>> pursuant to the governor's executive order and the 12 supplement toss the mayoral proclamation, declaring the existence of an emergency dated february 25th, 2020, before we go any further i'd like to ask the commission staff minister conrares to please explain the procedures for today's remote meeting. ronald? >> thank you, madam chair. and the minutes of this meeting reflect that due to covid-19 health emergency and to protect the commission members, the city employees and the public, the meeting rooms of city hall are closed. however, the commission members

and staff will be participating in today's meeting remotely. this precaution is taken pursuant to the local, state and federal orders, declarations and directives. commission members will attend the meeting through video conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present. please note that today's meeting is live cable cast on sfgov-tv and streamed live online at sfgov-tv.org,/ethicslive. once again, streamed live online at sfgov-tv.org/ethicslive. public comment will be available on each of the items on this agenda. each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak. comments are opportunities to speak during the public comment period and are available by calling 1-(415)-655-0001. again, the phone number is

1-(415)-655-0001. access code is 1465252262. again, access code is 14652522 1465252262. followed by the pound sign. and then press pound again to join as an attendee. you will hear a beep when you are connected to the meeting. you will automatically -- you will be automatically muted and in listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, dial star 3, to raise your hand and to be added to the public line. you will hear that you have raised your hand to ask a question. wait until the host calls on you. the line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak. ensure that you are in a quiet location. before you speak, mute -- before you speak, mute the sound of any equipment around you, including television, radio or computer. it is especially important that

you mute your computer if you are watching the via web link to prevent feedback and echo when you speak. when the system message says your line has been unmuted, this is your turn to speak. you will hear staff say, welcome, caller. we encourage you to state your name clearly. as soon as you begin speaking you will have three minutes to provide your public comment, six minutes if you are online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. if you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from the public line, press star, 3, again. and you will hear the system say that you have lowered your hand. once your three minutes have expired the staff will thank you and mute you and will hear that your line has been muted. attendees who wish to speak during other public comment periods may stay on the line and listen for the next public comment opportunity and should raise their hands to enter the public comment line by pressing star, 3. when their next item comes up.

the public comment may also be submitted in writing and it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has concluded and it will be included as part of the official meeting file. written comments should be sent to ethics.commission@sfgov-tv.org. once again, written comments sent to ethics.commission@sfgov-tv.org. thank you, madam chair. >> clerk: thank you. moderator, can you go with the item number 1, commission roll call. >> commissioners, please unmute your microphones so you can state that you're present at today's meeting after your name is called. chair ambrose? i think that you're muted, chair

ambrose. i just unmuted you. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> clerk: commissioner bush? >> you are muted too. >> commissioner bush: present. >> clerk: commissioner chiu. >> commisioner chiu: present. >> clerk: vice-chair lee. >> vice-chair lee: present. >> clerk: commissioner smith. >> commissioner smith: present. >> clerk: with five members present and accounted for you have a quorum. >> chair ambrose: thank you very much, moderator, can you [broken audio] it's amazing how many of these meetings we have went through. i want to welcome the public's participation today and also ask for their patience as we work through this meeting process. i want to remind the commissioners to please mute your microphones when you're not speaking to minimize any

feedback. and also remark that for technical reasons commissioner lee is going to try to participate by telephone. so you won't see her on the screen but when she can speak up, you will hear her voice. and with that, i want to call agenda item number 2. public comment on matters appears or not appearing on the agenda. members of the public who are already on the line and wish to speak should now dial star, 3. if you have not already done so, to be added to the public comment line. and please proceed with public comment. >> clerk: thank you, madam chair. the ethics commissioner is receiving public comment on agenda item number 2 remotely in this meeting. each member of the public has up to three minutes to provide

public comment. if you joined the meeting early to listen to the proceedings, now is the time to get into the line to speak. if you have not already -- if you have not already, please press star, 3. it's important that you press star, 3, only once to enter the queue. and pressing it again will move you out of the public comment line and back into listening mode. once you are in the queue and standing by, the system will prompt you when it's your turn to speak. so it's important that you call from a quiet location. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members. madam chair, we are checking to see if there's any callers in the queue. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> clerk: once again, if you have just joined this meeting we are currently agenda item number 2, public comment on matters not appearing on the agenda. you will have three minutes to provide public comment, six minutes if you're online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. if you have not already done so,

please press star, 3, to be added to the queue. for those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates that you have been unmuted. madam chair, we have callers in the queue. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> clerk: welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now.

welcome, caller. caller, are you there? okay. going to proceed to the next caller. it looks like there might be technical difficulties there. welcome, caller, your three minutes begins now. , withwelcome, caller. your three minutes begins now.

okay. okay, we're going to try the next one. please stand by. welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now. caller user number 9?

we're not getting a response from that individual also. we'll try caller number 10 again. welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now. chair ambrose, we show that we have three callers in the queue and we have no response from all three after unmuting them each. how would you like to proceed? >> chair ambrose: i'm just a little concerned, given the fact that all three of them can't speak that there might be some technical glitch fault on our part. so i think what i'd like to do is to proceed with agenda item

3, but come back and call agenda item 2 again after -- immediately following agenda item number 3 to give those individuals an opportunity to check in and, you know, or call back in, so that we could hear from them. because i don't want -- i mean, it seems uplikel unlikely that e called in and just hung up. so if that is okay with everyone else, that's what i'd like to do. we'll just continue agenda item 2 and pick it up again after we do agenda item 3. which would be the -- let me find my script -- consent calendar. sorry, i have -- just a minute. my agenda collapsed.

so with that, i don't know if i need a motion or to use my prerogative as chair to call agenda item 2 next. and so right now i'll call agenda item number 3 which is the consent calendar. the first part of the consent calendar is item number 3, the revised draft minutes for the august 14,2020 ethics commission regular meeting. and item number 4, which are the draft minutes for the september 11, 2020 ethics commission regular meeting. i'm going to ask for -- first for a motion to hear these two items as consent, or ask whether or not any commission member or a member of the public in

attendance would like to remove one of the two items -- items 3 and 4 from consent, so that we can discuss them and vote on them individually. and with that i'm going to ask for both comment from the commissioners and then we'll take public comment before we act on consent. so do any of the commissioners -- let me see -- get my participant screen up here so i can see if you have raised your hand. does anyone -- i don't see any hands. so, yes, commissioner bush. you have the floor. you need to unmute yourself. >> commissioner bush: i'm calling for a motion. >> chair ambrose: what's that? >> commissioner bush: i move the motion that we hear and consider the minutes of these two meetings. >> chair ambrose: okay. and do i have a second?

>> second. >> second. >> chair ambrose: okay, commissioner smith seconds the motion. with that i'd like to ask for public comment. so, moderator, can you please see if there's any commenters in the queue for item number 3? >> clerk: , thank you, madam chair. the ethics commission is now receiving public comment on consent calendar item number 3 remotely in this meeting. each member of the public has up to three minutes to provide public comment. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. if you joined the meeting early to listen to the proceedings, now is the time to get in line to speak. if you have not already, please press star, 3. it's important that you press star 3 only once to enter the queue and pressing it again will move you out of the public comment line and back into listening mode.

when you are standing by, the system will prompt you when it's your time to speak. so it's important to call from a quiet location. address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members. madam chair, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. if you haven't already done so, please press star, 3, to be added to the queue. for those on hold wait until the system indicates that you have been unmuted. if you have just joined this meeting, we are currently taking public comment on consent calendar item number 3, revised draft minutes for august 14, 2020, of this commission's regular meeting. if you have not already done so, please press, star, 3, to be added to the public comment queue. we do have callers in the queue, commissioner. >> chair ambrose: all right. >> clerk: good morning, caller. your three minutes begins now.

>> ronald, are the callers unmuted? >> clerk: yes. usually on the attendee list -- i have the option to either mute or unmute them and this particular caller is unmuted at the moment. >> it seems that there's a technical issue because all of the callers so far -- this is the fourth -- >> clerk: and these are either the same three callers that have been online and nothing has changed from the first public comment. so they're online, i just don't know why they're not unmuted -- i mean -- that we're not hearing anything. all right, let's try caller

number two. caller? your three minutes begins now. please stand by. i'm waiting to see if i hear from -- looks like we might go ahead and try to do a test by an ethics commission team member to

see if they call in and if they have -- base it on that end. please stand by. >> all right, good idea. >> can you guys hear me? >> we can hear you. >> oh, great. great. >> chair ambrose: excellent. >> maybe this is a question for the deputy city attorney, what would happen in the event that we cannot fix the technical issue with receiving public comment or hearing public comment as people call in? >> can you hear me? >> clerk: yes. >> okay, great. i mean, i think that the issue at the moment is determining whether or not the error is our end and that there's something

that is procluding public comment because our system is not working versus the technical issue is on the user end. because if our platform is working sufficiently, and individuals are having difficulty unmuting their device, i mean, that's not something in our control, right? so it's a little hard to tell exactly what is going on at the moment. so, unfortunately, i need to defer to our technical staff if they're able to diagnose the problems. >> can i ask a question -- is there any chance that because we're -- that only one attendee can speak at a time, is it possible that because you have commissioner lee as an attendee and her line is live that another attendee can't be heard, is that a chance of that?

>> clerk: we have steven massey who is calling us and i'll unmute him to see if it's working. >> all right. >> clerk: good morning, steven. >> hi, this is steven. can you hear me? >> clerk: yes, we can. >> okay. >> and the other question that i have, can you tell if people are calling in from their computer or their phone? it seems possible that perhaps a caller called in and they're just waiting to speak on a later agenda item, which would make sense if they were calling in from their computer and they could just leave it idle. i mean, it's hard to believe that anyone would have their phones dialed in and just leave it running with a live call and not speaking. so is there any way to tell the difference between somebody contacting us through the computer or through sfgov-tv

versus from their telephone? >> we can see on the webex, whether the person is dialed in and has their name entered. >> i mean, it's just an untechnical person making up possible explanations for why that it could be a problem. but i'm just wondering that given the fact that, steven, you called in -- did you call from your phone or go in through webex? >> i just called in right now and i'm speaking to you from a telephone. >> okay. >> well, in light of the fact that that, frankly, what i would like to do is to proceed with -- i'm going to close public comment on consent and ask for a vote in light of the fact that

our test shows that our system is working and that people are able to call in. i am going to each time that we call an agenda item, if those same three public commenters are in the queue and we can't hear them, i'm going to repeat the test for every agenda item so that we're certain that -- that it is possible for public comment to come through, through a telephone call. so if -- unless anyone has another suggestion about how we should proceed, i would like to try and to move forward with the meeting. is that okay? all right. then i'm going to ask that we call the roll on the consent -- i'm going to actually close public comment on consent items and ask that we call the roll on the motion made by commissioner bush and seconded by

commissioner smith. >> clerk: a motion has been called and seconded. i will now call the roll [roll call] with five votes in the affirmative and zero opposed the motion is approved unanimously. >> chair ambrose: thank you very much. and i need to advance my script. i would like to call item -- here we go -- i would like to call agenda item number 5, which is -- >> i'm going to go back to agenda item 2. >> chair ambrose: yes, thank

you. i had forgot, although i'm not sure that we'll get a different result but i did say that we'd do that. so returning to agenda item number 2, which is general public comment on matters appearing or not appearing before the commission. if there are callers in the queue, moderator, can you check to see whether or not we have public comment on agenda item number 2. >> clerk: thank you, madam chair. the ethics commission is now receiving public comment on agenda item 2 remotely in this meeting. each member of the public has up to three minutes to provide public comment. if you have joined the meeting early to listen to the proceedings, now is the time to get into the line to speak. if you have not already, please press star, 3. it's important that you press star, 3, only once to enter the queue. as pressing it again will move you out of the public comment line and back into listening mode.

once you're in the queue and standing by the system will prompt you with it's your turn to speak so it's important that you call from a quiet location. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members. madam chair, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> clerk: if you have just joined this meeting we are currently revisiting agenda item number 2, public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. you will have three minutes to provide your public comment. six minutes if you're online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. if you have not already done so, please press star, 3, to be added to the queue. and for those already on hold, continue to wait until the system indicates that you have been unmuted. good morning, caller. your 30 seconds begins now. >> chair ambrose: three minutes.

>> clerk: three minutes. thank you. caller? >> chair ambrose: are those the same three numbers from the beginning? >> clerk: now we're down to two and, yes, they are both the same. >> chair ambrose: okay. all right, we will try this caller. caller, your three minutes begins now. >> chair ambrose: steven, can you go ahead and call in again so we can confirm that it was

successful for anyone trying to get in. >> yes, i will call now. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> ron, were any of those two callers -- did they happen to call in during other meetings? >> clerk: that i don't know, but i'm getting a message from jared right now. okay. let me get back in here. good morning, caller. >> caller: hi, this is steven. >> clerk: yes. >> chair ambrose: okay. >> caller: it seems to be working. >> clerk: okay, perfect.

all right. >> chair ambrose: so i'm going to move on then and we're going to try again when i call agenda item number 5, we'll do the same procedure and test. potentially these individuals are intending to speak on agenda number 5. actually, i'm going to close public comment on agenda item number 2 and move on to agenda item number 5. the discussion of possible action on presentation by controller's office on the controller's september 24, 2020, report, preliminary assessment: gifts to departments through non-city organizations lack transparency and create "pay-to-play" risk. i'm going to ask executive director leanne pellam to introduce our speaker from the controller's office. thank you. >> good morning, thank you, chair ambrose. thank you, commissioners, and

thank you to everybody for your patient this morning with the meeting. we continue to work out the various hiccups and we appreciate your patience and forbearance as we do that. item number 5 is on the agenda this morning as a prior report from the controller's office was with the first of the preliminary assessments that that office is issuing. as this item notes, it is regarding the gifts to departments and the non-city organizations and it's an assessment that the controller's office has issued. it came out on september 24th, and we very much appreciate that the office is willing to be here today to present an overview to you about that report and to answer any questions that you might have. there is no action required. it's an informational item. but if the commission wishes to take some action, or to direct the staff, that opportunity does exist as it is agendized as a possible action item. as you know, these reports that have been coming in the wake of

the city attorney's investigation and the controller's office coordination and looking at procedures and policies in the city that may need to be strengthened to limit the potential for fraud, corruption or abuse. and the first assessment report was issued on june 29th. we were apprised that mark de larosa from the controller's office was able to be at that july 10th meeting to present that initial report. this report, mark is back with us this morning, and it's, again, to provide you with the opportunity to hear from that office, about the findings of that report, and the recommendations. as you know that the issues that speak to areas of the jurisdiction of the ethics commission questions the issues, policy matters, will be incorporated into the ongoing policy work with the commission. to make sure that our laws are as strong and enforceable as possible. so we will continue to be in touch with the controller's

office as additional reports are issued. we anticipate from them that there will be a series of reports. so we look forward to inviting mark back at future meetings. but for purposes of this morning's meeting, i'll turn it over to him to walk you through the presentation. the report is linked through our website. the members of the public can follow it there if they haven't already accessed it from the controller's office. thank you so much. >> chair ambrose: thank you. >> great, thank you so much, executive director pellam. chair ambrose, and the members of the commission, commissioners lee, chi and smith and bush, my name is mark della rosa and i'm with the executive director of audits. may i be able to share my scree- >> clerk: yes. >> i do have a presentation. thank you. and while you're pulling that up, i am joined today as well by

our deputy controller todd reidstrom in case you have any questions. all right. can you see my screen? >> chair ambrose: yes, thank you. >> perfect. great. as mentioned, i am ready and this is the second of our series of preliminary assessments at the controller's office is working on. back in july we presented a first one on the public works contracting and procurement. this second one is related to gifts provided to the departments by non-city organizations, and in particular the sub-accounts that public

works had with the san francisco parks alliance. just by way of introduction, i think that you already know this, back in february when the investigation became public, that the controller's office had set out to conduct a series of assessments related to the internal controls surrounding the various facets of the allegations. the goal really for the internal control review reviews that we'e conducting are to improve transparency and reduce the risk of fraud and ultimately to safeguard our public funds. in conjunction with what we're doing in the controller's office, the city attorney's office is also focused on their investigations related to any employees and contractors that were involved or outlying in the

charges. one of the key things that they just more recently have done as an action item was to begin the debarment process for one of the contractors that were mentioned or involved in the charges. and today we're going to be presenting to you this second report on, as i mentioned, gifts and supports that are benefitting our city departments with a focus on the parks alliance which is a non-city organization. as we did in the previous presentation, these assessments are labeled as preliminary and we're really wanting to hear from the subject matter experts such as yourselves, this commission, to help in -- in ensuring that the recommendations are -- are actionable and are appropriate. so some of our recommendations are actually worded in a very general sense to provide you the

experts and the leaders to -- to determine the best course of action to mitigate the risks and the findings. just very quickly, as we mentioned in our report, we're focusing on non-city organizations. when we set out our audit, with we started our audit or assessment back in february, we deployed a survey of city departments. all 56 of them. just to make sure and to understand the extent of -- of the presence of these non-city organizations amongst all of our 56 departments. and what we found based on the survey results was that they were able to identify 588 various accounts and sub-accounts. and because of the -- the lack of clarity in terms of what it is that we wanted to -- to

survey at the time we basically got a whole gamut of different types of arrangements that our departments have with non-city organizations. most of which are things that really go through the regular process like contracts and grants, fiscal agencies, fiscal sponsors. those are things that -- that typically goes through the regular processes within the city. what we're focusing on in our assessments are the friends of organizations. the parks alliance is the one that -- that the sub-accounts like public works had, that were maintained under. they're a 501c organization and they support a number of city agencies as well as -- as other groups within the city. and in 2019, just to provide context in terms of their finances, their total revenue in terms of grants and contributions amounted to close to $19 million. and their expenditures amounted

to close to $18 million. one thing to note as part of our field work in this is that we -- we gave the draft report to the relevant stakeholders, one of which was the san francisco parks alliance. and they wanted to -- us to include, and we noted, an attribute to them that they wanted to emphasize that they were not aware, nor did they know that the fiscal agency that they were providing was being used inappropriately and unethically at the department of public works city officials. they wanted to also emphasize that back in 2019 they reached out to mr. nuru to formalize the relationship with the department of public works through an m.o.u., but that that effort was ignored. a couple of very quick background just to set the -- the information. the sub-accounts that i'm

referring to that our report refers to are four main sub-accounts maintained by the san francisco parks alliance that are specific to the department of public works. the contributions and expenses numbers that we have here are for the period of july 2015, through january 2020. that was basically the scope of our review and this is also based on the information that we received that was maintained by the department of public works as referred to as the public works log. one of the -- one of the sub-accounts is called "the d.p.w. special project." and they had a total contribution for those five-year period of about $400,000. out of the 990 total contributions for that same five-year period. this is basically the special projects is the main account

that -- that contained the payments and the reimbursements related to the various staff appreciation and staff events that we mentioned in our report. the second sub-account is the clean team program that they maintain. and this is basically the neighborhood beautification programs that public works has. and they had payments and contributions of about close to $200,000 for that same five-year period. giant sweep is another one of the sub-accounts and that is the anti-litter programs that public works has. and there were payments and reimbursements that totaled $390,000 for that same period. and there's the fix team. and so those are the four sub-accounts that we found to be in existence within the parks alliance. again, just by way of context and background, this -- this slide right here notes some of

the donors that were the main contributors to the -- to those sub-accounts. as you can see the s.f. clean city coacity coalition make up e majority of the donors or the -- or the revenues that were going into these public works sub-accounts maintained by the s.f. parks alliance. one of the key things that we wanted to convey in this table is really how some of the same key donors that were providing donations to this public works sub-accounts were also the same ones that were doing business with the city by way of having permits during the timeframe that we reviewed, as well as payments that public works gave to these same donors during the time period as well.

another one that we wanted to highlight, it wasn't just public works that had contracts or payments to these donors. but there were also departments that contributed, or that paid these donors by way of city contracts as well as payments through purchases. and this slide six basically focuses on how those donations were then expended by the department of public works. and as laid out here out of the $980,000 that were expended during the time period of 2015 through 2020, the majority, or a good portion of them, was actually going to -- or 38% was going to various employee events, staff appreciation, training, the holiday parties,

picnics, and various meals were contributing -- or were the main expense types for this sub-account. other expenses were also the various volunteer programs that i had mentioned and the clean team, the giant sweep, and various merchandise, including shirt, hats, tote bags for the various events that public works held. this graphic is basically just to show the flow of funds that based on the information that i just shared with you from -- on the top lefthand side -- public works, going into contracts with these certain contractors to complete, you know, capital programs, for example, and those same contractors that are doing business with the city -- some of those were also contributors

to the public works sub-accounts that were maintained by the parks alliance. those sub-accounts then are paid out to various vendors. some of those payments actually went to city employees, including the department of public works employees who expended some moneys in relation to the various purposes of this sub-account, including for staff appreciation and other events. so in our assessment -- excuse me -- is there a question? oh. >> yes, this is commissioner chiu. if you could go back one slide to the flow --

>> i can't hear you, commissioner. >> you are frozen, commissioner chiu. and the contractors -- commissioner chiu, you were frozen for a moment so if you can -- >> commisioner chiu: so my question is, if you go back a slide here -- we look at the funds that go from public works to city contractors and then down to the sub-accounts and the park alliance. in the course of your review did you come across communication between public works and the contractors and the park alliance, you know, that covered the disbursement of these funds? >> we did not. the scope of our field work was pretty limited. part of that is by design, because we did not want to overstep our internal controls

on our reviews. i will certainly defer, you know, to the city attorney team that is conducting their investigations that may be able to speak to that specific indication. but in terms of what we looked at, we looked at the very high level kind of flow of the controls or the lack thereof. so we did not gather that information. >> commisioner chiu: great. thank you, so follow the money. >> that's right. >> chair ambrose: i had a similar set of questions though we can talk about whether or not we want to do questions as we go. so i understand what you're saying, mr. dell arosa that the investigations say interviews with the donors, for example, or interviews with the s.f. clean city which seems like another bundler of donations that then

get passed on to the park alliance. all of that is being handled by the investigations by the city attorney's office or d.a. and that the controller's office wasn't doing that kind of investigation? >> exactly. that is our understanding that that the more specific inquiries into the specific donors, as well as players within the city, are being handled by the city attorney's investigation. >> chair ambrose: okay. all right, that's helpful to know. thank you. if there aren't any other questions i'll ask him to proceed. oh, commissioner bush. >> commissioner bush: thank you. i wanted to know if you took a look at the boards of non-profits, because in a number of cases, including parks alliance, you have the non-profit board members who are a mix of lobbyists and city officials, or either appointees or in some cases elected

officials. so there's a mingling of factors that are involved in these actions. did you look at that? >> yes, through the chair, commissioner bush -- we did not on this particular one. how we basically scoped our assessments was looking at the specific allegations that were contained in the -- in the reports from -- from the f.b.i. we basically took that apart and then looked at the various kind of internal controls buckets of things. that certainly is a natural -- your question on the composition of the boards of these non-profits is certainly one that -- that is very related in terms of the larger picture. however, that wasn't -- that wasn't one of the things that was brought up in the -- in the f.b.i. reports and allegations.

it certainly is one that we're interested in in finding out as well. >> commissioner bush: i bring it up because if we're going to use this as a base for considering steps to inhibit corruption, i point out that san francisco's campaign and government code section 3.214, and the ethics commission regulations, 3.214-5, requires disclosure of quote "a professional relationship based on regular contact and a professional capacity, including regular contact and conducting volunteer and charitable activities." as far as i know, while this requirement for disclosure is in the law, there is no place anywhere where the disclosure can be found. so if you have city officials

who are on the boards of non-profits, there's no place that i know of, either in form 700 or anything else posted on web pages that discloses their relationship with other people who have business before the city. and i think that if you're going to proceed down this path, that that is something that you night want to take a look at. >> certainly. >> i have raised my hand. one more question. one of the points that the park alliance made was that they had reached out to d.p.w. to enter into an m.o.u. with them. can you answer the question is there an m.o.u. now between d.p.w. and the park alliance? are these sub-accounts still active? and is the departmental m.o.u.

with amenities such as the park alliance, is that a contract that gets approved in any kind of formal way by the mayor's office or the administrator for d.p.w., or in the case, say, if fmta has an m.o.u. with the park alliance, is that at the m.t.a. board? >> yep, on your first question, i am not aware of any -- any changes to the -- to the relationship between the parks alliance and -- and public works. but we definitely defer to the department or parks alliance on that question. we just have not followed up since our field work. and on the second one, i will be talking a little later about the various controls that could be implemented, including the establishment of m.o.u.s. we did find that, you know, some

of the friends of, including the -- the public -- the friends of the public library, is one that is a very well controlled in terms of the controls to make sure that there is transparency and visibility. and from my understanding the m.o.u. that they have with the non-profit that they work with, that the library works with the friends of non-profit, does go through their commission. so there is at least some public discussion as well as approval of that. that is just one example that we were able to find. >> okay, great. we're going to let you proceed now with your presentation because i know that you have more information. i'm sorry, commissioner bush. you're muted, commissioner bush. >> commissioner bush: thank you. i just wanted to revisit one

point. when we talk about mr. nuru and how he is soliciting funds from interested parties, including businesses that have contracts with the department, mr. nuru was also the staff member who made recommendations for rate setting boards on the fees that could be charged by recology. at the same time as he's making the recommendations that they could charge, he's asking recology to make contributions with his group. (please stand by) but not depar

currently must file the city's form sfec-3610 (b). this form is required of all elected officials, mayor, board of supervisors, d.a., treasurer, as well as commissioners, such as yourselves, who are in -- who are in city commissions and who are also required to file a form 700. one of the examples that we provided in that commissioner bush mentioned is that re-kolg. so the example we had, and this was based on information that we were able to obtain from the city attorneys public integrity

unit was that the 2019 office of the city administrator and public works holiday party that had solicited donations specifically for, a majority of the funds that were used for that specific holiday party were 80% of the $40,000 cost was from restricted sources, including recology. one of the key areas that we also looked at were the reporting requirements and the review to ensure that departments and department heads and city staff are complying with the certain requirements related to the payments. the recommendations that basically follow from these findings are that the city should amend the campaigning

government code of conduct to -- from soliciting donations from interested parties of their department unless specifically authorized by the board of supervisors. those authorized to solicit donations must file the behested payment form. we also emphasize that any consequences or failure to report, consequences should be made in terms of the failure to adhere to compliance with this code. another one of our recommendations as stemming from the findings are that departments should comply with the existing admin code section 10.100-305. this is basically the section in their admin code related to obtaining advance acceptance of gifts from outside sources greater than $10,000 for the department through non-city

organizations, including having an explicit language in that acceptance method of how those funds are going to be used. the other related recommendations are having an annual certification from the department heads that all of the gifts of goods, services and funds that they have received, and going through the approval process through the board of supervisors and complying with the timeliness of those certification reporting as already currently required and in our code. there's a couple of other ones, for us, the controller to ensure that there is sufficient oversight through annual auditing of the various entities are related to the findings, and a general recommendation that we put out there was for the city to review and strengthen the

consequences of non-compliance. this is by design a very general recommendation and basically we wanted to, as i mentioned before, defer to the subject-matter expert in terms of what those compliance and the consequences of those non-compliance should look like. the second set of findings that we had related to the interested party definition, and really the bottom line here was that the interested party definition for method payments does not clearly include all city contractors, and as you may already know, the ethics commission website defines or mentions that the donor only required to file form sfec-3620 if he or she is an interested party, and within that context an interested party refers to a person who is a party or participant to administrative enforcement

proceedings regarding permits, licenses and other entitlements. a party is someone who files the application or is the subject of the proceeding, and the participant has the financial interest in the decision. state regulations as we point out in our report specified that a licensed permit or other entitlement includes, and i'll quote this, all entitlements for land use, all contracts other than competitively bid labor or personal employment contracts in all franchises. really one of the key things that we're pointing out here is that the city's definition of an interested party does not explicitly include all city contracts, and so the following recommendation from this finding is for the ethics commission to at least consider or have -- consider revising or having --

providing a way to expand the definition of who is considered an interested party so that it includes all city contractors. as you may already know, the city's sunshine ordinance requires that no city official or employees shall accept the gift in the form of money, goods, services worth more than $100 unless the amount and source are disclosed. so as currently stands, as names are required to be disclosed and whether the donor has a financial interest in the city, according to the city attorney, a financial interest is any contract, grant, lease or request for license, permit or other entitlement with or pending before the city. -- various departments on the

various non-city organizations that they work with, including those that are friends of, and what we did find was that some of the -- those friends of organizations, the donations that they took from some entities were anonymously reported, so our recommendation here is for -- really for the department to comply with the sunshine ordinance section 67.29-6 where they are non-city organizations by not accepting any donation from anonymous donors for which they cannot identify the source of the funds. >> i do want to just stop you there for a minute just to make sure that we are clear on your recommendations. so as you point out, the sunshine ordinance was adopted by the voters, and so if we were to amend the sunshine ordinance we would have to go back to the voters. >> sure. >> as an aside, and i don't

expect an answer now, it would seem to me that the city could adopt a separate ordinance creating rules about city disclosure and not accepting -- the city departments not accepting donations for city purposes without amending the sunshine ordinance and having to go to the ballot, given that there is no new election for another two years, so deputy city attorney, if you could just think about that, and when we come back, we're going to be working on these issues every meeting in the foreseeable future, so i just would like to understand if there's another way to get at that without directly amending the sunshine ordinance, we can have an additive component. commissioner bush? you're muted, sorry. >> i'll get it right one of these times.

it may be that one route is to change what's approved and the statements of incompatible activities so that when a city official signs a statement of incompatible activities and they are in compliance with it, one of the things is that they do not accept contributions without all the disclosures that we're talking about. i have another question related to all of this. when you're looking at the non-profits and their relationship with city departments, you're looking at sort of standalone non-profits that exist for a specific period of time, but what about ones that are special? for example, the non-profit that was created for the americas cup, which brought in millions of dollars from interested parties, or the non-profit that was created for the super bowl, or the non-profit for the city

hall centennial? together those things came up to over $10 million coming into the city solicited by city officials and from entities that had city interest and city business. i don't see any mention of that type of non-profit in the report that you've done. can you take another crack at that part as well? >> commissioner bush, we mentioned really the scope that we took was the very relatively narrow one, and so the population of the non-profits that we were able to identify were those that were directly connected to the departments at the time of the survey. definitely quite aware of those two examples that you gave as non-profits were very specific timebound events, but for the purposes of what we looked at, it was those that had an

agreement for some sort of a relationship with the departments at the time of our survey. >> for example, the americas cup, the chair of that non-profit was also the chair of the rec and park commission, and a lot of what was being done had to do with control over rec and park properties along the waterfront, and so if there was a clear set of questions that could be raised about that. and so i guess what i'm looking at is while you haven't included that so far, one way or the other, either the commission on its own or with the control that sits this, we have a look at expanding our viewpoint to include those kinds of things. >> we'll certainly note that, commissioner. one of the things that we note in our preliminary assessment is that these are ongoing ones and

that we may add additional elements to the various assets of these reports as appropriate and as we continue our assessments. >> thank you. >> and to be clear, with respect to the commission's work and also, of course, as we saw in the agenda, the supervisor aimie and peskin have some legislation they are working on to address this definition of interested party, presumably when we work on that legislation we will draft it in a way that doesn't justify standing non-profit organizations to, as you pointed out, the special purpose then related non-profits that it created for city functions or city activities. so if there aren't any other --

let's see, commissioner chew, i see your hand up, and then controller office. >> thank you, chair ambrose. i had a question, in the broader report you had made an observation about -- at the department of public works. could you speak a little bit more to that? i don't know if you were able to look at or find any funds that were devoted to cultivating either, you know, greater awareness or training or, you know, compliance culture at the department of public works, and would suggest that you include something in that, in the recommendations, because i think that with rules and regulations and legislation that creates the structure of what needs to be complied with, but then there's also the second piece within any

organization you need to create an awareness of and a mindset and a culture of actually complying, and that if one is the other i think won't get us to where we want to get to. if you could speak to that a little bit, i would appreciate it, thank you. >> certainly, commissioner chew. tone at the top is certainly one of the recurring themes. i know i brought it up during the first presentation last time on the public works contracting. on this particular one, on gifts, it certainly is one that is also very evident. a couple of examples that we provided was -- i think i already mentioned the -- you know, the fact that the city administrator's office was aware of the efforts to obtain donations by mr. nuru for the contractors or the vendors for the holiday party is kind of one that speaks to the level of tone

at the top and the fact that those -- the awareness existed, made the action seemingly okay or allowable. other examples that we had was i think one of the ones that we mentioned was how some of the department of public works leadership were also encouraged by mr. nuru to obtain donations from various sources, including those that they do business with as part of their parks alliance public works subcontract. we're definitely going to roll in the recommendations from the tone at the top, because we see that this is kind of a larger topic that has very real implications in terms of what kinds of training do you provide to the department staff so that

they are aware of the various ethical rules as well as what unethical conduct looks like. those are things that we're definitely going to be including in our final report. i know that already based on the results of our first assessment, already efforts from on the departments and to address those tone at the top issues through possibly more rigorous training, reminder of the -- you know, the ethical obligations that they have. so we'll definitely include that tone at the top, which we know is one of the key root causes of some of the internal control weaknesses that we saw. >> so just so you may not be aware, but the ethics commission included in its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, current fiscal year that we're in, funds to fund ethics at work training

program. unfortunately it wasn't funded, and so -- but i think that in addition to strengthening the laws and regulations in this area, we also have -- do we have to have that training and compliance component as well in order for any of this to be effective. >> i'm going to go ahead and let the controller's office speak, and then i'm going to call on the commissioner who has her hand up. are either of you available to comment? >> yeah, thank you very much. i'll frame this as well, we really welcome all of these questions and we want to make sure that we do various follow-ups. again, this is the second of our preliminary assessment of which there are four additional work products that are coming, and so

to the degree that you have specific questions, we really do welcome that. a number of the recommendations, including the ones that were related to commissioner bush's recent question, our general recommendations that allow for not only our office but other oversight bodies who may wish to take other legislative and regulatory action sooner, and so for example, the recommendation number one, the focus of non-elected department heads of soliciting donations from parties and what that would look like can be -- voter legislation or board adoption legislation or other types of regulations or definitions. so this is just to re-amplify, we welcome all these questions. we won't have answers to every one today, and some of them we will defer to preserve the integrity of the investigation ongoing to the city attorney's office. so thank you very much. we'll answer whatever we can today. >> all right.

thank you, sir. and commissioner lee, you have the floor. >> thank you for the presentation. i just have a couple of questions. first of all, i think we need to be really careful with the definition of non-profit, because it's such a general term, and commissioner bush has mentioned there is a difference between non-profit that was set up for a single purpose, time sensitive project, versus the long-standing community benefit service organizations that have been serving the community, so i hope that moving forward as you make your presentation that you keep that in mind that we are

not talking about the non-profits who are delivering meals or are serving the homebound, isolated folks when we're talking about these investigations. secondly, in terms of disclosure and transparency, i hope that because it appears that in many departments they are supposed to have a disclosure of some sort, either m.o.u.s or they have received certain kinds of contributions, it's always just the organizations. so is there any way that the average -- let's just say if department of public works had disclosed that, they have received friends of, you know, communities of the bay, which

means nothing to the average reader, but if in the same area they put in board of officers of this organization, who are they, that would make a lot more connections to the general reader. and the third question i have, because these are non-profits, the folks making the donations, whether they are businesses, if they are vendors with the city department, they could technically claim their quote unquote donations as a charitable contribution. so they might be double dipping in terms of those contributions. is there any way that the controller's office can do a more investigation and see if that's the case? because that's another area that i think we should really look

at. >> good set of notes and questions, and actually that is a very good transition to i do have a couple more findings that i wanted to emphasize, and i think one of those set of recommendations do speak to commissioner lee's point on the controller's office conducting a series of more robust set of assessments and audits related to gifts received by the departments. >> okay. i'm going to get you proceed th then. go ahead. >> a few more, probably three or four more slides. so the next set of findings basically relates to how the sub-account lacked city oversight. as i mentioned, we did a

benchmarking of the various friends of accounts or organizations that work with our city departments, and we basically benchmarked what existed at public works with parks alliance, with the friends of public library, and the rec and parks, parks alliance relationship. we did fine with that for both of the other rec and park and library one. they did have an m.o.u. that delineated the relationship between the department and the non-profit organization. there were also very clear set of procedures to provide transparency related to any gifts that the department receives from the non-profit or from the friends of account, and there was an accept and expend provision in the contract itself. there's also a recognition of the compliance with the sunshine ordinance on the anonymous

donations, so that's definitely emphasized in the friends of public library. the set of recommendations that we basically had was for the city to require the departments to have an m.o.u., an established formal agreement with a non-city organizations to formalize the relationship, and we also including granting the controller the audit authority that would as commissioner lee pointed out would at least provide us with the authority to audit and go into the books to ensure that compliance as well as transparency and accountability measures are in place. and other reporting requirements as well to be included in that m.o.u., and having a clearly defined set of rules and

responsibilities. the last one that we just wanted to point out as part of our findings section relates to how those sub-accounts that public works had with parks alliance were used. so really just making a point that most of the funds that we reviewed were really for staff appreciation, and one of the key things that we engines many mentioned in -- that we mentioned in our report is that there's not always a budget line for this kind of an effort or a thing that city departments budget for, although we do acknowledge that such appreciation may have their own benefits. that's definitely well worth it, that could increase employee morale, recognize the good work of the staff. and so the recommendation that followed, basically, is for the city to make it easier for

departments to allocate or use certain funds for staff appreciation obviously within limit that have certain provisions on their explicit appropriations and purposes. as todd mentioned, this is the second in a series. we do have other ones that are in the pipeline. we are currently in the process of completing the third one on the ethical standards for commissioners, which we'll definitely -- i'm sure will be of interest to the ethics commission regarding the procurement authorities that they have, and so we are using the airport commission, given that that was the main focus of the nuru investigation. we also are working on a deliverable related to the department process that the city has. we're working on a review of the various policies and practices in award of permits and the

building inspection, and additional reviews and assessments may be included as we proceed with our assessments, and that a final report will basically put a bow on this whole series of assessments and recommendations with, of course -- from various entities, such as this commission. i just wanted to actually thank executive director pelham for the input that she provided, as well as the other city departments that also contributed in terms of information, in terms of review in making this assessment possible. that concludes my presentation. >> the chair: thank you, mr. della rosa. i will entertain questions from the commissioners about this last section of your presentation, and then i want to go to public comment.

so before i entertain questions, i do want to say if any members of the public intend to offer public comment for this item, they should dial in now and enter star 3 to be entered to the public comment queue. commissioners, do you have questions? if so, please indicate by raising your hand and i will call on you. and i see commissioner chiu, you had your hand up first, if you wanted to go ahead. >> yes, i just wanted to thank both men for the tremendous work that they have done on behalf of all of us here in san francisco, and appreciate you both coming today and look forward to upcoming reports and partnering with you to make greater transparency and government a reality here in san francisco. so thank you. >> the chair: thank you.

commissioner bush? >> yes, thank you. i also would like to echo the thoughts of appreciation for the work that y'all have done. you have certainly put us on the path. there's some ways to go, but you've put us in the right direction, and we haven't had that for a long time. in the process of doing your final report, i would appreciate it if you could include some information on what it will cost to do the work that you're outlining, because some of the things that you're proposing includes more extensive auditing and so forth, and i know that we're hard pressed at ethics to have funding for that kind of work, so if you have a proposal about what it would cost and what department should do the work, that would be important for us to have. thank you. >> all right, and commissioner lee, did i see your hand up there? >> thank you. thank you, i want to echo my

colleagues' sentiments. thank you so much for the really good report. i just have one question to mr. delarosa. do you plan to have a brief summary to keep the public informed, either through a press briefing or just a press release? if that, i think the commission would be more than happy to help you to disseminate your information. >> a good question, commissioner lee. we actually did issue as part of our public integrity work products we have been issuing press releases. we presented the same set of slides at the board of supervisors which is another set of avenue that we try to share with the public our findings and

recommendations. but we certainly will keep that in mind. >> thank you. >> the chair: and then i just had a question. i did get a chance to watch the government audit presentation, so thank you for that, but are there other commissions who are including you to present? because i would imagine each commissioner, or at least one of the larger department-related commissions, the ability to adopt their own policies, you know, consistent with, say, what the library commission did. is there a schedule for you to present to other commissions? >> yeah, the only one that's currently on the schedule is -- we'll be presenting the same slide deck on assessment number one and number two to the citizens general obligation bond oversight committee. they do serve as our audit review board for the city

services auditor of the controller's office. we'll be presenting before them on the 19th of october. as for the other commissions and departments, we have not yet, but we wouldn't be surprised if we were asked to also present. >> the chair: okay, all right, and with that, i'm going to turn back to the moderator and ask if we have any public comment on this item. hopefully it works. >> madam chair, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. for those already in hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. if you have just joined this meeting, we are currently on public discussion on the motion of agenda item no. 5, discussion and possible action on presentation by controllers office on controller's september 24, 2020 report. if you have not already done so, please press star 3 to be added

to the public comment queue. you will have three minutes to provide your public comment, six minutes if online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. madam chair, we do have a caller in the queue. welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now. >> yes, good morning, commissioners and director pelham. my name is dr. derrick kerr, a whistle-blower. while we appreciate the reviews conducted by the controller's office and the city attorney's office, these reports are limited hangouts. three issues have not been addressed. number one, why did our own watchdog agencies miss the rot? two, why does the f.b.i. so often lead the way in these

anti-corruption investigations? and third, why do city whistle-blowers go to the f.b.i. when we have three city agencies that supposedly investigate misconduct? last year the controller's whistle-blower program received 600 tips. 108 of them, or 18% r related to the departments of public works, public utilities, building inspections and the city administrator's office, all of this were implicated in the f.b.i. investigation. the city attorney's office has received some of these complaints, and likely the ethics commission also. how many of these complaints pointed to the very corruption

that the f.b.i. eventually uncovered? i have two suggestions. the controller's whistle-blower program, the city attorney's public integrity team and the ethics enforcement division should audit the complaints that they have received in the past five years to determine how many previously warned about this corruption. second, instead of solely promulgating more regulations and laws, laws that will not enforce themselves, why not encourage decent employees who report wrongdoing? that can be done by doing a better job investigating complaints. [bell ringing]. including retaliation complaints.

thank you very much. >> thank you very much, caller. are there any other public commenters in the queue? >> please stand by. madam chair, there are no more callers in the queue. >> the chair: i did want to say in response to the last public comment, we have i think extended an invitation to the controller's office whistle-blower program to make a presentation i believe at the next meeting in november where

we would have a public review of the controller's offices third quarter whistle-blower report and an opportunity to discuss among the commissioners and with the benefit of public comment, you know, some of what the caller was just raising, the fact that there is significant increase now in light of the work of the f.b.i. in the number of whistle-blower complaints that are coming in, that both the controller's office, the city attorney's office and the ethics commission have a shared responsibility to make sure that those whistle-blower complaints are heard and that the whistle-blowers are encouraged and feel protected. so that will be the focus of one of our agenda items at the meeting in november, and with that, if there are no -- i'm

sorry, commissioner bush? >> i would just like to add on to your comment about how things are enforced, that i think it's a strong recommendation for ethics and our laws to adopt the same kind of authority for private attorneys right of action to get enforcement which it appears the government itself is not doing enforcement. we do that already on environmental laws in san francisco. we have the same provisions when it comes to non-profit housing developers. we do not have it in ethics. it does exist at the state level and in los angeles and in other jurisdictions, so i think that would empower people who are filing complaints to go ahead and move forward with those complaints under the terms that exist in other provisions.

thank you. >> the chair: is there any other further comment? if not then i'm going to close public comment on the item. there are no further callers in the queue, correct, moderator? >> that is correct. >> the chair: all right, so public comment on agenda item no. 5 is closed. there is no action, although i will say this is to be continued. we look forward to the next report from the controller's office and to agendaizing and working on these issues with the board on the legislation that they have proposed to pick up on some of the controller's recommendations, and with that, actually, i want to call agenda item six which is discussion of the monthly staff policy report. patrick ford is going to make a presentation to us.

let me actually just stop for a moment. it is 11:00 right now. does everyone want to take just a five-minute break before we -- yes, there's a yes to that. okay, pat, i'm sorry to call you up, but we're going to come back at -- in five minutes and hear your presentation. thank you.. >> this is pat ford, you have the october policy report before you, so i won't rehash it, but glad to answer any questions about it. i guess i'll just point out you just heard a lot of really interesting recommendations from the controller's office based on their [indiscernible]. >> sorry, commissioner chiu, do you want to mute yourself? great, thanks. go ahead, pat. >> i'll definitely be continuing to review those and working with

mr. dell rosa on making sure we fully understand those recommendations and bringing them into this project, because i think they are very worthwhile recommendations. also just want to point out that next week we'll be having two interested persons meetings as part of the conflict of interest review project. the first one is on tuesday the 13th at noon. the second one is thursday the 15th at 3 p.m., and members of the public that want to join should email me at patrick.ford@sfgov.org, and you can also visit our website to see the announcements for the meetings, and it it has my email on it as well. i sent out the links to the meeting yesterday, as well as instructions on how to join the meetings. they will be conducted through web webex, just like this commission meeting is. and i would like tone courage any of -- to encourage any of

you on the commission to please join. it's been effective to have you present, only two at a time, but i think having one or two present has been really great in the past so you can interact with the interested persons if you'd like, or just listen to them. you just get an idea of what they are saying and i think it's been a very good part of the process. so again, those meetings are just coming tuesday the 13th at noon and thursday of next week at 3 p.m. just shoot me an email if you'd like to join. there's still room for commissioners. >> the chair: actually, on that note, i know that commissioner bush had expressed an interest in participating in the interested persons meeting on october 13, but because there can only be two participants, i wanted to know if not now then

soon if you can let me know whether or not you wanted to participate. i will defer to you. if there is nobody -- anyways, go ahead, commissioner. >> i would like to participate. i obviously want to observe the two commissioner persons limitation, so whatever day would permit -- is best, if there's room, i would love to participate. >> the chair: okay, so on that, as between the 13th at noon or the 15th at 3, is there one that's better for you? >> i think the 13th at noon. >> the chair: okay, then i'm going to send -- will participate at that meeting, and then i can do it on the 15th at three, but i'll defer if anyone else needs to. >> madam chair? >> commissioner lee? >> i also would like to

participate. the only problem is the only time i can make it was the noon one, so i wonder if commission chiu wouldn't mind switching. >> i'll switch. >> oh, thank you so much. >> yeah, i'll switch. >> thank you. >> the chair: okay, then that would be commissioner bush and lee for the meeting on the 13th. i'd like to do it, if it's okay with you, commissioner smith, so that would be commissioner chiu and myself on the meeting at the 15th at three. >> that's fine. i can't do it on the 15th, so thank you for asking. >> okay. all right, so that's the plan. and then, of course, this will be reported back on by pat ford at the agenda meeting in november so that whatever we learn from the stakeholder group meetings i'm sure he can summarize that and bring it back

to the commission. and with that i'm going to let you go back to your presentation, pat. >> great, thanks. yeah, that's wonderful that we'll have commissioners at the meetings, so thank you for being available for that. i think that's all i wanted to mention about the interested persons meetings. i guess also just that any participants, including commissioners, we will have the opportunity to share any ideas or proposals that they have. also any materials that they want to share, any studies, reports, journalism, anything they have. there will be a chat feature as part of the meeting that will enable people to share links to online content, so i'm hoping that that will be a new feature that we haven't previously had since the meetings have been in-person, so i'm curious to see how that will play out. it may be some good information sharing there.

also on the conflict of interest project, i think this was alluded to earlier in the meeting, but there is legislation pending now that was introduced by supervisors hainey and peskin that pertains to behested payments with some of the recommendations made by controller's office as part of their report. i think -- i'm hoping to get some feedback from folks out of the meetings next week on this legislation. i sent it out with the confirmation emails yesterday, and it would be eager to hear any feedback from commissioners too during that meeting. and i think it's probably a good approach potentially to do the project in a phased manner, similar to what was done for the public financing review where the first phase focused on more administrative features and how appeals and submissions are handled. the second phase touched on more

of the matching ratio, the amount of funds that candidates can get. i think it was helpful to break that up, and since there was pending legislation here, i think it might be useful to do behested payments as part of the first phase and then move on to the other topics that have been identified in the project, so it's another thing i'll be looking for feedback on at the meetings next week. >> through the chair, i have a question about the timing of this legislation. i'm happy to see that and hear that supervisor haney has reached out for staff feedback on proposed ordinance or proposed changes, and their timeline going to sync up with our interested persons meetings so we can solicit feedback and you were going to bring it back to us in november, is that a timeline that's going to allow

for ethics commission comments to be taken into account before the legislation goes to either committee or to the full board? >> i'm not entirely sure right now. i haven't been able to get good clarity yet from either of the sponsors' offices. i am scheduled to talk to an aide in supervisor haney's office on tuesday of next week, so hopefully we'll get some clarity as to what their plan is for this ordinance. i was advised by deputy city attorney shen that the commission's approval was not required for this ordinance, and i think i noted that in the report. >> [indiscernible]. >> his advice to me is not here today otherwise i would turn this to him right now, but his advice to me was that the language regarding the amendment that is in sifro and also in the conflict of interest code that says the commission's approval

is required, four fifths vote of the commission is required is not present in the chapter of the code that contains the behested payment rule, which is article 3 chapter 6 in his understanding of why that is is that sifro, the campaign finance reform ordinance and the conflict of interest code were created through the ballot measure process, so that has kind of default language saying that only those orders or super majority, both the ethics commission and the board, can amend those chapters. but since the bhested payment rules, article 3, chapter 6, was created through regular legislation, also created through a vote of the commission, that that doesn't have that language. so anyhow, that's why that is, and it adds this wrinkle that typically when the commission is working on legislation, it's with the understanding that the commission must approve it in

order for it to move forward. that's not the case here, and thus far i haven't been able to establish a plan with the sponsors as to what [indiscernible] they envision for the commission, but i do know that the aide from supervisor haney's office is planning to attend the interested persons meetings next week, so there definitely is a willingness on their part to work with the commission. they are definitely seeking feedback, and i hope that this timeline can accommodate the commission taking this up at the november meeting, and hopefully voting on it at the meeting too. or at least giving feedback at that meeting. >> can you clarify, i believe the legislation i assume was introduced on roll call and is subject to a 30-day hold, so when's the earliest that the board could have a committee hearing? and i see the deputy city attorney put her hand up. so jenica, did you want to

comment? you're on mute. there you go. >> thank you, chair ambrose. no, i'm just confirming that it is currently on a 30-day hold, and that happened -- i can pull it up and see, but it's -- oh, still pending, we definitely have some time to go on that. >> the chair: so then after the 30-day hold it would be calendared for any committee hearing, presumably government audit since that's one that supervisor haney and supervisor peskin are on. okay, in any event, even if the commission's vote is not required, i'm sure that we're free to make recommendations and certainly to take our own action, either endorsing the final version of legislation that they put forward and/or recommending amendments to it. but that does put a responsibility on us to track

this in-between meetings, and i think, pat, you're having the interested persons conversations, you know, in the next week will certainly facilitate that, but it does mean that the executive director should work with you in tracking that to see if a specific recommendation or action item needs to be put on calendar for the november -- i think our meeting is on november 11 -- no, november 13 or something. it's rather late next month. anyway, so if you can just make note of that, that if time is of the absence and we need to weigh in we'll need staff to initiate actual agenda item for the meeting in november so we can discuss it, take public comment and formulate our own opinion

about how best to proceed. commissioner bush? >> i'd like clarification from the city attorney and from you, chair ambrose, about whether or not if we have proposals for the commission to consider as recommended changes, can we circulate that as an email amongst ourselves, knowing it will become public, but nevertheless an opportunity rather than waiting for the next commission meeting to share thoughts that any of us may have about amendments or clarifications? >> unfortunately that would offend the brown act. i appreciate as a practical matter there's definitely an ability to doing that, but that is an out-of-session discussion. >> so it would have to be something that would be announced that we were going to circulate this? >> no, you just -- i'm sorry, go ahead. >> no, no, please, chair

ambrose. >> any communication between more than -- or three or more commissioners is a meeting and would have to be noticed and aagendaized and public comment invited. that isn't how we're going to be able to proceed. certainly if the staff initiates a proposal for endorsing the board's legislation or recommending amendments to it and they put it on the agenda and the public can see it, then we can all look at it and formulate our own opinions and actually two commissioners could talk about it, although there is some risk there because if one of those commissioners then talks to a third commissioner then you've got a meeting problem. so i think we need to assume that we will each independently

sort of follow what happens at the board on this in the next 30 days and that staff will initiate an agenda item for action that the public and we can individually consider, but that we're not going to be able to come up with a group plan between now and november, and frankly, i mean, if there was a 30-day hold at best they would be having, what the, the government audit meets the first and third thursday? so it seems to me unlikely that they're going to have a committee hearing before we have our meeting, but we'll just have to -- staff to track that for us. and for that matter, even if they have their committee hearing, we can still take an action on the 13th, if it is the 13th, i have that in my head,

yes, we can still take an action on the 13th because the matter clearly isn't going to get to the full board before the 13th of november. it seems that the supervisors had introduced if there are going to be open to our recommendations, i mean, it's a very complicated set of definitions and problems that we're trying to solve with respect to the defining interested parties and how to pick up contracts, et cetera. so you know, i feel reasonably certainly that they will be open to the ethics commission's recommendations, but -- >> commissioner, this is the problem with the finding is the parties, we need to have a good definition of what constitutes legislative activity, because the -- can go for three

purposes, charitable, educational or legislative, and legislative covers a multitude of concerns, including paying for your own staff. >> the chair: mm-hm. okay. noted and i think that's something that -- go ahead, jenica. you have your hand up. you're muted. >> i'm just looking at the board's website. legislation was introduced on september 29, and so if you're counting backwards from that date on a 30-day hold, we're looking at end of october, so -- i mean, it's not implausible that they could -- a goa would calendar for the following week, which would be prior to when the commission meets, but it's also not guaranteed. >> the chair: okay, so pat, when you talk to supervisor haney's staff, if you can ask them if that's their intention to hear it in committee the first week

of november or if they can wait until their meeting in the third week of november to have our input, or frankly, if they're going to -- if they had the hearing the first week in november, they are likely to introduce their own amendments to the legislation, because i'm sure they are getting feedback as well, and that would give us a chance to hear whatever revised legislation they are initiating and hear the comment at audit before we act. either way i'm assuming we're going to be able to cooperate with them and have advance notice and then it will go back and forth between all of us. anyway, thanks for that, jenica. i do want to get to public comment on this item. i know there's some commissioners who have to leave within the hour, so if you don't mind, if there are any members of the public that intend to

offer public comment for this item, they should dial in now and enter star 3 to be added to the public comment queue, and while we are waiting to see if there are any commenters in the queue, are there any further comments from the commissioners or questions for mr. ford? >> commissioner ambrose, i have a question for mr. ford on the form 700 filings. last time we spoke there were some very late stragglers on the form 700 filing. do we have an update on the number of outstanding form 700 filers? >> i personally don't. i would put that question to the executive director's report. i'm not sure if she has updated

statistics on filing this month. >> okay, well, when we get to that, that would be great. i would be interested to know how many are -- have yet to file and of the many who have not yet filed, you know, what number are -- have left their positions and have not filed a final form 700 and how many are currently sitting as commissioners or other appointees, board members who need to have filed but have not filed. thank you. >> the chair: moderator, are there any public comments in the queue? and you are muted. sna yes, thank you. madam chair, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. for those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted.

if you have just joined this meeting, we are currently on agenda item no. 6, discussion of monthly staff policy report. if you have not already done so, please press star 3 to be added to the public comment queue. you will have three minutes to provide your public comment, six minutes if you are online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. please stand by. madam chair, there are no callers in the queue. >> the chair: all right, thank you, moderator.

public comment is closed on agenda item 6. i will now call agenda item 7 which is discussion of the monthly staff enforcement report, and i will ask jeff pierce to make his presentation. thank you. >> thank you, chair ambrose and commissioners. how's the audio this time? i think last month i perceived that people might have had some trouble hearing me. it's okay today? >> the chair: yeah. thanks. >> all right, very good. so you've had the report -- you've had a chance to review it. i'll highlight just a couple of things and then turn it over to questions. one is we held over on this month report the notice about the lawn policy committee meeting we had presented last month that they had intended to review their streamlined administrative program at the state level and that that item had been continued from the

september meeting. they did hear that item this month two days ago on wednesday. it's on our agenda, for your interest. as you know, a year ago the enforcement division approached the commission with a list of improvements that we were making to our processes. at that time we asked for your approval that we move forward with a project to review and possibly expand our fixed penalty policy, which we would intend to implement as an expanded streamline resolution program, the commission did provide its approval for that project. the project is ongoing. regrettably it's been delayed for a number of reasons, including the pandemic, but our own proposed builds on the experience and the recommendations of the fppc. it will not be identical to

theirs because our -- are somewhat unique compared to their jurisdiction which covers the entire state. but we have continued to monitor any changes or proposals that the fppc has made to their own program so that we might be able to incorporate insights from their experience into how we propose our own ahead of implementing it. so i noted a handful of changes that the fppc is proposing to their program as a result of the implementing it over the last year and a half and their experience, and i'm happy to discuss any of those particular recommendations, but i would just note that with respect to our own program, the executive director has had time to review the proposal. i'm working again with senior investigator eric willett who is chiefly in charge of drafting the regulations that will govern

our program, and our next step, once eric and i are able to develop those amended drafts, would be to place those proposals in front of interested persons. our ambition will be to do that as we did a year ago after the election but before thanksgiving if we can move the draft along as quickly as that. if we're unable to do it before thanksgiving, we would hope to do it before the winter holidays. so that's an update on our fixed penalty policy. just as a reminder, we have an existing policy, but it covers only five types of violations, all in the campaign finance context. the goal of expanding it is to increase predictability and transparency for the regulated community, but also to enable staff to devote fewer resources

to smaller kinds of violations, violations that result in lesser public harm or which require less significant investigation in order to free up resources so staff can focus on investigating the matters that the commission has identified as being of greater value to the public. the proposal that eric has developed at this point includes not five violations in the campaign finance context but more than 40 violation types across all areas of the commission's enforcement jurisdiction with the exception of retaliation, which is unlikely to be suitable for streamline handling. any questions from the commission about this aspect of the report? >> the chair: i don't see any hands up. i do see a hand up.

commissioner bush? >> thank you very much. i have a couple of quick questions. in some cases an enforcement action is referred on to other departments, for example if it's signs that are on public transportation under sfmca that are political signs and they are not supposed to be up there, they go over to fmca. which departments are recipients of referred complaints that start off at ethics? and how is that handled? because in most cases, that is where an action that comes from a department that is headed by a political appointee as opposed to ethics which does not have at its head a political appointee. so there's a question that needs to be asked about that. the second question i have is if the spcc now has an online system for filing complaints

about advertisements having violated whatever provisions it may be, whether it has sufficient disclosure on it or whatever else it is, is there some way that having san francisco participate in their online review provides a greater flexibility for staff so that you don't have to take up staff looking at each individual mailer and so forth, but that that would become part of an online process? those are my two questions. >> thank you. to your first question, you know, you're right, we received many complaints that are outside of the jurisdiction of the ethics commission. typically investigators and i will work to identify which agency whether it's local or state or federal, might be a

more suitable entity to handle the allegations contained in that complaint, and then if we can identify which agency is better situated, we will either communicate with the complainant and direct them to which agency we think is better suited or we will make the referral ourselves and notify the complainant. your question regards whether that process is effective in light of potential political considerations that may exist among the entities who received those referrals. i don't know fully how to address that concern. i would note only that the law sets out who has jurisdiction over what kinds of violations, and so if there is, in fact, a political problem with certain entities handling certain kinds of violations, i believe that is more of a legislative problem

than a procedural problem and could require some sort of a legislative fix. >> in that regard, let's say ads that are placed are the way the rec and park facilities are used, so we go to the rec and park commission, and maybe the complaint would be about someone who was chair of the committee at the board who oversees the rec and park commission. so there's obviously a problem. so is there something where you could identify where those buckets are and then you can make the recommendation to the commission of whether we would like to see those -- that enforcement power given back to the ethics commission? >> can i interject with a follow-up question? if there's an allegation that

somebody, even if the underlying activity concerns the rec park or the airport commission, if it's a violation of the [indiscernible] then the ethics commission would have jurisdiction, we wouldn't just refer it to that other department, correct? so it's only where we don't have jurisdiction and there's an allegation that somebody is, you know, whatever, barbecuing in the park and they didn't have a permit for a barbecue, that's the kind of thing that we say you need to talk to rec park about that, right? i mean, if it's an ethical violation, we wouldn't just throw it over to the other department. >> i think that's true, but i have seen referrals to the departments for signs on buses that urged that somebody get elected. i've seen parks preserved. i've seen fire trucks festooned

with election signs. i've seen chiefs of police involved in election campaigns. >> those are good examples. just for clarification, wouldn't those, though, be rule violations, jeff? i mean, if -- just take the example of -- i don't know, maybe an ad on a city bus would violate mca policy but it wouldn't violate the code? i'm assuming -- i'm not going to assume. i'm going to ask you the question. >> you're right that there is a provision in the government ethics ordinance that prohibits political activity on city property. there is always a factual question, or maybe it's a legal question, about what qualifies that city property. we've had to look at this a time or two. we reviews in the past a

complaint about political advertisements not on the buses themselves but at bus stops, and what we determined in that instance was that that actually falls under an exception because it's public property that can be used for various purposes and that the advertising there is actually governed by a private third-party entity, but to your broader question, chair ambrose, you're correct. some of what commissioner bush is describing does regard prohibited political activity on city property, and if we were to confirm, yes, this qualifies as city property, or this was done on city time or to commissioner bush's other point if a public official appeared in uniform, that would be something that we could retain within our

jurisdiction by following the charter's process we would, of course, refer it to the city attorney and the district attorney for their review before we could proceed with an internal investigation. >> mm-hm. okay. thank you for clarifying that for me. i just wanted to understand what -- that we could -- if we had jurisdiction, we are not going to surrender our jurisdiction to the other department. it's just where these are the facts or we don't have jurisdictions. i'm looking, commissioner bush, can we proceed? because i know there are two other elements of your report, mr. pierce, that i've -- >> i just had the remaining question about the ftpc. >> oh, right, go ahead. >> it's an interesting idea. i'm happy to speak with the

state agency about whether the residents or concerned citizens of san francisco might host advertisements to their -- to that state system. i don't see anything that would present it, but i don't know what kind of coordination might take place between the state office and our own. i would note two things. one is that we can easily receive complaints about disclaimer violations via email, and that in the past. you know, citizens will take photographs and send them to us with a question about whether it's compliant. but the second thing i would note is that the commission has for more than a year signalled that it believes that disclaimer violations are low priority compared to some other things that the enforcement division could be spending time on. so if your point is that the state agency might handle that

aspect of our jurisdiction on our behalf, that would require some kind of an m.o.u. and a clearly defined relationship, and probably a contract and payments to the state agency to handle that. >> i guess the bottom line is [indiscernible]. because i see enforcement actions that seem to circle around disclosures, either the size or the type or whether or not it has the information about whether information can be found in any of -- all those things have to do with what's printed on door hangers and mailers and other ads. >> if we spent no time on those complaints, certainly it would save staff time. an alternative would be that if and when we get the streamline administrative resolution

program implemented, in theory we could handle those on an accelerated timeline, but that remains to be seen. >> thank you. >> i wanted to ask, so the state system is for -- is some kind of software program that i have that assume allows them to visually check compliance with state law, or is the program set up so it could determine whether or not the ads in san francisco complied with san francisco law? >> it's set up based on state laws, but it has an option of arrangements with local governments to enforce local policy as well. >> mm-hm. okay. >> announced the change at the program to cut out local governments to file complaints. >> the chair: okay.

actually, then, director if you and mr. pierce could find out, i know we'd have to have an m.o.u. is what you're saying or maybe potentially they're going to generously set up programs for local jurisdictions and not large local government for participating in that, but if you can just poke around and see what the tpcc offers on that i think it would be curious, because part of the reason for streamlining on the violations side is because it's not the most egregious affront to our ethics laws, but at the same time we don't want anyone to think that we don't have time to make sure that they are doing the disclosure that we very carefully, you know, set out as our requirement. so if there is a quick and dirty way, or maybe there's that software or something that we could put in a future budget for

our own, you know, sort of personal use and control, but so when you get a chance, if you can look at that some more. i did want to -- if we can move on to the discussion about your -- the investigations that are referred to other departments and your timeline, so mr. pierce, if you could talk about that? >> thank you, chair ambrose, yes. you're aware that we've added this to the enforcement report at the request of commissioner bush. again, the charter requires the ethics commission to refer to the city attorney and district attorney information in its possession that gives reason to believe that violation of law that's occurred. so essentially any time commission staff want to open an investigation, we review a complaint or facts alleged, sometimes those complaints are staff generated, they are

internal, we conduct a preliminary analysis, and we write up a review of what we believe the violations to include, and then we send that analysis along with any underlying information to our counterpart, to the city attorney's office and district attorney's office. the charter provides that those offices can effectively pluck those complaints up and conduct an investigation of their own. we, the commission, in january of '17 adopted a policy that partially governs what this process may look like. so at that time the commission reviewed the landscape and determined that effectively what we would do would be we would -- any time the city attorney or district attorney requested that we suspend our own investigation, sort of to stay out of their way, we would do so

for 90 days, and then we would re-evaluate whether we might continue to do so. the reason that we might suspend our own investigation is -- well, there's a couple of reasons. one would be that there are sometimes due process considerations that more heavily govern in the criminal jurisdictions and in the civil or administrative, and so it may happen that the -- an administrative agency or a civil agency, like the city attorney's office, can obtain evidence that the district attorney cannot and must not obtain. so if the district attorney wants to move forward with an investigation, we always have to be sensitive to what those constitutional protections entail, and we also have to understand that the district attorney may wish to retain

primary access to witnesses. they may wish to ensure that the integrity of their investigation is not in some sense disrupted by something that another agency is attempting to do. we also recognize that in the hierarchy of liability arguably criminal liability is the most severe liability after that and administrative liability being the least severe, so we acknowledge that when the city attorney or district attorney expresses an interest in a matter, it may be that the public's interest is better vindicated by allowing those offices to pursue those higher forms of liability. this month's report identifies three matters that remain on hold, one with the city attorney and one with the district attorney. i would note that that's three out of a total of 66 matters on the enforcement division's

investigative docket. one of those you'll have seen is still within that 90-day window, but two of them obviously have exceeded that window, one with the district attorney being nine months old, another with the city attorney being 22 months old. we have to, as i mentioned, evaluate on an ongoing basis whether it makes sense for us to resume our own administrative process after those 90 days expire or whether there are reasons why we might continue to stand down. that's a case-by-case analysis. it's a consideration that we make in ongoing conversation with our counterparts in those offices, and it's an ongoing conversation that i have with the executive director, and ultimately we have to decide in consideration of all the circumstances does it make sense for the ethics commission to invest resources on a matter that one of those offices is still investigating actively

investigating and hopes to pursue liability for these three matters, well the two anyway that exceed the 90-day window. we have determined that at this point it is not necessary for the commission to duplicate resources, and in fact it may be preferable for the commission not to disrupt efforts or originating in those offices, but that calculus could change. i would note that there are other investigative holds not reflected in this report for which the ethics commission, for which staff have decided those offices are still investigating but it's time for us to move forward with our own, so because those are not -- because we don't consider those to be on hold, those are not reflected on this list, but there are circumstances in which we make that determination.

>> the chair: i understand the points that you're making about the hierarchy of enforcement actions as between criminal and then of course civil action versus the misdemeanor administrative penalty that we can impose. i also understand really that as a city employee if these investigations involve city employees that a city employee can be required in an interview to incriminate themselves as part of their employment, whereas certainly if there's a criminal prosecution or investigation proceeding, that's a whole different set of due process referrals, and even more the other point that you mentioned, because it's something that i certainly

encountered when there were f.b.i. or district attorney investigations related to the departments that i was working on that when there is a criminal or civil investigation and witnesses that are being interviewed, the last thing that they want is for administrative interview to be occurring simultaneously where potential witness is clued in to a line of questioning before the d.a. or the city attorney or the f.b.i. have an opportunity to interrogate that witness. and so juggling all of that, i assume what you're telling us is that you are in communication with these other entities, the d.a. and the city attorney's office, if not the f.b.i., anyway, and sizing up the cost benefit or the respective role.

okay, i just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that it is a -- there's a balancing there between the commission rigorously enforcing more law and [indiscernible] these other entities who also have enforcement responsibilities be able conduct their report. so commissioner bush? >> i'd like to suggest that before a decision is made that there be an executive session of the committee to hear what the issues are so that we have a voice in this process. >> the chair: all right. i'm going to ask the deputy city attorney, not now, but can you work with the executive director and find out whether or not we could calendar an executive session on any of the pending

investigations at the 90-day point decision? so if you can just talk to director pelham about how something like that could be captured under the sunshine ordinance? i am now -- i want to see if any other commissioners have their hands up. [indiscernible]. presentation? >> sure. just a brief update for you on the status of accounts before the bureau of delinquent revenue. i know that's been a topic of online interest with the commission. the question came up at last month's meeting whether any of these accounts might expire, because i had described a posture that the bureau of delinquent revenue has adopted where in light of the economic situation they have taken a kind of softer approach to collecting

on these accounts. and commissioner chiu raised a concern that we may lose our chance to get our hands on any of these debts. as it turns out, one of those accounts, commissioner chiu, did in fact expire. you may have seen it. that's the one related to isabelle erbano. my understanding from conversation with the bureau is that typically the statute of limitations is set by our own laws, but the campaign and governmental [indiscernible], the campaign finance reform ordinance sets a four-year statute of limitations to collect on any debts. the other ordinances, as far as i can tell, are kind of silent about a specific statute of limitations for collection purposes as opposed to a statute of limitations for establishing liability in the first instance. the erbano matter was a lobbyist matter, not a campaign finance matter, and so the bureau is

working with its legal division to identify what those limitations are and whether any of the other matters are coming up to possible expiration. so i've asked that they come back to us at their first ability to identify any other accounts that are, say, within six months of expiring, and so they are working with their legal staff to do that. one last thing that i could say about this is that the practice of the bureau is, as they call it, to archive a debt that has expired. their view of this is that although the statute of limitations has passed, it does not mean that that money is no longer owed to the city. so they archive the debt and they keep it on file. the bureau and the ethics commission cannot take any actions to collect on that debt,

and the bureau interprets that pretty strictly. they believe that even a phone call would violate that prohibition. nevertheless, if a debtor like ms. erbano owed money in some other capacity, and if for whatever reason she were to overpay on that other account, because the bureau would have archived this debt, the bureau could offset the overpayment from the other account and apply it to her debt in this circumstance. so we can't collect the money. we can't take collection actions, but we could keep money that comes into the city, nevertheless. and i know that that sounds kind of abstract and maybe even improbable, but they assured me that that happens on a somewhat

regular basis. that's the status of those debts, but i'm happy to answer questions about any of them. >> okay, i see commissioner lee, your hand is up so i'm going to recognize you, commissioner lee. >> thank you, madam chair, and thank you, mr. pierce. i have a question. for some of these people who owe money, they are still active in the political or community circles in the bay area or in the city. have you considered maybe shaming them is a heavy word, but it seems like they continue to make a living while shunning their responsibility of repaying the city the money they are owed. so have you considered maybe this question to the city

attorney's office, maybe through press briefings or, you know, whenever you send out, you know, regularly? because it's public information, just let them know that, hey, you just cannot ignore what you are responsible for. because that can also send a deterrent to others that we take these things seriously, because these are taxpayers' money, and we do have the responsibility to make sure that they abide by these rules and laws, and it's very frustrating that i've been here for over two years and it's the same people, same response. basically ignoring the many, many you know, professional requests for them to do the right thing. >> i share your frustration, commissioner lee, and i

appreciate the advice about alternative remedies here. i think naming and shaming would be fair. i do think that featuring them on this monthly report is one way that we name and shame those individuals. i'm aware that this month one of these debtors discovered their name on this list for the first time and as a result of that reached out, but i'm very happy to explore other opportunities to promote the delinquency of those accounts and these individuals. >> chair ambrose, if i may, i would echo commissioner lee's comments. strengthening our efforts to try and collect certainly the time that i have been on the

commission we have attempted to collect from a number of these people, and so i have two [indiscernible]. highlight the outstanding delinquencies of these debts is what about including it in press releases every month? at the end of the interested persons list and post it to our website. you know, here is a list of people who are -- have fees outstanding to the commission, and then second is far be it for me to tell the bureau of -- how the bureau is handling all of these things, but the list only seems to grow longer, and the dates, the referral date, you know, we've got one going back to 2013, 2015, 2016, and it doesn't seem to be very

effective. so my question is, you know, what is there beyond -- i mean, we can't control what happens at the bureau, but what can we at the ethics commission do to try and expedite this to get a faster and more effective use of time and energy to be able to collect on a hundred plus thousand dollars worth of fees and penalties? >> thank you, commissioner chiu. i'm happy to explore the possibility of press releases with the executive director. i agree that the list does appear to get longer. i would note that when a debtor pays we remove them from the list. so it may not be reflected in every month report that sometimes the bureau does collect. in the last -- i'm looking at their update. i'm not 100% sure what the

timeline might be, but i think in roughly the last six months the bureau has collected on the ethics commission behalf nearly $6,000 in unpaid debts, so there is some success from that office, but i agree that many of these debtors have been on this list for a long time. this month's report does note a number of stance where the staff of the bureau are considering whether to move forward with small chaims actions, so i mentioned that -- claims action, so i mentioned that during the pandemic the bureau has adopted this soft approach where they don't want to make people's lives unduly difficult, but staff have noted a number of instances where they're going to speak with management and ultimately confer with the ethics commission about whether to move forward with any of those small claims matters. we could at the same time confer with the bureau about whether we want to take back any of the other accounts and what that would look like. i would only note that, you

know, effectively our staff are not as equipped as the bureau at the process of debt collection, and it would require diverting investigative resources to pursue these debts. but one consideration could be that the commission has to be increasingly thoughtful about the size of the penalty that it assesses. in some of these instances we do provide under our regulations that a respondent who might be unable to pay can attempt to demonstrate to the commission that inability. we have noted in some of our more recent stipulations over the last year or two instances where a respondent has partially demonstrated that inability, and so we have diminished the penalty amount to reflect the reality of their financial situation, but ultimately what i

acknowledge we want is not merely to assess penalties but to have respondents pay those penalties, and so we can be thinking at a sort of policy level about whether our penalties are commence rate with the ability of people to pay. so i appreciate the feedback, and i imagine that the streamline program will generate more stipulations of smaller amounts and that more likely than not respondents who are handled through the streamline program will be in a position to pay those penalties, but again, i can't 100% predict that. >> thank you. >> you're muted, commissioner bush. >> chair ambrose? >> the chair: thank you. i -- just a minute, commissioner

bush. i'm going to do the announcement for public comment so we can get people in the queue, and then i'll turn to you while we're waiting to see if anybody calls in. so on this agenda item no. 7, if any members of the public intend to offer public comment for this item, they should dial in now and enter star 3 to be added to the public comment queue, and while we're waiting to see, moderator, are there any callers in the queue, commissioner bush, we can take your comment. >> thank you. i'd like to associate myself with commissioner chiu and commissioner lee on enforcement alternatives. one is to inform any of the city officials who have made [indiscernible] people who are in debt and have not paid but are able obligated to pay. that would be the board of supervisors, the assessor, the city attorney, the district

attorney. are any of the departments that have advisory [indiscernible]. so i think in the past i have seen people who were found to have been been in violation and while all of that was being worked out [indiscernible] free to be appointed. for example, the mayor could appoint somebody and put them back on. so that's one thing. and the second thing is that if somebody is having to get a license from the city, so if the example, a lobbyist who has to then renew their ability to lobby and pay the lobby fees, at that time they should have to pay any backfees that they owe as well. those are my suggestions. >> thanks. if you can look into that, mr. pierce. i would note of the 100,000 so

we have outstanding through the collection efforts, about 75,000 of that is lynnette sweet and the bankruptcy matter that's pending, and i'm assuming, mr. pierce, that you're watching that closely, because i believe from the file that we saw earlier that there are potentially assets there in bankruptcy that may be available to satisfy that debt, so making sure that the statute of limitations doesn't run before -- or however that intersects with the bankruptcy proceedings. with that, moderator, do we have any commentors in the queue? you're muted, ronald. sorry. >> okay, hello. madam chair, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. for those already on hold, please continue to wait until

the system indicates you have been unmuted. i do want to remind all panel members, if you are not speaking right now, can you please mute yourself, because there is a lot of feedback right now. thank you. for those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicates you have been unmuted. if you have just joined this meeting, we are currently on public discussion on the agenda item 7, discussion of monthly staff enforcement reports. if you have not already done so, please press star 3 to be added to the public comment queue. you will have three minutes to provide your public comment, six minutes if you're online with an interpreter. you will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. please stand by.

madam chair, we have no callers in the queue. and you are on mute, chair ambrose. >> the chair: you told me to mute myself, thank you. [laughter] public comment on agenda item no. 7 is closed, and i'm going to move on to agenda item no. 8, discussion of executive director's report and update of various programatic and operational highlights of ethics commission staff activities since the commission's previous meeting. before you start, director pelham, i did want to note, i believe commissioner chiu you had informed us that you had to leave the meeting at 12:30. i don't know -- that's correct? okay. all right. so i'm assuming the other three commissioners, along with me, are able to hang in there, so we'll retain the quorum, and

then with that, director pelham, please proceed. >> thanks. thank you, chair ambrose. the report -- i can be brief. i realize it's been a long morning, but i wanted to highlight several items from the report. in connection with the discussion earlier today on the controller's office assessment, the discussion around behested payments came up as part of that report. this executive director's report also notes that since the last commission meeting on the day that the controller's report was issued the mayor's office issued a directive, executive director 20-02 that directed department heads to comply with the city's behested payments reporting requirements that apply to city elected officials and members of boards and commissions that are established in section 3.6-10 of the campaign and governmental conduct code. we -- on receiving that

directive -- internally met and explored what that filing process would look like for department heads as the directive took effect immediately. we identified the process as the one that currently exists for board commission members, so as president, department heads are able to comply with the mayoral executive directive by going to the website under compliance tab and following through to behested payments information and behested payment disclosure pages for public who want to see what is being filed pursuant to that executive directive. we provided information back to the mayor's department, how they plan to interpret the executive directive, but we're happy to have that tool available at present and have our web pages updated at present so that department has -- follow the directive that was issued on the 24th of september.

separately on the public financing front, we have now 16 of the 22 board of supervisors candidates who opted to participate in the public financing program all qualified to be receiving public funds. we have a total as of november -- excuse me, as of october 2 of roughly $2.7 million that candidates have now qualified to receive. i think we're all very excited about looking back on this election experience following the election to really assess and hear from the candidates about the program and how they used it and how they felt the new provisions may have been helpful. this is over 70% participation rate, which is the highest i believe we've seen in the city history of this program, so we're going to want to learn as much as we can from this process. i'm sure you'll be hearing more from us about that in the months to come, but we were happy to see that participation and we'll be monitoring and -- those funds after the election as required by state law.

there was one note that i included in this report as well. one of the candidates who had submitted timely and by the deadline, we -- i issued a revised determination following my initial determination due to information that was not presented to the committee at the time of their filing, so as detailed in my report, the revised -- my amended or revised final determination provided that that candidate did in fact follow public funds, so she's included in one of those 16 members of candidates running for board of supervisors who has now qualified as well. that information is all updated on our web pages that you'll see in the report. that's using our dashboard, so people can go to that tab and look at find out what's happening on the public finances front. the budget, as you all know by now, was adopted on october 1 and signed by the mayor, so we have been proceeding to put

together our clear hiring plan as best as anything will clear over the next few months due to the continuing impacts of the city due to the covid pandemic and the city's emergency response. i spent a bit of time detailing in this report for your information the starting point for our hiring plan. we have a position vacancy. we know what the amount of money is that we're going to be working with the department of human resources to try and fill those positions on an expedited basis, and also highlighted a rather detailed list of the various stages of the process that governs the hiring process for civil service positions and to some extent the exemption positions as well. [please stand by]

>> we'll continue to keep you

updated. and then lastly, commissioner chiu had asked the question about the form 700 filing process and how many officials have now filed their statements that were not filed timely on june 1. we now, as i -- as of today have ten officials who -- nine of whom did not file their form 700 timely, and one of them did not file their ethics and sunshine training certification timely, so there are ten individuals who are not yet in compliance, and the next step, as we had mentioned next month, would be at this stage to refer them to enforcement if further action may be warranted. so that's what's happening on that, and i'm happy to answer any further questions you have for me. >> thank you, director pelham, and i'm going to recognize

commissioner bush -- or did you take your handout? >> no, i meant to have it up. one of the things that i'm interested about is making lists for hiring purposes. >> well, the report that i've included tries to identify the steps that will be necessary for us to hire the positions that we have to the extent that they're civil service positions. one of the things that we want to cover with them is have any of those processes changed because of the pandemic is happening? are there extra protocols in place that we can take advantage of? so we're trying to work with

the team to come up with the most expedited hiring process that we can develop. we're hoping that that will allow us to do multiple hirings at the same time. and the other thing i would emphasize from this list is the various steps included in the hiring process can be started from scratch. our office has generally started from scratch in putting the kinds of job selections that we're putting together. we can take that approach, and maybe it's something we could consider, but generally, we've put together the types of job descriptions that let people know, this is what you're going to be working on in our office. that requires a whole stream of analysis and vetting and testing to make sure that we

have minimum qualifications stated correctly and strongly, and standard knowledge, skills, and abilities stated as clearly as possible so we can design the essay questions and other things as effectively as possible to describe what the person will be doing. it's not a swift process, but it's something that we have a lot of experience with. we're hoping that what we have in place are building blocks. we'll be able to bring in next week a portfolio, here's what we've done so far, and we want to do this as quickly as possible. and we're working with d.h.r. in order to have progress on these hirings because as you know, we will not be able to do what we have to do unless we have these positions filled,

and that's critical. and that's our top organizational priority, as you know. >> i'm glad you're tailoring that to the situation we have at ethics. one of the things that's been circulating is a preapproved list of people, and they did not reach out beyond san francisco, for example. they didn't go to the l.a. ethics commission or other agencies that have similar duties to ask if they had people who would like to apply for our jobs. is that being done now? >> absolutely. we've done that since day one, since i joined the commission. 21 days seemed a reasonable amount of time to think that we could get the word out broadly.

we circulate notices as broadly as we can, and i think it's something that's important to keep our eye on, as well. we want to make sure that we're getting the most diverse group of people that we can. it does take thought to not just put it in the usual suspect places but really spread the word to audiences, to schools, to organizations, community groups that are very much invested in the work that this commission does, and so we want to reach out as soon as possible with the notices that we have [inaudible]. >> that's how we got you hired. do we have any information on solicitation for contributions by commissioners and others for [inaudible] san francisco? >> i'm sorry. could you repeat the question? >> in the past, we've raised the question about soliciting contributions to help pay for

things -- contributions of services, perhaps, or advisory groups and creations to assist us in our duties. >> i do not have more information to report you for this month. i can tell you that we started at the staff level doing research on models, funding models that might exist elsewhere, and steven and i have been doing research to see what it might look like in the city, but i expect that we're going to have more at the november meeting. >> you might try the department of elections. they have advisory committees. >> i can follow up with john [inaudible] on that. thanks. >> i want to go ahead, actually, and read the notice of the invitation for public comment, and then, if there are other commissioners that have questions, we can take that there. if there are members of the

public who wish to enter public comment for this item 8, director's report, they should press star, three to be entered into the comment queue, so moderator, let us know if there are any public commenters in the queue, and i did want to ask really quickly, director pelham, on the mayor's -- on the executive director's report, [inaudible] does that also apply to designees in the department? so the director of the department has delegated to their communications director or somebody to go out and solicit funds for some department event, is that the department head? i mean, is any solicitation for

anything for a departmental activity attributable to the department head or, if it's the communications director to solicitations? i don't know if you know that off the top of your head, but if it's something that, when we come back, we can look at the legislation issues itself. what we're trying to get to on that i think is not what, you know, jane doe, department head is behesting as payment but who are the donors who have business before that department who are being hit up for money that benefits the department? so it's not who's asking, but it's the fact that somebody is asking on behalf of the department that's regulating the donor that's giving the money. so any way, if you can reflect

on that. >> yeah. happy to. we can certainly relay that information to the mayor's team. we've been looking at the language when it came out. there were some places where it doesn't make sense, the language that's currently written about it. it's not clear how to [inaudible] department heads, so we highlighted some of that information. but as i said it, it speaks to the director's -- the department director's activities, not staff. that may be something that they want to expand on further so that it takes sense, referring to the consent. that's something we will refer to the mayor's office department team. >> you know, because the same issue is there with the board of supervisors legislation. i mean, just in drosting, start with what is the problem that you want to solve, and