>> i now call the meeting to order. please call roll call. >> please indicate your presence by saying present after your name is called. [roll call] >> all 5 members present. we mow now have a quorum. with that call item 2, public comment on matters not appearing on the agenda. mr. moderator please check and see if we have anyone waiting for public comment. >> thank you madam

chair. yes, we do have one caller. welcome, caller. your 3 minutes starts now. >> the commissioners-my name is francisco decosta and a long time ago we the people, san franciscans fought for the sunshine task force and the ethics commission. over the years, especially the last 10 years, the sunshine task forces has failed us. now more then ever the ethics commission has failed us. the way they failed us is by kicking the can down the street and saying they don't have sufficient staff to

do the (inaudible) when they do not know how to prioritize what is urgent. the entire nation knows that san francisco is one of the most corrupt cities the nation. and it is mandatory that the sunshine task force and the ethics commission and the controller and the san francisco city attorney do the right thing, but they have not. it has taken the federal bureau of investigation to indict (inaudible) from the san francisco public utility commission, but there is more to it. the san francisco public utilities commission is a most corrupt department today in the city. and the

former city attorney is now the general manager makes $500 thousand is the fox guarding the chicken coop and when we the public at public comment reveal to you facts, empirical data the ethics commission cannot do, because they don't have a mechanism to do sound investigative reporting or investigate, even when we give the empirical data to the controller's office-has been let down. so, we look forward today that you all will look into your hearts and do the right thing while you are discussing the agenda items. today you have a

opportunity to do the right thing and stop kicking the can down the street. >> caller, that is your time. thank you. there are no other callers on the line. >> thank you. the public comment on item 2 is now closed. now, we go to agenda item 3, presentation discussion and possible action on legislative proposal from board of supervisors and mayor regarding city behested payment rules. call the special meeting to enable the commission to discuss and consider recent legislative proposals that have been brought forward. you recall new legislation took effect last january and required under prop e passed, 59 percent of san franciscans on the june ballot, all future legislative

amendments the city has payment rules must be approved by majority vote of this commission and 2/3 sof supervisors. introduced legislation to modify provisions of the lay. we understand mayor breed has placed a ballot item on the november ballot and (inaudible) understand today we have representatives from the mayor office as well as supervisor peskin and staff from the fpuc toprint present on the issues as they see them. to set the stage for today's discussion let's turn first to our commission staff presentation and then invite the participation of the legislative sponsors and the puc staff. now, let's hear from our staff mr. kenning. because we already

have review some of these proposals in the last meeting, if you can focus on just the proposals that staff has recommended either outright rejection or with conditional support. just to get things started. go ahead, please. >> yes. thank you chair lee. can i get a share permission here? thank you. >> commissioners if i might while setting up the slide deck i want to provide context for the information and public information. since the materials were published for this meeting late yesterday afternoon we received a revised version of the

proposed ordinance by mr. peskin and mayor breed and we have attached those in printed version to materials you have this morning. we also sent them to you yesterday and inadvertently attached incorrect document so we have the text in front of you this morning and apologize you haven't had a chance to look at it in depth but mr. peskin and mr. heckle from the mayor office will walk through the updated version from yesterday. mr. canning can walk through the provisions we understand are in the basic documents that have been worked on to date but certainly if you want to focus the conversation on the proposal mr. peskin and mayor breed put together yesterday happy to accommodate that as well when they get to the presentation. wanted to highlight that for you. >> if mr. canning can also include the two in the presentation, that is

helpful (inaudible) not have gotten the information late last night. or this morning. go ahead, please. >> yes. thank you chair lee. yes, to briefly set the table for today's discussion, talking about legislative proposals from the board of supervisors and mayor regarding behest of payments. this is part of the commission's ongoing government ethics and conflict of interest review project started in 2020 in response to (inaudible) by numerous city officials and people engaging with those city officials and these recommendations has payments come out of the first phase of this project. the background on the legislation is recommendations from the 2020 project started. the controllers office published a record recommending the city prohibit city officials for behest of payments from

interested parties. in december of last year the board of supervisors passed the legislation prohibiting city officials and rules go into effect january 2020. overview of the new rules they prohebt indirect and direct of behested payments. they expand the definition of what a interested party is to include certain contractors that were not previously covered by the definition, persons seeking influence officers and employees and registered lobbyist and permit consultant. (inaudible) that is now prohibited. as chair mentioned prop e passed in june with 69 percent of the vote. this changes to the way certain contractors with the board were made interested parties. it

also requires that any legislation passed is approved by super majority of board of supervisors and ethics commission. the legislative proposals two pieces of legislation require to pass legislatively. the mayor also submitted a version of the legislation for the november ballot which would not require ethic commission approval to be placed on the ballot. so, for summary of the staff recommendations, based on the two pieces of legislation from supervisor peskin and the mayor, of those 18 proposals that are contained across the two pieces of legislation, staff recommends the commission support 5 of the proposal as

drafted. 10 proposals with some revisions or modification or clarification and reject 3 of the proposals. for the recommendations to support, those include changes to the definition of grant (inaudible) clarifying communications about grants to the city are not a attempt to influence making changes to clarify how the grant exception work s. miner formatting changes and the definition of regarding administrative proceeding. the recommendations that staff recommends the commission support,--sorry, people are not seeing my slides?

great. well, i guess i'll go without the slides. >> mr. canning we have your materials here so you can probably proceed without the slides. >> very well. recommendations to support with some modifications include- >> if i may- >> yes. >> is this document is public, correct? >> correct, yes. >> just reading it i don't think mr. canning is super helpful, we have it in front of

us. if there are things you want to direct our attention to. >> yes. happy to do that commissioner. i think just in summary of these 10 items that staff recommends tentative support with modifications, most of those changes i think are pretty miner and just seek to clarify what is being proposed or tweak the language slightly to avoid any unintended consequences, but i think the bulk of those are things staff recommends the commission support in concept just you know, like to get clarification on the details and how those are executed. yeah, that leaves a lot of overlap in terms of what is proposed by supervisor peskin and the mayor regarding ways to strengthen the city behested payment rules. >> we have all this-one of the

commissioners will need to leave by a certain time, so i would ask my fellow commissioners to hold off questioning to mr. canning, and let's proceed to listen to our other participants representatives from the mayor's office. supervisor peskin and representatives from the puc and are then we can have questions. let's proceed. who would go first? supervisor peskin. welcome. >> chair lee, commissioners, staff, to the ethics commission, my name is aaron peskin. i am the primary author of what became proposition e on last month's ballot and-sorry, was that last

month? it was last month. and, am pleased to be before you today. the staff report gives the history of behested payments. when i first started as a supervisor 22 years ago, it was a completely unregulated field of ethics law. there was no behested payments reporting. the word behested payments didn't even exist, but over the succeeding 20 years it is now regulated at the state and local levels and appropriately more and more so and as the staff report indicates in the wake of the 2020 revelations about corruption by in one case a department head, we heeded the calls of the ethics commission and the controllers public integrity report and my then colleague

supervisor haney drafted legislation, which ultimately became law in december of last year, with many modifications made along the way. by way of candor, i became concerned that there were efforts to revisit that law and brought prop e forward expressly for the purpose of having a conversation like the conversation we are having today that involved the approval of this body to in any way modify that legislation, so i welcome this conversation today. i was hopeful that this body would promulgate regulations to the december legislation which has yet to be forthcoming. in the interim clearly there is some level of confusion and concern from various departments

and actors in this sphere, and to that end there have been efforts to clarify and revisit certain provisions that are before you today. there were two competing measures that are in your packets. i am pleased to say and you'll hear further from hank heckle of the mayor's office that we were able in the last days through discussions to come up with a compromise version that i forwarded to mrs. pellem your staff yesterday, which hopefully will make your jobs and our collective jobs easier as you deliberate, make suggestions, deal with those 18 items, some of which are in the no-brainer category, some of which perhaps deserve modification and some which staff takes issue with. those have been further clarified in the compromise version that is now

before you. ultimately, it is my hope that a piece of consensus legislation with your imprimatur can come forward and the board can take that up and enact it by 2/3 majority come september. your body would have to forward that recommendation with a simple majority of 3 of your 5 member body. i am available to answer questions, welcome you as a thought partner in getting this right, and will remain for the rest of this meeting until you go into your closed session. thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you supervisor peskin and if you could wait for the other presenters so we can ask questions together. let's have mr. heckle, representative from the mayor's office.

>> good morning chair lee, members of the ethics commission, staff. thank you supervisor peskin for your remarks. hank heckle the legal compliance officer in mayor breed's office to address the legislation amendments before you. the legislation passed by the board enacted the beginning of this year is a significant complex reform with major changes to existing law in which city officials -the legislation was targeted, it play to pay relationship with those having business with the city like city contractors. however behested payments is a broad consest and (inaudible) philanthropic donations to the city such give to sf covid relief program, interacting with policy

organizations which wish to fund pilot programs. asking non profit partners for resources to certain community groups and seeking charitable donations like asking a neighbor for donation to the child's school. over the past several months we received feedback and questions from department staff recording compliance. the mayor takes compliance as this legislation very seriously as it is a important reform on critical ethics issues and response to corruption problems that faced the city. however, it is a complex piece of legislation and vetting compliance can be challenging. in fact the mayor issued directive to departmentserial this year to pause programs that rely on philanthropic support until there is clear guidance from the ethic commission and city attorney office. in a effort to address the

concerns and facilitate compliance we collaborated extensive with supervisor peskin on amendments that clarify and refine the legislation. you were presented with two competing sets of amendments at the last meeting. since that time we made significant progress and we have a set of consenss amendments before you now. we appreciate ethics staff very thorough memo regarding some of the proposals. all parties and staff agree on reasonable changes to certain areas such as illuminating ministerial permits from the interested party permits. issuing permits for picnic tables in the park. there are still remaining areas for discussion and i can address them here. i can either sort of get into those details or take

questions-happy to focus on a few issues have received some attention is the attempt to influence element of the legislation. we are challenges with the legislation and figuring out compliance. this can have a lot of unintended consequences. often time city officials will meet with foundations for policy advocacy. this is critical for open ideas. such groups offer to fund such policy initiatives and partner with the city on important projects. an unintended consequence is the policy advoscaes

leads to a catch 22 situation where policy advocates will meet with city officials to present say a pilot program, share ideas with how to design the program and offer to fund it, but because of those additional-those initial discussions they get ensnared in attempt to influence program and defeats the ability to receive the funding. we know this is the case for example with the tipping point program that was used to fund the city very successful cabin shelter pilot at 33 gough. that was done prior to enactment of the legislation. we received advice from the city attorney office and ethic commission that given the fact tipping point engaged with department of homeless officials to advocate for the projing eththat can prohibit them from funding the project

under the current law. there have been some discussions of interpretations or maybe exceptions that deal with that issue but frankly they don't go far enough because they only deal with funding directly to a city department whereas, the 33 gough program involved the fill anthpistfunding the cbo and other non profits, so it would still get ensnared under current law. in collaboration with supervisor peskin we proposed eliminated attempt to influence portion of the legislation. we believe it is unsesinary and problematic due to the consequence i mentioned and we think it is redundant in light of the other prongs that exist do the work at getting pay to play such as the contractor prong, the administrative proceedings prong, the lobbyist prong, all those create barriers to the sort of commercial

leveraging of favors that the behested payment legislation is designed to avoid. another change that i know received some concern from staff is a sort of de minimis exception where we would propose that payments of up to a thousand dollars are exempt. this is necessary to avoid complex compliance decisions for small donation is involved. for example, a member of department staff asking for a box of ppe during covid, we dont want to create situations we have to do complex analysis whether someone is a interested party for low ticket item such as that. it also helps protect the small charitable solicitations people make in their private lives which is important activity covered by

the first amendment but impacted by the legislation. a solicitation for a hundred dollars for march of dimes or sponsor the walk-o-thon. those are not the donations and payments the legislation is focused on so think it is helpful to exclude these smaller ones. this would also track with the previous local reporting requirement which only requires reporting interested party donationsf oa thousand dollars and up. so, we believe that is a appropriate and really miner change that shouldn't be controversial. in addition in the compromise legislation that supervisor peskin and our office put forward, there is a limitation on the term of the contractor prohibition that limit the duration of the contractor prohibition to start at the time that bids are made for a contract and then 12 month after the award of the contract. we believe this balances the need to

avoid leveraging behested payments during the contract procurement process while avoiding restrictions on interacting with existing contractors to procure concessions on price, on the number of supplies in a purchase agreement, solicit community benefits from the contractors in the context of department racial equity action plan. seeking access to property from tenants of the city such as to provide tours or to host community events. again, those are contractor relationships so those are impacted by the legislation and absence of a change like this. it would avoy snaring parties to long-term leases like 66 year leases where there is no real concern that exchangeing behested payment for procuring a contract. it is also similar to the duration of the

prohibition in the contractorsmericing campaign contributions to officials that approve contracts. that is in the cgcc section 1.126. finally, there is additional exceptions. one in supervisor peskins original amendment we kept that we think is very useful and the representative from the puc is address is exsemgz for competitively procured community benefits that are solicited in a open rfp process. this is similar to the puc social impact program, the amendments allow for such programs to continue if they are subject to open bidding process and the board of supervisors authorize new programs or reauthorizes existing one. there is also a special waver where departments can go and seek waver ined

advance to do solicitations for critical program. the departments disclose if goes to the interested parties and the board can make a decision whether the funding (inaudible) city goal and does not create appearance of impropriety. there is a carve-out for community benefits related to acquisition of real property. this relates to situations where community groups will acquire land and sell them to the city for use as a park. for example, there is a project at 771 wolsy in the city, a urban farm land that the city is looking at acquiring in that context. the community groups who might otherwise be interested parties provide maintenance and other services to improve the land and are maintain it once the city convert it into a park. these are not typical community

benefit packages and we wanted to make clear such transactions were exempt. finally, there is a grace period sort of provision at the end of the legislation that we've proposed that would allow ethics to promulgate regulation prior to january 2023. enforcement is stayed before that time or 60 days after regulations issued. this allow ethics to perform essential functions by issuing regulations to provide additional guidance and will allow departments and the city attorney and ethics staff to continue to work to provide guidance and compliance as departments adapt to the compliance of the ordinance. thank you. >> thank you mr. heckle. before we have any questions, let's call for representatives from the sfpuc.

>> good afternoon, chair lee, commissioners director pel lem. ron flynn, the deputy general manager. thank you for digging into the issue and mayor office and supervisor peskin bringing this forward. i want to talk one specific exception in this and that is the provision that create exception to allow solicitations from interested parties as long as maids under a authorized program for charitable donations for 501c3 donations and schools. let me tell you what the social impact is and answering questions and also address that we had a audit and what we are doing about that. so, the social impact partnership program has existed at the puc for

about 10 years. what it does is when we advertise certain contracts we include a provision that allow proposers to offer to do volunteer service or donations to non profits and schools in the community that will be impacted. so, what that means is that they can propose to volunteer in the local school, they can teach kids about water, stem, they can do a beach cleanup, they can do volunteer hours, they can work at a homeless shelter, go into the community and do volunteer work. how the process actually works is that the request to do social impact partnership, to commit to the volunteer hours is part of the open public process and proposals. when someone is says i propose to do the project they give the list of things they will do and

the list of volunteer and donation hours go to a panel, called a social impact partnership and evaluate it. it isn't a for profit school. it is someone in-a location in the community and they see the size of that donation, and they grade it and give it points and are those points can be worth up to 5 percent bonus points. if someone does not do a social impact partnership they are still eligible for the contract, it isn't mandatory, they just are not eligible for the bonus points. separately a panel evaluate the merits of the overall proposal. how good is your firm? what is your price? all the things that go into evaluation of a panel, of a proposal. the points get added together and the highest proposer including bonus points the city enters into

negotiation or contract. that proposal social impact partnership they made now become part of the contract so it is a contractual agreement to do those volunteer hours. it is contractual agreement to make those donations to where they said they were going to make them. a couple things that i want to make very clear, the city and city employees are not eligible recipients of any donations or money so this cannot come to the city or city employees. puc employees are prohibited director where the money should go. it is voluntary provision and i'll talk about a new idea that came from director pellem and staff how to make that more probust. the commitments become part of the contract and it is up to the puc to enforce those. as

you know, the controller office conducted a audit of this program. last year and in some time in december came up with the audit and had 7 recommendations. they really revolved around transparency and enforcement and so we have taken steps to address those . the first thing we did is general manager harrera directed staff to agree to every audit recommendation and to begin to enforce those. that began right away. we recently did the first 6 month update where we are either have completed or in the process of on all 7. let me talk about what those particular things are. on enforcement, it turned out of 8 contracts with a cip, there were 4 or 5 contracts that have gone through the life of the span and the firms had not done the things they committed to do. and there were no teeth and no (inaudible) and no

enforcement. we have now looked at every single contract, we have contacted everybody and have a process in place to insure and communicate when those people are meeting their obligations. this links to the transparency portion. every single contract that has a cip commitment is now publicly available on a dashboard on the puc website. that dashboard includes the firm who made the commitments, the people who are getting those commitments and how well the firm is a making those commitments so if someone is half way through the project and done half their commitments they have a green. someone half way through the project and done 25, they have yellow or red and we have to work with them to up their commitments to the community that they made. that transparnt portion was one of the criteria that

the audit wanted us to meet and so really wanted us to come up with a way of letting everybody know who was getting this money and when and where they are getting it. the other piece is that there was a lot of confusion about whether or not the puc was directing where this go for. you must give to my favorite non profit. it has always been the policy to not do so, but there was ambiguity in contract language and things that needed to be cleaned up. in addition since working on this particular exception as we were asking to be able to continue this program, director pellem and her ethic staff suggested we create not only a transparent about like who has it but how you can get it. how you could become a school or non profit that are raising your hands for a firm to reach out to do. what we would like to do is sort of have

a community event where people want to come and participate. they can raise their hand now but we are now building on the dashboard so anyone can sign up to say this is who i am, i'm (inaudible) this is what i do, please select me as the recipient. firms then see those and get directly. again, puc staff is prohibited from saying please give to that one or that one. the grading is if they meet the criteria. are they non profit or public school, in the area impacted by the contract and how big the commitment is. that is what it is. happy to answer questions about response to the audit. about how it works. any other thing and appreciate your consideration and request you do allow this this to be a exception to the behested payment rules because under the current rules we are

not allowed to continue to seek this in new contracts going forward. we have the obligation to enforce it on old contracts, but we can't do that until we get our exception. >> thank you mr. flynn for the presentation. commissioners, if you wish to ask questions and make comments please go to the request to speak button. right now i want to call on commissioner bush. if you have any questions or comments. >> i have just a few questions. to begin with, most of these issues require some form of (inaudible) when mayor breed or supervisor peskin and other members of the board introduce measures for the ballot, did they have (inaudible) that took place prior to that?

>> please. >> this is supervisor aaron peskin to commissioner bush through chair lee. i believe that the original behested legislation introduced by supervisor haney was subject to meet and confer the measure that became proposition e was not subject to heat and confer, but the executive director of the department of human resources is in the room and don't want to put her on the spot but can answer any questions to the best of her ability. >> i dont want to be mysterious about what is behind

my question. ethics has been working for some time on behested payments and updated our policies and we have been involved in a meet and confer process that has now gone on all most 3 years, and i'm wondering, is this what can be expected as a result of meet and confer and is that the same situation that the mayor for example has faced when she wanted to put something on the ballot that she has to go through a meet and confer process that can drag on several years before action can be taken. >> commissioner bush, director izen is here so she can briefly address your question. >> president lee, members of the commission, good morning, carol izen the human

resources director for city and county of san francisco. i will do my best to answer the question. the original legislation did go through extensive meet and confer process which was concluded. we have evaluated the language in the proposed ballot measure and preliminarily have concluded internally within our own shop that because there are no significant adverse impacts to employees that it would be subject to our normal process of informational meetings, but would not require meet and confer. and similarly as i understand it, the proposed legislation we would arrive at the same conclusion. we had a couple meetings with our labor organizations about this, and it is my view that we would not receive a challenge about it due to the fact that

the pending-proposed legislation you are considering here does not constitute significant adverse (inaudible) the commissioner bush reference to ongoing meet and confer is not about behested payments, it is on pending ballot measure questions on gifts. i hope that answers your question. >> thank you very much. let's go to commissioner (inaudible) >> thank you. i have a question for mr. heckle. i think the commission wants to be a good partner with the city. now the mayor has a ballot measure she only has to august 5 to remove. i don't think we are in a position to vote on anything today or that matter before august 5 so think the most important question is what the mayor intends

to do. >> that is a good question commissioner. thank you. what we are looking for today is progress and we made significant progress in the legislative front with supervisor peskin's help and work which we appreciate. and we understand-we appreciate the commission convening for the special meeting, given there is a ballot measure, the mayor put forward that is still out there. we have to august 5 to decide if we leave it up or not but we are looking for movement and areas of agreement or concerns or questions. we want to help the commission get to a place where we can approve something that works for all partners. we are not--while we do want to move forward, we are not coming in here with some

ultimatum, nothing like that. >> very limited work we can do today to snd a message to the mayor other then saying, we are taking this seriously and want to be partners. i have factual questions about the proposal. nothingt that would torpedo it where i'm sitting but it is hard have movement since we are seeing this for the first time, but at the same time we want to assure the mayor and supervisors we want to be productive members of the conversation. >> thank you. i think given the progress we made with supervisor peskin, obviously we need the input of the ethics commission. it is legally required. it is valuable. it is- that is what we are interested in hearing, so we are not trying to push things without sufficient hearing but we do think today can serve a purpose of airing area

of agreement or not. >> i do have a couple specific questions about the measure for you. and also have questions for supervisor from the puc. maybe take in order. i think i see mr. (inaudible) may have questions for him as well if he is able to stick around. i'll be very brief. mr. heckle, you mentioned i think a key issue was getting rid of the (inaudible) you explained the issue is folks communicating about their own grants which makes sense that is issue we want to address. couldn't it be addressed with a surgical exception that gets at the specific issue, communication about your own grant opposed to what this proposed is much broader remedy which is rid of the entire influence prong. other then folks communicating about their own grants and relate to the tipping point mr. cobb, the example when you have

a chance one question i have for you, the issue your organization faced are they because you are communicating about your own grants opposed to other issues? i dont expect you to answer from the gallery. that is my question to mr. heckle. >> thank you commissioner finler. the question is why remove the prong as opposed to something more focused. >> the prong you described seems like a legitimate problem but seems there may be a narrow way to address that. >> i think the problem of the element of the legislation sounds like it has value on its face, and we totally understand the intent behind it, it is really a bear in practice. it is just frankly broad, it is nebulous. any discussion, a phone call, a meeting, depending on what you talk about could become a

influence and these are the normal political and policy discussions that officials with their constituents, with foundations, with community groups, with non profits, and to your point about trying to focus in practice we had a lot of questions around the grant example, so there has been advice that if you are kind of-adhere to the context to the grant of a city but maybe you are okay, but the problem is, what if you target the funding to other non profit partners? ples there is a question of what is within the bound andinate within the bounds. inyou are having related policy discussions and meeting with a group that advocates on homelessness and they have a whole agenda or whole suite of policy proposals and you pick and say this one we heard your 3 proposals and this makes the most sense, we like to implement that. we like to seek a grant

from you to design it and fund it and build it, but now they already advocated oen the two other. reading strictly they are off limits now. it is kind of creates all these artificial and very difficult to vet boundaries around policy dialogue which we think is unworkable. >> part of the response to the extent a party is contractor or lobbyist they are already captured? >> we think the other prongs cover the waterfront of pay to play. leveraging savers for commercial purposes for businesses purposes, so contractors are covered, those seeking contracts. administrative proceedings which is a pretty wide birth of activity, licenses, permits, all kinds of entitlements, any enforcement hearings. once you are in the category with a department they can't

solicited you. lobbyist, you can make a solicitation through a lobbyist, permit consultant and we think the types of improper attempts to create favor would be covered by those other instances in all most all cases. i'm not aware of real world cases where there is a problem and the examples in the controller report related to contractors maybe, also some folks that might have had administrative business before the city. so, just these policy dialogues and discussions in the abstract and dont think create a problem. business interest tend to have those discussions through lob ious to solicit the lobbyist and couldn't solicit the entity with business. have a contract or subject to proceeding. >> i have two more questions but i'll let my

colleagues jump in if they have questions. >> since the request to speak function is not working so let's do the-(inaudible) raising your hand. >> (inaudible) >> i do have a question for supervisor peskin. >> madam chair, i had a couple more questions for mr. heckle. >> okay, i thought you were done. >> i wanted other folks to have a chance. on the waver issue, that is new one that wasn't in either proposal so digesting that. i (inaudible) to wave themselves from the requirement. has there- >> (inaudible) i wanted to speak. >> who was that? >> not sure. >> this is commissioner bush. >> okay. please hold on. >> larry bush. >> can you please hold off until commissioner finler finish his

questioning? >> yes. >> did you hear the question? >> about the waver provision? >> right. the concern is it occurred to me a lot of the board to wave themselves and allow them to solicit payments that would otherwise be prohibited. >> i have to look at the language again. even if that were theoretically possible i'm sure supervisor peskin would you know, would tell you that that's probably not something that would be adviseable to the supervisors to do for other reasons. i think it is a pretty limited provision but i think the intent of it is-i understand we didn't draft the language but my understanding is if there is a special circumstance or program and there is maybe a class of potential funders and you want to pre-clear them you

could do that or maybe if you had a existing relationship with a fill antropists and they become a interested party and clear it to get solicit additional support. >> those are my questions. i want to say-make a comment. i made a practice to disclose who i spoke with to inform on the issues so i spoke with someone from the city attorney office, i spoke with supervisor peskin to ask questions i had about the proposal and wanted to put that on the record. i believe commissioner bush had a question. >> because we have a time sensitive issue and we have the closed session coming up that i definitely want all of us to participate, so i would ask my colleagues to please keep your comments and questions brief. commissioner bush. >> thank you. briefly, the

record shows that people speak to influence city policies without being involved in particular contracts, so for example, the chamber of commerce provided funding for a review of san francisco tax policies and impact on large and small employers. the result was complete rewrite of our tax code and none of that was ever disclosed, because it was not within the (inaudible) of what was considered discloseable. by the same token, you have people who are seeking to influence the (inaudible) of certain favored people to serve on city commissions. there are a range of things that don't appear to be explicitly covered

in what is under discussion here and i'm concerned about the fact that while we try to close the one door, we are opening up others that are equally problematic. >> may i respond to that chair lee? >> please, mr. heckle. >> thank you commissioner bush through chair lee. so, with respect to the chamber of commerce example, i'm not-i dont know all the details of what you are describing, but it sound to me--so, there already is exception for public advocacy. if that advocacy happened in public which by the way could be a speech to a room of 25 people would be considered a public appeal, i probably-if they issued a public report i think that probably went through a public appeal so i don't think it was some sort of back-room

type situation. also, the situations that were mentioned are regulated in other ethics law so i am not sure the code provision exactly, but i know there is a restriction on exchanging favors for a seat on a commission or for an employment decision or official action. those are specifically laid out in the campaign governmental conduct code. there is also of course state and federal bribery protections locally in terms of contract decisions or maybe the staff raise the issue of what if a business wasn't seeing a contract themselves but tried to thwart the contract bid of arrival. that would clearly be a violation of the city's contracting laws for open and fair contracting procurements so that would be illegal to

exchange a behested payment for that. and it would also be subject to bribery anti-bribery laws as well. >> thank you. there is no questions from colleagues. i do have a question for supervisor peskin. under the behested payment exemption, one of the amendments that the-you propose is prohibit the ethic commission imposing penalty on city officers or employees who violated the ordinance. as you know, the people of san francisco gave this commission a mandate to conduct investigations and impose penalty on violators, so can you give us the thinking behind this and the rational why this amendment was

proposed? >> yes, thank you for that opportunity chair lee. the amendments that are before you in the compromise version brought to you by my office and the office of mayor breed includes a provision, implementation provision, a safe harbor, if you will, that ask the ethic commission to timely promulgate regulations within your authority and to do so on or before the first day of january of 2023, but as soon as possible, and during your regulatory rule making that nobody be penalized until those are done january 1 or your regulations which ever comes sooner. really, it is if i may be candid admonition

to this body and staff to timely promulgate regulations without anybody held liable during dependency of regulatory decision making. i also like to respond to commissioner finler relative to the preapproval waver provision, which is that i would be more then happy to make it explicit that the board of supervisors would not provide that as to itself, although i note, i say with a smile that you cannot see, that the mere fact it has to be done in public would rending it mute but happy to put that into the ordinance if you so suggest it. >> if i may supervisor peskin. thanks for all the work on this. we really do

appreciate it. wonder if you can address the major concerns in the staff memo is and concerns i share which is removal of the administrative action and attempt to influence provision. those are fairly significant and we need to understand why you want to do that. >> so, let me be candid about that as well, which is-i think mr. heckle spoke to it correctly from my perspective which was as a practical matter, it was proving itself more and more difficult to implement, but in my conversation with mr. finler which he preoperatively disclosed we actually were starting to have a constructive conversation about ways that it could be more narrowly tailored. for instance, i believe in the legislation we originally passed, but i also

am hearing legitimate concerns from actors in the political and are administrative processes that are government. the budget is a legislative action. the budget of san francisco is a ordinance. it involves the participation of literally thousands of people and organizations and so in that very specific sphere that comes about in a compressed period of time on a annual basis, thousands of organizations are influencing legislative action and are otherwise participant in this arena, and so that from a practical standpoint became very very difficult to implement and carve up in a way that made sense and hence, the agreement between the mayor's office and my office relative

to removing that. but mr. finlive had creative idea s we were kicking around and i would be open to those and think the mayor's office would be open to those and that would require these kind of discussions and your engaging as a thought partner in the process, which i said earlier is precisely why proposition e included the majority approval of this body. >> one opponent of clarification. (inaudible) it is-none of this prohibits interested parties from influencing or attempting to influence anything in the city government. what it prevents correct if i'm wrong, is the city employees from then asking those organizations to give money to something, is that correct? >> that is correct. and given-sorry for underscoring this repeatedly. the lack of

regulatory interpretation and given what happened in the last 6 months, and frankly no offense, the very conservative interpretations that have been forthcoming from the city attorney, the realty is that this has been applied in a way that in some instances was not intended that quite frankly don't make common sense. and these amendments are trying to address that in the absence of regulations and in the presence of very conservative readings by the city attorney office. >> i dont want to pre-judge what the commission will do, but i think that eeben if this legislation is not pass it is certainly something i would be interested in a commission developing regulations to make it clear. because i understand clarity is a huge problem. i dont know if it needs a legislative fix. >> music to my ears commissioner romano. >> i just have one

more follow-up question for supervisor peskin. i appreciate the safe harbor concept, but the past few years have taught me that once you open up a window of prohibiting this commission from imposing-carrying out one of its mandated functions, it is really hard to take it back or much easier for people to expand that. so, even though this prohibition is only for a period until--matter of 5, 6 months, but on principal, i do have a lot of problems with this being a challenge to this commission mandated

function given by the people of the city. so, i again i understand the practical reason, but on principle i have a lot of problem with putting this in writing as a-as part of the law and future stakeholders may want to expand that and to take away this vital pool this commission have in terms of really overseeing and addressing corruption and bribery. i just want to express that and see- >> if i may chair lee, i will respond in a number of

ways. number 1, it would not hurt my feelings if you were to recommend adoption of this legislation with that proficient absent or modified. number 2, i would respectfully suggest that we keep language that says that this department shall promulgate regulations by a date certain. that is what i'm getting at in this matter, and 3, i will respectfully remind this commission that proposition e is the proposition that actually is giving this commission authority, so you would actually have-should the board of supervisors or mayors office suggest the penalty safe harbor

provision extension be extended that require a approval of the body. as an elected official that does politics, remind if the mayor puts the measure on the ballot august 5, your ability to influence this legislation would be annihilated. >> madam chair. would it be okay to give mr. cobb a chance to respond or if he doesn't want to that is fine or wait to public comment. >> let's wait for public comment, please. >> we can do public comment now then. >> he is (inaudible) >> i think he can commit to being brief. thank you. >> how are you doing? could you ask the question again so i make sure i get it right? >> clarification-you highlighted issue with tipping

point being a interested party. i want to confirm my understanding is those issues arose because the organization was communicating about its own grants with city folks. >> yes. >> that is basically the question. >> yes. we also had our attorney look at the legislation and point out based on our prior actions where we would be a interested party and attempt to influence. separate from the city attorney and attorney who works for the supervisors we had our private attorney take a look at it. where we advocate all the time to the city about things that we believe and that our community believes needs to happen in the city to improve the city and we talked about things like the (inaudible) projects. it was philanthropy in the first wave of the pandemic that stood up the shelter in place hotels, knowing the city and federal government was going

to take time to actually get funds to pay for those and philanthropy paid for the first month of the shelter in place hotels and because we are always advocating to the city for them to take action whether on homelessness or education or early childhood, it often makes us a interested party. then, at the same time, we often talk to the city about where it is that we should invest dollars in neighborhoods and again an example of that is that we wanted to fund equitable vaccine distribution in uptake and we needed to talk to the department of public health in the city to say what neighborhoods based on the data. what populations are not getting equitable vaccine distribution? it may need a different cultural way to actually make themselves available and so we needed to talk to them to understand what neighborhoods, what subpopulations we should

actually be targeting our grants to non profit organizations, not to the city to actually meet the goal of getting i think at the time 80 percent of san franciscans vaccinated. >> thank you. that is super helpful. >> thank you. commissioners, since this is a actionable item, i are see right now several scenarios. one, we can approve the proposals as presented. two, we can approve with certain amendments. three, take no action, mindful there is a possibility had there is one or possibly two similar items on the november ballot. do i

entertain any motions from colleagues before we open up for public comment? >> i dont have a motion but articulate what i think we should do is take no action and hope that the mayor sees this conversation as a indication of our good faith interest and hope to be a partner in this and she will hopefully withdraw her measure. i don't think we should vote on anything before us today. >> i have a second on that one? >> that isn't a motion. >> okay. >> articulating my thoughts. >> i move for that. i think that is the appropriate action. >> so, commissioner bush, you have any comments? >> i think we should move forward. i think we worked around on the issues more then 2 years, and we have seen a half dozen senior city officials indicted and facing criminal charges for

the way they behaved. we know already that there is no audit done on form 700 to see if people are actually disclosed the gifts they are getting. in fact, the whole thing with (inaudible) was he wasn't in a category that require disclosures. >> are you- >> saying we rely on good will and ignoring the record of the past is to say that we have-we are a hopeless group so i would not support a delay. i would support we move forward as it only takes 3 votes to move forward that i say let's get through votes and move forward. >> commissioner bush. >> at least we are on record. >> commissioner bush,

then are you making a motion to approve this in one form or another? in totality as presented or with certain amendments? commissioner bush. >> i'm listening. i'm thinking about how to answer that question. >> meanwhile, i think supervisor peskin would like to- >> chair lee, commissioners. far be it for me to interfere with the internal workings of a commission, but i would like to make perhaps a friendly suggestion to commissioner finler suggestion yet to be a motion, which is, i take the statement as a constructive statement that we are all moving forward in collaboratively and perhaps it could be continued to

your next regularly scheduled meeting of august 12 with the hope that there could be a action taken. the board of supervisors does not reconvene, we are not on summer recess to the 6 day of september of 2022 during which time i believe you have one regularly scheduled meeting so i think what-i don't want to put words in the mayor mouth but what the mayor wants to see is there progress and we are moving forward. clearly i have showed that my office is in the mood to compromise, hence the compromise hesher measure before you so you can work off one measure instead of two at which is definitely a step in the right direction, so i think if you could signal that you will take it up as soon as possible that would be helpful both to the larger political ballot context as well

as getting this out of our collective hair. >> thank you supervisor. supervisor bush, i didn't hear from you. as i mentioned there was 3 possible actions we can take. commissioner finlev suggested in no action. i would suggest that we approve--i share your frustration and i share your commitment that we need to really move forward, and i would make a motion to approve this with at least one amendment, which is to remove the- >> (inaudible) >> excuse me if i might interrupt i want to procedurally understand where we are. i believe i heard a motion from commissioner romano to take no action so don't know if commissioner romano wishes to amend or withdrawl? >> that was the first motion. >> that is on the floor. >> motion taking no

action. and continue the conversation. >> yes, i want making the motion because i didn't realize we needed a motion to take no action. if it requires a motion, by all means i move we continue this to august 12 the next regularly scheduled meeting. >> i also want to clarify to commissioner bush's point, commissioner bush i believe you are extremely concerned about loosening or tightening up let's say behested payment rules. the proposals being discussed right now are only to create exceptions to the behested payment rules. they are not to strengthen them. i just want to make sure that moving forward it is only making more exceptions to the behested payment rules. that is the proposal at least. >> and also the reason why we scheduled today's special meeting was because of the possible placement of

a ballot measure from the mayor in order to meet the november deadline and why we have the meeting today so i would like to hear from the mayor's representative mr. heckle and see where that going. >> thank you chair lee and commissioners. i like to echo supervisor peskins's comment but i want to make clear, we are not pushing, we are not trying to make the ethics commission do something in a hasty manner but i want to be clear respectfully, the city is paralyzed by this legislation. all philanthropic programs have been ordered to cease by mayor breed pending fixes to this legislation. that accounts for 10s of millions of dollars in support for key city programs that homelessness, covid relief, poverty - >> i think we understand that. may i ask, did mayor breed support the legislation? >> mayor breed did not

vote-sign this legislation. >> she did not sign the original-passed with the board of supervisors correct? >> correct. >> did she oppose it? >> she didn't sign it. we knew there were issues from the jump. >> we understand the urgency and we understand the mayor's position in terms of making a ballot measure and we understand if the ballot measure were to pass that would remove our say so and board of supervisors input on these reforms. i share commissioner finlev position we very much want to be a proactive partner and to the extent there is problems or confusion or making the city run more smoothly we want to definitely address that. we just got this last night. it is very hard for us as you said i think it is a complex piece of legislation. i think it is over a hundred pages, so we just have time. i think you understood our substantive

concernsism timing concern is we are not-i'm not going to act today to approve any of this legislation but we certainly want to work with you and to the extent legislation cannot pass i want to second what i said to supervisor peskin we are very much in the interest of creating regulations or working on regulations we have to clarify the perceived problems. >> thank you commissioner romano. my point is that i am echoing supervisor peskin's comment. we dont want to kick the can down the road indefinitely. we want to see movement on this and i think continuing-if the commission is not prepared to act, we think that these changes are-you have a narrower scope of changes and exceptions before you then at the last meeting so i think you would be in a position to vote, but certainly we would like to see if not handled

today then at the next meeting we think would be appropriate with-if there is additional concerns or questions. we sent a memo to the city attorney and ethics commission with 50 questions based on department feedback. we only received answers to half the questions and very complex questions. the legislation is confusing and creating a lot of chaos. >> thank you. commissioner bush. >> yes-i like to amend-can you hear me? >> yes, please go ahead. >> are you making a motion because we have a motion on the floor. >> i want to amend the motion. i want to propose a amendment to the motion. >> then you are making a second motion. >> perhaps- >> what do you want to say

commissioner bush? >> well, i am going to say what i want to say, which is that we would add a provision that calls for complete funding of audits lobbyist and other activities that have direct impact on the city's decisions, because right now whether it is form 700 or lobbyist reports or whatever, there is no outside adit and no internal audit done on a regular basis and that is why you have the-so many examples of actions against city officials for failing to disclose because nobody ever made it anyone's responsibility other 10 then the person submitting the form. >> commissioner bush, the motion on the floor right now

is to continue the dialogue between the interested parties and at the next scheduled meeting, which is august 12, we would decide on the behested payment amendments only. so, this is the motion. if you are interested in other motions then we can address it later time, but roget right now we have on the floor a motion and seconded to continue deliberation on this matter and to take action at the august 12 regular scheduled commission meeting. let's open up for public comment on this motion. do we have anyone in

the room who wish to comment so we can-okay. yes, mr. cobb, please. >> hello again. sam cobb, ceo point of tipping point community. i totally agree with mr. henly things have been totally stalled and halted because of the legislation. there was a state grant that came out that was just released two days ago that needs to be submitted back by the city of san francisco by september the 6 in order-and the city needs a match of $2 million in order to proceed to apply for funding for young people transitioning out of foster care that would bring back another 2 and a half to $3 million. unless we can have conversations with that city department and we can help them pull together that match, they will not be able

to apply for those funds, so i want to say that this halted, it is having a impact as we speak. that said, i agree with the motion to continue this further because the public also needs to see the compromise proposal in order to insure that some of the concerns that not just me but others have. i thank the mayor and board of supervisors for working on this diligently as well. thank you. >> may i just add that come august 12 there will be a firm decision. we are not going to kick the can down the road. any other comments? otherwise let's go to the callers in queue please. moderator. >> thank you madam chair. we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue. callers, if you wish to provide your- >> my apologies. >> it is okay.

(inaudible) >> suzy smith. good morning deputy director for policy planning and public affairs human service agency and want to echo the urgency. over the last couple years our department which includes department of benefits and family support as well as department of disability and aging services has either directly received grants from foundations or influenced foundations on the grant making upwards of about $25 million over the last few years, and as mr. cobbs shared, we want to apply for the state grant that is now just released and we have 5 weeks in order to put the application together and they want written commitments that we are able to provide the match and tipping point foundation is interested in supporting the project and is very engaged in advocacy for

pilots that work, so they are interested in piloting invasion to complex social problems that then if successful advocate for sustaining those initiatives. so it is really important in terms of stifling work on a day to day basis how we are trying to help in this case 21 year olds that are leaving our foster care system and hoping to get a thousand dollars a month through this initiative for at least 6 month s to help transition to adulthood so i want to undersceer the day to day impact on departments and the ability to serve the most vulnerable rez dlsh to the city. another example with the department of disability and aging services, we have working groups where foundations are part of the committees. the working groups adviceing on things like health directives and partnering with communities and people of color to

think about what is the best way to help them actually get advance health directives and these are conversations that are ongoing and impact the strategy of the foundations. if we are not able to do that there is arare of programming and impact that would have a immediate effect and already is. anyway, just wanted to underscore in a practical way departments are finding it very difficult to know what to do, how to do it and it stopping important programming. >> i understand we are not supposed to engage with the public commenters, but i just want to ask, with a 2 week gap between now and august 12, impact your >> the challenge is the state has only given 5 week tuesday put the proposal together and it is middle summer so we need meetings in order to be able to by september submit

this proposal so it gives us a very short window- >> (inaudible) exxuz me supervisor peskin (inaudible) couldn't vote before september 6 anyway, so-- >> well, i guess we'll have-we have asked for city attorney guidance on this particular question. it just is very unclear. >> that makes sense. >> thank you. moderator, any comments? any callers? >> yes, madam chair. there is 6 callers on the line. >> welcome caller. your 3 minutes starts now. >> hi. my name is matt valdez. good morning commissioners. i'm here on behalf of the san francisco giants and giant community fund here to talk about the amendments

on behested payment law. the giants are non profit community fund and rec and park (inaudible) along with other improvements. this legislation posed a challenge to say the least. i wanted to come before you all today to ask for you all to make amendments to the language to allow project like ours and many others through the city to continue. i was born and raised in excelsior (inaudible) giants and (inaudible) focus on looking for a larger project that can is a more meaningful impact and we identify (inaudible) amazon as the proper location. years ago approached rec and park about project at crocker and working with them the

past couple years, 2018 and included in the project in the 2020 health recovery bond measure. as the result of the passage of the measure funding is allocated and we agree to match millions in funding to carry out the project and working hand in hand with rec park, a great partnership in designing the project but at a standstill because we are advise (inaudible) junior giant program provides opportunity for (inaudible) [difficulty hearing speaker] see our kids playing baseball and softball for free and learning lots of life skills but we work with rec and park and need field permits to allow the activities to happen and we do win the world series need a permit from rec and park to have the parade. as a result, this legislation is

really tied our hands to be able to give millions of dollars of support and beautify and rehabilitate our public park and so we are just asking for a project like ours and many other projects that pose no real ethical issue if you would be willing to amend the current legislation to allow projects like ours to be completed for-to provide matching funding and to not just provide the community countless san francisco kids from a opportunity to enjoy the project and play. with that, please ask you to dopt language that allows our projects and others like ours to proceed. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> welcome caller. your minutes start now.

[echo] >> thank you to the mayor's office and supervisor peskin for sponsoring the amendment and to the members of the ethic commission for considering reversion to the ordinance. we greatly appreciate the fact that you are getting much needed attention to the serious issue. my name is cathy lowery calling on behalf of rising up initiative. rising up is a public private partnership launched by mayor breed in 2018 and supported the broader city wide goal reducing homelessness for young people 18-25 by 50 percent (inaudible) to date we ended homelessness for 571 young san francisco adults. 74 percent are young people of color. the ord nnsh had a chilling effect on philanthropy and limited the ability of foundations and non

profits to engage in partnerships like rising up. we see through the implementitation working together the public sector and private sector we can accomplish so much more reducing homelessness for young people. the private sector support and public sector support are integral pillars in our community efforts to end homelessness and we support and applaud effort to promote good gover gover nrns we urge the commission to support the proposal. >> welcome caller. welcome caller, your three minutes starts now. >> good morning honorable commissioners . my name is (inaudible) department of

homelessness and supportive housing. i apologize for not being in person but i'm on the east coast now and wanted to give my-share my thoughts. i appreciate being here today to share thoughts about the behested payment legislation passed in january and proposed amendments. i want to start by acknowledging good intentions and work going into the original legislation designed to pay to pay relationship. (inaudible) makes government more transparent and ethical. this is why we suppose the mayor office proposed amendment that clarify the law and provide clear guidance to city staff so they can confidently comply with these laws. as it stands the current version of the behested payment legislation significantly impacts our departments and the city ability to respond to the homelessness crisis that demands urgency and invasion. our department ability to discuss potential homelessness response projects with philanthropic partners resulted in highly successful

partnerships providing millions towards critical programming and helped hundreds of households exit homelessness. the majority of foundations working to address homelessness seek to advance policy change as a part of the mission which places them in the gray area of the attempt to influence clause included under the definition of interest rt paies. this includes foundations like tipping point community put forward mill yngs of dollars to move forward solutions to address the crisis on the streets. the definition threatens the ability to receive foundational grants, advice foundations on the grant making to support the proposed amendment to (inaudible) definition. finally i want to express my concern there is no fiscal or racial equity analysis conducted on the original behested payment legislation. this is concerning on many levels but given many organizations representing and serving the communities depend on

philanthropic support. (inaudible) from sources of support. i appreciate your time today and your consideration of the proposed amendments from the mayor's office and supervisor peskin that support our ability to address the homelessness crisis with the urgency and invasion it demands. thank you. >> thank you, next caller, please. >> welcome caller. your 3 minutes starts now. >> good morning commissioners. mary (inaudible) policy director at (inaudible) cochair of homeless emergency service providers association and active member on steering committee of human service network. these are major service provider coalitions that represent more than 80 non profits provideic essential service that can save people lives experiencing homelessness and extremely complex physical and mental health issues. calling to urge the commission to move quickly and

decisively in august to adopt the amendments proposed by the mayor office and by supervisor peskin, specifically i want to urge the commission to clarify the ability tofundraise and remove barriers to fundraising that support services like the ones the non profits provide and also want to ask the commission to remove interested parties (inaudible) people who attempt to influence legislative or administrative action in line with the amendments proposed. this ordinance has had a chilling effect on fill anthopy and limit the ability of foundations and non profits to work with the city and public private partnerships that allow us to respond flexbly to the city most pressing problems and i definitely support good governance oriented ordinances, but we need to make sure that they are tailored to

address the pay to play issues and not disproportionately impact non profits that are providing life saving services and not funded at cost to do so. thank you. >> thank you. >> welcome caller, your 3 minutes starts now. >> my name is john (inaudible) i want to thank the body as well as the board of supervisors and mayor office seeing the need for this legislation which i stand in full support of. however, as a partner with the city and county of san francisco through san francisco recreation and park department well over 30 years it is concerning to me relative to the ability for us to continue to navigate this relationship forward which is looked at nationally as a public private partnership of merit and looked as a model, we have worked to invest well over $5 million in the space a

derelict abandoned site 30 years ago and quarter million volunteer hours from the citizens of san francisco we transaction formed the state and create a national memorial in city and county of san francisco. looking at the legislative (inaudible) whether or not the partnership is possible today. our work is improve the fabric of the community by bringing individuals and citizens together that may (inaudible) working on a project put on hold to conserve water and insure irrigation of golden gate park (inaudible) because of this particular legislation, it is on hold now impacting the environmental safety and security and the preservation of water within the city. i ask this body to please look and see if long-term partner such as ourselves and others on the call can be exempted to allow us to move forward with the projects. this is

the fabric of san francisco, how we work together to bring about a better community and better city. i ask you to please insure this is not a chilling effect with community organizations. again, thank you for your work. >> thank you. >> madam chair, there are no more callers on the line. >> thank you. public comment is closed. we have on the floor a motion moved by commissioner romano, seconded by commissioner finlev to continue further discussion and for the action- >> i think the opposite, not that it matters but i moved i commissioner romano second . >> okay. and to continue the discussion and further action to the next regularly scheduled meeting on august 2. i also like to propose a new amendment, which is to approve

the joint proposal presented by the board of supervisors and the mayor to amend with one amendment, which is to remove the provision that would prohibit the ethics commission from imposing penalties. i made that motion and do i have a second to that? >> (inaudible) >> that is what i'm presenting for us to consider. >> they both can't pass. >> they cannot pass. well, we'll-- >> perhaps just to clarify, my understanding is if we have a motion that is made and seconded that motion should be acted on first. if there is a frndly amendment to the motion which sounds like this is not that, this motion would be voted on subsequent to

the first motion. >> the procedure is we have to vote for the first motion and then someone else can make a second? >> as i understand it would continue the discussion and consideration of the proposal pending engagement with the mayor and supervisor peskin office on the proposal and on the progress the ordinance has shown and think the staff is very willing and eager to work with those offices to bring something back to the august 12 regular meeting. that would be the result i believe of the first motion as i understand it. >> so, can i have a clarification from the city attorney? can we have not competing but different motions on the floor for the commissioners to vote on? and which ever one has the majority vote will prevail? >> yes, as far as our understanding is that

you make--commissioner lee you are making a second motion regarding an alternate route you like to take. i do believe we could have two motions on the floor. obviously if the first motion is voted on and passes it is countered to your second motion, so you need a second for your motion to- >> okay. >> be taken up for a vote. >> okay, thank you. do i have a second? no. is commissioner bush on the e line still? >> hello. >> commissioner bush did you hear the motion on the floor so we have one motion that was

moved and seconded and a second one moved but not seconded. >> the second one i'm seconding. can you hear me? i'm seconding the- >> the one to move- >> the second motion. >> okay. so, now we have two motions. the first one is to continue further discussion and further action to the next meeting at august 12. the second one is to approve the joint proposals with certain amendments. specifically the penalty, so let's call for a vote first on the first motion, please. >> do we need public comment on the second motion because public comment was only for the first motion? that is

a legal question i guess. >> city attorney. >> we had a opportunity for the public to comment about the agenda item, so public comment-secondary public comment period is not necessary. >> just to clarify, madam chair your motion is to adopt the proposal we got this morning that we haven't gotten staff feedback, is that correct? >> yes. >> thank you. >> call for a vote on the first motion to continue the item for discussion and further action at- >> now we are voting on the motion tocontinue the item to august 12. roll call, please. >> on the motion to take no action today and continue further discussion for action as the commission regularly

scheduled meeting on august 12, made by commissioner finlev and seconded by commissioner romano --i'll now call the roll. [roll call] >> so, since that one was approved so there is no need for a vote on the second one, because it is--city attorney? it is not necessary to take a vote on the second motion? >> yes, you should resend your motion. >> i'll withdraw my motion. that passed, so

let's-thank you very much- >> if i may before you leave, i wanted to make one thing very clear if i may, chair? >> yes. >> so we are all on the same page because we will separate and be difficult i want to make sure we understand the primary concerns i think that at least i'll speak for myself, which is removal of the administrative action, the remove of attempt to (inaudible) those are the two main ones. i also have questions about the exception for non profit recreational cultural activity and real estate property provisions. i want to make sure i-you understand that we hear loud and clear that there is a serious issue with the current legislation as law in san francisco, we want to work as best we can to help on that. i am also very impressed by the broad coalition of parties from the government from non profit

organizations who realize this is a major impediment to making the city work better. we want to help on that too and look forward developing solutions that address the concerns but maintain the spirit of the behested payment law you enacted last year. >> if i may commissioners, i welcome commissioner romano's statement and i think it was otherwise reflected and now let's get together and do the work both in public and offline with commissioners. you're welcome to contact me with staff. our doors more then open. i like to resolve this matter and really take the politics out. i think we are all on the same policy page which is stamp out pay to play, quid pro quo in san francisco. that is why the legislation passed unanimously. i

appreciate the acknowledgment the mayor never liked the rej slaigz and returned unsigned and for the record, i do take issue with what is something of a manufactured crisis. there are legitimate parts but the notion executive order all philanthropic giving has come to a halt is politics and the realty is, many of these parties could be vetted by the departments and the city attorney office and ethics commission staff to determine whether or not they truly are conflicted interested party or not. fundraising doesn't need to come to a halt but let's fix this thing and see you august 12. >> thank you. thank you all. >> thank you supervisor peskin. i like to echo the sentiment of continuing to work collaboratively. i can make myself available of course to ethic staff and individual commissioners off-line

to engage on your questions and concerns. as far as the repercussions of the state of affairs, the mayor director is pause programs pending compliance so programs are allowed to continuing with the approval of ethic commission and staff and city attorney if there is a green light programs can proceed but weknow there is red lights as to whether programs done in the past were attempted again today. thank you for your consideration. we look forward to collaborating further with you on this important issue. >> thank you very much. now, let's go into closed session. >> madam chair-before we do that i want-i thought it is good time to jump in. last week in the office of assessor recorder i met with the manageic director of the san francisco war memorial

and perform ing arts center john (inaudible) to discuss pending changes regarding the payments and gift laws so wanted to share i also met with the people. i won't go into detail what we discussed because it isn't relevant for now but may inform the conversations moving forward especially in closed session so i wanted to share that. >> just it remind the public, up to 2 commissioners can speak to anybody without violating the brown act. just to keep that in mind. let us go to proposed closed session. item number 4. do i have to read all these? we need to move forward. city attorney, do we need to--regurgitate all the

closed session--? >> i'm sorry chair lee, what was your question? >> do i have to review all these closed session requirements, because we really are under the gun. we only have about 20 minutes to discuss this. >> i debelieve we have to read all of the item on the list. >> okay. >> we can continue after 20 minutes even though some commissioners may need to leave. (inaudible) >> this item is scheduled for the commission discussion and possible action employee relation staff here for the closed session item. anticipated issue on the negotiation of the status of the meet and confer with organization, san francisco (inaudible) regarding the ethics commission proposed june 2022 ballot measure and regulation amendments. purpose of the item today, the

4 steps. 4a receive public comment on all matters pertaining to item 4 including whether to meet in closed session. second then vote on whether to meet in closed session under california government code. section 54597-6, and sunshine ordinance 67-10e to discuss labor negotiations. this is action item as noted in item 4b. third is closed session held the commission initiate that closed session meeting to meet with a labor negotiator and follow that closed session will reconvene in open session. pursuant to brown act section 54597.1 and sunshine ordinance 7612 and (inaudible) discuss and vote on the motion regarding whether or not to disclose any action taken or discussion held in closed session regarding the

labor negotiation. let's go to public comment to see if we have any public comment on this item, please. moderator. >> thank you madam chair. there are no callers on the line. >> okay. so, let's proceed to-no public comment so let's proceed to closed session. director pellem, would you like to- >> i'm not sure i heard a motion to go into closed session moved and seconded. take a roll call vote. >> do i have a motion to go into closed session? >> yes, let's move to go into closed session. >> second. >> roll call please. >> motion made to go

into closed session by commissioner romano and seconded by chair lee. i'll call the roll. [roll call] >> the motion has been approved unanimously. >> okay, now we will move into closed session for update with labor negotiator and status of meet and confer concerning the proposed 2022 ballot measure. we have here joining [meeting reconvened]

>> okay. we are now back in public session and i want to thank the public-members of the public for patient ce and continued engagement. we are back in opening session. commissioners do i have a motion to disclose action taken? >> not disclose the content of closed session. >> seconded by me. roll call, please. >> on the motion not to disclose closed session deliberation, i will

now call the roll. [roll call] >> commissioner bush, i believe you are muted. >> we are working to unmute. >> let's take-let's skip over- >> it looks like commissioner bush had technical difficulties and hasn't been able to join the meeting. >> let's proceed with the roll call. >> we can go to the rest of the roll call and see if the technical difficulties work out. [roll call continued]

>> commissioner bush, are you back online? >> i vote no. >> with 3 votes affirmive and one in opposition the motion is approved. >> thank you. now we on item 5 which is additional opportunity for public comment on matters not appearing on the agenda. any callers? >> let me check madam chair. just one caller on the line. welcome caller, you have 3 minutes. >> commissioners >> can you please speak up? >> went into closed session (inaudible) yes? can i speak up? can you hear me? >> yes, please go ahead.

>> get a opportunity to speak. what i want to say now is that we can focus on the form 700 and we can focus on auditing the lobbyist, so that we get some results. what is happening in this deliberation is that community the citizens, san franciscans are not aware of what is going on. they are not even aware of this meeting. and these other people who are coming and speaking because you know, they want to make some money and i'm not going to name their names and it is not right that you give them one or two

opportunities to speak just because they come in person. what we were discussing about was about giving exception to the behested rules that have to be-rules that have to be fallowed and we want people to follow them. we don't exemptions. the people are fed up. so, i wanted to speak earlier on 3a or 3b, but i was denied and i'm taking this opportunity to let you know exactly what i said in my introductory statement. we look upon you to do the right thing. do not kick the can down the street. the other thing is, don't wait for the last moment. all

these things have to be in place at least three weeks. we know the mayor did not sign what was sent to her. we know that the mayor was against proposition c-(inaudible) she wanted the benefit of proposition c. thank you very much. >> madam chair, there is no more callers ong on the line. >> thank you. public comment is closed. now, is agenda item number 6, adjournment. this concludes the july 27 special meeting of the san francisco ethics commission. thank you all. [meeting adjourned]

[crowd noise] [music] as a city we do a lot of parades and celebrations. public work system in the middle of things, doing inspections and cleanings and organizing our crews so we are used to creating something it is something we know how to do. >> this is managed by city workers. they are out here doing the jobs to make sure our city looks good in our city time. >> we are also routing for the warriors whether we work. it was thrilling when they won and we had to get to work to plan for the parade and to make

sure that everybody in the city everybody that come to the city is safe and taken care of. >> a lot went everwent in 100 hours of planning with the warrior and mayors office and city partners it took a team to make today possible. >> important this the department has the presence, seeing the priority and vehicles makes everyone feel safe we value our commute and serve it, it is important. >> the giant crowds we are to bring out our specialized equipment. we have small response united staffed by a paramedic and mt the small golf cart devices have a gender and he get in and out of crowds. >> i'm here to help people get

to where they need to go and figure out the bus routes and navigate things temperature is important we take care of safety and make sure everyone gets to where they need to so everyone can celebrate the warrior and be out on parade day. >> how is or ems book >> when we have been able to do is set up mobile command posts. and we partnered with the private sector with verizon to provide priority communication so we can run our entire emergency response on that network for our first responders. we know they will work even though we are getting thousands of people all competing for the same network to send photos and e maild and texts and video our first responders are able to do the same amongst the large crowd. >> get out here at 5:30 a.m. and saw employees cleaning the street its takes a team to build

a champion. >> i love it and bum when he left i'm glad he is back no matter how much he plays or does not play that man's heart and spirit he carries everyone along and really mentor people and mentoring is so important whether in basketball or the fire service or ems. mentoring is huge and having a presence like that around is huge. >> my favorite player is jordan i like he is a role player and come out as a starter i feel similar to the city i like a structure and plan when there is an opportunity to lead i like that, also. >> the player i like lisa. he is similar to me all there and game is in the pretty but gets the job done. every time he scores all right. my man is back. >> happy with seth curry's wife

strong. she is a leader and she just really puts on a great face for females and being strong and in the face of challenge and negativity. [music] [crowd noise] >> they were tons and tons and tons of blue and yellow confetti. every wrchl the end we picked up 38 tons of trash. mostly confetti. >> in terms of for our crews we were ready. after we had been data break and done carnival in may. our team was prepped to do the work and they felt tremendous pride in part of the huge celebration and tremendous pride in the coordination we did with the mayor's office, the police department issue public health and the city agencies that got

together and put on a party for the bay area. put on the party for the nation. [crowd noise] [music]c]c]c]c]c]]

valencia has been a constantly evolving roadway. the first bike lanes were striped in 1999, and today is the major north and south bike route from the mission neighborhood extending from market to mission street. >> it is difficult to navigate lindsay on a daily basis, and more specifically, during the morning and evening commute hours. >> from 2012 to 2016, there were 260 collisions on valencia and 46 of those were between vehicles and bikes. the mayor shows great leadership and she knew of the long history

of collisions and the real necessity for safety improvements on the streets, so she actually directed m.t.a. to put a pilot of protected bike lanes from market to 15th on valencia street within four months time. [♪♪♪] >> valencia is one of the most used north south bike routes in san francisco. it has over 2100 cyclists on an average weekday. we promote bicycles for everyday transportation of the coalition. valencia is our mission -- fits our mission perfectly. our members fall 20 years ago to get the first bike lane stripes. whether you are going there for restaurants, nightlife, you know , people are commuting up and down every single day. >> i have been biking down the valencia street corridor for about a decade. during that time, i have seen

the emergence of ridesharing companies. >> we have people on bikes, we have people on bike share, scooters, we have people delivering food and we have uber taking folks to concerts at night. one of the main goals of the project was to improve the overall safety of the corridor, will also looking for opportunities to upgrade the bikeway. >> the most common collision that happens on valencia is actually due to double parking in the bike lane, specifically during, which is where a driver opens the door unexpectedly. >> we kept all the passengers -- the passenger levels out, which is the white crib that we see, we double the amount of commercial curbs that you see out here. >> most people aren't actually perking on valencia, they just need to get dropped off or pick something up. >> half of the commercial loading zones are actually after 6:00 p.m., so could be used for

five-minute loading later into the evening to provide more opportunities or passenger and commercial loading. >> the five minute loading zone may help in this situation, but they are not along the corridor where we need them to be. >> one of the most unique aspects of the valencia pilot is on the block between 14th street. >> we worked with a pretty big mix of people on valencia. >> on this lot, there are a few schools. all these different groups had concerns about the safety of students crossing the protected bikeway whether they are being dropped off or picked up in the morning or afternoon. to address those concerns, we installed concrete loading islands with railings -- railings that channel -- channeled a designated crossing plane. >> we had a lot of conversations around how do you load and unload kids in the mornings and the afternoons? >> i do like the visibility of some of the design, the safety aspects of the boarding pilot

for the school. >> we have painted continental crosswalks, as well as a yield piece which indicates a cyclist to give the right-of-way so they can cross the roadway. this is probably one of the most unique features. >> during the planning phase, the m.t.a. came out with three alternatives for the long term project. one is parking protected, which we see with the pilot, they also imagined a valencia street where we have two bike lanes next to one another against one side of the street. a two-way bikeway. the third option is a center running two-way bikeway, c. would have the two bike lanes running down the center with protection on either side. >> earlier, there weren't any enter lane designs in san francisco, but i think it will be a great opportunity for san francisco to take the lead on that do so the innovative and

different, something that doesn't exist already. >> with all three concepts for valencia's long-term improvement , there's a number of trade-offs ranging from parking, or what needs to be done at the intersection for signal infrastructure. when he think about extending this pilot or this still -- this design, there's a lot of different design challenges, as well as challenges when it comes to doing outreach and making sure that you are reaching out to everyone in the community. >> the pilot is great. it is a no-brainer. it is also a teaser for us. once a pilot ends, we have thrown back into the chaos of valencia street. >> what we're trying to do is incremental improvement along the corridor door. the pilot project is one of our first major improvements. we will do an initial valuation in the spring just to get a glimpse of what is happening out here on the roadway, and to make any adjustments to the pilot as needed. this fall, we will do a more robust evaluation. by spring of 2020, we will have recommendations about long-term

improvements. >> i appreciate the pilot and how quickly it went in and was built, especially with the community workshops associated with it, i really appreciated that opportunity to give input. >> we want to see valencia become a really welcoming and comfortable neighborhood street for everyone, all ages and abilities. there's a lot of benefits to protected bike lanes on valencia , it is not just for cyclists. we will see way more people biking, more people walking, we are just going to create a really friendly neighborhood street. [♪♪♪]

>> there is a lot of unique characteristics about visitation valley. it is a unique part of the city. >> we are off in a corner of the city against the san francisco county line 101 on one side. vis station valley is still one of the last blue color neighborhoods in san francisco. a lot of working class families out here. it is unusual. not a lot of apartment buildings. a lot of single family homes. >> great business corridor. so much traffic coming through here and stopping off to grab

coffee or sandwich or pick up food before going home. >> a lot of customers are from the neighborhood. they are painters or mechanics. they are like blue color workers, a lot of them. >> the community is lovely. multi-racial and hopefully we can look out for each other. >> there is a variety of businesses on the block. you think of buffalo kitchen, chinese food, pork buns, sandwich. library, bank of america with a parking lot. the market where you can grab anything. amazing food choices, nail salons. basically everything you need is here. >> a lot of these businesses up and down leland are family owned. people running them are family. when you come here and you have an uncle and nephew and go across the street and have the

guy and his dad. lisa and her daughter in the dog parlor and pam. it is very cool. >> is small businesses make the neighborhood unique. >> new businesses coming. in mission blue, gourmet chocolate manufacturing. the corridor has changed and is continuing to change. we hope to see more businesses coming in the near future. >> this is what is needed. first, stay home. unless it is absoluteliness scary. social distancing is the most important step right now to limit spread of virus. cancel all nonessential gather everythings. >> when the pandemic litly land

avenue suffered like other corridors. a few nail salons couldn't operate. they shut down. restaurants that had to adapt to more of a take out model. they haven't totally brought back indoor seating. >> it is heartbreaking to see the businesses that have closed down and shut because of the pandemic. >> when the pandemic first hit it got really slow. we had to change our hours. we never had to close, which is a blessing. thank god. we stayed open the whole time. >> we were kind of nervous and anxious to see what was going to come next hoping we will not have to close down. >> during covid we would go outside and look on both sides of the street. it looked like old western town. nobody on the street. no cars. >> it was a hard eight or nine

months. when they opened up half the people couldn't afford a haircut. >> during that time we kept saying the coffee shop was the living room of the valley. people would come to make sure they were okay. >> we checked on each other and patronized each other. i would get a cup of coffee, shirt, they would get a haircut. >> this is a generous and kind community. people would be like i am getting the toffee for the guy behind me and some days it went on and on. it was amazing to watch. we saw a perfect picture of community. we are all in this together. >> since we began to reopen one year later, we will emerge stronger. we will emerge better as a city because we are still here and we stand in solidarity with one

another. >> when we opened up august 1st. i will not say it was all good. we are still struggling due to covid. it affected a lot of people. >> we are still in the pandemic right now. things are opening up a little bit. it is great to have space to come together. i did a three painting series of visitation valley and the businesses on leland. it felt good to drop off the paintings and hung them. >> my business is picking up. the city is opening up. we have mask requirements. i check temperatures. i ask for vaccination card and/or recent test. the older folks they want to feel safe here. >> i feel like there is a sense of unity happening. >> what got us through the pandemic was our customers. their dogs needed groomed, we have to cut their nails so they

don't over grow. >> this is only going to push us forward. i sense a spirit of community and just belief in one another. >> we are trying to see if we can help all small businesses around here. there is a cannabis club lounge next to the dog parlor to bring foot traffic. my business is not going to work if the business across the street is not getting help. >> in hit us hard. i see a bright future to get the storefronts full. >> once people come here i think they really like it. >> if you are from san francisco visit visitation valley to see how this side of the city is the same but different.

>> good morning. i want to thank all of you for joining us i'm david which you the city attorney of san francisco we are here to announce 2 lawsuits fileed protect the patients of laguna honda and keep this institution open. my office filed a case on behalf of the city of san francisco, the reigning law group fileod behalf of the patients of laguna honda. for over 150 years willing lag provided critical skilled nursing and rehab service for our most vulnerable for seniors, family members with disabilities, those who can't take care of themselves. we are h