i left mine in the car. thanks. madam chair. we are ready to begin. okay i like it. are we still planning. okay okay. good

morning and welcome to the august 18th, 2023, regular meeting of the san francisco ethics commission. today's meeting is being live cable cast on of gov tv and streamed live online at esp gov tv.org/ethics live for public comment. members of the public may attend in person or may participate by phone or the web platform as explained in our agenda document . mr. clerk, can you please explain how the remote public comment will be handled today? thank you, madam chair. public comment will be available on each item on this agenda. each member of the public will be allowed three minutes to speak. for those attending in person, opportunities to speak during the public comment period will be made available here in room 400 city hall. for those attending remotely public comment period can also be provided via phone call by calling. 14156550001. again, the

phone number. is 14156550001. access code. is 26620724697. again an access code. is 266200724697. followed by the pound sign, then press pound again to join as an attendee when your item of interest comes up, press star three to raise your hand to be added to the public comment line. public comment is also available via the webex client application. use the webex link on the agenda to connect and press the raise hand button to be added to the public comment line for detailed instructions about how to interact with the telephone system or webex client. please refer to the public comment section of this agenda document for this meeting. public comment may also be submitted in writing and will be shared with the commission after this meeting

has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file. written comments should be sent to ethics commission at sf gov. org. once again, written comments should be sent to ethics commission at sf. gov org. members of the public who who attend are members of the public who attend commission meetings, including remote attendance are also expected to behave responsibly and respectfully during public comment. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members as persons who engage in name-calling. shouting interruption or other distracting behavior may be excluded from participation. the following behaviors or activities are strictly prohibited during remote participation. applause or vocal expression of support or opposition signs regardless of content or message, provide manatee threats of physical aggression. the prohibition on signs does not apply to clothing , which includes signage pinned

to clothing messages displayed on clothing pins, hats or buttons. this provision supplements rules and policies adopted by city hall, the sheriff's office, or the board of supervisors, related to decorum, prohibited conduct or activities. noise et-cetera and is not meant to be exhausted. thank you, madam chair. thank you. i call the meeting to order . let's go to agenda item number one, which is roll call please. commissioner flores, thing. hi, commissioner finland. hi, chair lee. present commissioner salahi . present madam chair. with four members present and accounted for. you have a quorum. thank you. let's go to agenda item number two, which is general public comment. would anyone in the audience wish to speak. commissioners my name is

francisco dacosta. i have been involved with the ethics commission since its beginning. this commission is operation is now corrupt and fails to meet the charter requirement on the waters. direct action. you may think you can hoodwink the public, but the time has come. now. to take this matter to a higher level. i will just state one thing. the secretary, for example, of this commission should be in the pendant. it is not what this commission has

done or come to you in recent years is be a lackey of certain very evil and corrupt entities in city hall. we know this. i participated in the sunshine task force that has been destroy fraud. as i stated, i participated in the ethics commission this is san francisco . we uplift one another. we do not take people into a cesspool . what has been created today by commissioners is that y'all are being anointed by very corrupt people to do very corrupt

actions, much like what is happening with donald trump. my much like what is happening with donald trump. this is san francisco. and if the sunshine task force and the ethics commission doesn't do right, then we will fail. oftentimes i call from home. today i'm here. to pay my respects. to charlie mack. stella who often came here and spoke truth to power recently. he passed away in an sro. his body was found many days after his death. this is the plight of our advocates. we

fight has expired, but nobody respects us. thank you. anyone else in the room who wish to address the commission? if not, let's go to the remote queue, please. madam chair, we have no callers in the queue. okay. public comment is closed. now let's go to agenda item number. three consent calendar. there will be no separate discussion on the consent calendar item unless a request is made by a commission member or a member of the public. in which event the matter will be removed from the consent calendar with any member

of the commission wish to any items. i see none. i see none from the audience. so let us go to public comment on consent. item number three, which is draft minutes of the ethics commission. july 14th, 2023 regular meeting. number four acting executive directors report number five proposed tabulation decision and order in the matter of frank fung, six proposed the stipulation decision and order in the matter of san francisco bicycle coalition. san francisco bicycle coalition education fund, brian whitmire and janice lee. let's go to the public comment. anyone in room? i see none. let's go to the queue, please. madam chair,

we have one caller in the queue. please stand by. welcome. caller your three minutes begins now. can you hear me okay? yes. okay david, good morning. on the draft minutes. there was a. i believe somewhere i i'm having trouble finding it right now. referred to someone. maybe it was at the end, someone stated and i think the word that was listed was stated. yes yeah. page nine. chair lee asked, and perhaps it should refer to deputy city attorney brad rossi as or something if he had anything to add. he stated no, i think that should be stated and i think there was some other there was simply on clarity

about a couple of the votes. perhaps if someone on on staff or elsewhere could just do another read through the minutes. i think there may be some clarifying edits that would be helpful. nothing substantive, but i think to the extent that the minutes reflect the actions taken in the record of those actions, they should be as as accurate as possible. i think those are my comments at this time. thanks very much for listening. capture that. madam chair. there's no further callers in the queue. you able to capture the comments? i was having some. the minutes could be amended to reflect that stunning correction if that's. thank you. any other callers? no, there's no further callers

in the queue. madam chair. okay. public comment is close. colleagues to entertain a motion . to approve the consent consent calendar subject to whatever spelling fixes staff makes in the draft minutes. second. second. roll call please. a motion has been made. i will now take roll commissioner flores vang. hi, commissioner. finland. hi. chair lee. hi, commissioner . hi, madam chair. with four votes in the affirmative and zero votes opposed the motion is approved unanimously. okay now let us go to item number seven, which is election of commission vice chair for ethics commission bylaws. article four, section. one. i wish to ask our acting deputy director, mr. massey, to

provide an overview of the process for nominating and electing the vice chair for the for the coming year. that ends in february. okay. thank you, madam chair. the commission's bylaws do not provide for a specific method for the election of its officers. the commission is customarily employed the following procedure for the election of its officers. any commissioner who wishes to nominate a candidate for vice chair will state the name of that person that person agrees to run that person is nominated. commissioners may also self nominate for vice chair when there are no further nominations in after public comment, the chair will close the nominations and take a roll call vote in which each commissioner shall state the name of the nominee for whom he or she is voting. if a nominee receives three or more votes, that person is elected vice chair. if no nominee receives three votes, the commission may have further

discussion and proceed to another vote. this process shall repeat until one nominee has received three or more votes. okay. let us open the floor for any nominations for vice chair. i'd like to nominate tyce commissioner. jones if none nomination is close, let's take public comment. place i see none here. do you have a second? do we need a second. a deputy city attorney, brad. commissioners, i don't think you need a second for the nomination of an officer in this situation. thanks so let

us go to public comment. commissioners. if you read robert's rules. you'll understand the statement that i made. having said that, let me state because i know that a lot of people listening to me at home, i stated that this commission. needs to have standards and i see. and i've been here for a long time, many years. and i see that on our commission today. we need a.

candidates that reflect the wishes and the standards, the morals and the ethics of san franciscans and i do not say that and i say that in watching y'all from before, even though some of y'all have represented on the fair political practices commission, some of y'all purport to be attorneys, y'all still do not do due diligence. and you could see that in your budget. so whoever is appointed, you know, we need you have a budget now, but you need to do due diligence as so. i'll be following y'all. i'm not going

to be calling in, but i'll be watching y'all and i'll be addressing the issues on my blog . thank you very much. thank you. any other callers. madam chair, we have one caller in the queue. please stand by. welcome. caller your three minutes begins now. commissioner is. thank you , commissioners. my name is carol harvey. i've been an investigator, reporter and a citizen of san francisco for 30 years. i'm here to honor charles marsteller. and bob plante holds true warriors in the fight for honesty and integrity in san francisco politics. i learned about the kauffman charter when connie chan ran for supervisor for a majority of san francisco citizens is an agreement that the city and county of san francisco and san francisco city

government are more deeply corrupt than ever before. correcting this appalling and dysfunctional situation mandates many sweeping, bold and honest changes. first, we need a charter amendment to replace the kauffman charters adverse effects so that ethics can be elected with a protected budget to do truly independent investigations. second, we must conduct a recall of all the ethics commissioners, followed by an intensive effort to make certain that their replacements are highly ethical people. thank you. thank you. i just want to remind members of the public that the opportunity for our public comment to the specific agenda items is for the special agenda items and there will be ample opportunity for you to

comment on other items. that's not included in today's agenda items later on. any other members of the public waiting in the queue? no, ma'am. if not, oh, my apologies. good morning, commissioner. my name is lois scott and i've been voting in san francisco for over 40 years, and worked for the city for over three decades as a senior, i've been participating in an informal group of citizens who recognize and want to reduce corruption and we call ourselves the anti corrupt action coalition. i've come today to talk about charlie marsteller, who died several weeks ago. he was a mentor to us and a leader in the creation of the ethics commission by amendment to the city charter in 1993. he was a

proponent of campaign finance and the lobbying disclosure legislation and a keen critic of dereliction in, except for his association with sf common cause and the san francisco league of women voters. he stood above the fray, analytical and abhorrent of any self interest in any issue. but he knew who the miscreants were. your commission is, is or should be an important asset to those wanting integrity and government. charlie always hoped you would have some success, as most public employees and citizens hope so too, and have been disappointed and i'd like to recount just a few of my unhappy experiences as whistleblower. and i'm just going to summarize here, because i know this may not completely

fit what your agenda item is and so called random audits of small political action groups. one group that i was a part of came up for several audits and almost broke the group with all the costs except that we won a lawsuit that corrupt contracts at puc. as an active city employee and newly minted union president in 2007, i brought concerns of some ethical engineers to the board of supervisors and almost got excuse indicated was is the city family a racketeering, influential, corrupt organization then now corrupt contracts remain and it is doubtful that statements of economic interests are very effective. we watch, we wait, we care. we vote. we remember the inspiring work of charles

marsteller and bob plant hold. so thank you. thank you. okay public comment to agenda. item number seven is closed and neglected. to ask commissioner finley whether he would accept the nomination before we take a vote, i assume yes, madam chair, i accept. okay so, commissioners , as i call you a name. oh you would be calling me. okay, let's take the roll, please. commissioners, as i call your name, please vote by stating the name of the individual for whom you cast your vote to serve as vice chair of the ethics commission for the coming year, beginning august 18th, 2023 through february 29th, 2024. commissioner flores fang. commissioner mr. live. chair lee

commission commissioners leahy. commissioner finley. madam chair, by a vote of 4 to 0, the commission is elected commissioner finley to serve as vice chair, beginning august 18th, 2023, through february 29th, 2024. congratulations vice chair phillip. congratulate. okay it's going to be a wonderful, happy term. now let's go to agenda item number eight, which is discussion and possible action on executive director recruitment process, which may include consideration and action to rectify selection of executive search firm to assist ethics commission in recruiting and screening candidate. i ask our acting deputy director to

introduce the item and give us a brief. summary of how we can recall. we are recessing the executive search process. this also requires that we find a new executive search firm, the department of human resources has conducted a mini solicitation of approved firms and that solicitation is closed . we have one firm that has applied so that firms berkeley search is the firm's proposal that is in your packet. and so today you can consider that firm and you today we would ask that you ratify selection of that firm so we can proceed with the hiring process. thank you. i

also want to mention that mr. paul green from hr is here to answer any questions or if you want to add any information on. i think he summed it up pretty well. if you vote to approve this contract and then i will reach out to the firm and coordinate a meeting with you. chair lee, to begin the next steps. okay thank you. let us go to public comment. any comment from my colleagues? none. let's go to public comment, please. i see none in the room. anyone waiting in the queue? madam chair, we have no callers in the queue. commissioners. for those of us chronologically speaking,

for those of us attending your meetings in the past, y'all did say that you would give up immunities to the public. right have you all done the outreach? i say no. so this is what's happening. you know, y'all now have difficulty in finding this director because the city has a bad name. so behind closed doors or in whatever manner y'all do your business, y'all have chosen some agency or some headhunter or whatever y'all call them to get your director. is this the way of serving san franciscans. this is san francisco. this is where the united nations charter was signed, and this is where we are going to have a apec

conference soon because we signed a charter and we got those members to tell all the world leaders that we have standards. we do not have standards. this is a very, very, very, very corrupt city. we don't have standards of sunshine. task force doesn't work. our ethics commission doesn't work. a comptroller's office doesn't work. so we want to know we the people want to know if this director is chosen . does he know the history of san francisco. is he going to stand up for the constituents of san francisco or are we going to have this cabal? this is a cabal . thank you very much. okay, thank you. i want to maybe i

should have mentioned it earlier , the original executive director search started about. 8 or 9 months ago and before we. start the started the search we conducted, we conducted numerous meetings and outreach to our stakeholders. i think we held at least ten meetings with our stakeholder community to seek the input and to solicit their perspectives on what kind of a candidate should lead this commission and based on their comments, suggestions and ideas , we put that in the job description as well as outreach

to seek a pool of candidates so this process has been transparent and this has been very inclusive. and again, i really want to thank our stakeholders and our partner community to really engage with us through the process. we are restarting this search and in front of us today is a. candidate firm who would be working with us but make no mistake, we will be heavily engage with this firm to make sure that everything is transparent and the public will. the public's perspectives will continue to be included during this process. so with that, any

if we do not have any other callers. no, madam chair, there's no callers in the queue. okay. so let us close the public comment and before we take a motion, i just want maybe i should do that after the motion about moving forward and the next step. so let's do the motion first. do i have a motion to accept. berkeley consultants . to work with us? i'll move. is that a question? are you seconding? i'll second if that was okay. so roll call, please. i going to go commissioner flores fang. hi commissioner. love chair lee high commissioner . hi, madam chair. with four votes in the affirmative and zero votes opposed, the motion is approved unanimously.

technically, it is between the two are to go. to employ the search firm. we do not employ. correct. the contract is with. and yes, i'll be reaching out to coordinate that right. just want to make that clarify. thank you , colleagues. as you recall, when we first started this search process, given the time and everything else at that time, the commission has had authorized the chair to either form a search committee to move people or direct the chair to handle the administrative activities with the search firm as specifically to make sure that everything is proceeding in

a timely manner. when the when it comes to time, when we can interview all the candidates, then the entire commission will be involved through the review of the candidates, the applicants, the selection of the candidates to go on the. second round of the interview and also the final round of the final slate of candidates. and also the ultimate selection of the candidates so that is the process where all members of the commission get involved. but prior to that, the work that is required, such as meeting with the hr and the search firms to make sure that certain deadlines

are met, certain materials are ready to go. and also the scope of their outreach that was given that director or that director was given by the commission to the chair. so that the chair would do all these. detailed and administrative activities. all the while, no decision would be made without consulting the commission. so that was the agreement that was made at the original search. so i want to ask if this commission would like to continue this practice or would you like to see a different approach moving forward? my only concern is it's been over eight months since

this commission has had a permanent leader. i very much and i would speak for all of us. this commission very, very much appreciate what the staff stepping up doing, acting, double acting, triple acting duties to make sure that this commission continues to move forward smoothly. but i don't think it's fair for us to really take, you know, time that is that adds the stress and extra burden to our staff, especially now that we are in a new fiscal year. so my first recommendation would be with with just 1 or 2 people to work with the hr and the search

firm. i also want to add that the reason why we had the search committee, but in practical terms, it did not work with the city attorney has advised us, even as a committee, search committee, we still would need to notified the meeting and staff would still need to find meeting locations and everything else. so effectively that would have added extra time that at the time we felt that we did not have or given the activities that we need to get done, the chair would be able to get it done without the normal notification process. so that's how we did it at the last recruitment process. and i just want to throw it out and see if anyone would like to either

continue or amend it or go back to a more formal process. i would support a motion to authorize you to work with the d.a. and the search firm to move it forward. if that's what you're ultimately asking for. okay i make that motion, then. okay i second that. we need to open up for public comment again. mr. city attorney, on this motion, you've already taken public comment on this item, but it's a different action. so just to cut a cross, all your t's and your eyes, you might as well open up for public comment again. okay, let's do public comment and ask a question first. mr. russell, do we even need a motion? if we're just asking the chair to work with the hr, i, i don't think you necessarily need in motion if you're all in agreement and there's no objection to the what was already authorized before, i

think you can continue with that without another motion. will you withdraw your motion? i withdraw my motion. okay. thank you. okay. so let us know. public comment right now, we already had public comment. no, no. so first, the first the city attorney with all his wisdom said, okay, we'll have public comment then. you all had some some discussion and you said no public comment. okay. so right now, you have to your the chair, you should inform us that we don't have public comment. right we had the public comment on this item. yeah. but i introduced some other notions which if you are very careful and paid attention to my comments, y'all are not out operating rating according to the rules. what was set for this commission? and so the best way to inform y'all is legally and we'll do that and i have a

letter from a former founder. i'm sorry, sir, but we're not receiving public comment at this time. thank you. thank you to madam chair. we're ready to go on to the next agenda item. okay. so let us proceed. okay. let us proceed on the vote. i think we did the vote already. my did we do the vote? voted to retain the search firm. okay. okay. my apologies. slip deprivation. okay, so let us go to agenda item number. nine, which is discussion and possible action on emotion ordering submitted to the voters at an election to be held on march 5th, 2024, and ordinance amending the campaign and

government conduct code to one expand gift prohibition for city officers and employees to expand rules and prohibiting bribery. three require ethics training for form $700 for prohibited members of the public from acting as intermediaries for city officers and employees with respect to certain prohibited gifts. five impulse personal liability on city officials for failure to disclose certain relationships. six. create generally applicable incompatible activity rules, and seven require ethics commission and board of supervisors. third, supermajority approval for amendments of certain ethics related ordinances and appropriating 43,000 from the general reserve in fiscal year 2324 to fund and administrative costs required to implement the

ordinance and amended ethics commission regulations to strengthen gifts, training and other city ethics laws. first, i want to call our action policy and legislative affairs manager, mr. michael kenny, to introduce this item and to refresh our memory of this process and answering the questions from the commissioners. thank you. chair lee, fellow commissioners, i'm pleased to present this item for the commission's consideration today. what is before the commission today as a proposed ballot measure and draft regulation amendments? this is the culmination of what has been the commission's top policy priority for the last three years. in 2020, multiple investigations into alleged corrupt activity by numerous city officials and contractors came to light, which over the last several years has demonstrated an alarming level of unethical conduct in and around city government and its decision making processes. in

response to this, in september of 2020, the commission said a review of the city's conflict of interest rules as its top policy priority. this project was broken into three phases the first dealt with behest payments and produced recommendations that resulted in legislation that now prohibits city officers and designated employees from soliciting behest payments from those with official business before their departments. the second phase of the project was focused on gifts, both direct gifts to city officials and gifts through city departments and the third phase looked at other essential ethics provisions. the recommendations from phases two and three of this project are presented as the ballot measure and regulation amendments that are currently before the commission today. to briefly highlight some of the things that these reforms would do, they would strengthen the city's restricted source rule, which prohibits city officials from accepting gifts from those doing business with their department or those who have attempted to influence them in government decisions recently. it would expand the

annual ethics training requirements to all form 700 filers. it would codify rules that are currently in departmental statements of incompatible activities so that they can be applied consistently across the city and would protect the campaign and governmental conduct code from future legislative amendment by requiring supermajority future changes to be approved by a supermajority of both the board of supervisors and the ethics commission, along with various other reforms that are described in the staff memo attached to this item. these changes were first considered by the commission in late 2021. since that time, these reforms have been discussed in public and multiple commission meetings as well as in private, with city bargaining units through an extensive meet and confer process which just concluded last month. as discussed in the staff memo, multiple revisions have been made to these reforms since they were first introduced based on extensive feedback with stakeholders with the meet and confer now concluded, the commission is able to vote to

place the ballot measure before voters during the march 2023 election next year. during the past week, staff have been engaged with top officials from the department of public health regarding concerns they have over one aspect of the proposed ballot measure dps is concerns regarding section 3.2 18a1a of the proposed ballot measure, which would prohibit city officers and employees from having a financial interest in entities that contract with their department. this is a concern for dps for two main reasons. one is that many of their employees are also employed by ucsf, which contracts with dps regarding hospital administration and secondly, they have nurses who work with dps as well as for profit clinics, which also contract with dps. to address these concerns. staff is recommending that the commission vote today to place the ballot measure before voters with two

slight amendments. the first of which would narrow the rule regarding having a financial interest in an entity that contracts with your department so that it only applies to form $700, which are the city officers and employees who are involved in making government decisions. secondly, to specify that employment with another government entity like ucsf is not considered a financial interest for the purposes of this rule, staff believes that both of these are reasonable changes that do not undermine the overall effectiveness of the ballot measure. staff also believes that these amendments would address the bulk of dhs concerns and that any additional concerns they may have could be addressed through future regulation making processes with the commission we've printed out draft language for these amendments which, stephen, could you maybe pass those for, for those on the record and for those not in the room, those listening? the proposed

amendment language would be inserted into section 3.2 18a1a, which is at the bottom of page 66 of the ballot measure starting online. 23. the proposal language would insert immediately following contracting with one's own department on the first line quote for officers and employees required to file a statement of economic interest under article three, chapter one of this code which is a long way of saying form $700. this would specify that the remaining part of the rule would just apply to form 700 filers, not all rank and file employees. additionally at the end of the subsection, the amendment would add an additional sentence quote, for this subsection capital a employment with a federal, state or local government entity shall not be a financial interest. as amended. the revised rule would essentially prohibit form 700 filers from having a financial interest in a private sector entity that contracts with their city department. this would

address the most problematic examples of this type of behavior that have recently been observed in the news while also being responsive to dhs concerns . lastly i'd like to state that while voting on the ballot measure and regulations before the commission today may be the culmination of this policy project, it is not intended to be the end of the commission's work on this policy project. should the commission vote to approve the ballot measure and regulation amendments today, there would be more than a year before these changes become operative should they be approved by voters. during that time, the commission would be able to continue engaging with stakeholders and have the ability to enact additional regulations to address concerns and ensure an effective implementation of these reforms. should they be approved by voters. this is an ongoing process that staff is enthusiastic to continue working on with the commission and stakeholders. with that, i'm happy to answer any questions the commission may have. thank you. thank you, mr. canning. first, i want to express our

deepest thanks to the staff, mr. canning, mr. ford and the entire team during the last two plus years, you have worked diligently, patiently and respectfully with all all stakeholders, including. the municipal executive association members and members of the public and our stakeholders, community. you kept this commission. abreast on every almost every meeting. we made changes in response to comments and concerns. and that's why this process has taken over two years. we missed two deadlines

and this one i am happy that we will finally meet so. so hats off to the staff for the diligent work. and you listened . and this proposal truly reflect what what this commission is charged to do. so i intend to make a motion to place the ordinance directly before the san francisco voters as a ethics commission ballot measure reflecting the amend comments that you have presented and also a second amendment. i mean, the second motion to approve the proposed regulation amendments presented and vote to adopt these amended regulations pursuant to our authority under

charter section 15 .102. so do i have a second? and then we have a do you want to say public comment before making the motion ? i think we can make a motion. and second and then open up for public comment. the eight second . i'm personally not prepared to second it until we've heard from hopefully public comment. i'm hoping someone from dps is here . i think there were serious issues raised this week that i would just like to know more information about before we motion on it. so i'm just explaining my thinking. okay so first of all, before we open up for public comment, do we have anyone from the dhs, dps who can respond to some of the presentations that was made? we

were in contact with greg wagner from the department of public health, who was aware and was trying to find someone to call in potentially. i don't know if there's someone in the queue. okay, so why don't we open up for public comment first in room if anyone wish to speak. just to reiterate, you will have three minutes to speak the moment you speak is when your time starts. okay thank you. good morning, commissioners. my name is dr. edward diaz. i am the deputy director of administration of finance for the board of supervisors and i also currently oversee the form 700 and ethics trainings for the department. i read these proposed changes, and i do want to bring additional perspective or comments from the department side regarding how these regulations will affect the department's. i wanted to comment on four specific items. the first is regulation 3.25, a

one on ethics training annual deadline. we recommend that the language in this particular regulation be further clarified or edited to specifically identify which part, which parties this regulation will be affecting currently, as the regulation is presently written, it says quote unquote each city officer or employee required to annually complete this ethics training. so does this section refer to positions that are listed currently in the campaign and governmental conduct code, section 3.1 03a1 and b one, which are basically ethics filers. form 700 filers. if it's the case, we if basically this requirements applies to this these positions that are listed in these two codes, then we recommend that this be more specifically spelled out in the proposed regulations. the second

item is with respect to regulation 3.25, a dash two b ethics training deadline. when assuming a position this particular change appears to introduce a new monetary penalty for not completing ethics training. this is a new penalty current members of boards and commissions cannot vote if they do not submit the ethics training or complete the ethics training. as a result, we feel that a monetary penalty is unnecessary because the loss of voting privileges for members of boards and commissions who fail to complete ethics training timely basically affects the most important duty in their position. additionally, with respect to this regulation, if you do approve this, we do recommend that changes are made to the current ethics system to separate the ethics training and the sunshine ordinance declaration in the system. currently, you have to complete

both in order to be marked as in order to be marked as complete for ethics training. the third item is with respect to regulation 3.2 5c1, which is the deadline for the annual notice as stated in the regulations, the positions that are laid out in the regulations are ethics filers. we believe that this means that the duty of providing the annual summary should lie with the ethics commission, putting this on the department adds another burden on i'm sorry, your three minutes are up. thank you. are you representing the dpc. yes okay. i think if you can go ahead, please go ahead. yeah thank you. so as i said, i'm placing the deadline for providing annual notice to the departments, adds an administrative burden under the department's. as we all

know, a lot of departments are short staffed and they're already struggling to complete a heavy workload. so adding this additional item increase their workload, we do recommend that the ethics commission reach out to additional departments. maybe all city departments, to see how this will affect their workload as well as the workflow. lastly, the proposed regulations also change some of the rules regarding gifts. these are changes to longstanding rules regarding gifts. as a result, we do recommend that the ethics commission obtain more input from affected parties, namely city departments, additional city departments, elected officials, employees, as well as labor unions. because a lot of these changes are to significant or major gift rules that personally, i've been with the city for 11 years. these changes might actually confuse or create issues for some of the parties that are affected by this regulation. with that, i'll

conclude my presentation and thank you for the extra time. thank you. thank you. anyone else who wish to speak. i have some questions for mr. canning. then i. i'd like to ask a discussion on this item. why don't we take public comments first? that's great. together next caller, please. i have one caller in the queue. i do need to ask, do i give this individual extra minute, four minutes since we had this individual, the sunshine? deputy city attorney brad rossi. the sunshine ordinance does require equal time to all people who provide public comment. so since the first commenter did receive more time, i think the equal time should apply to other commenters. okay. all right. one caller in the queue, please stand by. welcome caller your four minutes begin now. hi

commissioners. this is debbie wasserman from the san francisco human services network, an association of about 80 health and human service nonprofits. it's been over a year since this commission has held the public hearing on the ballot measure and during that time, discussions have occurred only through a meet and confer process and in closed session ethics staff have now brought the measure forward only a few days after, after posting the revised lengthy measure and a 218 page memo online with little time to review and assess whether the public's concerns have been addressed and whether the changes have created any new issues. the commission also has new members and a vacancy, so some commissioners were not present to hear the public express its concerns about prior version. for our nonprofit members, those concerns included provisions related to fundraiser tickets and how the law applies to restricted sources such as

uncompensated reports of directors or those who seek to influence legislative work, administrative action and other provisions. in addition, i actually just became aware last night about dps concerns about 3.218. i had never understood it previously, but was informed yesterday that that section would prohibit city employees from having dual employment or serving on boards of directors of nonprofits that contract with the department. and we appreciate the proposed amendment for form 700 filers, particularly any high level policy employees who have decision making authority over control acts. but it is overly broad. it has consequences for nonprofits as well as ucsf for lower level employees and frontline workers. where there's no potential for corruptive influence, it would harm lower paid workers who need two jobs to make ends meet and it would

be devastating to nonprofits who struggle to provide competitive wages for specialized medical staff like nurses and psychiatrists, many of whom work some part time hours in nonprofit programs. health and human services. nonprofits also need to attract board members with expertise and many city employees volunteer in that capacity without conflict of interest. we understand the need and desire to move ahead and finalize a measure for the march election. but there is still significant time before the deadline. i'm requesting today that the commission hold off on any vote today on the measure and the regulations and give the public adequate time to review the new measure and participate meaningfully in the process. so we're just simply asking for more time to review the long memo and the long revised measure and we look forward to engaging as expeditious as possible with ethics staff and

commissioners on the measure so that it can then move forward. thank you for your consideration of this request. okay. thank you. any other callers. madam chair? there's no further callers in the queue. okay. first of all, i want to ask mr. canning if he can respond to some of these questions from the public. first. yes julie, happy to do that. i guess to the most recent caller, debbie lerman. the staff have engaged extensively with debbie throughout this process and many of the exemptions that are currently listed in the draft regulations came from those conversations with ms. lerman and also specified that there is no new measure. the changes to the ballot measure from the last year were procedural to update the date of the election in specify the title change the substance of the ballot measure

itself has not changed in more than a year. the changes have been to create additional exceptions and clarify the exceptions that are found in the regulations. many of those exceptions, which were added based on stakeholder feedback to the concerns of the first caller. the. regulations. 3.205 regarding the annual training requirement are based off of what's in the ballot measure. so the clarification of who it applies to is specified in the code already that it applies to form 700 filers that are listed in article three, chapter one, and then the code. the regulation is a supplement to that. so that specification is already there. the idea that. people who fail to complete their annual ethics training could be subject to monetary penalties has also been in the ballot measure from the beginning. and i'd you know, had ample opportunity to discuss

that and similar with the annual notice the ethics commission is responsible for producing the summary that would be distributed by departments. part of the reason for being distributed through the departments in line with the comptroller's past recommendations is to focus on a tone at the top with ethical leadership. we think having the departments be the entity that sends these ethical reminders annually to their officers and employees to be a effective way to solidify that tone at the top . thank you. questions i, i have a question about the proposed amendment to section 3.218 to address the concerns from ph. as i understand it, part of the motivation for this section is making sure that city employees who have outside employment are not influenced by that outside employment or outside financial interest in their decision making. and i'm just trying to figure out what the right way to

find an appropriate carve out is. and i'm curious whether staff has considered applying rather than limiting it to form 700 filers in and of itself, but applying something similar to the test that's in regulation 3.2, three, four about officers or employees who personally and substantially participate in awards of contracts. would that be under inclusive over inclusive? not really be what you're concerned with here or. yeah, i think that would definitely be far narrower. i think the benefit of narrowing it just to form 700 filers is that those are individuals who are generally engaged in making government decisions and to have those individuals being having a financial interest in entities that contract with their department, you know, is a broader view that speaks to both the potential for improper activity as well as the potential appearance of it. if someone sees someone have a

financial interest in an entity that contracts with the department, that there is a concern that that could be a, you know, a look that erodes public trust and there are also additional rules that already prohibit taking actions for specific actions like voting on a contract with an entity. you have a financial interest, and that's already prohibited. so this would be kind of a broadening of that to 700 filers . is there any concern that limiting it to form 700 filers is under inclusive from the staff or has the potential to be . oh, sorry, sorry. um. this. i don't believe so. yeah. i think this would speak to the most relevant concerns that we've seen in the news recently regarding former 700 filers that

did have potentially improper roles with entities that contract with the department. i have a couple of questions. mr. first, i want to congratulate you on making so much progress on this. i think we're getting closer. i think this dual employment issue is a real serious issue. it's unfortunate that it's just come up recently, but it has. and i think we have to be very deliberate about it. and i think the proposed amendments or sorry, the proposed carve outs make sense conceptually, but i don't have a good sense sitting here who a dpa is a form of 700 filer who at any agency for that matter. i'm concerned that it's potentially over inclusive and under inclusive. i don't think anybody wants to prevent a part time nurse who works for the city from also working with a nonprofit or sorry, a for profit agency. that's not a government government agency, but i don't know that none of those folks are formed. 700 filers and i don't maybe you can tell me that. i wish someone from dpa. we're here to clarify that i was a form 700 filer when i worked

for the city. i was not high up in the chain and i'm not sure that this this would not capture a lot of folks who do not present any concern about undoing effluence. at the same time, i can imagine forms 100 filers who have dual employment with another government agency that is problematic under this carve out, those folks would not be prohibited from dual employment if the other employer is a government entity. so without having a sense of how this would actually affect employees on the ground, who would be in, who would be out, i think it's hard to vote on such kind of a black line and that that's my concern. and i don't you know, we got this proposal yesterday. no fault to you. you've been doing this very, very diligently. this issue has come up recently. and i think we're potentially putting a measure on the ballot that would affect the livelihood of thousands of city employees. i understand that there can be regulations that address that, but that's still the language we're considering. and i don't have a good sense of who it affects. and that's kind of the heart of my concerns. i wish

were here. but it's not just epa. it's all agencies have probably part time employees who have other jobs that don't present any real concerns. so again, a 100% support. where are you going with this? these are common sense carves out carve outs. conceptually, i just don't have a sense of the impact on the ground. and that's what i'm struggling with right now. maybe i could give some more context, commissioner finley, for the record, patrick ford, director of enforcement. we looked at this earlier this week and found that it looks like about 11% of dps employees are from 700 filers. so 89% are not. and dps is doing the same process that all other departments are doing, which is the biennial code update, where every two years departments go through the list of a what update biennial code update. it's an update to the conflict of interest code. it occurs every two years as required under state law requires every local government agency to go through its lists of forms. 700 filers into realign on that list with the

realities in the department. so they need to go through and they need to look at whether every department does, in fact, make or participate in making government decisions. and they need to amend that list so that the people who do that are in the list, the people who don't are not in the list. so there is a separate process. since your question, commissioner salahi, about why we're using forms of 100 filing instead of a different test, we have the benefit of that. it's stated there is a list you can look, am i in this list or not? so that helps for compliance. people can see that they're on the list. that's a process that we help the departments in every other year. we put out a guide to how departments are supposed to do the code review. we can definitely help dps in particular with that process. when that comes up next year, it's every even numbered year we can help them. so if there are questions about who is a filer, who's supposed to be one and there will be, you know, if you do improve this amendment, there will be this extra element of it

that if you are a former 700 filer, that this rule will apply to you. so i think there is a process to address that, that concern to make sure that it's properly inclusive, the right people are in it and not in it. we're saying the departments can on their own put people within the form 710 requirement and without. so the way the process works is the state law designates what's called a code reviewing body for each conflict of interest code and for the city and county. that's the board of supervisors. so the board of supervisors is ultimately responsible for making sure that that ordinance passes. they do that through essentially the city attorney's office and the clerk of the board sends out a notice to departments. every other year asking them to submit their changes. the city attorney's office puts those all together into a single ordinance. there's a meet and confer process that takes place on that ordinance. so usually a handful of bargaining units will attend and they'll discuss why they think some positions should or should

not be included. there's a debate that goes on departments and representatives to explain why certain positions are included, why they're not. so there's a pretty fulsome process that takes place every other year. then at the end of that meeting, confer process. once everybody essentially more or less agrees on it, then the board votes on the ordinance and then the law is amended. thank you for that answer. do you have a sense of who the 11% are that are formed? $700? i don't mean their names, but in terms of their positions and what they're doing, because that's 11% of that. that's a i'm guessing a lot of people that we potentially be telling them no dual employment. so maybe you can help kind of clarify what those folks are doing. yeah, i mean, without getting into specific positions, which i think that's hard to know, there's so many positions. i think generally if you were to look at them, you would find them to be more supervisors, managers, people doing more administrative work in general. i don't want to speak about specific things. there may be instances where that's that's

not the case since it's a big department. but in in theory, it is supposed to reflect who in the department makes or participates in making government decisions. if there are people in that list who don't do that, they could be removed from that list then i don't want to take all the questions. so my colleagues have some jump in, but i'll just finish this thought. have you reached out to dpa to get their thoughts on the proposed amendments to see whether this addresses their concerns and they're fine with this? yeah i spoke to greg wagner yesterday afternoon and described language to him. it was the amended language or was the conceptual language that we spoke about with acting director massey. excuse me, mr. wagner, is what's his position? i just didn't. as cfo of the dpa, who we've reached out to, executive director grant colfax initially, and he was supposed to attend the meeting but sent mr. wagner and instead and we discussed the concept of those amendments on

wednesday and then talk to him again on thursday afternoon and said we'd be making those recommendations to the commission and i was i can't speak for him, but he seemed very enthusiastic about those and really appreciated the effort of the commission to consider making those changes. and seemed very receptive. and, you know, supportive of those amendments. and also willing to continue to work on the process afterwards for additional read making, chief operating officer is title. and i think you're saying he specifically said these amendments address our concerns with the dual employment prohibition. yes, i believe they don't address every concern, but they address the bulk of them and, you know, there's additional opportunities for clarifying language and potentially addressing additional concerns either through regulations or legislative fixes at a later date before any of this would go into effect. and i don't like to

put you on the spot to speak for someone else, but that's because we're here at the last minute, the day before or the day after. this, i guess, came to light. let me just ask the converse question. one of those proposal, a chief of a city agency, would be able to be the chief potentially of another government agency, and that wouldn't violate this because the other entity is a government entity. and that, to me, facial really could be problematic. but this would basically carve that out right, for this particular rule. yes but almost certainly other rules would probably prohibit that. i think for one, that would probably be an excessive time demand. i don't know how you could be a chief of two agencies, one one government department and one, i guess another government department that would seem to be incompatible under a different provision of the law. also, i think you would probably run into 87, 100 issues, conflicts of interests. if you're making decisions that affect another source of income. so yeah, for

this specific rule, you're correct, but there are probably other rules to address it. i'd love to hear my colleagues jump in if i think this is a healthy discussion to have, because these are a significant issues. commissioner lawrence fang, thank you for that very helpful context. i'm wondering, i mean, you mentioned that this is not the only concern, but that that mr. wagner did feel like the other concerns or things that could be resolved or kind of work through through the regulations is my understanding that correctly or other legislative fixes, are we talking about supervisor siff? i i or salahi? sorry i sorry. suffice legislation. yeah, you're proposing a lot of great things to so just just to be clear about it's like this this

seems like a great fix for this, but then what about everything else and would it kind of drill along in a way that's i mean, i think the additional opportunities for clarifications or corrections would be that if the commission was to act today , there's more than a year before the implementation date, should it be approved by voters. so during, you know, starting immediately, the commission could continue to work on additional regs specific to section 3.218 to which was going to need to happen at some point anyways. like the current regulations are about the departmental statements of incompatible activities which if this was approved by voters, those regs around the logistics of how to amend your statement wouldn't be applicable anymore. so the commission would need to do regs to clarify those sort of mundane things. and at the same time, those regulations could add could clarify definitions or add exceptions if necessary to what was going to be before the voters and that could be done in the same way that the regulations currently before the commission are set up so that

they would have the same operative date as the ballot measure and only be become effective if the measure was to become effective and so that could be passed by the commission in the next couple of months. additional regulations like that. additionally, if there was something in the actual ballot measure language itself that was severely problematic that the commission wanted to address, there would be at least six months between the time the voters weigh in and the changes becoming operative. where the ethics commission and the board of supervisors could work on a joint legislative amendment to make that change to the code before it actually impacted anyone. when the rules would become effective. or that's before it gets to the voters. that would be after the bar. the voters were to weigh in. there would then be that period where the board and the commission could make legislative change. and what is the drop deadline for us to kind of work through this vote on this and still get it on for the march, the drop dead deadline with the department of elections

is december first. there are some follow on activity that would probably make sense to have happen after that. for example, with past ballot measures of the commission is submitted, they've voted on the arguments for the measure and had that be included in the voter materials. and that happens in early december. so it would probably make sense to have that be a separate vote potentially. and then also as we've learned through this process over the last couple of years, that lots of things can impact those deadlines and i think the more you know that it's open right now, there's the potential for unforeseen things do conflict with that deadline. i i just want to remind members of the public last minute proposals comes up all the time. and in fact, that's why we miss those two previous deadly lines.

and the reason why we scheduled this vote today is instead of october. november was because learning from the experience of the previous two proposed deadlines, we really wanted to give us room to make sure for that. we do not miss this the third time around. this is not this ballot measure was not the idea of this commission, this ballot measure proposal came from members of the public in response to the corruption. scandal that came up. about three years ago. so we've been pushing this back consistently and as mr. canning said, we respect the concern from our our

city family and they've been addressed and that's why we're here today, to meet them. converse finally been done. and i imagine. as a representative to me. to express the views and again, we respect these last minute concerns and my understanding from mr. canning is there is ample time for all parties to address them to the satisfaction of the employees. and i would really, really hesitate to table this even though the drop dead we always use the term drop dead, but that's, you know, we gave each other three months. the previous two times and we still miss

those deadlines. so so i, i urge members of the public to remember this isn't a commission driven initiative. this was driven by members of the public who wanted this commission to do something within our power. so i just want to make that above and clear. you may also traditional comment, which is that given the past meeting, confer over the ballot measure and the associated regulations, the seems clear to staff that the pathway forward to address these concerns would be to kind of go forward and go through if the commission was to delay and try to consider additional amendments at this point that would potentially be subject back to the original, the same meeting confer that we just closed out, closed out and you

could create complications there . whereas if the commission was to move forward with what's before them today and then consider additional revisions as either separate legislation or additional regulations, those would be subject to meeting confer, but would be more narrow cast and a cleaner, separate process potentially. thank you for that clarification. i just wanted to make a brief comment. thank you for the explanation about the statement. 700 background process for how those are put together. i think when the meeting had started, i had shared commissioner finley's concerns about not grasping the practical impact of this carve out on employees. but i think with with that background information and the knowledge that that's a continuing revised list as well as knowing that there's time built in for any necessary amendments to regulations or legislative fixes down the line before this becomes effective. i think at this point, i'm prepared to second chair lee's motion from

earlier today. i just wanted to clarify whether her motion included the proposed amendment here. yes i believe it did. yes. okay. i'm prepared to second that motion then. shall we go to public comment. public comment, please? okay as a reminder to member of the public who just joined us in person and also remotely public, i, i commissioner, deputy attorney brad russell, you did already take public comment on this item on the same motion that you had made. doesn't prohibit you from taking more public comment. but but there was public comment, more clarification of some of the comments. so let's go back to public comment. just to reiterate to the folks who have joined us in person and remotely public comment is will be available on each item on this

agenda and each member of the public will be allowed four minutes to speak. commissioners this is a very convoluted subject, much like behest. but you, commissioner us have to keep in mind that even though people come here and muddy the waters now this form 700 and be has is connected in many ways recently, meaning three weeks or four weeks ago, they came before the board of supervisors and they give them a green light to guide donations on behalf of apec. we are sending mixed signals to the city and constituents of san francisco, so be has donations muddy the waters? the form 700 is not

properly understood by the heads of departments. there is no oriental ocean. it is much like when you get clearance in the federal government in order to maintain a standard you have orientation. that is why we had a president who took the, you know, the top secret document home, because in his mind, he was hallucinating, that his he could do whatever he wanted to. and we do have heads of depart comments in this city and county of san francisco who have not filled out their form 700 before for years. so when you are muddy, the waters like this, do you think so that the people who are listening at home understand what you are saying? your commissioner has don't understand when like one of your commissioners worked with form

700, so you really know the nuances. so what we're having in this city is we shouldn't be having your have this last minute deliberation or suggestions or contacts and, and there are other things to which which you all think that we don't know. we know about foreign entities now trying to get contracts here in san francisco. we know about them. some of them are in this room. they may not know that. i know. so we got our connections. you know, we know what's happening in san francisco. we got a lot of foreign agents getting contracts and new ethics commission have no clue of what is happening. so let me stop there. okay. before i get too deep into this situation, but will visit your on another level

, a more legal level. thank you very much. thank you. any other public comments? ms. scott. hi, this is lois scott again. and does two thoughts. one for myself, i think that the form 700, which i saw many times as a city employee, is a kind of a weak net for catching anything that's going wrong. there's so many things that can happen outside of that form. of course, more training and information on it is important, but i kind of criticized the basic tool. the second point is going back to charlie marsteller and i as his friend, had almost daily phone calls from him and heard a lot of his philosophy. he i was getting instructed in how to do things right and one of the

things he was most passionate about i see in your proposed a charter amendments and that is the supermajority cleanup. and he was very concerned about that area having been weakened in the behest payment turn around and that he wanted to restore for that check and balance so that there wasn't kind of will full or frivolous amendments to your regulations. so i think he would endorse that piece of it. there's an awful lot of it, and it's complicated from a citizens standpoint. this is a lot more reading and study that's needed. and i hope you and us pay attention. thank you. thank you . there's no other public comment in the room. let's go to the queue, please. i'm sorry,

madam chair, before you do that, could i just finish my make a final comment? yes i like charlie marsteller. i'm glad we spoke with him today. i started my good government career, common cause. i prosecuted white collar crime. i worked at the fair political practice commission. i support this measure a lot and there are many things i like in there. but i was also a city employee and this measure as written potentially reduces or eliminates dual employment opportunities for thousands of city employees. and i just don't understand at this moment who's affected and who isn't. and for that reason, i can't support this today. it's not because i don't like the measure. it's not because i'm against the goals at all. purely. i don't understand who it affects on that particular issue. and there's no if we vote today or a month from now doesn't change the operative date doesn't change the election would go before the voters on. so i just want to explain my reasoning because it's not that i'm against the measure at all or the goals or even this provision. i just don't fully understand the impact of it. and i wanted to just make that clear

for everyone. why don't we continue with public comment and then we can have a response from from staff regarding the schedule and then final comments from the commissioners before we either take a vote or take whatever action. so let's continue with the public comment first. i'm sorry, i thought comment was done. i didn't mean to cut the queue. we did not go to the queue. okay. madam chair, we do have one caller in the queue, but it's the same number as who already at the same public comment item. yeah. so per. yeah, let's go for it. for me. cut out deputy city attorney brad rusty the if you allow this commenter to comment again, you'd be providing an equal time . so because it's the same motion that's still pending. so i don't think you can give this person more time. okay. okay so if it's the only one column the queue, then we don't have any more public comment in the

queue. okay first, before we continue this dialog, i want to ask the staff to really walk through what were some of the concerns that commissioner finley has brought up and what are some options that we can address with without further delaying these? the progress that we've made so far? yes, really, i mean, there is one option that could allow the commission to act today, if that's what the commissioner would like to do, that would alleviate some of these concerns, which would be to just remove this aspect of the rule from the ballot measure, which is another amendment that we had considered this week, which would be just to remove the phrase or having a financial interest in from that section. it appears two places which need

to be removed, two places within 3.21. 8a1a and if that was removed, it would get rid of that financial interest rule as it currently is in the measure. and that would allow the ballot measure to move forward and would also allow the commission to continue to engage with supervisor safai in the legislation that he was pushing that would have had a similar effect and that could be happening through separate legislation through a separate meet and confer that would just kind of remove this as an issue from the ballot measure entirely . and that would be one way for the commission to move forward. while still being able to continue to engage with stakeholders as well as bargaining units on the concept of additional employment that trigger another. going back to the mta, no, that was one option that staff has already cleared with the department of human resources as an option that the commission could act on today. additionally, the city

attorney's office has also seen language that would remove that as well, and has also said that that's up in the commission could do a ask a clarifying question on that. so that would have the effect of not prohibiting any dual employment whatsoever by any city employee, at least in this part of the code. um irrespective of whether it's dual employment with an entity that contracts with the department. yeah so related to that, i think dual employment can be a problem. my concern is that i'm not sure we're addressing the right way today. so if we did that, we'd be able to then through regulation or through subsequent action, create some kind of dual employment bar, right? correct. and there's already legislation introduced by supervisor sakai that would address dual employment explicitly, and that's legislation that needs to be approved by the commission before it could move forward. and the board of supervisors has initiated a meet and confer over that out of deference to the commission moving forward with

the ballot measure, supervisor surveys office asked the department of human resources to pause that meet and confer for the time being. so if the commission removed that language from the ballot measure, supervisor chavez office could resume that meeting, confer over their legislation, which again needs to be approved by the ethics commission before it can move forward. so it would let that whole additional employment question happen through a separate process that the commission would be engaged in. got it. thank you for that explanation. and that's also a ballot referendum. uh no, that could be done legislatively with approval from both the commission and the board. will that be subject to the supermajority requirement of this proposed referendum? i if it was enacted afterwards, yeah. i believe it would be i would maybe be approved. it might not be a supermajority, but it would be approved by both. would that also i mean, setting that aside, that's helpful. and i think that's a reasonable approach in in discussion about this separate section. would members

of the public and be able to bring up their other concerns? are we just practically speaking, are we opening it up? like, i just want to make sure that if we have some sort of interested persons meeting, we aren't just saying this is the only thing we're talking about, but that we're able to open it up. so i've been looking at supervisor a's legislation. is that where or like if we're removing this? yes, i guess, yeah. yeah. that that process could be. yeah the commission could do a separate series of interested persons meetings on that, perhaps partnering with supervisor chavez office since they were the ones that were initiating that legislation and that's also legislation that is not currently set in stone that can be revised based on feedback from the meet and confer or from the public at large. and again, would need to and also with the benefit of that is that it wouldn't have a an external kind of ballot measure deadline. that's something that the commission and the board could consider at whatever pace they deem as appropriate. okay and i

mean, my main concern is that i mean, i think what happened this time is it's been out there, it's been public. but i think people, you know, the urgency of us having to vote on it today kind of inspired people to maybe take a closer look and engage, you know, throughout the process. it'll inspire people to take a closer look so that we're not there's a tension where we want to move forward, but we want to make sure we're listening to everybody. and so as long as we are also considering the other concerns that weren't just specific to this section moving forward, i, i think it makes sense to advance. and i believe all of the concerns that we've heard from the last week are related to this section, to the last minute concerns coming in. so yeah, i think that's the end of what we've heard. are you said that the bulk you use language that the yeah that that was the bulk in terms of like the amount of potentially like nurses if there was the risk of somebody maybe being a nurse who's also

from 705 as commissioner finley was addressing like there might be additional people to address for that concern, but that the concerns were about this section, though. but i think to the to the extent that folks have concerns about other parts of the measure that have nothing to do with the dual employment, i think maybe that's part of what the commissioner was asking about. those i think could be addressed by regulation before the operative date. is that what you're kind of part of the question? yes yeah, there's could be. and staff will continue to engage these stakeholders. yes. yes. 100. and also that's there was president said that that when both the board of supervisors and this commission share common. interest in certain proposals, we did hold joint public hearings a few years back on a specific matter. so this doesn't

mean that the commission will have to take a back seat. we will continue to work through the staff with the supervisor's office and i'm sure the board will welcome our engagement. so i just want to make it really, really clear because that was done a few years back when we had the join public hearing at the board of supervisors level. okay are we ready for a vote on this motion? i think i think someone would need to make a motion to approve a amended version of the measure. i thought i did well. so this is a different amendment. this would be amending section 3.2 18a1a to strike or having a financial interest in and below in the parenthetical. also strike has a financial interest in the entity or to strike those two terms

motion to include all that and second it second. okay roll call please. there are motion has been made and seconded. commissioner flores moving. i vice chair a chair lee a commissioner salahi. i madam chair, with four votes in the affirmative and zero votes opposed. the motion is approved unanimously. thank you very much . alex. do we need a break or shall we continue? there's only a couple. okay let's continue with the next item, please. which is on agenda item ten. request for waiver for post-employment restrictions for miss tracy packer, which is a continued discussion and possible action from our last meeting. welcome ms. packer again. thank you so much and good morning, chair lee and

commissioners and the staff and team. my name is tracy packer. i'm a retiree from the san francisco department of public health, and i'm really appreciative of you hearing my request today for a waiver for post-employment restrictions under section 3.23 for a three. and i'm here today to talk about the personal hardship that this would cause if the waiver is not approved. and i want to just note that i'm very appreciative of the opportunity and grateful for this process, as i had prided myself in following all the ethics commission rules when i was an employee and i believe that i am my from my experience, that my history with this contractor does not create an ethical challenge and hope that the ethics commission is able to see that granting a personal waiver would not create ethical concern, as i won't go into a great detail of my issues

because there's materials and i was here last month. but i will just say that i'm seeking a waiver to accept an offer of employment as a part time short term consultant with the san francisco aids foundation, a community based organization that provides sexual health and substance use services in san francisco to our most vulnerable populations and those disproportionately affected by hiv. hepatitis c and sexually transmitted infections. i'm requesting a waiver to accept this consultant role to support the organization during the transition of the chief of programs, laura honey brooks, who's a member of the executive team, she's leaving at the end of august. the san francisco aids foundation did enter into a contract with the health department in january of 2023. my role with this contract was in the rfp development process, which was in 2019. as you might remember, because of covid and the deployment of all dps.

pretty much all dps staff, including myself, there was a pause put on the process. the rfp process was completed in terms of the review by an external review process. and in 2022, the contract development began. i left my position in july of 2022. i was not involved with the final contract and budget decisions. i know that i spent a lot of time in my initial visit here talking about my sort of what i believe is lack of undue or unfair advantage. but today i really want to talk about is why i'm really excited about this opportunity and why i think it would be a really great match. and also how it's a personal hardship. so i also wanted to clarify one thing is to just to say about the volunteering, this opportunity is so important to me that i did indicate to the ethics commission staff that i was willing to volunteer initially while going through

the ethics commission approval process. this is not an indication of the lack of personal hardship. rather it really represents my desire to do this work and to support this important agency as soon as possible. so just to clarify that, working as a consultant to support the san francisco aids foundation is actually a dream job for me. it's a dream opportunity, something i've actually been waiting for in my years of working in public health to work for a community based organization in public health. it allows me to continue my commitment to public health, which to me is social justice. that's why i entered public health. and i think it it provides the opportunity to make real and sustainable change in the lives of people affected by hiv, hepatitis c, hepatitis c and stis, or sexually transmitted infections. as i've talked about in my letters, i've dedicated my work life actually, to addressing the health disparities in the communities

affected by these diseases, including gay men, trans communities, communities of color, people who use drugs, and people with few resources. and this opportunity gives me a chance to do that, continue that work, but in a different way. as a manager in the health department, my role was to work on the on the systems level, supporting and managing the system. and this would give me an opportunity to work directly with the community in a community based organization. i'm really excited about that. working close, close to the community and i'm excited about the opportunity to contribute directly to the strong system of care that exists in san francisco and that the san francisco aids foundation is a part of. also one of the values i've held throughout my time here is community engagement. i was led the community planning council for many years and a partnership and public health planning and implementation has

always been a priority. and the san francisco aids foundation has a very strong history of incorporating the input and collaboration of communities affected into their work and in fact, their staff are from the communities. so that's an opportunity for me to continue doing that work side by side and really to provide the support to the staff during this transitional time. i also want to point out that san francisco's at a critical time with hiv, hepatitis c and stis. as i mentioned earlier, at the previous meeting, we have the tools to eliminate new infections and care for people. but the social determinants of health, such as poverty, homelessness, racial discrimination, are all barriers to our success. and i have the expertise to manage complex systems and provide leadership support that matches the current needs and i think matches the current need of the san francisco aids foundation. and i think that during this time of

change, it's a it's a great opportunity for me to help the system as well as to pursue something that means a lot to me . the system of care is complex and is vulnerable. and so i think maintaining the san francisco aids foundation is a key is a key partner with many other community based organizations and i believe that it's important to ensure the system is supported during the transition of the chief of programs. and importantly, that the staff of the san francisco aids foundation have continuity during the transition. and i'd like to be a part of that. last couple of points. this i think this opportunity is well suited for a retiree. i have the experience, skills and dedication, and i have relationships with the communities, with also with bodies at the state and the federal level. and i'm willing to work in a part time short term position. and i'm not sure there's a lot of people who would be willing to do that. so

i do think it's a nice match for someone who is retired. i am aware that the criteria also for hardship also includes opportunities for other positions and i wanted to just acknowledge that, you know, i find that this is a perfect transitional role as a as a retiree and that i also have been have not looked for other opportunities while waiting for this this approval, which is important to me. so given all of those things and my extreme passion and enthusiasm for this work in my dedication to public health in san francisco, so i respectfully request the ethics commission to approve my request for a waiver and allow me to accept this short term, part time consultant position. i'd like to say that my former supervisor is here, dr. susan phillip. she's the director of population health and the health officer for the city. she's here to speak as is dr. tyler trimmier, the ceo of the san francisco aids foundation and other leadership from the san francisco aids foundation.

there's also someone here from the network of hiv aids providers to speak. there are other community leaders, and some are on the phone. i will say there's one person that needs to leave soon that's here, and there's one person that needs to leave soon. that's on the phone. so i'll leave you to it. but i thank you so much for this opportunity and really appreciate the possibility that i may be able to do this work. thank you. thank you. miss packer. and it's great to see you again. but before we ask your former colleagues and your supporters to speak, i want to ask mr. kenny to give us an update before we open up the floor for the public comments. thank you. thank you. appreciate that. yes. and i'll be brief to respect the public commenters who are in line and not to repeat what was discussed last month, but the commission does have the authority to grant ms. packer a waiver if it finds that not doing so would cause an extreme hardship for her. the term extreme hardship is not

explicitly defined in the code, but the commission regulations do specify. the commission may consider ms. packer's vocation the range of employers who she could work for and the steps taken to find new employment and any other factors. the commission deems relevant. this allows the commission to take a broad view of extreme hardship and consider any factors that it deems relevant. last month, staff had recommended against granting ms. packer a waiver based on the narrow view of extreme hardship. limited more explicitly to what is listed in the regulations. however, based on the commission's precedent of looking more broadly at other relevant factors, specifically in the last meeting and based on ms. packer supplemental letter, which is attachment two to the staff memo staff, has revised its recommendation staff currently recommends that the commission evaluate ms. packer's request and supplemental letter and if the commission finds that denying ms. packer a waiver would cause her an extreme hardship, the commission should approve that waiver. as stated last month regarding the code's goals of avoiding undue

influence and unfair advantage and of promoting the idea that government decisions should be and should appear to be made on a fair and impartial basis. staff still does not believe there are significant risks associated with the granting. ms. packer waiver in this situation. if the commission does decide to grant ms. packer a waiver, staff would recommend this waiver be granted narrowly and only apply to this position with the aids foundation. thank you, and i'm happy to answer additional questions. thank you . given the time restriction, let us open up for public comment first before we speak public comment, please. good morning, commissioners. my name is bill hirsch. i'm proud to serve as the director of the aids legal referral panel in san francisco. i also am proud to serve as a co-chair of the hiv aids provider network, which is a network of about 30 agencies that contract with the city and

county to provide an array of health and supportive services to people who are living with and at risk of hiv. i am also an attorney, and i understand the importance of the rules that you're considering today. i also recognize that the rules provide for a waiver. so i'm here to speak in support of granting the waiver. in this instance, it is important to remember that hiv is not over. there are. 16,000 people living with hiv in san francisco, and there are thousands more who are at risk of the virus. this work involves not a one stop shop. the work involves a complex system of care for some of the most vulnerable folks in the city. the folks that we're working with are not only living with hiv, they are often living with serious mental illness and

active substance use disorders, and many of them are homeless. it is a complex system of care and the city has committed to some goals around getting to zero, getting to zero new infections of hiv, zero hiv related deaths, and more ambitiously, the end of hiv related stigma. those are ambitious goals. people like tracy packer have been working diligently for decades aids to advance those goals, and that is part of the reason that san francisco is the model of care for the rest of the country. it is because of unsung heroes like tracy packer, the hiv aids provider network gives out an occasional award. we call it a happen hero award, and it has been given to folks like house speaker emerita pelosi. it is an

honor that we bestow on people who have demonstrated a lifetime of commitment to service and in this instance, you should know that tracy packer is one of those heroes. thank you. thank you, mr. hirsch. next speaker. good morning, commissioners. my name is dr. susan phillip. i'm the director of the population health division at the san francisco department of public health. i'm also the health officer in san francisco. i appreciate the opportunity to come and to present my comments in support of the request by ms. packer. i have served as ms. packer supervisor from december 2020 until her retirement. i also have been a long time colleague working very closely in the areas of sexual health with ms. packer for over a decade, and prior to that, as a

colleague, not working with her as closely, but her reputation was well known. i am in strong support of the request, as i said, for and i would like to just make a points in two areas. the first is that as you have heard from ms. packer and from director hirsh, ms. packer has really dedicated her professional career and has developed significant expertise in community health and sexual health and in serving populations that are most impacted by conditions such as sexual health and behavioral health and other needs. she has built a national reputation as well as a reputation throughout san francisco. so is a unique individual in that regard. also, as you heard director, former director packer, ms. packer was not involved in the deliberations and the discussions around the contract process. her last involvement in

this particular rfp with the san francisco aids foundation was in 2019, and then she served the city admirably during the entire covid 19 pandemic. so from my personal work with ms. packer, i have the utmost confidence in her, in her ethics, in her desire and her willingness to adhere to the strictest standards set out by this commission. again as shown by her, by her dogged pursuit of the process in working with you all and in having full transparent of her, of her interest in working with the san francisco aids foundation, the second point that i would like to make in my position is in in actual reference to the san francisco aids foundation, which is an incredibly important partner to the san francisco department of public health and to the city more largely around important issues of sexual health, behavioral health, incredibly large issues that, as we all know, are incredibly

important and front of mind right now in the city and county of san francisco. the aids foundation is a nationally and internationally known partner and agency and its strength and its stability is of utmost importance for public health in san francisco. so they provide vital expertise and services, again, to some of the most vulnerable members of our community and to those communities that are disproportionately impacted by sexual health. as these hiv aids and behavioral health needs. so just one example of this is a year ago, san francisco was impacted by an outbreak of impacts formerly known as monkeypox. and san francisco was able to overcome that outbreak on the heels of the covid pandemic, in large part because of the partnership of the san francisco aids foundation, their leadership and as a result, we were able to vaccinate and

protect the city. so those are my comments, and i appreciate your time and hearing me. thank you. thank you. dr. phillip, let's switch over to callers from the queue. take two more callers before we come back to the audience. madam chair, because we have we have three callers in the queue currently. please stand. we'll go to the first caller. welcome. caller your three minutes, your four minutes begin now. commissioners chair lee and fellow ethics commissioners. my name is mike shriver and i'm calling in to most adamantly support the proposal to have the ethics committee grant tracy packard the waiver so she can work with the aids foundation. i've worked with ms. packer for over three decades now, either as a health commissioner, a special adviser to the mayor on aids and hiv policy under mayor willie brown and even as the co-chair of the hiv community planning council and some of the words that popped to my mind about ms. packer immediately are integrity , vision and partnership. i

think granting ms. packer the waiver to work with the foundation would be an incredible gift to both the hiv community here in the city, as well as to our efforts to end the hiv epidemic. i cannot think of any reason why ms. packer would not be able to do the short term project with the foundation with the utmost of vision and professionalism. and i really hope that you grant her the waiver. thank you. thank you, mr. shriver. next caller. please welcome. caller your four minutes begins now. i'm sorry i lost sound. is this for vince. when i'm sorry, what was that? i lost sound. did you just call on me? yes, you? yes. you're your three. your four minutes begins now for your public comment. all right. good morning, commissioners. my name is vince chrysostom. i'm director of aging services at san francisco

samuel alito foundation. i'm a person who's been living with hiv since 1985, 30 years ago, i started my career in san francisco, and at the same time a very young, idealistic woman named tracy packard was also starting her career at dps. over the years, i've watched tracy serve my communities. the populations i care about serve san francisco in ways that will probably go unnamed. i don't think having worked for 30 years, there isn't anybody whose life or work has not impacted. and when i found out about the transitions that i had mentioned to someone that god tracy's consulting, maybe we should consider calling her. and i was surprised. i was pleasantly surprised to know, but that was actually in the works. and so i want to put forth my recommendation that you grant this. many people said they would be here if needed to speak on her behalf. we are so proud

to call tracy a friend and also the community's that we might self. and my friends who are long term survivors are around because of the treatment that we got. and then that knowledge would be lost. tracy has this opportunity to give back to our community in ways that is very seldom seen, and i'm not exactly sure how you define hard extreme hardship, but i think for someone who has served the public in the public health capacity, tracy has to not be allowed to serve would be a great disappointment. i just cannot even imagine experience doing so. i hope you will grant this. i hope if there's anything that we can do, the community is ready to step up and speak in support and again, thank you for your time. and please grant this request. thank you. and let's come back to the speakers in the room. let's take the next two callers in room here. we have do we have any other speakers? if.

hello, my name is laura. honey brooks. i am the chief program officer at san francisco aids foundation. sfa promotes health, wellness and social justice for communities most impacted by hiv through sexual health and substance use services, advocacy and community partnership. i urge the commission to consider the important impact that tracy could have on communities most impacted by health disparities through this short term temporary role. i believe the definition of extreme hardship must consider the hardship that our communities and programs will face the same communities that tracy has dedicated her entire career to serving. should tracy not be approved to serve as a critical bridge until another programmatic leader is identified and onboarded, this bridge is needed now. and tracy

packer is not only uniquely qualified to serve in this capacity, but she is also available to begin this work immediately. i reached out to tracy because i believe tracy uniquely possesses the skills to support staff during this time of transition. she has decades of experience in the hiv, sexual health and public health space. she is passionate about this work. she possessed his integrity and humility. humility and she is a systems and strategy thinker. she is a bridge builder, a problem solver and an amazing tactician. the issues facing our communities. sexual health disparities, preventable overdose, death, homelessness and untreated mental health issues just to name a few, are staggering, complex and require multiple mutually reinforcing interventions and supports the direct service work is incredibly hard and our staff deserve skilled and compassionate support to further sf's mission. the role that tracy could provide through this

waiver would support strain teams and ensure continuity during the transition. i care deeply about sf in our communities, a thoughtful transition is deeply needed in this moment for our board, staff and clients. this role would also support dr. tyler turman, who you'll hear from in a moment. in his second year at the helm of sf. as i mentioned at the last meeting, dr. tamir is the first ceo of color in the organization's history and as we move into the fifth year of our seven year strategic plan, we need passionate leaders flanking and supporting dr. vermeer's vision for health, justice for all. tracy would be a tremendous asset to sf during this moment of transition. thank you so much for your consideration and thank you, miss brooks. we'll take one more speaker before we switch back to the speakers from in the queue. please go ahead. good afternoon, commissioners. my name is laura thomas. i'm the senior director of hiv and harm

reduction policy at the san francisco aids foundation in a separate capacity, i also serve on a different city commission, and i just want to say thank you for your service and your thoughtful deliberation. it's a little odd being in this room on the other side of the microphone . i have worked in hiv in san francisco for over 30 years in including at the department of public health, where i had the opportunity to overlap with tracy packer for a number of years while i was there, i also served on the hiv prevention planning council while she was managing that for the department of public health. and i just want to say that, you know, her work has been very fluid and appreciated by the community for many, many years here. and from the san francisco aids foundation perspective, you know, we have valued our

communication and relationship with her over the years. i have found her to be someone who combines a rigorous adherence to the rules and regulations and the highest ethical standards with the compassion and recognition of community challenges and flexibility. she, in working with the community where appropriate, she brings a unique perspective and expertise to the challenges currently facing the san francisco aids foundation and would have an enormous benefit to our ability to grow our partnerships and programs. the community of people living with and at risk of hiv and our vision for health, justice will be best served by her assistance in this time as a consultant. and it seems like it would it feels to us like it would be a hardship for the community and for our efforts to end hiv in this city if we were not able to bring her

on as a short term consultant in this. with that, thank you. we ask for your approval of a waiver for her. thank you, ms. thomas. let's go to the speakers from the clearly, we do have one more caller in the queue. caller your four minutes begins when you start speaking. afternoon my name is kyle temple and i am senior director of the stonewall project, san francisco aids foundation's substance use and behavioral health program. i'm here today to advocate in support of ms. packer's waiver request with the departure of our chief programs officer, laura haney. brooks we who work in programs at sf find ourselves at a pivotal moment in what i believe is a similarly momentous point of inflection for the city and county of san francisco in its ability to fortify its efforts to address the deep need for uninterrupted access to low

barrier social services, particularly among our more marginalized community members, by virtue of her demonstrated passion for social justice and her years of experience working in the public health space, ms. packer is uniquely qualified to assist sf in navigating organizational change while ensuring our services maintain continuity of high quality, low barrier care for the communities we serve. i urge you to support this request. thank you for your thoughtful consideration of the matter. thank you. if there's no other callers in the queue, let's go back to members in the room. we have one caller with you. let's take the person in the queue. oh we do two and two. oh, no, we don't. okay, now you're back. good morning, commissioners. my name is ben cabana and i'm the chief of staff at the san francisco aids foundation. our field in the hiv

aids sector is one where we grow leaders from within our community. i myself was a client of hiv prevention programs throughout my youth, and today i've been the leadership team at san francisco aids foundation. i would not be here and been a success in my leadership development without mentors who can provide core technical skills and help increase knowledge and instill confidence . i've served in hiv community advisory bodies for the past ten years and was previously the co-chair of the san francisco ema hiv community planning council, and tracy packer has been a leadership figure for all of us throughout that entire time period and also in my leadership development. we have new leaders in our organization at san francisco aids foundation who are in need of the technical mentorship that i once received to be successful. these leaders are steering crucial programs

aimed at reducing hiv infections , preventing overdose deaths and increasing access to health care and social support services for our most vulnerable neighbors in our city. allowing tracy to continue to serve our sector, our communities, and our organization will strengthen our program. leaders ability to succeed and thus increasing the impact of our crucial programs and services. so thank you so much for your consideration of this waiver and thank you for your time. good morning. my name is dr. tyler turner and i proudly serve as the chief executive officer of san francisco aids foundation. but i'm also here today as a black queer man who's been living with hiv for nearly 20 years. i i often approach these things and think whether i should right out the perfect statement, but above all, i ground myself in the

values i was raised upon, which is the power of storytelling and it was as i woke up this morning thinking about what to say, i was reminded that 11 years ago today by my grandfather, who was the head of our household for many reasons, passed away. and one of the greatest lessons that he taught me was the power of community and the power of reaching community through trust and through pushing one another to grow and through very difficult conversations. as while i've only been in san francisco for a year and a half, my partnership with san francisco department of health has been all of those things in times of public health crisis and social issues facing our city. they have been both a strong partner and challenged us to grow and really difficult ways, and that has been through difficult conversation, but through trust building, trust being a currency with the people that we serve and in our ability to get to a day when san

francisco can become the first city to reach zero new hiv infections. and the only way we can do that is by strongly investing in the continuity of our programs and services at a really vital time in the epidemic. i believe in sitting here and listening to my own staff and to community members who have been talking passionately about tracy, that she is that bridge that i need at my side. my colleagues talked about my role as the first person of color in the 40 years of san francisco aids foundation to take the helm. and that is no easy task, as i'm sure you may know, there are many things that have been stacked against people of color, and there are very few people of color who lead nonprofits in this space. and i need a team that i can trust, a team that can be strong, compassionate leaders. and in this temporary bridge from one amazing leader to hopefully be

the next amazing leader that we will find. and it would be my honor and it would be a disservice if we could not have someone as talented as tracy joining our team. so thank you so much for your time, for your consideration. thank you. any other speakers. commissioners? i do not know. tracy walker, but in the 80s i knew a doctor, dr. silverman, who created a model. this model has helped our nation , but also helped thousands of people that i worked with when i was at the presidio. so i had to overcome. i'm fighting the military, but i did convince her. general that i and another gay man that we could do a lot

for those that needed help in our case, it was to allow those military personnel who had aids to get their retirement money so that they could buy their medication. i believe at that time they were called cocktails. so by listening to fellow san franciscans, this is what i want to tell you all commissioners. this is how we uplift one another. if we can can help anybody like tracy parker by giving her a waiver and uplifting thousands in san francisco. we have a very serious pandemic and san francisco, not only aids, but drug like fentanyl that is like killing thousands of people. and

we need experts like tracy parker to help us. and so, you know, my comments are not like my usual comments, but it's i'm the director of environment justice advocacy. i fight for this type of issues. i have many lgbtq friends who i fight for. they just call me and i stand up and do what i can. so those are my comments. thank you very much . thank you. i see. no other public comments. let's see if we have a motion to either approve or deny the waiver. thank you. thank you. chair lee. i thank you, ms. packer, for your patience with us for your 30 years of service to the city and for your interest in continuing that service through other means

. i'm going to renew my motion to approve the waiver that i had proposed last time. and just briefly summarize my reasoning as the staff memo acknowledges, the commission has broad discretion for how to evaluate extreme hardship. it's not limited to financial hardship. it includes any other factors we deem relevant and one that i deem relevant. is that what constitutes extreme hardship is informed by the facts and circumstances of the case. and what gave rise to the application of this regulation in the first place. and here it seems very clear that there's a very attenuated link between ms. packer's role in developing the rfp and in the ultimate decision about who received it. and so i don't believe that denying the waiver would vindicate the public's interest and might actually harm it for other reasons. so i moved to approve the waiver the second i, i second and i'll just add that i echo everything that commissioner salahi said, and i thank you and all the public

speakers for being here to speak and support truly nice to hear about the good work that the city has done in this area. and i think the aids foundation is lucky to have you being willing to participate. and i'll also second the motion. but i want to give my colleagues a chance to make any comment sense. sure. i'd also like to renew my motion for the reasons that i stated at the last meeting and thank you all for coming. thank you all. before we take a vote, i just want to ask one more question to ms. packer. you mentioned this is for a short term employment, so were you looking at a specific we were talking about about six months. we thought that that would be about the time to for them to hire a new chief of programs or whatever their new title is. and for me to support their onboarding. so something around that time. so i would imagine the motion would be to grant the waiver for a six month period. and if for whatever reason you need to come

back and you can come back, great. thank you. is six months sufficient or i don't want to impose an undue burden on on you to come back just for an additional month at the tail end . so it's a great question. it does make a difference. my personal view is it doesn't make a difference to whether there's a justification for the waiver here, whether it's a six month period or slightly longer than that. to answer your question, i think it's a good one. i mean, it can take time to hire people. you know, so it may not be well, i'm from the city. we don't hire people in six months. i'm sorry. well, but right. and so obviously, the san francisco aids foundation has a more well, they move faster. so, i mean, if there's room for more time, that would be okay with me because i would be happy to continue. but i also want to adhere to what the commission thinks is best. yeah, i'll make my motion for a nine month waiver just to build in some flexibility without. yeah. thank you for the six

months. was that your. that was your initial proposal. i think it was my i think we just, you know, in in talking about it, i think it was six months that we came up with. yeah. thank you. yeah. i think my last motion was specific to the six months and so i would be voting again if i were to be reconsidering the time frame. but given that as part of your motion, you provided six months, i feel comfortable this this was for a limited term. so i want to make sure that there's an end date. otherwise not you, but people can continue in this position for the next 50 years. i'm retired. i can ask mr. when does this restriction actually expire for ms. packer the contract in this question was entered into in january. on january 1st of this year. so after january 1st, a waiver wouldn't be necessary. so we don't need to give a waiver for a long. so six or i mean, you could still specify 6 or 9 months, but that would be

sufficient. sure. okay, great, great. thank you. so my motion is to extend the waiver through the through january 20th, 24. and there's no need for a waiver after that point. roll call, please. second, it was second. right. okay. all right. a motion has been made and second, in request for waiver for tracy packer, commissioner flores feng, i vice chair. hi, chair lee. hi. commissioner salahi. hi, madam chair. with four votes in the affirmative and zero votes opposed the motion is approved unanimously. congratulations and thank you all for all their service to the city. thank you. and good luck. okay, let's take a. five minute break. i need a five minute break. so. madam chair, we are back live.

okay i now call agenda item number 11, which is audit the division update highlighting division operations colleagues as you recall, we had asked miss fong to come back to give us an update from her last appearance . so miss fang, thank you. good afternoon, shirley, vice sheriff and live commissioner. forest flying and commissioner solly hope. i said that right for the benefit of our newly our newest commissioner. i want to provide a short overview of what the audit division does. i provided that overview the last time we provided the update, but i think just to make sure that you get that same overview, i just want to take a minute to provide that . so under the city charter, the commission has a duty to audit campaign statements filed with the commission to ensure

compliance with laws and regulations and under the city's campaign governmental conduct code, the candidate committees who receive public funds are subject to mandatory audit and committees that don't receive public funds. they still may be selected for audit at the discretion of the executive director. the commission also is charged with auditing at least one or more lobbyist every year and with the lobbying audits that we did, were that we finished this earlier this year, that was our first round of lobbying audits. so we hope to make that part of our regular program going forward. besides conducting the mandatory and discretionary campaign audits and lobbying audits, we also are responsible for developing and implement a post filing compliance review program for

the statement of economic interest or what we all call the form 700. besides the audits and reviews that we do in providing the oversight that we do during election season, we administer the city's public financing program where we conduct a candidate eligibility for our candidates running for the board of supervisors seats and the mayor's seats. and we coordinate the disbursements of public funds. so with that brief overview of the division, i would now like to provide a status of where we are with the audits. since our last update back earlier this year, the division has focused on addressing the backlog of outstanding campaign finance audits, the backlog was subject

to the board of supervisors resolution that was introduced last december in response to the resolution, the audit division has focused on conducting mandatory audits and also working with the office of contract administration to establish a contract with an external vendor to assist with the backlog of audits that we have. we've been working with oca since september of 2001. i mean 2021, excuse me, and since the beginning of this year we've made significant steps forward in establishing a contract. as we continue on with the contracting process, we will continue to provide updates to the commission as we move forward. while we continue to work on the contract, we have started to work on the backlogs internally. specifically, we have conducted two mandatory

audits of committees from the. 2019 election. three mandatory audits of committees from the 2020 election started. another two mandatory audits from the 2020 election and shortly we plan to start another audit of a candidate committee from the 2020 election for the audits that we have completed so far. audit reports are available online now. the remaining mandatory audits from the 2020 election and the 2022 election. those are audits that are planned for the external vendor. once we establish the contract and those specific committees are there outlined in the staff memo and also available on the website to and in addition to working on the mandatory audits that i just summarized

internally, we and assuming that a contract is established by the third quarter of fiscal year 24, we expect to begin planning for the next round of lobbying audits covering the 2022 registration and disclosure activity and also continue developing the form 700 post filing compliance review program. so that is a short status of where we are. we are working toward addressing the backlog as much as we can until we get the contract established . and with that, i'm happy to answer any questions as. i have a couple quick questions. a couple areas where you mentioned that additional committees have been selected for discretionary audits. is that kind of a staffing issue or in other

words, had or would you like to phrase this? was that because of a limitation on resources or there is no reason to audit any additional committees since i have joined the commission, we were at 25% capacity and that was around the time during the office closure due to the pandemic and as of 2019, the election at that time, that was the last time discretionary audits have been conducted since then. we spent a lot of time working through recommendations from the budget and legislative analysts office for the last couple of years. so we focused on that out, which involve making sure we build the audit division or program to make sure that we have a standardized program going forward that we could rely on. so we focused on that and also developing a lobbying program, which is one of the recommendations as well.

so staffing plus focusing on the implementation of the blr recommendations. that's why we have not had the bandwidth to perform discretionary audits and also the backlog of audits that have been built up since then. but going forward, assuming that we work through the backlog, then at some point the goal is to get track, get on track with our mandatory audits and then have the bandwidth to conduct discretionary audits. got it. no, thank you. then one last, i promise, this is quick for public companies. there are various kind of industry standards for auditing standards . the pcaob, i think, is one is a such a thing. sorry, that's a tongue twister. is there such a thing for political committees or lobbyist committees like an industry standard of what? an audit should cover? not to my knowledge. in the same vein that

that you're referencing, i know what you are talking about for the most part, are audits. look for compliance with laws and regulations. and so the various ice testing areas that we look into are is ensuring that the committees comply with the laws and regulations in those testing areas. so as far as a standard way to conduct the audit, that and also what the fppc may have as guidelines to. right. and i guess each jurisdiction has different laws, so it'd be hard to have a like a statewide standard given their different disclosure requirements in every jurisdiction. great. well, thank you. that's it. thank you, ms. fall. thank you. now that we have a new budget with a little bit more security, what is your division? staffing looks like

there's one manager, me and three auditors and that is considered 100% fully staffed. okay and at the last your last appearance, there was some question there was a recommendation is that even though you're required to do a minimum of one lobbying firm, i think there was some interest to see if we can scale up to do more than one. so with your 100% staffing, do you see that happening in the foreseeable future? yes yes. the code only requires one. but even in our first round of doing lobbyists lobbying audits, we conducted six. so we don't think conducting one lobbying audit is sufficient to get a representation of compliance

with laws and regulations. so given in the activity that we may see during the audit period, then we will scope out what makes sense to look at and to test. and depending on what we see, that will determine how many audits will make sense to look at. but definitely more than one. yeah. thank you so much for coming and i know no questions. i guess not. okay great. let's go. oh, before you go, we have to go to public comment. oh okay. so anyone in in the room who is to speak? i see none. let's go to the queue . madam chair. we have no callers in the queue. okay. so thank you so much. thank you. all let's go to agenda item.

agenda item number 12, which is items for future meetings. none none. okay. public comments for agenda item number 12. madam chair, we have no public and we have no callers in the queue. okay agenda item number 12, public comment for any item that was not on today's agenda. hello. this is lois scott again. i just have a question. i know that you are going to adjourn in honor of charles marsteller, and i wanted to inquire on will there be comment at that point or how how would one coming up after you speak so is this a

good time for her to make comment on mr. marsteller? oh, you want to hear our. yeah, of course i want to be here. i didn't know whether it's coming up. it's coming up. is there a public comment on the adjournment? usually a german we have no comments, but i think what we can do is we can add make the statement, and then we'll have open we would have public comment and then we will adjourn. would that be. thank you. yes. okay i can speak right now if you would like to speak to me. she may not want to she may object to our comments. so so let's have her here first. okay. now further comment. we have no public and we have no callers in the queue. madam chair. okay. colleagues, i want to close today's meeting in honor of our friend charlie marsteller. he was a true friend of the san francisco ethics

commission. as we knew, he passed away last month. charlie was a very special friend to all of us. he was the first person to welcome me when i first attended my. first commission meeting and his last appearance before this commission was about 2 or 3 months ago. he he expressed his concern over our ongoing discussion on the proposed ballot measure, and he was very interested to hear about any progress we would be making in terms of replacing. our former. director so i like to think that he is smiling on

us at today's meeting. seems like his energy was here to help pass the ballot measure and we have a new new plan to fill the next executive director. charlie was a skilled. professional and human being at sharing his thoughts and his ideas in a way that was both well informed, humbled and respectful. he treated everyone one in this room, in the office and in the community. even those he disagreed with or even those who disagree with him with respect and he listened to what everyone

had to say, always with a smile on his face. this was true even during the heated policy debates on major discussions and legislations on this commission . he would help set the tone for a civil debate just by being present and setting a fine example of the gentleman that he always was to us. charlie was one of the most consistent stakeholders in the ethics commission's policy matters, and all of our public engagements. he took interest in a wide array of issues he engaged in nearly every policy projects that the commission undertook. he always had meaningful feedback to give that could help shape policy and move projects forward. this shows both his depth of

knowledge and his genuine desire to contribute to improving good government for san francisco, this commitment extends to the commission's founding in 1993, when, as the leader of common causes local chapter at the time , charlie was highly involved. he was also very active in friends of ethics, which has challenged san francisco and this commission to improve our practices for years. a major accomplishment for charlie's was his championing championing of what became proposition. oh, this measure passed on the november 2000 ballot with established new campaign contributions, limits and public financing. charlie pushed for the ethics commission to act in play and place it on the ballot , even after the board of supervisors supervisors had rejected the measure on a 10 to

1 vote. that measure remains a core feature of our campaign finance program to this day. charlie treated the ethics commission, staff and commissioners as his family, and he regularly visited the commission's office, often sharing new stories and fresh ideas and just sometimes just wanted to drop by and bring a smile and give us energy. charlie always showed the highest levels of respect and collegiality during these interactions, making him a familiar and welcome face for many years in office and to this commission, charlie lived humbly, as we heard today, but he served due to dutifully. he cared deeply and acted kindly. he will be missed. i will miss his smile, his tap on the

shoulder, just to remind me what i needed to do as a member of this commission. but always remind me to smile as a human being and be kind to others. his contributions to san francisco will live on continuing to shape our city for the better, and i would propose that we adjourn this meeting in his honor. before i do, let's see if we have any public comments on this matter. i thank you, president lee. those were beautiful comments. and i share the same feelings. i'm lois scott and i was a neighbor and a friend of charlie's and i think i want to share something about you may not have known that he was an avid coin collector, and it was

a way of connecting to history and it was also a way of financial support. he was a very astute trader in these coins that they sort of started with his grandfather's collection. his grandfather, i think, had been a solicitor general of the united states, some eminent washington office. but charlie bought and sold coins and he loved his coins. he loved the real ones and the heart of his collection were the greek and roman coins. gold and silver and he loved them very much. and he would hold them in his pocket. and i think he was kind of commune ing with some of the people whose faces were on the coins. and he knew all the roman empire emperors in order he knew all the kings of england and order queens and kings and he.

gradually replaced he, he sold some of these in order to support himself. and he replaced them with replica coins that were made by, i guess, somewhere in china. and he used to have them in his pocket because with a replica he could still feel the face. and you probably never realized what was in his pocket that he was connecting back through the ages. and i wish i now knew which of the emperors he most admired and whose spirit he was communing with. but that's what i feel about charlie. i hope that although i don't have coins in my pocket that we commune with the best of our history and our our ideals

to continue this his work. so thank you. thank you, mr. any colleagues express anything? if not agenda item number 14, which is adjournment and we adjourn in honor and in remembrance of charlie mosteller. .

>> shop and dine the 49 promotes loophole businesses and changes residents to do thirds shopping and diane within the 49 square miles of san francisco by supporting local services we help san francisco remain unique and successful where will you shop and dine shop and dine the 49. >> my name is neil the general manager for the book shop here on west portal avenue if san francisco this is a neighborhood bookstore and it is a wonderful neighborhood but it is an interesting community because the residents the neighborhood muni loves the neighborhood it is community and we as a book sincerely we

see the same people here the shop all the time and you know to a certain degree this is part of their this is created the neighborhood a place where people come and subcontract it is in recent years we see a drop off of a lot of bookstores both national chains and neighborhoods by the neighborhood stores where coming you don't want to - one of the great things of san francisco it is neighborhood neighborhood have dentist corrosive are coffeehouses but 2, 3, 4 coffeehouses in month neighborhoods that are on their own- that's

>> you're watching san francisco rising with chris manners. today's special guest is katy tang. [♪♪♪] >> hi. i'm chris manners, and you're watching san francisco rising, the show that's focused on rebuilding, reimagining, and revitalizing our city. with us today is katy tang, and she's talk to -- talking to us about assistance and services provided to local businesses. can we talk about the role of the office of small business? many small businesses are struggling to help. how can you help? >> director tang: we are here as the city's central point of information for all things small businesses, so we can

help people start, stay, and grow in the city. if you want to start a small business, we can pair you up with small business advisors, who can talk you through your business plan, help you develop it, whether it's regulatory requirements, business permits, and just help you understand the journey that was up ahead. and if you'd like to stay in san francisco and perhaps your business is facing challenges, we can also pair you with a business advisor who can assess your business needs and figure out whatside that would best help you. so for example, perhaps you need more marketing assistance or you need to be connected to a loan, a low interest loan or a grant program, if that's available. those are services we can provide to you, whether you're starting out or trying to stay in san francisco. and of course, if you want to expand and grow into a new space, we can help assist you

with that and help prepare you for the journey ahead. we have a team dedicated to assist you you with all the small business needs, all the requirements needed to help you establish your small business in san francisco. >> do you have an e.s.l. program for people who want to start small businesses? >> director tang: we have staff that can speak spanish and mandarin and cantonese, and we understand if english is not your first language, it can be difficult, so we want to be as helpful as possible. >> excellent. i know that s.f. shines was created to help with restoring and improvement. can you tell us more about that? >> yes.

it's run out of a sister development and it's much needed in the small business community. if you are trying to improve your storefront, whether it's outside, perhaps you want to make some interior improvements, a lot of times, that involves a lot of cost and resources to be able to do so. for example, you may need to hire an architect to submit drawings so you can get your work done. currently, s.f. shines is offer a pairing of business sign services. you can be paired up with an architect to get your drawings done to help you start to do the actual work. we hope that people will stay tuned, and you can find out

more information on our website. that's sfgov.org/osb. >> let's talk about the shared spaces program. it's been a huge success, and outdoor dining spaces are very popular. >> the shared spaces program, especially during the pandemic, really helped spaces survive. to have an outdoor space where people could safely gather was critical, and the office of small business has been working with these shared spaces during the pandemic. some may or may not have been up to the city's code regulations, so department of public works and other departments have been trying to figure out what violations are and help businesses come into

compliance. the planning department and the city have decided that they'll give businesses until 2023 to come into compliance. also in the meantime, for businesses that want to start new shared spaces, new parklets, that is still an on going program, a new program, so people can always submit their applications for shared spaces regardless whether they started one during the pandemic or not. >> do you anticipate there being other shared spaces programs in the future and how do small businesses go about finding out about them? >> small businesses can find out about it by visiting our website, sfgov/osb or you can call 415-554-6134, and we can connect you with the planning

department and other agencies that would be connected with the shared spaces programs. >> over the pandemic, businesses have been victimized by vandals and other crimes. how can you help them? >> the city offers a program called the vandalism relief fund, and this would allow businesses suffering from graffiti or broken windows to apply with the city through our neighborhood services division, and you could get up to 1,000 or 2,000 if you submit certain documentation, such as a photograph of the damage or a copy of the receipt or document showing the amount you paid for

to correct the incident. we are so excited that the city now has a centralized permit center, where people can come and get their business done, hopefully, in the same day where there are several different agencies, ranging from department of building inspection, planning department, public health, fire department, all here to help people, whether you're building a new business or even new construction, to be able to, again, fit all of your appointments in one day and get things done quickly. so starting in may, our office of small business has actually started working out of 49 south van ness at the permit center, and we have a team of two staff who are dedicated to helping small businesses through their permitting journey. so we do encourage people, you can come to the permit center or you can e-mail us at sfosb@sfgov.org, and you can communicate with our staff

dedicated to helping you with your permitting needs. we hope that people will consider consulting with us before you even sign a lease so that we can help you on the path to success and understanding the journey of setting up a small business in san francisco. >> well, thank you so much. i really appreciate you coming on the show, miss tang. thank you for the time you've given us today. >> director tang: thanks for having me. >> and that's it for this show. we'll be back shortly. you've been watching san francisco rising. for sfgovtv, i'm chris manners. thanks for watching. (clapping.) the airport it where i know to mind visions of traffic romance and excitement and gourmet can you limousine we're at san francisco inspirational airport

to discover the award-winning concession that conspiracies us around the world. sfo serves are more 40 million travelers a year and a lot of the them are hungry there's many restaurant and nearly all are restaurant and cafe that's right even the airport is a diane designation. so tell me a little bit the food program at sfo and what makes this so special >> well, we have a we have food and beverage program at sfo we trivia important the sustainable organic produce and our objective to be a nonterminal and bring in the best food of san francisco for our passengers. >> i like this it's is

(inaudible) i thank my parents for bringing me here. >> this the definitely better than the la airport one thousand times better than. >> i have a double knees burger with bacon. >> i realize i'm on a diet but i'm hoping this will be good. >> it total is san francisco experience because there's so many people and nationalities in this town to come to the airport especially everyone what have what they wanted. >> are repioneering or is this a model. >> we're definitely pioneers and in airport commemoration at least nationally if not intvrl

we have many folks asking our our process and how we select our great operators. >> ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ the food option in san francisco airport are phenomenal that's if it a lot of the airports >> yeah. >> you don't have the choice. >> some airports are all about food this is not many and this particular airport are amazing especially at the tirnl indicating and corey is my favorite i come one or two hours before my flight this is the life. >> we definitely try to use as

many local grirnts as we can we use the goat cheese and we also use local vendors we use greenly produce they summarize the local soured products and the last one had 97 percent open that. >> wow. >> have you taken up anything unique or odd here. >> i've picked up a few things in napa valley i love checking chocolates there's a lot of types of chocolate and caramel corn. >> now this is a given right there. >> i'm curious about the customer externals and how people are richmond to this collection of cities you've put

together not only of san francisco food in san francisco but food across the bay area. >> this type of market with the local savors the high-end products is great. >> i know people can't believe they're in an airport i really joy people picking up things for their friends and family and wait i don't have to be shopping now we want people take the opportunity at our location. >> how long has this been operating in san francisco and the late 18 hours it is one of the best places to get it

coffee. >> we have intrrnl consumers that know of this original outlet here and come here for the coffee. >> so let's talk sandwiches. >> uh-huh. >> can you tell me how you came about naming our sandwiches from the katrero hills or 27 years i thought okay neighborhood and how do you keep it fresh you can answer that mia anyway you want. >> our broadened is we're going not irving preserves or packaged goods we take the time to incubate our jogger art if

scratch people appreciate our work here. >> so you feel like out of captured the airport atmosphere. >> this is its own the city the airline crews and the bag handlers and the frequent travels travelers and we've established relationships it feels good. >> when i get lunch come to eat the food i feel like i'm not city. i was kind of under the assumption you want to be done with our gifts you are down one time not true >> we have a lot of regulars we didn't think we'd find that here at the airport. >> people come in at least one a week for that the food and

service and the atmosphere. >> the food is great in san francisco it's a coffee and i took an e calorie home every couple of weeks. >> i'm impressed i might come here on my own without a trip, you know, we have kids we could get a babysitter and have diner at the airport. >> this is a little bit of things for everybody there's plenty of restaurant to grab something and go otherwise in you want to sit you can enjoy the experience of local food. >> tell me about the future food. >> we're hoping to bring newer concepts out in san francisco and what our passengers want. >> i look forward to see what

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in person in city hall, room 400 and broadcast live on sf gov tv and available to view online or listen to by. calling (415)!a655-0001. the small business commission thinks media services and sf gov tv for televising the meeting which can be viewed on sf gov tv2 or live streamed at sf gov tv.org. we welcome the public's participation during public comment periods. there will be an opportunity for general public comment at the end of the meeting and there will be an opportunity to comment on each discussion or action item on the agenda for each item the commission will t