what comes up are being able to ask on the june ballot and puts at risk what happens in november that the public is entitled to know what are the obstacles. >> if i can respond. yes, i can certainly try to follow up with the commission to see what i can share confidential. >> commissioner: and the basis

for the rules in the law. >> certainly, commissioner bush. i understand as much as possible i will provide the legal notations. >> commissioner: thank you. >> chairman: okay. if there's no more questions. thank you, deputy city attorney schenn. let's go to public comment, please. >> thank you, madam chair. we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue. for members of the public joining us remotely and if you joined the meeting earlier, now's the time to get in line to speak. if you have not already, press star three to raise your hand. it's important you press star three only once. it will move you out of the public comment line and back into listening mode. it's important you call from a quiet location. we also ask that you please address your comments to the

commission as a whole and not to individual members. please stand by. madam chair, we have two callers in the queue. >> caller: welcome, caller, your three minutes begins now. hello, commissioners. i note that you receiveded our letter, but i'll go ahead and read it now dear commissioners thanks so commission staff for considering the amendments in today's agenda, specifically the focusing of liability on gift receivers and removing liability from gift givers.

for those who are most familiar with the law or otherwise good actors with exceptions from lobbyists will diminish the effectiveness of the law, but potentially improve upon it by making clear where responsibilities lie and i look forward to forwarding these much needed san francisco ethics laws. thank you for your dedicated and hard work on this important legislation. thank you.

>> chairman: thank you. >> please stand by. madam chair, we have one more caller in the queue. welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now. >> caller: good morning commissioners. my name is raffle remmington. i think without looking at all of the proposals for the ballot measure it's a naked and raw exercise of white supremacy. i also believe the focus should be on bribery.

the past conversation about tickets or side shows and wholly not jermaine to the issues. no one has been arrested or accused of misusing tickets. this is in search of a problem. two comp tickets are the industry standard as well as promoting the healthy life for our keep in mind when we attend these events, we attend as professionals carrying our signs. the ballot measure will have a harmful impact on disenfranchised communities by limiting government access it

feels like to commissioner bush's good faith comment, this is not an exercise of good faith and i think you need to examine that if we're going to make any progress. >> chairman: thank you. >> please stand by. we have one more caller in the queue. welcome, caller.

your three minutes begins now. >> caller: hi commissioners. this is debbie lurman. we appreciate the proposed amendments to eliminate liability for members of the public which would still allow enforcement of bribery laws. changes still don't fully address our concerns. we still believe the measure goes too far in prohibiting gifts that don't rise to the level of corruption and its overly broad definition of restricted sources. our biggest concern continues to be the limits on comp tickets to nonprofit fundraisers. that would allow and officials that make a clear case for artist and exhibit performances but it's unclear whether the standard would recognize the benefits above the city and community based organizations and attended events held by san francisco and human service

nonprofits. by participating in these in supporting by front line service providers. historically, city policy has been to underfund these contracts and expect nonprofits to secure additional funding. right now, we're facing a recruitment and retention crisis that threatens nonprofits' ability to meet their contractual outcomes or take on. the attendance at these events or learn about new organizations that they could be funding including both large organizations that have to raise millions of dollars from saul p.b.o.s struggling for

it's extremely unwe're also skeptical at mere attendance of an event would influence an official's decision around rewarding contracts. those decisions are subject to extensive r.f.p. and review processes. we urge you to adopt language that allows attendance at events and recognizes they are a necessary part of public officials' jobs. secondly, even without liability, this law would have chilling impacts on the relationships between public officials and members of the public and threaten the reputation of the person who offers to give a gift. we are troubled at the broad definition of restricted sources even without liability. the mere expression of policy

-- >> your three minutes has expired. >> chairman: thank you. do i have anymore callers on the queue? >> please stand by. madam chair, there's no further callers in the queue. >> chairman: okay. public comment on agenda item number six is closed. the let us proceed on a vote on a motion made by commissioner chiu seconded by commissioner ramano which directs the ethics commission staff for activities with the city partners including the d.h.r. as well as continued engagement and outreach with our stakeholders

and other interested persons. roll call, please. >> commissioner: can we comment before roll call? >> chairman: comment. i thought we. okay. >> commissioner: i'd just like to point out that action by the staff to come up with proposals follows against twelve city officials or those seeking action by the city. so it's not creating a response to a nonexistent situation. we have a very compelling case of criminal charges tending in the ports involving senior city officials. not all of them, but some of

them are senior city officials. and so our actions are designed to address what emerged in that process and what emerged did include gifts and private arrangements that took place that provided a benefit. if not to the person, to the organization. >> chairman: thank you. let's proceed to role call, please. >> [roll call] madam chair, with four members present and voting, you have four votes in the affirmative and zero votes opposed. the motion is approved unanimously.

>> chairman: thank you. and thank you all my fellow commissioners. we now proceed to agenda item seven which is the executive director's report in a programatic operational highlights of ethics commission staff activities since the commission's previous meeting. director, please. >> director: thank you, chair lee. this month's report is fairly brief and straight forward. you know that we are all resuming our onsite public hybrid meetings here in city hall and others have remarked today it's really wonderful to see colleagues live and in person and so we are appreciative of your coordination and cooperation with this new hybrid process and with our city partners at sfgov tv, department of technology and, of course, the

public for engaging us online and also now availably back here at city hall. so we look forward to seeing folks at their convenience, but welcome their participation either way. we are in the middle as you know of our annual statement of economic interest filing process throughout california public officials are required to file their annual disclosure statements to help avoid conflicts of interest and to provide transparency about the interest we hold that could be potentially affected by the work that we do and so this year you'll recall that we have a new online filing process for all of the city's designated filers who are designated by their departments under the law in their conflicts of interest code for their departments. we at present, i think we are just about over the 50% mark with over 2,500 filers and we have two weeks to go. so we are working in our office and with filing officials throughout city departments to make sure that folks have the information that they need.

yesterday, was a banner day for us. our compliance team had the third information session this season and there were over 150 participants. and so these are remote sessions, but we're up almost to 300 people who have participated in one of our information sessions. we're very much looking forward to getting feedback. good, bad, or otherwise about how people found it so we can continue to improve these sessions. but we're really delighted to see we're reaching out and making a difference to this very important filing season. i did want to also mention in terms of job opportunities with the commission that we are continuing to receive applications for our ethics at work unit we're putting together. point in time we did just this last week post an additional position, two positions for that who would be training an outreach specialist that will be working with the manager on that new program. we're hoping in the next day or

so, also have the training technology specialist. so the whole round of announcements for these positions and what the unit looks like will be obvious to folks who are interested in these positions and this type of work will be coming to work for the ethics commission. so we continue to look at that and people and their skills and we're very interested to get the program up and running. and finally, staff news, i also noted in the report that we have a new senior investigator that i'm delighted to announce ammon wilson who has been in our office for just over a year. just coming up on a year. he's been an investigator and he's now going to be one of our senior investigators. he previously served to the california auditor's office where he did a number of complex analytical audits throughout the state of california on state operations and programs. we also have news to announce today, it wasn't timely for the report, for my written report, but we have now confirmed that

we are having a second senior investigator who will also be joining us on april the 5th, i believe, ashley mockett will be joining us. she also comes from the california auditor's office where she's done some interesting complex research. so we want to thank the california auditor for the fine training they've been providing and we're delighted to be looking forward to welcoming ashley to our staff this next month as well. i do want to note a senior investigator since last october decided he wanted to resume work back up at the state or federal level. his last day was march 11th. i wanted to make sure you were aware of that as well. so we'll continue to work closely with our colleagues, the department of you'll resources to hire and fill these as quickly as possible. happy to answer any questions. >> chairman: thank you very much. and job well done about the

participation rate going up all the time. thank you. commissioners, any comments? >> commissioner: director appealham, i just wanted to congratulate you on the successful launch of the e-file 7400. i know that's been a long aarduous process. but please give my heart felt thanks to steven masse and his incredible team and what a message thaw have so many people participate in the information sessions and this is going to be just make much more information and data available to the public and i think that that is absolutely the work of the commission at large and so kudos. >> i agree, it's a great accomplishment and thank you for all your hard work. >> commissioner bush, do you

want to say any comments? >> commissioner: yes. i would also underscore that director pelham has had to juggle an ever increasing array of issues that we have thrust on her and the situation that's also emerged and she has handled it well. >> chairman: here here. okay. let's go to public comments, please. >> thank you, madam chair. we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue.' please stand by. madam chair, there's no callers

in the queue. >> chairman: okay. public comment is closed for agenda item number seven. agenda item number eight, discussion and possible action on items for future meetings. commissioner bush. >> commissioner: yes. can you hear me? >> chairman: yes. >> commissioner: i have a couple of items that i'd like to put on the calendar for a future meeting. one is on expenditures. i'd like to see a report if we can get one on expenditure committees focusing on otherwise prohibited donors in other words lobbyists and contractors who give [ indiscernible ] including slate mailers and state committees. those are all routes that are

used as a get around to avoid both our campaign contribution limits since independent expenditure limits can accept contributions of any amount as well as avoid prohibited sources because independent expenditure committees do not have prohibited sources. i understand that in general, committees are not regulated because they're not considered to be part of a specific committee, but we do have independent expenditure committees that exist in total either to support or oppose a specific candidate and that raises an issue of whether the rules that apply to candidate committees might apply to

independent expenditure committees that are linked to a candidate. the opinions that i've gotten from attorneys in campaign finance is that that is an area where we might have group act. at any rate, it will be good for us to be able to report to the public exactly what it is that's going on. also, i have a question. i'd like to add when we do the gifts as the committee staff moves forward, i would like to see that we include a transparency requirement identifying the donor, the recipient, and the amount involving any city approvals. and it should include major donors because if you go onto our pages, major developers

donate to nonprofits pending approval of their projects. and i have not seen us make specific mention of the major developers and the contributions they make to nonprofits. i would like to see that the board approve gifts when it's for a city purpose and above a certain amount. so, for example, the gifts that came for america's cup or for the super bowl or for the new lighting system at city hall, those were all arranged more or less privately by the then mayor who then hired his own campaign consultants to be in charge of the fundraising and

the operation and i think that it would be more appropriate for those kinds of events which do have a city purpose to go through a board approval process. in some cases, it involves the use of city property, for example, for the america's cup. it required making available the marina green to the exclusion of the traditional use by youth sports gang committees -- i said gangs. i don't mean gangs, but obviously. youth sports clubs. to have a regular season of play involved of which all had to be canceled. so i would also point out that the issues that we've been

raising on gifts that are not unique to san francisco. san francisco was contacted by the honolulu and hawaii ethics commissions over what they have as aloha gifts and other jurisdictions have contacted us about so i would suggest that we take a look as we move forward on this with other jurisdictions and how they have handled even relatively modest things like the aloha gifts in hawaii essentially involved peanut butter sandwiches that

go to every new legislator at the time they are sworn into office. thank you. >> chairman: okay. commissioner chiu. >> commissioner: through the chair, i will not be here to participate in this, but i would suggest and i think this was contemplated for earlier in the year would be a presentation from tyler field and his team in the dash board for the new commissioners as well as the public to show how information can be obtaineded on form 700 filings as well as campaign finance reports. the accessibility of the data i think is marvelous and i think that everyone would benefit from one of those excellent presentations. >> chairman: i remember that one.

you made that several times and i would ask the director to check with mr. field to see if we can do that next month now that we are meeting in person again. hopefully commissioner chiu can show up in person. >> commissioner: yeah. the visualization of the data is really powerful because you can see where the money's coming from to support ballot measure and who knew that $8 million is coming from north carolina and only several hundred thousand from california. it's very informative. >> chairman: and i think by then you may be able to give us an update or report on the recall that we just had because i know that we've gotten a lot of interest on that one. so that could be very timely. if there's no more comments, let's go to the public comments, please. >> thank you, madam chair. members of the public who are

joining us remotely and if you wish to provide public comment on agenda item number eight, please press star three to raise your hand. of it's important that you press star three once to enter the queue. pressing it again will move you out of the public comment and back into listening mode. please stand by. madam chair, there are no callers in the queue. >> chairman: okay. thank you. public comment is closed for agenda item number eight. agenda item number nine, additional opportunity for public comment on matters not appearing on the agenda pursuant to ethics commission by laws article seven section two. >> madam chair, please stand by.

madam chair, there's no callers in the queue. >> chairman: thank you. public comment is closed. agenda item number ten adjournment. today's meeting is adjourned in honor of commissioner daina chiu. [ applause ]

>> the hon. london breed: welcome to chinatown, everyone. it has been a very, very challenging two years. we have missed our incredible parade. we had to distance ourselves and celebrate virtually, so the fact that we are here today to start the new year, to kick off lunar new year in san francisco, is extraordinary. >> well, good afternoon. we are now experiencing a massive surge on the national, state, and regional level, and