so that is on page 11. of the attachment and ms. made owe called out where language needs to be added that's in subsection a2. and this is talking about how to format the names of the contributors to the top contributors. so if you are listing your top contributors and the advertisement and those are committees and you are additionally listing the contributors to those committees, she points out that the words and contribution amount need to be added in the first sentence so it would read for any major contribute or that is a recipient committee the names of the top two major

contributors of $5,000 or more to that committee, which i defined as a secondary major con contributor must be following the name, contribution amount of the major relevant contributor. you need to put the dollar amount after the name of the contributor and after that, you put the names of the contributors to that contributors. that is correct. what she points out here is you would not want to put the name of the contributors immediately after that because that would get in between the name of the contributor and how much money that person or entity gave. i agree. it's a good addition to add that language there in the first sentence. >> ok. >> those are all the amendments that i would suggest. i'm glad to answer any questions

about those or anything else in the regulations that you might have questions about. >> just more broadly, stepping back for a moment, with this new ordinance and the regulations that are implementing prop f, how will the ethics commission be in a position to enforce this ordinance. is there a data base where all land use matters so defined can be searched to know whether or not entity company x and properly made a contribution improperly. these ordinances are only as effective as the enforcement ability. >> is there a data base that

contains all land use matters? yes and no. there's not one that solely contains land use matters as defined here. there's nowhere that you can just call up a data base and it has all land use matters exactly as that terms is defined and interpreted here in 1.127. that does not exist. land use matters are public information. so that they are out there and you can't find them. but it's not as easy as just calling up a data base. it's not like 1.126, the contractor contribution rule where we have two sets of notices that are actually creating a data base and when they file notice you have a data base of approved contracts and you can use that for compliance. what you would be doing is essentially asking the contribute or to identify parcels of land they have a

financial interest in or parcels of land has a financial interest in but their shareholders for. you would check to see, for that parcel of land, are there any on going city processes that constitute a lapped-use matter. the best way to do that is to use the planning department planning information map, call up the address of the parcel, that will give you a list of any building permits or discretionary or anything going on with that property you would want to preview all of those processes and see if there are any, within the relevant time period that constitute what is defined as entitlement, request for an entitlement in the code. and again, that's kind of a ambiguous term. it's not defined in the planning code and so there would have to be some work there to determine our any of these entitlements and we worked with planning to

identify which ones are not titlements and it's on going advice giving because the fees you played to the panning department are based on the value of your project, which are always underestimated and now they'll probably be over estimating or never mind. and any event, i think that you might want to get your i.t. people together because it might be a slightly more simple cross tab. if you are talking about over $5 million projects, there are fewer of those than everything that's spendin pending before te planning commission. at least when you -- it's

something to think about comparing and they also have to list the owner of the property. they have to give authorization for an application at planning department and you can that would tie in with your list of potential contributors. putting the machine to work for you. to fer et some of that out. it has to be the donor >> how will the donor make they can't make their $500 contribution? >> well, hopefully they will work with the committee to try and identify it. if they did not make the written attestation to the committee and they declined to do that but the committee wanted to accept the

contribution, the committee would have to ask the contribute or why did you not make this written attestation to us. is there a financial interest you have in a land use matter and work to try and identify what they are and then do the due diligence with them of actually looking those items up and seeing if they are in fact land use matters as defined. there are certain things you can rule out off the bat. if it's under $5 million and it has to do with their primary residents you can rule it out. if it's not a primary resident and it's over $5 million, would you have to go through that more detailed process of looking it up and evaluating it. >> link particular to the name of the person or corporation or whatever that was the entity and making a contribution. >> correct >> what makes it challenging and

impossible to create a data base right now, of people who are prohibited for making contributions, even if there were perfect data base, of all land use matters, no department keeps track of every person who has a financial interest in the land use matters. they don't know who all those people are so they bridge that gap. >> we have a running list. i'm just seeing there is information that gets filed with the planning department that when you are looking it will be easier to find than just randomly going through their agenda for a year or something. they have a robust data base on the matters that are pending before that commission. they do have a data base and we're trying to figure out what

materials to make available to people. they wouldn't have a end product of a data base of names. there's always a good a leg work and we'll make it easy and spell it out for them but the pieces are not there to put together in a full proof compliance tool. there's not. >> well, i guess we'll have to just try and work through the issues as they come up. hopefully it won't be too much of a budget buster. i don't want to hold this up any longer on this holiday eve so it's move -- we have public comment. >> so i talked about the six amendments. i'm glad to talk about those or anything else in the regs that you might have a question about >> any other questions? >> call for public comment on

agenda item number 6. >> >> good afternoon, commissioners, i wanted to thank mr. ford for presenting my amendments to you and i think they will provide clarity and to the regulations and the only other additional item i thought about, as you were discussing regulation 1.1-3 were you going to do after the land use matter as defined in section 1.127-a. say excludes a person's primary residents and it leads that way fight a few people will know the primary residents are not if they have issues or matters before the planning commissioner entities of the boards regarding a paper ary residents they

wouldn't have to worry about that. prohibiting them from making a contribution. thank you. >> thank you. >> we would add that parenthetical into the language? >> the amendment for regulation 1.127-3 >> yes, definitely. >> i would move that >> >> any other public comment foray again da item number 6? >> so, i would like to make a motion to adopt amendments numbers 1-6 as previously discussed. do we need to read out everything for the record? >> i don't think so.

i second that amendment for a motion >> amendments 1-6 for the regulations all in favor. aye. so the motion is carried. the amendments 1-6 are approved unanimously. >> thank you. >> agenda item 7. discussion of monthly staff policy report. >> thank you, agenda item 7 is my monthly staff policy report. >> i need a clarifying point.

it's unclear on the record whether or not we actually adopted all of the amendments and their totality or just the amendments you itemized. the regulations in their totality >> ms. mayo's -- >> not just the stakeholder suggestions but you have a variety of other suggestion that's you put forward to the commission that you did not itemize, right. you mean the amounts you are revising for the new thresh holds so we didn't talk will be >> i would propose adopting attachment one with with the edits proposed so there's not any ambiguity.

as opposed to the edits before the commission and the attachment, right. maybe before we move on we can go back and make a motion to adopt, also adopt, everything proposed in attachment one >> attachment one as amended by amendment 1-6 that were read into the record >> yes. >> so there's, mr. ambrose making a motion to adopt attachment one as amended by amendments 1-6. correct >> the list -- there was a suggestion to number the amendments, right and we were talking about specific subject matters and i'm concerned those topics are notten campusing of everything. >> we're going to adopt all of attachment one which has all of the written -- everything the staff but then as further

amended by the ones that we talked about that are all numbered. his other stuff amending the dollar amounts is already written in attachment one. >> just as long it's clear we're adopting everyone in attachment one and the suggestions that were previously proposed as amendments 1-6. >> i think you made the motion. i move that we adopt attachment 1. the amendment to the regulations that are proposed by staff and tapment one to agenda item number 6 as modified by what we've referred to as amendments 1-6 as discussed and read into the record and attachment number

one. that make sense? >> yes, thank you. >> all in favor, aye. >> the motion is passed unanimously. back to agenda item number 7. >> agenda # i 7, the monthly poy report. i will make this brief and only provides updates that aren't already here in writing since i know you already read this. so the first item under policy prioritization plan updates is the public financing review project and you approved some regulation amendments related to that project and another thing is to help other divisions in the office who are implementing these changes so they can go

live january 1st, 2020. as you know the ordinance lowered the match able amount of a contribution from the full $500 to $150 and we've discovered that net file in its matching request function, when you enter in contributions and submitting matching requests to ask them to be matched, the way it was set up in the code of code meaning like the software code, not our code, but in the net files code, was that net file would search all the contributions that you had entered as receiving. remember net files is all encompassing system that you use, not just for public financing for all of your reporting. so it will search all the contributions you entered and it will essentially generate a request for you and based on

your san francisco contributors that have not been matched and it will build, you can call it the best available match air class for so you it find all of the contributions and put the full amount up to 500 on the matching request. we discovered that mechanism is hard wired into the marching request. there's not an easy way for us to institute automatic $150 cap on that. net file will put full $500 contributions on to people's match request. there's no way for them to make it just $150. there's no manual override so it will just kick $500 onto the request every time. that cannot be changed. what that means -- >> it cannot be changed by january 1st or at all? >> it can't be changed by january 1st. as you know, net file has a number of projects for us,

including other jurisdictions but always a number just from us of changes to their system that we're requesting and they're always competing for bandwidth and this is big enough for my understanding is it would require enough work even if they did turn to this it would be hard to roll it out by january 1. what we're going to do for this election only, is is to allow candidate committees to use the net file and we realize they have no way to limit their matching request contribution to 150 so we'll allow them to submit full $500 contributions for matching. we won't consider it a violation and we won't get them in trouble for asking for more than they're entitled to but we'll have a manual auditing process where our auditors, who add straighted the program, have to keep track

of all of the contributors themselves and make sure they never match over 150. essentially, that process is not automated. that file can't be right now. we're going to have to manually do that for $150 limiting process ourselves >> is there an e.t.a. on when they could complete the update to the source code? >> it would be some time during next year. in any event, it will not capture this election and we don't think it's a good idea to change the system on people midway. >> so you mean the march 2020 election or the november? >> they can't fix it before november 2020? >> he can't fix it for november 2020 election period. >> that's a year from now? >> well, although the election is almost a year from now, the time that people are starting to use net file >> it would be six months from now >> well, it's now honestly.

committees are already out there and i believe they can submit matching requests earlier in the year. i want to say february i have to check but some time in february they can start submitting. so it's a little sooner than you might think. the roll out period would have to be now. we want it to go now so what we've come up with is the best solution to manually do this $150 limiting process for this election in the meantime, work with net file to institute an automated $150 cap that will be in place in time for the following election >> is there anything to check the manual work on the back end? just to run a script to test? the math? >> yeah, i would have to touch base with our team to see if

they can do something like that. i don't want to speak for them. i'm sure they are automate it and we don't want to be doing everything manually and we have the matching request point in terms of auto make where it's automated with a lot of manual oversights that we're keeping close tabs on things. yeah, more on that later. i just wanted to flag that for you because it will be a little strange that we're actually telling committees it's ok for them to request $500. because, that's all they can do. i should also note, this is for the free net file. this is for the basic netfile that we make available to filers for free. the net file professional program which is a related separate but private product

available to committees, it's a private transaction between them and net file which we don't get involved with but our understanding is that the net file pro efficientl professionaa way for committees to say how much of a contribution they want to appear on a matching request. they could actually only request 150. they have the technical ability to limit that request >> is that being communicated to them? >> we're talking to them. my understanding is that most candidate committee who's are participating in the program, are working with the treasurer who uses net file professionals. so, it could turnout being for more candidates, their treasure will have access to a way to limit their submission to 150 but if they are use our system it will be weird where they won't have that ability >> communication is critical to make sure that they understand that even though the system is generating a $500 match, they're

actually only entitled to 1 othe150 sothey don't become or e disappointed when the amount they receive in terms of matching funds don't correspond to what the request was >> absolutely. we're focus recogniz focusing o. on the next page, e filing for all projects, as had he update you had at the last meeting, we concluded meet and confer i haven't heard anything that and that suppose done and we are moving forward with that project full steam now and the next thing is i will bring you a draft regulation at the january meeting that would institute e-filing for all and it will have january 2021 effective

date. that's a preview of what to expect next month. another update that's not contained in here is that since writing this, i went to the conference with a number of other members of staff and i'll let the director give you the full update but i can speak to my experience there and i was on a panel that focused on relationships that fall outside of the traditional scope of contribution and gift rules so i focused on the payment laws that were created in san francisco and went into effect this year so those are the new prohibitions on using your value to an organization that you are affiliated with. and also the payment disclosures. that brought into the disclosure to appointed officials as well as elected and lower the threshold to 1,000 so i was giving an update to ethics

commission staff from around the country and in canada too about this. i got some interesting questions and feedback about that. it's something that not all jurisdictions have on their radar. new york and l.d. are doing this so it was added context to commission did earlier >> are did they go for an outright ban? >> in new york, they have actually created the rule that the commission did not approve last year. which was to prohibit officials from soliciting from individuals who have matters before them. new york has that rule in place. so that was interesting to learn.

los angeles, i think the los angeles city council approved a developer contribution rule similar to the one we were just talking about in prop f and there was some discussion in los angeles about whether that prohibition should extend to payments made by developers. i don't think they have that but it's been part of the discussion down there. so, to answer your question, yes, it's regulated in some cases considering being regulated in those places >> in a future meeting, if it's inappropriate to discuss here, i would like to actually sew a report if possible, just on if there's any trends in terms of the reporting that that's been received to date to see how many payments have been made, how much have been made and to whom. >> it could be maybe -- >> are you talking specifically

about the new payment disclosures created here? >> yes. >> yeah, i would be glad to. i can tell you right now that there have been very few. of the 3.610 disclosures by the officials making the ask for the payment, i think we've had a dozen or fewer disclosures and four filers and they're all members of the board of supervisors. and not a really high aggregate value of the payments and i don't believe there's been any disclosures by people making the payments nor by organizations receiving the payments. the reason could be that the thresh holds were set high for people making payments and you only have to foil a disclosure if you make 10,000 or more in one year. and for organizations receiving the payments, you only have to file if you receive $100,000 or more in one year at the

official. it's possible no one hit those thresh holds yet. i don't know. but that's the high level of review of the state of those disclosures right now. >> thank you. >> i would be glad to provide more information and deeper dive into the disclosures we have received, if that's of interest. >> the only other update i wanted to mention is just to highlight that next month, in addition to the -- [please stand by]

process with other departments. so that's something i would like to put on the policy prioritization plan. but i think there is some bandwidth now that the regulations have been approved and now that he -- e-filing has been discussed, there is some room to have another project. i'll be working between now and next meeting with colleagues on staff to identify some good projects to put before you. so i look forward to that discussion. >> likewise. thank you. >> i'll be glad to answer any questions that you have. >> any questions?

public comment on agenda item number 7? no public comment. agenda item number 8, discussion of informational report regarding possible elements in revising the commission's fixed penalty policy. >> good afternoon, chair chiu and commissioners. my name is eric willett. i'm an aid, senior investigator analyst with enforcement division. i'm here to provide an update on staff's efforts to revise the penalty policy into the streamlined administrative resolution program. at the august 2019 commission meeting, directors -- commissioners directed staff to move forward with the policy to reduce incertainty and time spent negotiating a settlement by providing a level of standardization and

predictability to the commission's enforcement program. at the september 2019 meeting, staff delivered a process outline with eight steps and appear today to deliver step four by detailing the progress staff made on steps one through three. commission staff reviewed the practices of other jurisdictions including the fair political practices commission, l.a. city ethics commission and san diego ethics commission as well as consulted internally with commission staff. these conversations were very helpful, and they developed the violations applicable to the goals of the new expanded program as well as the consideration for the inclusion or exclusion from the policy. in addition to a thresholds applicable to each specific violation type. as step two, staff hosted two interested persons meetings. after the november election and before the thanksgiving break and received stakeholder input on a series of questions related

to the commission's efforts to revise these approaches. this feedback established members of the committee were in support of these efforts and expanding the existing policy and they provided an opportunity for these persons to present ideas on violations types they would like to see included as well as parameters that would include or exclude an entity or respondent from the program as well as ideas with regard to penalty structure. in that step three, based on its review of other jurisdictions, internal consultation with staff and feedback from interested persons, enforcement staff developed an overview of preliminary considerations for participation in the streamlined administrative resolution program. general requirements are that the director of enforcement reserves the right to include or

exclude any respondent from participating in the program. is it respondent must agree to commit to the commission stipulation and order pursuant to enforcement regulation section 12a and which the respondent acknowledges responsibility for the violation as well as to adhere to the payment. and the respondent must agree to abide by time frames for resolving these and keeping with the aspects of this program. general exclusions from the program would include evidence of intent to conceal, repeat offenders and conduct that resulted in more than minimum public harm. with regards to specific eligibility requirements, enforcement staff ongoing consultation with staff from other divisions of the commission and enforcement staff

will draft specific requirements of eligibility and additional considerations factors and exclusions that are specific to each violation type and will provide that in the coming weeks, most likely the beginning of 2020. now we'll turn to specific violation types we would like to include in the program. the preliminarily identified expanding the existing penalty program which includes essentially just three violation types from article 1 which is the campaign finance reform ordinance to expanding it to 35 violations over three articles of the san francisco campaigning governmental conduct code. that would include the lobbying ordinance as well as conflict of interest code. and expand the policy and vision to reporting and conduct violations that are relatively straightforward and don't require a large n. of resources to successfully resolve. as you can see within the memo

in the agenda item, there are 18 violation types from article 1, eight violation types from article 2 which is the lobbyist ordinance and nine from article 3, the conflict of interest code. before i move onto our next steps, i would like to pause and provide the commissioners an opportunity for any questions. >> how are the interested persons determined? >> the members of the regulatory committee, as well as anyone who is attached to our mailing list or watchdog groups. we had through our two different i.p. meetings, we had professional services representatives, general counsels, as well as members of the common cause organization, as well as friends of ethics.

and we anticipate additional engagement from these persons as they are presented more concrete and specific additions in the coming weeks with these next few weeks that we'll have scheduled in the future. >> commissioner ambrose? >> the documentation for the existing six penalty -- fixed penalty actions, is there like a monthly report or memorialization of that your action was on that so that if somebody made a complaint about a violation and it ended up on the fixed penalty, they would be able to see, by going to some list somewhere that action had been taken? >> that's an interesting consideration that we should take into account.

for instance, this commission meeting did actually include a stipulateed agreement that was - that took place through the existing fixed penalty policy. it was agenda item four or five. >> right. i saw that. obviously if it ends up with a stipulated, it's going to be on the agenda. just so we move, and really this is more for the protection of the staff, as you move towards more staff-based discretionary decisions, the responsibility and also the exposure to allegations of not giving due consideration to somebody's complaint can escalate. and i think if it gives you the advantage of saying i've made this information available to the commission, no one opt commission asked to bring -- no

one on the commission asked to bring it before the commission for review or reconsideration or something. you know? even though you are not going through the formal process of not making a probable cause finding or finding of no probable cause, if you had a list in general, mostly i was thinking about that in terms of the preference for using warning letters for certain of the minor and initial and unintended violations. everybody's going to be asking you if they could please have a warning letter instead of a $1,000 fine. by making that public information, it still has some approbation associated with it and also allows, presumably, you have to keep track of it anyway, because once you get one warning

letter, you don't get a hall pass the second time around. so that was just my thought, is that if it wasn't already something that somebody could do a pretty quick search for that you might want to keep a running tabitha we would see so that you could -- a running tab so we would see that you could see what's out there. >> i may have missed the first part of your question. if your question is are we currently memorializing and keeping track of the reason behind case dismissals -- >> is there a list of anyone who is been assessed a fixed penalty or got a warning letter. so i know you keep tabs of the complaints, but the disposition of them, warning letter, fixed penalty, probable cause finding, et cetera. >> i believe we do keep that

information, but we would also keep it for the points you underscored. >> yeah. at least where you have -- if you have a disposition with a fixed penalty or warning letter, that's going to be a public letter. the complaints themselves, i'm assuming, are not locally disclosed. but they are certainly known to the person who made the complaint. i just want to think about how to bring some sunshine on what the action item was, because i do think it will provide the staff with some, whatever, protection against criticism about how you've implemented or handled these various dispositions. >> eligibility requirements will bring before the commissioners will include specific enumerations for warning

letters, the thresholds for what is not minimal public harm, and that would be excluded from the streamline administrative resolution program, as well as we envision including that language within our regulations. so we would be able to cite to that within the stipulated agreements as well. >> okay. all right. that was my only -- >> feedback. >> if there are no additional questions, our next steps for this fixed penalty process outline, which were detailed at the extent 2019 meeting, would be to host an additional two interested persons meetings to solicit specific feedback to these 35 different specific violation types and perhaps get a little bit more information with regard to penalty structure. and then revise the draft as

appropriate as number 6 and then number 7 would be to present findings and recommendations for the commission for discussion of potential adoption and necessary. we were envisioning perhaps placing the administrative resolution program within the existing enforcement regulations. and then after commission approval, we would begin implementation of the new program. that concludes my presentation. >> any questions from commissioners? >> when are the two additional interested persons meetings? >> we were hoping to do those in the early -- i put that in january or february, definitely within early 2020. >> i think we've got the momentum going here. so it would be great to continue to build on that as we head into

the new year. and i do note -- here it is. ms. mayo has included comments on the agenda item number 8. so i just would want to make sure that you and jess and the team consider that feedback here. >> yes. >> and she may come up during public comment as well. so take that into consideration. >> understood. thank you, chair chiu. thank you, commissioners. >> public comment on agenda item 8? >> commissioners, as i've indicated in my written testimony, i am in support of expanding the commission

streamline enforcement program through the fixed penalty provisions. and i did want to point out in my paragraph too that i think it's also important when the staff is considering factors and criteria for participation in the program, that they do look at violations that are readily apparent with little or no investigation. those have resulted in minimal public harm. and then number three i think is important. i've dealt with the fair political practices commission, and this has been very helpful in matters where the respondent fully captors with the investigation and -- cooperates with the investigation and sometimes self reports. in terms of the additional provision under campaign finance, i think since contractor contribution prohibition is included, it certainly makes sense to include

violations of provisions regulating the contributions by persons with pending land use matters especially since that's going to be a new provision, and people are going to be very confused about that. the $10,000 business entity disclosure and member communications disclosure. i added the gift prohibition since the lobbyist contribution provision was already included. that, again, makes sense. and then the other items that i have under the governmental ethics issue. and i did particularly want to also emphasize the payment reports by donors and recipients. i think it was listed for the offices. but i do have a concern that donors and recipients, since this is a brand new law, may violate that inadvertently, and i think a fixed penalty would be appropriate for those as well. thank you. >> thank you.

any other public comment on agenda item 8? okay. i'll look forward to seeing the next phase in 2020. agenda item 9, discussion of monthly staff enforcement report, but not including an informational presentation on city whistle blower protection that was included as a clerical error in this agenda. this was covered in last month's meeting. but public is welcome to comment on this. and this agenda item also includes an update on various programmatic highlights of the enforcement program's activities. >> jeff zumwalt, investigative analyst, on behalf of our director of enforcement who is not here today. to the portion of this agenda item we are pleased to have mr. jeffrey, the director of the bureau of delinquent revenue. he has agreed to appear to

provide an update on b.d.r.'s efforts to collect on up paid late fees and penalties the commission assessed. but the parties or respondents have yet to pay as well as to answer any questions the commissioners may have regarding their collection process. >> good afternoon. so i have a list of questions. i'm sure if you have those questions with you on specific items you want me to cover? >> no >> okay. so i can walk through the questions and then answer them. so there's 11 in total so let me know if i get too long-winded. one of the first questions was how does our office decide how many resources to invest in trying to locate a deter. to answer that question, we typically evaluate the collectibility, so how much information we have on the person as well as if there's any

ways to execute on the obligation. and also the total value will help determine how much effort we are going to dedicate to try to invest in trying to locate someone or execute on the obligation in and of itself. so i'll stop each time in case you have any questions on the response. the second question, does the bureau ever decide if the cost of locating a deter or seeking payment outweighs the benefits? and yes, there are times when, let's say for example if someone who has assets outside of the state or they reside outside the state but the obligations are owed here and we have to seek outside counsel or efforts there that's more costly, then we would typically circle back to the commission to communicate that so you would be aware of that. if you sent us an obligation for

$5,000 but the cost to pursue them is going to exceed that, we'll communicate that so the ethics commission can make that decision. >> do you have a list of objective criteria that tells you when you basically pull the plug? or is it a discretionary decision? >> typically discretionary. it really depends on what information we have available to us at the time. and we do have some cases where the balances are pretty significant or if we have momentum, we obtained the judgment, and it's time to go back as we would like to, then that can also play a factor in deciding how much time and effort we want to dedicate to it. the third question, what roll, if any, does the ethics commission as klines play in adviseing bureau -- as clients in advising the bureau whether to cut their efforts. it's up to the ethics

commission. if you have incidents where you believe it's not worth us to continue to pursue them, we are fine with having those cases recalled back or referred back. >> can i jump in here? >> yes >> so do you meet with ethics commission staff periodically to review the list of -- >> we send a monthly report. so the monthly report will share what the current status is, the last actions taken, where these cases are. and it gives them a timeline. so we can have some cases like one is in a bankruptcy and how much time it's going to take in the bankruptcy process. we show that information on a monthly basis. >> okay. >> the next question, what method does b.b.r. use and we have many. within our office, we have access to various databases that

are unique to t.t.x., such as business tax filings and other information such as that. we also use lexis-nexis, there's d.m.v., employment information. and we have trained professional collectors that know how to leverage social media, linked in or internet tools so we can use information to locate a person. number five, how does the bureau decide when to reassign an account to a collection agency. this is also part of the cost effectiveness discussion component. so sometimes if we look at our resources and we have had cases not specific to the ethics commission where if they are located outside of the state, and we do have two collection agencies who supplement our collection services. we can assign to them, and they do collections all throughout the u.s. i've had them go for it versus

us spending money directly. number 6, recent status indicated debtors have refused to pay. how do debtors communicate that? it's normally through phone or e-mail or some other way. a promise to pay is when the debtor has committed to a specific date of repayment and dollar amount. the dollar amount typically is for the entirety of the balance. so anything less than that would be either a settlement discussion or payment plan based on the debtor's ability to pay. refusals to pay is flat out refusing to pay. so they are not going to make any commitments to pay back the obligation. so that informs us for our next steps. refusals will escalate if we have the ability to execute via

judgment, that's the path they will go down. when the bureau secures a payment plan with the debt debtor, what form does that take? it is formal. we have them sign a payment plan agreement. i want to be careful with how i call it a contract. it's basically the language agreement stipulates to the debtor that they are acknowledging their obligation to pay, that they owe the obligation. they are waiving their right under the statutes of limitations for the actions that we are take, ask they are acknowledging that consequences of default. and we have the typical repayment terms as far as the duration of the payment plan agreement, the obligation deadline date and we provide for their convenience the methods of how they can pay us, online, for example. question 8, if a payment plan is

a contract with the city, are there code provisions that affect how the bureau and debtor interact? for example if they miss a payment have they breeched the contract? does renegotiating a payment plan mean renegotiating a contract requiring certain formalities? i wouldn't want to call it a contract, per se, with the city. this is definitely a document that we would use as part of an enforcement proceeding if we took it to court to show the debtor acknowledged they have an obligation to repay the debt. it doesn't change how we interact with them. in our line of work, it's kind of expected that you are going to have a sloppy payer. so we are get them on a payment plan agreement. if they happen to miss five days and pay on day ten, we will work with people who are oing with us on good -- who are working with us on good faith. if you default, it is considered a default of an agreement. and what happens is while the agreement is active, you are basically, we are going to

suspend our collection process because you are making an effort to pay. default will trigger that process to resume and go through the debt collection cycle that we normally would. question nine, does the debtor's agreement to a payment plan represent a waiver of rights to challenge the debt or underlying ethics penalty that forms the basis of that debt? i would say no. so the language in the agreement does not preclude them from being able to challenge it. question ten, can the ethics commission take it back after they make a referral to negotiate or does a referral indicate we own the account? we do not own it. it's fine for the ethics commission to recall an account back if they needed to renegotiate for whatever the reasons might be. some of the common things we see

with clients is if they send an obligation to us and say we were off on the amount that was due or there was the due process element that was missed and whenever we administered the penalty to them it wouldn't have that part fixed before we sent it back, that happens on a regular basis with other clients, and we treat those cases the same. it's fine to have them pulled back. the only thing is if the client or the debtor is responding after efforts have been initiated, whenever they make payments, the commissions are still payable to b.d.r. >> i'm sorry. could i go back to my original question? i've been mulling it over. and that's whether you have any objective criteria or not. this is sort of a two-part follow-up. number one, has the bureau ever considered whether it auto to have at least a few -- ought to have at least a few brightline criteria, for example if the

claim is less than x, we will not spend more than y months chasing it. >> got you. i totally missed that one. >> and second part would be has the bureau ever compared its policies with the policies of similar jurisdictions to see how they focus on collecting debts? >> answers to both questions. so as far as objective criteria, yes, we do typically, have a full collection effort for accounts of $1,000 or greater. that's the primary criteria. anything less than $1,000, we are not going to consider going down the legal path. you'll probably get the standards collection treatment, notices, 90 days of dialing, then they are assigned to a collection agency. anything over $1,000, they will look for assets.

we work them up to 18 months before we assign them to the collection agency. and then the second part of that question, as far as comparing to other government entities who do the same collections we do, yes, we do. so we do touch base with other members of different commissione the c.m.r.t. or organizations that we share best business practices and how they do performance evaluations on the ability to pay and the return of investment as far as the time and effort that we put in. >> thank you. >> commissioner ambrose. >> i think i heard an answer to a question i had, which is the control and responsibility for the management, the ultimate decision on management of these outstanding debts is retained by the ethics commission.

so it's not a matter -- it's referred to your bureau, you're assisting the commission in the recovery of that debt. but there have been some that have been carried here now for seven years, and that was part of the genesis for some of these questions is how much longer are we going to be reading about this person is unable to be found. so we should not here and now, but follow up with the staff in thinking about how we might be able to give further feedback to you about whether or not you should continue to carry this on some of these on your to-do list. >> understood. i think part of that too would be some of the older cases are typically judgments. so probably we have them for the duration of the judgment.