, they're usually at night, but they're interesting and you see local politics at its best. alright. let's turn to discussion -- >> we need a vote on that. >> alright. >> so moved. >> second. >> alright. public comment? hopefully none. alright, hearing none, i'll call the question, all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> opposed? it's carried unanimously.

turning to item 5, discussion and possible action on ordinance introduced by supervisor peskin to amend the campaign and governmental conduct code to require members of city boards and commissions to file behest payment reports, and i think mr. hepner is here from supervisor peskin's office and bring us up to date and tell us what you are looking for from us. >> absolutely, thank you very much, thank you, commissioners, chair renne, director pelum, i do have copies of some amended pieces of legislation that i'm happy to distribute to you, i left 10 or so copies on the table for the public, but i'm hoping that somebody can distribute those and could i grab just one of those?

we can walk through some of the changes we made, some of which were discussed expressly in the department staff report. but jumping in, i mean, i do want to thank you for taking this matter up again and for staff's report and from soliciting comment from the fppc all of which is going to be invaluable as we move forward with this. there are a lot of stakeholders with this legislation and it's become very evident we need to strike exactly the right balance to make sure this is furthering the aim of transparency and openness while not imposing a burden from commissioners or ethics department staff, so i do want to walk through a couple of the change that is we have made, just in the past week, i'm sorry, this did not make it into your packets. we set forth on the first page a definition for auction nao*er and explicitly

exempted auction nao*ering later a little further down as an activity that does not count as a solicitation, just because there was some concerns about that. on the second page beginning at line 8, we defined interested party as any person who is the subject of any administrative action taken by a board of commission, we defined non-profit organization as 501c organizations. under section 3.610 subsection a, we did as we indicated last month, we expanded the filing time from 30 days to quarterly or 90 days, 90 days from the date at which the 5 thousand dollar contribution was made or a series of -- and then in the next subsection 2, we

left it at 30 days for those solicitation that is are made to solicited -- to interested parties. on the third page, we have that exception under subsection d for auction noes, we also undertook a definition and tried to carve out full time employees of non-profit organizations who have fundraising responsibilities and are soliciting charitable contributions on behalf of their non-profit employer, if you're working for a fundraiser as a none profiteer, that will be your job and you will be exempt from reporting every solicitation that you make with the exception that we do want you to disclose any solicitations made to interested parties. and lastly, ethics

department staff request, we allowed for this not to be just reported on a form 803 but on some other electronic forms as staff sees fit, there's a reporting mechanism and per staff's report which i'm happy to get into a little bit, i understand that might take some resources ask some time and we're more than willing to take that into consideration. with respect to the staff report, just a couple of comments. i thought the reference to the fppc's report i thought was particularly instructive on one point and this is a point that has raised concerns from several of our board members and commissioners and that is well what if my name is on a -- that goes out in a mass mailer, i raise money for the san francisco ballet or some other organization and i'm

selling 10 thousand dollar ticket tos a charity night and my name is on the mailer that goes out, is that a solicitation, and the instruction from the fppc is in fact, if you're a board member of the ballet for instance and every board member's name is included, there's no particular distinction to your name from the other board members and that does not -- that would not count as a solicitation. on the other hand, if there is some distinction made whether your name is highlight separate from other board members or looks like there's a fact specific determination that is made i suppose if the board member or commissioner personally signed it or crossed off the mr. so and so, maybe details like that may make it look like a direct solicit tai, more like something that should be reported and those are the circumstances that would give rise to this

reporting obligation. anyway, i thought that was very interesting advice from the fppc and kind of confirmed what was both xho*en common sense and what we had talked about and now there was another concern about twitter solicitations, just briefly i thought i would throw that out there, what if somebody saying donate to green peace on twitter, i think there are certain aspects of this where there is going to be in effect on a board commissioner orbacker or supervisor's behavior are going the have to change nair behavior in some ways and maybe hey don't tweet out donate to green peace, might be that's something that person should not be doing in our public facing role, whether or not green peace has an item before the board or commission, it starts to be a little bit sticky, i don't want to say suspect

but at least maybe behavior that a commissioner or board member should not be engaging in. there was a mention -- >> could i ask a question about that. >> yes. >> engaging out about that behavior about twiting out between graen peace, what is that with the commissioner's role with deciding matters against it, what's the conflict or matter? >> i suppose the nexus would have to be there would have to be a secondary sexbacker nexus in that circumstance, maybe graen peace is supporting the caoe byways of a new park downtown or there would probably have to be some secondary nexus to make clear sense, but -- >> currently drafted -- if the commissioner were to tweet and were to generate contributions of 5 thousand dollars, they would have to file a report, is that right? >> that's correct. that's correct. >> even though the green

peace activity may or may not have anything to do with the work of the commission on which that commissioner serves? >> yes, that's right, and the portion of the staff report which i thought was well written talking about how narrowly to craft this reporting requirement and we could craft it even wider was one option that ethics staff set forth, and any political donating active or any solicitation for candidate to elected office, that could be included theoretically. >> wouldn't you want to narrow it down that the commissioner would be deciding upon, if it's an out of state alma mater and alma mater has no business in front of the commission, why would we need to know about that? >> right, and i think that more often than not, this

reporting requirement may capture behavior that is entirely innocuous, there's no suspect -- >> why do we need to capture it then? >> by limiting the scope of the reporting requirement, what we're doing is essentially putting the onus on the commissioner or board member themselves to be the judge of whether this is something that should or should not be reported and from a policy angle and i think there are fair room for disagreement here, i don't think that putting the onus on the commissioner or the board member in a self-reporting context to make that tough determination is where we want to put that balance, so yes, a lot of this behavior may be innocuous, but furthering the aims of transparency and openness, i think it's probably the public's obligation to make that determination of whether that solicitation is suspect in any way. so, i think that that's kind of where that ideological or

principled view comes from is i don't think it should be the commissioner or board members' role to make that judgment. and i'm more than willing to hear push-back on that of course but that's where our office was coming from. >> i would hope we would have more trust in some of our commission members to be able to make that determination and i have a follow-up question with regard to the privacy of those donors, particularly out of state donors or the example i gave last month of parents at a school for example, when they make the contribution to the charitable organization, i think they have a reasonable expectation that their name won't show up in a public database. >> so, this requirement does exist for elected officials in various contextess. i don't think it's that rare or unique to require the reporting of people who make contributions over 5 thousand dollars, i think that that

threshold is set relatively high, so that you're really capturing -- >> but are those examples, do they require all donations or only those for contributions made with some sort of connection, a nexus back to the government organizations? >> correct, and maybe staff or city attorney shen can correct me if i'm wrong. >> yes, to respond to that, currently elected officials are required to file behest reports, 5 thousand dollars or more, it doesn't really matter what the source of that contribution whether that source of the contribution has any business before the elected, it's a pretty wide net. >> and i think we're get hinting the territory where strike thing balance is important, we don't have the

desire of [inaudible] if you're a board or a commissioner in a public facing role and this is not about trust than it is about trust in our political system, but if you are in that public facing role you are in a unique position to leverage your public facing role and the decisions you make at public hearings to raise substantial amounts of money, we don't know the extent to which this is going on anecdotally, i know it's out there, our office knows this is something that does occur and in the interest of public disclosure which the ethics department staff also recognizes the high demand for more publicly accessible information, electronically or otherwise, i think that's where this legislation is coming from. i can wrap up my comments fairly soon, i did have a comment, there was a note in

the staff report noting that this is going to be -- this requires filing these reports with the ethics department as opposed to with the individual commissions, the only reason why we put that in there is because i think it's -- it would be pretty difficult to ask our boards and commissions to develop their own mechanisms for receiving and processing this and i think having it centralized is probably best for the sake of uniformity, to that end and along with the recommendation of ethics department staff, we are happy to support additional funding for the ethics department, we are always happy to do so in order to further the aims of this and certainly are amenable to a start date or an effective date of january 1, 2018 to allow the ethics department staff some time to get these mechanisms up and running, we're more than amenable to that. just one additional point, there was mention made in

the discussion on the ballot measure item number 4 with respect to whether we were considering prohibitions in this. we weren't really until a couple of days ago or rather until we read the letter from friends of ethics. i think that our office would be amenable to a prohibition, a flat-out prohibition on solicitations to -- solicitations of interested parties or solicitations to maybe specific types of 501c4's i think is one that came up in particular, that said, it's not in the legislation right now and i'll leave it at that and take the recommendation. the question that i had is how does that -- does that obviate a disclosure requirement f you're prohibiting activity out right, does it obviate the need to disclose your other behavior and my thought

process ended up with, probably not, when you're committing something to paper and you're required to do so in the form of a filed statement with a government entity, that is kind of causing -- it's creating another honesty mechanism, another little self-check, this is all self-reporting again and i think that a lot of this, while we trust our board member and is commissioners, we want to make sure that we create the most fluid mechanism for that reporting. >> let me ask you a question, and that is if there's say an invitation to the opera gala and it goes out and it lists names of the gala committee and it asks for 10 thousand,

5 thousand, 1 thousand, whatever the table is, and my name is on it as one of the committee, is that a solicitation? >> no, and i think the fppc letter addresses that point directly and at risk of misquoting it, my understanding is no, that if there's no distinction between your name and the other names, if you're just part of a list of the committee members, then it would not be a solicitation requiring reporting. >> and particularly if it doesn't identify any city office, it doesn't identify me as a commissioner. >> i think that's -- yeah, that would be another distinction. >> okay. >> procedurally, i'm happy to hear the discussion tonight, if you have any questions, i'll hang around. i don't think it's necessary for you to take action, but while it is before us, i

would be grateful for any oak -- recommendations this body has. thank you. >> commissioners, i just had a quick couple of comments. the -- one of the questions that the memo tried to outline for discussion tonight is the question for breadth and nexus, and mr. hepner talked about the distinguish of commissioners that might have [inaudible] with the nexus, one of the things i wanted to subjecting, there's form 700, the statement of economic interest, commissioners are routinely require today consider what the reach of their work might be because their conflict of interest code disclosure categories identifies the kinds of interest or should identify the kinds of interests that they could potentially influence and it doesn't include the breadth that an

elected official would have typically because commission and board roles are triply more prescribe today certain functions, so i think it's maybe not as difficult as on first blush it might seem for commissioners to consider the ways their particular mandbacker mandate could translate to the kinds of solicitations they would be disclosing, that's what i wanted to throw out there, whether that burden is too great or whether it might be something that commissioners are familiar with already. >> thank you. >> do any commissioners have any comments or questions, if noted, i'll call for public comment. >> good evening, commissioners, back again, [inaudible] it's fascinating

how this issue is growing, and i think our elected officials have been really put in a difficult position because they're out fundraising in some cases for private sector activity which is perhaps in their districts that would support their local home based home grown grass roots organizations which is a very good thing, on the other hand, the first people they were going to think of to call would be the lobbyists or the people that are making comments to them that are trying to get them to influence administrative and legislative action. that said, i have always been won to personally and i think many people in foe have felt that disclosure is where we start, so building a basis or a database of disclosure to

see and track this type of activity, much of which now is reported anecdotally or in the press is probably a good start so we can start building our database and following this activity which is very robust. in our communications to you, we have given you a list of contributions that have come in or have been issued by the behest say for google in the millions of dollars, like 6.8 million dollars, and i believe that was for one item. so, this is not small bucks. routinely, some supervisors are going out and going through a list of organizations or rather lobbyists or people looking to influence legislative action because they are in

fact registered lobbyists to make donations so they're bringing in the bacon where there's five or ten contributions that have been made in 5 thousand dollar increments that goes to the 501 c-3 or the philanthropic institution in their district, so my point is that clearly this is maybe not the way they want to go when they see it in print and when they have to disclose it to the ethics commission, and then we have a much better sense of what's going on, so i would urge you to support this and i would also ask whether or not it would not be a good idea for you to seek an amendment to the current law to prohibit such activity from lobbyists. >> thank you.

>> i'm bob plant hold. i wanted to echo what mr. hepner said that you don't necessarily need to take a position, ubd just offer comments or raise question, you like this, you don't like that, you wonder why, so you need to make a decision, no, should you? a lot of us would you like to make some sort of supportive decision separate from in addition to comments. i want to call attention to the supplemental memo from item 5 that came from larry bush and friends of ethics questioning part of the staff analysis and recommendation, so in looking at the revised text that mr. hepner has brought forward, maybe it's being addressed even if he hasn't linked to our comments or to the staff, i want to note on page 3 with d exceptions, the number one issue, i think it's helpful

that there's that second part that says commissioners -- provided commissioners will have an obligation to provide behest payment reports, so on and so on, so i'll give you archival history n the past sfrj ri, i was an officer on the board of a non-profit, the executor was on a major commission, there's several commission that is have perks, that can give away or provide services or things of value, of significant value to people, and so that person would solicit contributions to a major fundraising event which is handled by somebody else, then that money was brought into the non-profit. at the same time, that commission like i said did have different business that people could benefit from when they went for a decision before it, so the idea of requiring a filing of behest payments reports even if the donation is not specific to

the commission and the duties of commission but is part of the fundraising activities of that staffer, i think it's helpful to keep in mind and i think this is an acceptable start towards addressing that option. i'm trying to be vague because i don't want the name name, this is like i said in the past century, so everything is just dusty records, but as a person who was an officer on the board of directors, i was on ec sh uneasy on how some of this was happening, but at least there's a klans to bring light to it. thank you. >> good evening again, my name is jonathan mince s*er and i'm a political attorney here in the city, i didn't plan on speak on this issue until i heard something that concerned me from the presentation, the phrase that we don't know the extent to

which commissioners are soliciting donations to non-profit organizations and the degree to which that interested parties may be appearing before them. that's particularly, particularly concerning. i truly believe that this is a solution in the search of a problem. i also am scared that this is really just going to be a trap for the unweary, it's worth noting that elected officials are already suj to this requirement, most major contracts or most things where there's a concern of this goes before those elected officials. i'm afraid this is a trap for the unweary, i'm afraid this can be used as a tool to levy fines, administrative action against small commissioners who don't know this law exist, who don't know that the -- by raising money for their pta, they're implicated in any way. there's enough disincentives not to go into public service, why add another

layer when we don't know there is another problem, is there such an evil of somebody soliciting millions of dollars contributions to donations of an art commissioner to a non-profit support to an art commission or some other small commission, is this something we really need, and again, i don't want to start to brainstorm -- try to understand the legal issues that may come by a prohibition on behest payments, i encourage you not look that, for every evil scenario that i con ko*kt kokt in your head, think about quha's happening, we're talking about donations to non-profit organization, to 501 c-3 organizations that do great work in the community community, to the extent we know funding is limited, non-profits step in at a time of need, i don't think we should take as to limit

contributions to non-profits nor do i believe there's really a purpose for this, nor do i believe we need another disincentive to public service. thank you so much and i appreciate your time as always. >> thank you. >> commissioners, debbie lur man from the human services network. i did speak to this somewhat in july about the need to encourage non-profits to serve on commissions and share their expertise for the good of the community and to balance that with the ability to raise funds for their organizations. we do not wanted to hamstring the ability of non-profits to raise money and the city is on our case all the time to raise money and to enhance whatever funding we receive from the city, so that leaves us with this need for a

balanced approach. i do praoeshtd the staff memo suggesting that the legislation apply only where there's a nexus but we have worked with supervisor possess -- peskin's office and we appreciate the exemption of this for non-profit staff who are fund raisers and who are simply doing their jobs and the reason to balance that for donors to want non-confidential, we would have preferred that applies to board of directors as i suspect some of you do serve on boards, some of the most civically engaged people in this city both serve on commissions and serve on boards, and we need our ports of directors to be leading our way in our fundraising campaigns. it is a relief you can still be listed on an invitation but it would be nice if you could scribble a note to your buddy saying hey, tom, how about coming to this event, so i think we would like to

see that be a little broader but we are appreciative of this exception and we'll work with supervisor peskin for whatever final measure goes to the board of supervisors. and we do agree with the interested party exception, that was the compromise that made a lot of sense as the way to resolve any potential, again, undue influence. and the other thing i want to say, there were some comments here about a ban, whether it's a lobbyist or anybody else, i think we would have a problem if there was any kind of propose salt to ban contributions by anybody to 501 c-3 organizations, and so i hope that that does not gain traction as a serious discussion. thank you. >> i don't think you have to worry about that. i think it would be constitutional. >> thank you. >> good eve anyones i'm bob

docent door f, former friends of *it ix commissioner, i'm here to talk about 501c4's and 501 c-3's, 501c4's are the issue that we're looking at with beh*is payments that are in the tens of millions of dollars in some cases. when you have a 501c4 that requests a contribution from an elected official or a commissioner for a pet project, that needs to be recognized and needs to be brought to the public, you can't hide these kind of things from the public. i think we need legislation that brings us out into the open. thank you. >> thank you.

does any commissioner have any comments or want us to take any action this evening? >> well, i don't think we've been asked to take action by supervisor peskin's office. we've been asked by his staff member and also by several of the people who are in favor of the measure to indicate by comments and other things as to whether or not we believe that the measure is on the right track, whether we would endorse it. it's not something that's going to be part of the ethics commission's bylaws or any part of us doing anything. so, i can say that just personally as one commissioner, i think supervisor peskin's on the right track in regard to where he's heading. there are some concerns that

are pointed out both by our staff and other people by the interesting parties, that compromise could be reached out in order to reach the transparency so that someone doesn't lefrj their position as commissioner or as a san francisco official in any kind of improper way. there's a necessity for that and in my opinion, supervisor peskin is on the right track and is going in the right direction. >> i would only add to that, that i agree this is on the right track. i would like to see it a little more narrowly tailored so we can get at those -- the nexus of the behest payments and the conflict that arises when the matter is coming before the commission. i think that to cast such a broad net is almost like

trying to boil the ocean and you will spend a lot of time sorting the weed from the chaff, if you can be more targeted, i think you can be more effective. >> yes? >> with regards to the last person who commented, why not limit this legislation to 501c4's? >> as opposed to including 501 c-3's? >> i'm happy to venture a guess at an answer there. i think that that would be narrowing it too far and in fact we're not only interested in the entity to which money is being solicit tainted for but also the individuals or entities for which charitable contributions are solicited of, so it could be a 501

c-3, 9, 12, 400, i don't care if you're soliciting it from somebody who has a matter coming before your board or commission, so that's the other element of this that i think is at play here. >> the staff in your memo made a list of recommendations, i think it's on page 7, and i would make a motion that we adopt those recommendations and have them transmitted on behalf of the commission. >> i second that. >> any discussion? any public comment? i'll call the question. all in favor?

>> aye. >> aye. >> the record should reflect that it was passed unanimously and that the staff recommendations will be transmitted to supervisor peskin with i think a clear indication that we support the intention of the legislation but those concerns that the staff has identified should be understood. >> thank you very much, commissioners, i appreciate it. >> alright, item number 6 is continued to our next meeting . item number 7 is a discussion of the executive director's report. >> excuse me, chair renne, even though we're continuing item 6, we need to take public comment on it. >> pardon me? >> even though we are continuing item 6 to the next meet, we do need to take public comment on that item. >> i thought the item was

moved but i'll call for public comment on item number 6. hearing none, we'll move to item number 7. >> thank you. and i just would say for the record, our apology sos the commission and the public to item number 6, we thought it would be prudent to make sure the public had full opportunity to be here, so we posted the notice and we will continue to do that as necessary, so again, our apologies. in terms of our agenda item 7 and the executive director's report, i think the most important thing i would like to share with you, i'm please today announce the hiring of our new deputy direct torx jessica bloom who is here with us this evening. >> welcome. >> she's going to be jounbacker joining our

office on august 15th, she's assuming day-to-day management of our investigative and enforcement program and will head our enforcement and legal affairs function. i'm very delighted she's going to be joining us with her legal skill, her enforcement experience and her insights and her mentoring talents as well to our growing staff over the coming year. as you will recall from my update last month t commission received over 120 applications for this position, so it was a competitive process, she comes highly regarded as a keen legal mind, a fresh thinker and a collaborative problem solver, quick experience approaching complex issues from different angles, the work will unfold in all that we have to do. she spent six years as an assistant attorney general working for the missouri general attorney's office

where she enforced state, environmental and animal welfare laws include thing cleanup of the state's water, landfills and hazardous e waste and through the creation of a new unit that dealt with animal cruelty preveption where she mansion and responded to complaint, invest gated violations and successfully prosecute add number of cases to uphold state law, she received recognition as an outstanding achievement award in 2010 and 2012. most recently for the past three years, she has been serving as the senior staff attorney for the non-profit animal legal defense fund in the bay area region but works across the country, she's applied her legal skill to win major cases, worked with conservation groups protecting wild and endangered an maol malls. her law degree is from the university of iowa college

of law, and she holds a ba from the university of iowa where she majored in organizational ethics and [inaudible], so i will look forward to providing more information for you in the coming months about the structure of the office and how we're going to align ourselves to get all of our work done but i was delighted that she's here tonight and i hope you join me in giving her a warm welcome. >> well, welcome. would you like to say a word or two? we'd be happy to hear from you. >> thank you, commissioner, i'm -- thank you for that wonderful introduction, leeann, i'm pleased to be here, i'm very excited about the work, *ib it's a little bit outside of my wheel house if yu heard from my background, i've already started diving in and found this riveting, this debaitd

that's been going on and learning all the key players and i also wanted to mention that i brought my husband and my daughter earlier, so if you heard a crying child as she was etc. courted from the room, that was may, she's two years old and we just rent add house in berkeley so we're excited to be part of the community and to be part of the commission -- or staff for the commission, thank you very much. >> welcome, and we look forward working with you and you have a big job because i think we have what, two openings for enforcement? >> three. >> three, with one enforcement officer left and we moved to two, so hopefully we'll give you the resources so you can really turn two and some of the criticism that if you attend our meetings, you will hear from time to time is that we have been a sleeping tiger or

something that they call us, that we didn't do enough enforcement but a lot of that had had to do with personnel, so -- >> well, i'm your gal. >> okay, great. you have a delightful two year-old also, she seemed to be commenting justifiable on the merits at the time when she was here, but bring her whenever you would like. >> thank you. >> alright, thank you. >> and i guess i would make since it's an evening for correction, one other note on the memo on item attachment 2, i provided the charts showing the number of open formam complaints on our caseload as of july 20th as well as the matters under preliminary review. those numbers are accurate, we have 22 formal complaints still pending, 56 matters under preliminary review,

the memo however says 55, so my apoll jis for that, i diced the data after the memo and i did not correct the memo, so -- but we want to keep providing this information for you so we can keep track of where we are and with the additional staff resources coming on board, more hands to help get those members moving along. i'm happen my to answer any questions but i wanted to make sure to introduce our newest staff member to you. >> any questions or comments? other than to compliment ms. palum and the staff for continuing to provide us with great support. any public comment on the executive director's report? hearing none, item 8, discussion and possible action on items for future meetings.

it has been the practice in the past for the commission to skip one meeting during the summer because of the vacation schedules and it would be my recommendation subject to comment that we cancel the august meeting. i know one of the commissioners is going to be unavailable in any case and that we defer all matters that i think there are only one or two matters that we were contemplate ining the august meeting, that they be continued to the september meeting. any comments or concerns? any public comment? >> just a reminder, you're not off the hook because of course you have 30 club

meetings or whatever to go to, so you'll be very busy with that. it's just as well you're not worrying yourselves with the agenda. >> thank you. and i do feel that considering the amount of work that the staff -- we put on the staff over the last few months, hopefully some of them can take vacation. alright, so that will be -- the notice will go out that the meeting for august has been cancelled and we will -- our next meeting will be the fourth monday in september. any other comment or public comment? then item 9, additional opportunity for public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda.

hearing none, i will entertain a motion to adjourn. >> so moved. >> second. >> alright. public comment? hearing none, all in favor? >> aye. >> aye. >> the record should reflect that unanimously we adjourned at 7:45 which is pretty early. thank you very much. ( meeting is adjourned ).

t-we're live. good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. welcome back for another session of the land use and transportation committee. my name is malia cohen, chair of this committee and to my right is supervisor scott wiener, the vice-chair and to my left is supervisor aaron peskin. our clerk is victor young, yes. and i also want to recognize jessie -- jim smith and leo who are televising this meeting on sfgovtv. mr. clerk, do you have any

announcements for us today? >> yes, please science all cell phones and electronic devices and completed speaker cards and documents to be completed as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon will appear on the august 16th, 2016 meeting of the board of supervisors, unless otherwise stated. >> thank you. could you call item 1? >> item no. 1 resolution authorizing the sublease between the city and county of san francisco, as tenant and sublandlord and the crossroads as subtenant. of 4124 rentable square feet in the building located at 167 jessie street for an initial term of five years. >> thank you. so colleagues, today we have mr. brian chiu to present on this item. mr. chiu, the floor is yours. >> thank you, supervisor. members of the committee, as you may recall back in january of 2015, you

approved the city entering into a lease for this space. at a time when we were eagerly looking at opportunities for the city to be able to provide some additional space for our non-profits and as you may seen in today's examiner, we're very excited this is one of those opportunities. back in 2003, the initial landlord for this space, third and mission associates entered into agreement with the california historical society, a 99-year lease as part of a restructured deal with what was then sfra and what became the office community investment and infrastructure. about ten years later the california historical society decided that they did not need the entire 15,000

square feet. and was going to return that to the landlord, the ocii commission rightfully was concerned about the loss of non-profit space. and so as part of that agreement, the landlord agreed to enter into an 87-year lease with the city for approximately 4,000 square feet of unimproved space along with that there was a portion of the payment that was going to come to the city, characterized as community block grant income, which would allow for the capital improvements necessary for that space. so the city agreed to enter into that long-term lease for a dollar a year with the landlord. we then worked with our colleagues at oewd to come up with a process to identify

the appropriate non-profit for that space. we wanted to line it up with the recommendations that came out of working group on non-profit displacement. and so we issued an rfp in september of 2015. we distributed information about that through the human services network and many city departments. 25 different non-profits indicated interest in utilizing that space. two different non-profits completed applications and after review, the city determined that the youth organization at the crossroads was the best organization to utilize that space. since that time, in the fall, at the crossroads has been working to finalizes sublease agreement and we come with you to authorize the lease between the city and at the crossroads and propose to ent near a five-year lease with one five-year option to extend the term of that sublease.

we're very excited about at the crossroads in particular, because of its focus on reaching out to homeless youth and young adults. as some of the you may be aware at the crossroads is really a national leader in services to the homeless youth population and they are going to be offering one-on-one case management services at that site. as many of you may know it's becoming increasingly more and more difficult for us to identify spaces for these kinds of direct services, and so we're really excited that we're able to provide this for at the crossroads. i'm here to answer question and we're joshua from department of real estate and the executive director of at the crossroads. i would like to ask rob, if you wouldn't mind to come up and make a few comments? >> thank you so much.

it's incredibly exciting to be here. two years ago when prada bought the building and let us know they would not be having our lease renewed and we faced an uncertain future terrifying for us and terrifying for our clients. for the last 18 years our organization has been helping young people street san francisco with the focus on those kids falling out of of services. we don't have the option of moving out of city for cheaper rent. we need to be right where our clients are. when this opportunity presented itself, it was basically like a dream come true. when we were selected we were overwhelmed it was the singlemost important moment in our organization's 18-year history. it will allow us to help every year more than a thousand young people in san francisco get the support that they need to move

beyond the streets, and build outstanding lives. a lot of our office use is going to allow us to expand the money that we save with the space will allow us to reinvest in the young people that we work with. i just want to thank a couple of people, josh keen from the department of real estate. i want to thank brian chiu from mohcd and oewd and bill with related the owners of the property, and the non-profit displacement mitigation fund. but i just want to say thank you for this opportunity. we're really thrilled to have it. >> thank you for your presentation. mr. chiu, is that it? all right, colleagues, do you have any questions for mr. chiu? let's go to public comment. ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to come and speak on item no. 1, please do so. just by way of reminder you will have two minutes. will you hear a soft chime indicating that you have 30

seconds remaining. all right, seeing no speakers for item 1, i'm going close public comment at this time. thank you. [ gavel ] . the matter is in the hands of this committee. >> i would move that we send this item to the full board with recommendation as a committee report. >> all right. thank you very much. and without objection, that motion passes unanimously. [ gavel ] >> mr. clerk, let's bring up item no. 2. >> item no. 2, ordinance amending the administrative code to revise the residential unit conversion ordinance to require hostion platforms to verify that the residential unit is on the city registry prior to accepting a fee for book a short-term rental transaction and to provide an affidavit of compliance to the city and retain certain records authorizing the office of short-term rentals to issue an administrative subpoena to obtain records provide for

civil, administrative and criminal penalties against hosting platforms for violations of their obligation. >> supervisor peskin has opening remarks. >> thank you, madam chair and supervisor campos who is the lead author of this legislation, which is really a series of technical amendments to the short-term rental enforcement legislation that supervisor campos authors and co-authored with supervisors mar and avalos and i just wanted to make some remarks about the ordinance. which is pretty straightforward. is still to require that hosting platforms do business with law-abiding hosts and ensure that they are not aiding and abetting scofflaws who are further deteriorating our housing stock. it's modest commonsense legislationing and i think it's fair for everyone and for law-abiding hosts and

fair for san francisco. most residents want to give our short-term rental law a chance to work, but san franciscans won't be played for fools forever if short-term rental platforms persist in keeping our law unenforceable. after confering with the city attorney about airbnb's legal amounts that after they filed litigation on the law we passed last month, it is our desire to simultaneously address for this needed regulation or if there real motivation is to continue to flaunt our tourist rental laws with impunity. at the end of the day, the board didn't pass this ordinance to litigate over the scope of federal law. our intent is to make san francisco short-term rental

law enforceable and fair. these amendments aim to accomplish exactly that by simply making language more precise by making modest changes in record keeping requirements and by tailoring enforcement to work through administrative subpoenas rather than a publication option. i want to thank carolyn goosen and she is here from supervisor campos' office if you have any questions as is deputy city attorney jon givner. that is it. >> thank you very much. supervisor peskin, question through the chair, in terms of amendments, i have heard that this will not necessarily apply to all

short-term rental companies because of the way it's structured. for example, a company like vrbo, can you comment on this? because this has been reported to me? >> insofar as that it ised at the point of sale is that the argument you are making through the chair? why don't we defer that to ms. goosen. >> welcome. >> carolyn goosen, supervisor campos' offices as deputy city attorney givner wants to add to this, but the way san francisco defines web [tpao-rpt/] one that facilitates advertisement of units, but is involved in any kind of business transaction related to it. so clearly craigslist is one company not included in how we define a web platform, but other companies where there is a business transaction that

occurs between the platform, for example the way airbnb does it that company is relevant under this law if there is a business transaction plus the advertising. >> supervisor peskin has an answer. >> if you look at section 41a4 line 4, the definition of "booking service," i think it actually would apply to all platforms. a booking service is any reservation and/or payment service provided by a person or entity that facilitates a short-term rental transaction between an owner or business entity and a perspective tourist or transient user and for which the person or entity collects a fee in connection with the reservation and payment services provided for the short-term rental transaction. as i understand even these platforms that in essence charge for a listing, i think that they would be covered under that definition, but i

will defer that to competent counsel. >> deputy city attorney jon givner. i don't frankly know exactly how vrbo operates. the ordinance as supervisor peskin says would apply to booking services. which is basically those that collect a fee in connection with reservation or payment service. i think ms. goosen is correct that craigslist does not collect a fee with a booking service. i can't say vrbo's business model. >> thank you for the clarification, supervisor wiener. >> i asked the question, because i think it's important when regulating short-term rentals that we're regulating as broadly as possible and not regulating some companies and not other companies because different companis have different

structures. but they are all facilitiating short-term rentals and for all the good reasons that we want to regulate them it should apply to all short-term rentals. this measure that this amended, that i voted for, to try to increase enforcement because we want people to comply with the law, to the extent that the amendments were to contract that and basically exempting out certain companies and focusing on other companies; that would be an issue for me. i would be interested in perhaps this is a committee report for tomorrow, is that correct? yes. perhaps by tomorrow trying to get a better sense for that. because i know this came up -- i think 30-day waiver and it sort of moved quickly, which i understand why because the litigation,