saturday is 10 to 6 and sunday is 10 to 3. sheriff and live we are ready to begin. >> thank you. >> would you mind just to say one more thing? the audio came through a little weird terrified that we were ready to begin. i can hear you but it's a little muffled but i think we're good. >> welcome to the february 7th, 2025 regular meeting of the san francisco ethics commission. today's meeting is live cable cast on s.f. gov tv and live

streamed online at s.f. gov keyboard forward slash ethics live for public comment members of the public met in person or may participate by phone or the webex platform as explained in our agenda document. mr. clerk, will you explain would you please explain how remote public comment will be handled? >> 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 408 city hall for those attending remotely public comment period public comment period can also be provided via phone by calling at 14156550001 access code is 26612892579 followed by the pound sign and then press pound again to join as an attendee when your item of interest comes up. please 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 the 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 s.f. gov dot org. members of the public who attend commission meetings including remote attendance are also expected to behave responsibly and respectfully. during the public comment please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to an individual members. persons who engage in name calling, shouting interruptions, foul language or other distracting behavior may be excluded from participation

. >> thank you, mr. clerk. i now call the meeting to order . >> the clerk will you please call roll under item one turf and live here? commissioner florus feng here. commissioner salahi here. commissioner. so are your staff in love with the former? yeah. with former members present and accounted for you have a quorum. >> thank you. that i call agenda item number two. general public comment. does anyone in the room wish to make general public comment? >> seeing none. mr. clarke, will you check if there are any remote callers please? >> chair felt that we were checking to see if there are callers in the queue. chair live there are no callers in the queue. >> thank you. hearing no further members of the public wishing to speak. general public comment on item two is now closed. i now call the consent calendar . >> colleagues as noted in the agenda unless one of us wants to discuss an item on the consent calendar or a member of

the public wants to. we will not discuss them separately anyway. >> i'm sorry. go ahead. commissioner, i can say there's nothing that i want to add substantively but i did just want to offer a welcome to everybody who we recently hired and also thank everybody whose positions have been vacated for their service to the commission. so i just want to acknowledge welcome and thank you. >> thank you. is anyone in the public wish to call an item from the consent calendar? >> seeing none mr. clerk, would you check if any remote callers chair friendly if there are no callers in the queue. thank you. >> i move to adopt the consent calendar. well, i did that last hour kind of clunky as checking if there were folks who want to call someone inside.

you check if there's any public comment on the remote sorry on the consent calendar. >> seeing none in the room. mr. clerk, would you check if there are any callers? chair if there are no callers in the queue. >> great. thank you. so with that i move to adopt the items and then consent calendar. >> second thank you. >> on the motion to adopt the consent calendar. >> turf and love i wish her flowers fang. commissioner salahi. >> hi. commissioner. so i chair live with four votes in the affirmative. the motion is approved unanimously. >> thank you, mr. clerk. we're now going to go a little bit out of order. we're going to save it. item six election of commission officers until the end of the agenda. so instead called item number seven. discussion i propose possible action regarding proposed regulation decision and order in the matter of labor and working families. slate and daniel anderson mr.

demicco. >> good morning. i have a note to congratulate the new chair so i'll just scratch that out since we saw the order. >> so this case involves respondents, labor and working families. slate which is a general purpose committee and their consultant daniel anderson. it's a case involving coordinated spending too. as a reminder. so basically in this case coordinated spending with this staff of the general purpose committee being their consultant and the staff of a supervisor campaign for supervisor dean preston turned out what was otherwise an independent expenditure into a contribution under law and that led to violations including a contribution over the limit and inappropriate reporting of the

contribution as an expenditure. >> so i'm going to basically break this into three parts and briefly talk about the coordination and then the communication that was funded by the expenditure and then the calculation of the benefit that went to supervisor president's campaign. >> so so as a reminder under law if an independent expenditure funds a communication that benefits a candidate and it was coordinated with that candidate then the expenditure is not independent and it should have been considered a contribution. the law has various tests. one of those tests is that if the communication was made after an agreement on timing location or mode of dissemination was come to between the funder of the communication and the beneficiary at then that is considered coordinated. so in this case again daniel anderson who is a consultant for labor and working families

slate the general purpose committee who funded this communication he texted with a staff member of supervisor preston's campaign who benefited in part from the communication and they texted about the timing, location and mode of dissemination agreeing on language for an invite for the event and agreeing on it that they could that the general purpose committee could put fires and literature in at the event. there was also a parallel language from the two committees in terms of how they talked about various things and we thought there is also a text message that shows that the communications in this case were printed specifically for this event. so they were printed after an agreement had been after an agreement had been made on timing location and and and mode of dissemination. so that's the coordination in this case and then moving to the communication that it funded the cases are sort of

complicated because it involves numerous campaign. i'll try to walk through it as best as i can briefly but it involves campaigns for both the democratic county central committee in assembly district 17 and 19 and the campaign for supervisor in district five. district five encompasses all of assembly districts 17 and 19 or of and in this case bilal mahmood was running in both assembly district 17 for democratic county central committee and in district five supervisor race against supervisor preston. >> so essentially in this case the general purpose committee paid for fliers which on one side had essentially the candidates for that assembly districts democratic county central committee that they

supported. and on the other side it just said, you know, vote no on bilal mahmood for democratic party. >> now this brought a benefit to supervisor preston for two reasons one, the side of the fire that just said vote no on bilal mahmood for the democratic party was vague and could have been talking about his candidacy against supervisor preston. >> but two half of those fliers were focused on assembly district 17 and half of them were focused on assembly district 19. so for the ones on 19 on the opposite side it had a list of the candidates supported by the committee running in assembly district 19 democratic county central committee. and so for those fires the only race that bilal mahmood is running in in assembly district 19 is supervisor. he was only running for the triple c race in assembly district 17 so for someone

district 19 it only could have been interpreted as talking about vote no for him in the supervisor race. >> so this caused a benefit to accrue to supervisor preston's campaign and because the communication was made after the coordination and it should have been a contribution at least in part and that's where we get to the final part of this case which is just briefly how we dealt with the calculations here to put it again quickly the the respondents in this case paid $6,968 for all fires. they coded half of that. >> the sides that had the candidates for d triple c as contributions split amongst those candidates. so we're not dealing with that side. we're only dealing with the side that said vote no on ballot mahmood. so half of that was coded as an

independent expenditure against bilal mahmood $3,484 half of that was dealing with assembly district 17 and half with 19. >> so the half that was dealing with 19 that entire thing should have been a contribution since there was no other way to interpret no one. bilal mahmood except for in the supervisors race for that half for the other half we split that once again in half because half of the benefit was toward bill was against mahmood in his supervisor race and half in his d triple c race. >> so that led to a total of $2,613 that of spending that benefited the preston campaign after coordination. obviously the contribution limit is $500 so that was 2113 over the limit and that is the first violation in this case a contribution over the limit. second violation is just the incorrect reporting of the spending as an independent expenditure instead of a contribution that penalty was

set at 15% of the spending which is $400 for a total of 2513. and just i'll wrap up by noting sort of the importance of these laws essentially if supervisor preston was running you know, if any supervisor is running low on money and they want to get a certain message out or they want to get a message out at a certain time in a certain place, they can coordinate spending with a group that then spends independently and they have no limit on contributions they can accept and then spending that they can make. and so that's sort of an end run around a contribution limit by coordinating the spending. and so it's important that we, you know, identify instances where spending is coordinated and it should be treated as a contribution so that the playing field is level across all candidates and everyone's abiding by the same restrictions and limitation on their fundraising and spending

. thank you for that. i have a couple of questions but i'll see any my colleagues want to jump in now. go ahead. so thank you. that i think is a really good case and important to highlight the coordination issues. i have one question about so the last paragraph of the substance explains why there are not charges against the preston khan candidate campaign because i think as the memo articulates, the law kind of goes both ways. it prohibits excess contributions but making them and receiving them. >> so i was hoping you could kind of flesh out a little more what that last paragraph talks about and i want you to go beyond what's in the public record here but maybe you can kind of synthesize it and the gist that i'm getting is that you all thought it was appropriate to not focus on the present campaign because there's no indication that his campaign knew about the substance of the the coordinated communication. but i'd like you to flesh that out if you can a little bit. >> yeah, that's exactly right. and so there's no indication

that in this case if the respondents had shown up to this event after coordinating on the timing and mode of communication and their spending funded a communication that very clearly opposed bilal mahmood for d triple c and it was only you know, distribute did it in a way that focused on assembly district 17 where he was running and not on the district where he was not running and it very clearly identified what it was opposing him for then that spending would not have benefitted supervisor preston's campaign in any meaningful way and there wouldn't have been any violation like any violation whatsoever. so it was the content of the communication that created the violation not not necessarily the coordination alone. and in this case there was no indication no evidence that we could find that the staff of supervisor preston had any knowledge or input into the substance of the communication. got it?

yeah. thank you for that. i think at the same time highlights kind of the the concerns that if campaigns are talking to other campaigns that there may be lines you're crossing. >> so it's a good thing to folks to be aware. any questions for my colleagues ? >> yeah. yeah. just one quick question. i mean i do think that the penalty up here is fair given the circumstances that you described. >> i'm wondering if in speaking with the respondents they highlighted, you know, any part of the law that they found confusing or they kind of expressed what it was that led them astray here or what they wish they would have seen in order to kind of avoid. >> it's a good question. also allows me to note so most of the credit in this case should go actually to our now audit manager armond who used to be an investigator with the enforcement team and he did a lot of the investigation in this case before he changed roles that also maybe a question that he knows the answer to. they never expressed confusion around the law to me but again i came on later so i don't

sorry almond price or so just briefly, the consultant in this case was aware of the coordination law in general. he knew the location where it's laid out all these different factors that might lead to coordination. so it was i think there was a bit of confusion that it wasn't only about the content of the communication itself but also the dissemination. so that might have slipped by but generally there was understanding that it also applied to the dissemination and it was just i think an oversight. and with this case i don't know that we've necessarily had a coordination case about dissemination where there also wasn't agreement on coordination. so with this opportunity we can make that known to our regulated community.

thank you. the questions. let's take a second. thank you, mr. d'amico. with that let's take public comment. does anyone in the room in the gallery wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none. mr. clarke, will you check if there's any one on the line? >> chairman there are no callers in the queue. with that i move to adopt staff's recommendation on item number seven seconded. >> with that you have a clerk at your at your leisure on the motion to adopt staff's recommendation on item number seven. chair high commissioner flora fang commissioner salahi i.

commissioner so i can live with four votes in the affirmative. >> the motion is approved unanimously. >> thank you sir. that closes item number seven now call item number eight presentation and public hearing and possible action on ethics commission budget proposal for the fiscal year 20 2526 and fiscal year 2627. mr. director thank you chair for lot of good morning commissioners i may have brought up a slide deck for you real quickly

. great. you should be able to see that now. i think we only have this one screen in this room that faces away from you so hopefully you can kind of see it on your small screens. if not, feel free to stop me and i can read this anything that's on the slides if you need of assistance with that. >> so this is the commission's second required budget hearing. you remember from the last meeting that city law requires each department to have two public hearings on its budget each year so so that there's an opportunity for the public to give input on the budget proposal for you to have a discussion amongst yourselves and to give me direction as to what budget we should propose that complies with the mayor's budget instructions and perhaps what proposals we want to make that doesn't comply with those instructions we can make that request. >> so this is the second opportunity to discuss that. you'll see some of the slides here are the same from the last

time. i'm not going to go through them in that same level of detail since you've already heard that content but they're here in case you want to have a discussion we can go to that slide, look at that content so you'll see me kind of skipping some of this but there is some new content in here. i do have a budget proposal that i want to get your feedback on and then i also have a budget request that i suggest we make to the mayor's office that would not involve a cut to the ethics commission. so i'd be eager to hear your feedback on that. i think it's always good to make both kinds of proposals to the mayor's office that they can evaluate that. >> this slide just reiterates what the strategic priorities are right now for the commission. i think these are things that we've talked about together at many meetings. i think they're in alignment with our basic charter mandates . they align with our program areas and the basic programs that we do.

so this would be kind of a flavor of what will go into the proposal, how will be portraying the work that we do at the commission? and again this just gives a snapshot of what our current fy 25 budget is and what our baseline would be if that were carried forward into the next two fiscal years. and again you can see at the bottom that we are about 87% salary and benefits. we are primarily a organization of people. we are not an organization that engages in a lot of contracting or grantmaking or owns a lot of physical assets. >> we are a group of people doing this work. >> we also have the election campaign fund which is the fund that pays out grants to supervisor oriel and mayoral candidates that qualify for public financing under that program. that's separate from our operating budget. this is our current org chart

and this actually is different from last month because unfortunately we did have a staff member move on to another city department so there was a promotion opportunity for her, very happy for her but unfortunately we do have a vacancy now. so there was one very brief moment when we had zero vacancies which was really exciting and first time we'd have that but we're back now to having a vacancy. and of course there's a hiring freeze in the city right now that's going to prevent us from filling that. so we are going to go into this budget with a vacancy if we can talk about that in a moment. but you can see that it's under the engagement and compliance division. it's one of the 1823 senior program administrator positions . >> and to recap, these are some of the mayor's priorities that he will be trying to carry out through this budget. i believe that these are the same are very similar to what mayor reed had iterated while she was still the mayor. so this budget process kind of

will span to mayoral administrations and these are the instructions that carry out those priorities. so of course it's a 15% cut. that's what we must propose. we have to come up with a way to meet that. >> we do not grant to community based organizations so that's not an issue for us. >> we have very few contracts but we of course did review that and try and find savings. like i mentioned, there is a hiring freeze. and then some other instructions that are relevant. the mayor has told departments to cut our least effective programs in order to find savings and to try to allocate resources in the most impactful and most effective programs also to improve operational efficiency in how we deliver services and how we report and especially to maintain public facing services and operations. so where possible to reduce things that are internal to the city so that the public in san

francisco does not feel as much of a reduction in the services that they're receiving from city. and that's very important to us . we are a very public facing agency. we provide critical accountability and transparency and information to the public. so that's something that i've tried to do in creating this proposal is to make sure that we are not rolling back on that core mandate that we have in any way. >> so this slide gets into the proposal that i would like to make to the mayor's office as to how to meet that 15% cut that would involve a cut of $1.1 million. >> and like i mentioned, mostly we are a salary budget. >> so that cut would involve a reduction in staff. it would involve reducing our funded positions by four. so going down from 29 to 25

positions. as i mentioned, we have a vacant position that we won't be able to fill. so i would propose that we allocate a cut there since that position is already vacant. it's a very important position but at least we could minimize the impact on the staff by allocating a cut on that position. but other than that we will have to choose three filled positions which is a very difficult thing to do but that is the position we are in. the three positions that i've identified are the training design specialist position within engagement and compliance division. the personnel clerk that's within the operations division and the 1840 policy research specialists within the policy division. i'll go into a little more detail on the next couple of slides about what the impact would be if that were to happen. but just to reiterate that's a 14% cut to our budgeted staff

so that will mean we will have to dial back some of our work. we won't be able to keep doing everything we're doing but we're going to try to be strategic if we have to endure that and try to keep doing as much as possible. >> before i talk about those staff positions, i do want to highlight some of the non staff cuts that we were able to find. these are things related to materials and supplies. some of the services that we contract for our work order with the comptroller's office for accounting services we can dial that back a little bit. also our maintenance costs within that file. we found some savings there and that's not enough to meet the 15% but at least will help. and what's most helpful is that we were able to in discussions with the mayor's office find a way to use some of the election

campaign fund to help fund staff spending. the reason we can do that is that city law provides for 15% of that fund to be used for administration of the public financing program. and since the audits division is responsible for administering that program, we found a way to allocate some of our staff expenditures to that fund. not a ton but enough to reduce how much we're going to be impacted on our staffing. so that was a really good and positive development. >> this is what the org chart would look like basically you can see the positions, the positions that are identified here so you can see where they fall in the chart. there would be two within the engage in a compliance division . one of them is vacant. one of them is not one within the policy division and one within operations.

you can see that at the top. >> so to talk a bit about what the impacts would be if we were to lose those positions, i'll talk first about engagement and compliance. so of course this is our division that is responsible for giving guidance, delivering trainings, creating our compliance materials, answering advice questions. it's a really important function. it's how the people we regulate can get in touch with us and you know, make sure that they know how to comply with the lots. >> i am foreseeing that if we were to lose both of those positions and also in the spirit of cutting our least effective programs and trying to minimize any impacts on our public facing services so the service people would get if they reach out to us and ask for compliance assistance, i would want us to take a close look at the major developers program and the campaign consultants program and consider whether or not we have the capacity to continue administering those.

those are not very high value programs in a lot of ways they the campaign consultant program provides information that largely already appears within campaigns for 60 campaign statements. this is kind of an extra layer of reporting. so i think it could be a place where there's some duplicative information that we might consider whether we could save some time and money by not administering that program any further. the major developer program has to do with companies that are developing real estate projects in the city that make donations to nonprofit organizations. i can tell you that this has not been a very effective program in terms of people engaging with it and filing disclosures through it. we have a handful of disclosures that have been filed and it's something i think we should take a close look at and see if it's worth continuing to spend staff time to administer that program. >> well, mr. ford, those are not the only programs that those positions are responsible

for, right? >> correct. and you're raising a good point which is it's very difficult in such a small office to point to one particular type of work that one position is responsible for and say if we lose this position we can't do this work but we can still do everything else. everybody in the office has lots of different roles. they touch many different programs. so if we were to lose any of the positions that we're talking about today, there would be a much larger reshuffling of work programs would have to be changed and tweaked. everybody is basically going to have to take on some different roles which would make it manageable but people would have to be working more across divisions to try to get the work done. so what i'm looking at is where can we just reduce the overall level of work that right now the department is doing roughly dialing that back about 14%. if we're losing 14% of our staff, i'd want to look for

about 14% of the work we're doing because i will tell you everybody is very busy. there's not there's not really a lot of places where i can just have people do more work. >> so that's what i'm looking at is where can we just eliminate programs that are either not effective or not efficient with the understanding that then we'll take those 25 positions that we still have after this budget and we'll find ways to make that remaining workload doable. i think the staff are very ready to do that. >> and is it fair to say that with respect to the first and third bullet points the main impacted parties or communities would be city employees who have to get the guidance on how to comply with ethics regulations and also the board of supervisors in the mayor's office with respect to those custom forms. >> no, i don't think so. i would really want to try to make the the impact focused on

these programs, particularly the major developer campaign consultant program. but i also would want to try to to find other ways to save time and energy. so for example, not supporting the customized workflow that we've created implemented and have continued to support and maintain for the mayor's office and for the board of supervisors for the last seven years. i think that's something that those offices ought to take ownership of at this point and if they need to establish a work order with the department of technology to make sure that they have the technological expertise to do that, i think that they ought to do that rather than us do that through our budget. this is separate and apart from the standard disclosure process that all the other elected officials use. i think what has been difficult for the board and mayor is that there's too much data entry involved. if they were to do the forms so we created a customized back end software solution that they could essentially have the departments fill that information out for them. so that's just not something

that we'll be able to support under a 15% cut to our budget anymore. but no, my goal would be that when people come to our website and want to find information there would be no noticeable change in the level of information that's available. and when people call us or submit a ticket through our advice portal or when they send an email to our main inbox, they're not going to experience any kind of decrease in service or response time or quality. i see that as a core service that we provide. i think that's what we need to prioritize and focus our energy on not on other things that would distract us from that. >> thank you. >> so i'll move on and talk a bit about policy and operations. if we were to lose the 1840 policy research specialist position, it will basically reduce the commission's ability to work through policy projects. that's a new position. you remember that we only hired for that position just about a

month ago and the purpose of that position is to help increase our capacity to study our programs, to study the laws of study what's happening in other jurisdictions and to help us go through the policy process of refining those laws, implementing them. losing this position would just reduce our capacity to be able to do that for payroll. >> we would need to establish a work order through the city administrator's office. we do believe that that's feasible. we could do that. so that would cover that element of that position's responsibilities and the other administrative tasks that are performed by that position would essentially have to be absorbed into other commission staff and by our dhs, our analysts who's somebody that works with us through a work order that we have we pay the department of human resources for the analyst to work with us . so we would be relying on that work order of a new work order with the city administrator and

our existing operations staff to absorb that. >> so the next slide to talk about our request that that i'd like to talk about but maybe before we move on to that, do you have any more questions or feedback about how we could meet the 15% cut? what our required proposal would be to the mayor's office ? i just had one question for you. we received a public comment from i think the clerk of the board of supervisors asking for reconsideration of that issue and i wonder if you had any response to that? >> definitely. yeah, i reached out to both the clerk of the board and the mayor's office to give them as much advance notice as possible that we may not be able to continue supporting the software solution for them. i wanted to let them know as early in the process as possible that that may be an effect of this 15% cut to our agency.

>> i did that because i wanted them to have the opportunity to include a request in their own budget. so if they need to establish a work order with the department of technology in order for them to take over and support that software product that they would have the opportunity to do that. i thought it would not be fair for them to find out only later in the budget process when they had lost the opportunity to put that in their own budget proposal. so this is still something that may not happen. i just wanted to give them an advanced heads up that it could happen so that they could plan we could start having a conversation about it and talking about what an alternative approach might look like. we had a very productive meeting yesterday with the mayor's office, talked through what this would how this would impact them, what exactly the difference is between the custom workflow that we built and what the standard disclosure processes that other elected use the mayor's office seem to understand the issue we talked about. it's impossible alternatives. we have next steps plans that the mayor's office will help get us in touch with the department of technology to

talk about whether or not they could be part of the solution to a different way to do this. i think that was very productive. thank you. is there anything more you can ask for from the mayor's office or for the board of supervisors in terms of technology support to make some of this more efficient and provide more resources to the employees and officials in terms of some of the work that your office is doing? >> absolutely. and that's part of our request that we want to make that would not involve a budget cut. some technology support is part of what we want to ask for. but certain things that you think can be improved though are things that you've looked at that you can ask for specifically? >> yes. >> and also steven massey, the director of technology services is here. so if we want to go deep into

what that is, he he's available to talk about that. and also i should have mentioned that deputy director guy three tech on deal is not well but she's on the line. so if we want to get into any really specific numbers she's available to so we can do that as well. i think for now just go ahead. thanks you. okay. so the budget requests that i'm proposing that we make would not involve a cut to the ethics commission's budget and why i would like to request that would be first of all to fill the vacant 1823 senior program administrator position that was just vacated. as i mentioned, it's a very important position and it helps deliver trainings and respond to advice requests that come to our office very core to what we do. that would be a very important position to backfill and have on our team. i would also ask the mayor's office to reclassify the

training design specialist position to also be an 1823 senior program administrator. they're very similar in terms of the pay scale. it's an analogous classification but the duties and responsibilities are different. so i would want to equip the engagement compliance division with as many programing administrators as we could people who can respond to advice questions, who can interpret and analyze the law, who can't help people who are trying to comply with the law as opposed to the training and design specialist position has been really critical as we implement proposition d and as we roll out the new mandatory ethics training module that now all forms of 100 filers have to take. but we have that module in place now. we've done a lot of the creation of the materials so the design role law has been incredibly important i think could benefit the agency more as a program administrator moving forward. so that's something that i would like to ask the mayor to

consider. i would also like to ask to retain the 1840 policy research specialist position as it is. as i mentioned, this position is very important to helping us analyze and improve the laws also supports the advice program. so if there are questions that the engagement or compliance division needs assistance on for any reason, the policy division is there to help back them up. so having enough staff in that policy division also supports engagement. compliance supports our advice program as well. i would like to also make the same request that we made last year which was to reclassify three of the positions within the enforcement division. this is something that the mayor's office agreed to in the last budget and then the board took it back during the board's budget process. so we were close to getting this but it ended up not happening. the board had a general policy against what they call upward substitution reclassifying positions to a higher

classification. so they rolled that back from the budget that we had approved but i would like to ask for it again. i think it remains just as important as it was last year. this would essentially be to reclassify to 1823 senior investigator positions that are essentially like administrative prosecutors. now you heard from mr. d'amico today would be his position and another position that's filled by a board attorney. these are people who lead the legal elements of our enforcement matters. they engage in settlement negotiations with respondents, councils and the political bar in san francisco. they draft charging documents, subpoenas. they present oral arguments to you, hearing briefs to you. these are very specialized and and nuanced skills that i want to make sure we're really breaking into our org chart that these are distinct from the other investigators who provide critical work in fact finding doing interviews,

gathering documents but that those are different types of work investigating versus administrative prosecution for lack of a better word are different. i'd really like to break that in because it has been so effective and that's why in part why you have seen so many good cases come before you in the last couple of years. >> in order to do that we would also need to reclassify the director of enforcement under city civil service rules. certain classifications cannot supervise other classifications or 9 to 2 manager one cannot supervise an 1824 principal investigative analyst so we would need to reclassify that position to a 9 to 3 which i think also is appropriate given the sensitivity and expertise required for that position. >> similarly i would like to ask that the mayor's office allow us to reclassify the 1052 ice analyst position to a 1042 ice engineer.

this is a position in the adult division or electronic disclosure and data analysis division. the reason is that the 1042 is part of the engineer series whereas the 1052 what we have now is an analyst's serious. there's similar but they are different in the kinds of work that they do and what we really need from this position is to provide engineering services engineering work to be creating things like our electron disclosure systems, our dashboards building custom software solutions inside the office to support automation especially within audits. we want to automate a lot of the manual audit work to try and make it more efficient. similarly with enforcement we want to automate as much as we can reviewing voluminous disclosures or documents. and so that position could be a very critical piece to that. i see that as something that would without adding an actual additional fte, it would really

increase our capacity and our effectiveness quite a bit. part of this budget request would still be to not maintain the personnel clerk position but rather to support that through a work order and to otherwise absorb the roles of that position into our d our work order into our operations division to that would be to realize some operational efficiency. >> i also like to ask to have budget to help cover some net file licensing costs. right now we are essentially paying for all of the licensing for all of the city's forms of 100 filers and we're doing that through a project funded by court which is the committee on information technology. that's a city wide committee that essentially funds technology projects across the city. that's how we have been funding those licenses and that is running out that will be finishing up pretty soon early

2026. so we need to find an alternative funding solution to that. so that's something that i would like to ask for as well and also to support increases for net file systems maintenance and certain other software services. and this gets to your question commissioner, i stephen could talk in more detail if you want to but there are some particular products that if we are able to get funding for and we could procure them it would really give us the platform we need to explore more automation, more use of advanced technology to make our operations more effective and efficient. >> how much of those licensing costs right now has steven would have to answer that question is quite a bit. >> yeah. steven, do you want to talk about that? i'm guy three here. if needed i can also jump in or guy three sure go go for a guy

three hello commissioner. are you asking specifically about the form 700 licenses or just our software licenses in general? >> both. okay. yeah. so the form 700 licenses that support about 6000 or so city employees and officials is currently funded by a court project which is what director ford is talking about. so we are estimating roughly about 10,000 or so in the first year that will need to be funded in a 526. that's because we have some partial funding left in that project but the following year and a 527 will have to fund that fully and then also moving forward that's around the time when the net file contract will also need to be renewed. so we only have an estimate. so we're currently estimating about 65,000 but it will also depend on the renewed contract

negotiations. separately would we're also asking for increasing license costs that we fund on our own. these are tools that we use to support our office operations. we also use microsoft products adobe products that support our email services and other communication tools that department of technology supports. so we have certain costs related to that as well. so that's roughly in the first year at about 12,000 or so for those costs together and in year two it's something similar each to slightly less than a year to about 9000. so those are the software requests in our budget proposal. >> great. thank you.

>> director ford i have a kind of broader question. so the proposed the second proposed budget with the reclassifications i think it all makes a ton of sense to me and i supported them i think about a year ago when we did it the first time around. but wouldn't that would that in fact increase the budget since you're upgrading some classifications? >> so this is what the budget totals would look like under the request. >> it would essentially keep us flat in the first year of this two year budget and there would be about a half percent increase in the second year. so it wouldn't increase our budget but it would it would keep us flat but there is a cost associated with it. yes, that's why it would be an ask to to actually fund us by keeping us the same but nothing that asks make 100% sense. this is the climate where and so is your idea to kind of present both budgets to the mayor's office one with cuts one. the second one we just

discussed? >> exactly. we actually have two input the 15% cut scenario into the city's financial system. so we would have to in some numbers that add up to a 15% cut there's actually a dollar number that's at $1.1 million number. so we have to input that. we don't have the opportunity to input the requests but that's something that we would express to them through the budget memo to the memo lays out very similar to how this slide deck is organized first it would be here's what the 15% cut scenario is. here's what the impacts are, why we think that's bad. and then the second half is alternatively here's what we would ask that you do. and then there's typically a negotiation process where we meet with our budget analysts. we'll meet with the mayor's budget director, we'll talk about the impacts of the 15% cut. we'll talk about the opportunities and the costs associated with keeping us flat and hopefully we trend towards the request but that's the negotiated process and then

that's not even the end of it. the mayor's proposal is only a proposal. the board ultimately approves the budget and as we saw last year they will make changes to it if they would like to. got it. thank you. no more questions for me. you can proceed. okay. >> so this is something that i'll be working on over the next couple of weeks with deputy director take on dale will be preparing that memo to go to the mayor's office and we'll be entering the submission into the system. so that's do i think we've got a slide right here with the deadlines. so if you have any further ideas or you want to talk in greater depth about any particular part of this, we do still have a couple of weeks that's in part why we changed the date and thank you again for your flexibility. we changed the date of the meeting from the second friday to the first friday so that we could have this conversation

and then perhaps you might digest this information and have further thoughts you wanted to share and we could continue to talk so that opportunities is still there. this is our required second public hearing. it's not your last chance to be involved in this process and to work with us so i just wanted to put that out there. >> these are really hard questions by the way analyzing it and laying it out. it makes a lot of sense to me. so thanks for doing that work. any other comments? does that conclude your presentation? it does. thank you. all right. thank you. and i think even though it's not an action item we have to take public comment. great. anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item? sir, thank you. a copy of the letter to the board of.

>> good morning chair. honorable commissioners of the ethics commission. i'm edward diocese. i am the deputy director of administration of finance for the office of the clerk of the board. the board of supervisors and i am speaking on behalf of the office of the clerk of the board as well as madam clerk angela calvillo. >> i just passed out a copy of the letter that was submitted by the clerk of the board yesterday in case you need a copy for your review. at the meeting today i'm here to speak on behalf of the clerk of the board and urge you to continue maintenance of the current 126 form process and you sign as the letter spells out both ethics commission as well as the office of the clerk of the board. i've worked on this system since 2018. we really do appreciate that work that stephen massie and the ethics commission has done accommodating some of the business processes and the input from our office.

i really am here to urge you to continue maintenance of form 126 and to continue responsibility over it for a couple of reasons. >> as you are all familiar with the form 126 there's a lot of data that is known only to departments not to the mayor's office, not to the board of supervisors including the nature of the contract and the contract amount. the board of directors. so there needs to be a system an online system available for departments to enter that data for the office of the clerk of the board, for the board of supervisors as well as the mayor's office. >> and as you know that data helps to meet the public's right to know. >> it's an important disclosure that the public needs to know so it promotes open and transparent. that alone is a reason why the system needs to be maintained by the ethics commission. >> the second reason is that the proposed discontinuance of that system actually will not save any budget for the city.

so realize that the 15% general fund cuts that's been asked for of the departments are citywide cuts. they're not just cuts to single department. so whatever cut or savings that the ethics commission may realize is actually going to move over to other departments mainly who may need to hire another it specialists to maintain the system. >> and obviously the board and the mayor are going to be paying for this. >> so basically there will be no cuts or savings of the general fund from this particular proposed change. secondly, this change is going to inconvenience both the mayor and the board of supervisors as they will have to collect that data on behalf of the ethics commission. so there will be costs in terms of overtime as well as additional personnel, additional work, additional workload for the staffs of those two departments. so i'm here to urge in summary that the ethics commission

continue to maintain the system on behalf of the city, on behalf of the mayor and on behalf of the board of supervisors. >> i am available for any questions if there are any. >> thank you. >> we don't generally i think respond to public comment but i'm happy to entertain questions as any of my colleagues have them. >> i have a question for director ford if that's okay. this just clarifying question is it right that the proposed halting of the that program is only if we our budget is cut by 15% correct. >> if we were to lose the staff positions we would have to dial back a number of things and reassign work throughout the office so we would not have the capacity to support that anymore. and just to be clear, also supporting the disclosure requirement that the code imposes on the board and on the mayor this is not the ethics commission's disclosure requirement. so those offices would be

gathering the data for their own disclosure requirement not on behalf of the ethics commission and it's something we've been assisting them complying with their requirement. mm hmm. and if the mayor's office and the board of supervisors approve the larger budget proposal that you will present as an alternative, would the commission continue to service that program? yes. okay. thank you. >> thank you. thank you for your service. if i may also add also spelled out in the letter the last paragraph i mean there is a potential no change to the current system that could result in more efficiency, some more cost savings into the current process a single form 126 has to be submitted by both the mayor and the board which results in two submissions. so we propose that the current process be reworked to have the department submit the singular form to the board and then it goes to the mayor for approval. that could potentially reduce workloads for both the ethics commission on board of supervisors mayor's office as well as achieve some savings.

>> thank you. we saw that in the letter and i think it will be added to the agenda as part of the public record. >> thank you, sir. thank you for being there. when else in the gallery wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none mr. clerk, would you check if there are any callers or if there are no callers in the queue? thank for that. no more callers. item number eight is now closed and i'll call item number nine. recognition of chair types for a live upon the end of a service on the ethics commission. >> so up mr. for standing up i'm going to start talking as well i was actually going to flip it around but i guess i'll wait until you've had your your time. i had to twist tice's arm to let him put this item on the

agenda. so thank you for your cooperation. >> chair fin laughs we're very sad that you are not going to be with us anymore and whenever any commissioner but especially a chair leaves the commission it's very important to stop and recognize the work that that person's done. this is community service. you guys don't have to be here . you're not getting compensated like the staff are. you are volunteering and you're just serving the city that you live in and that you love and it's it's a tough job. it's a thankless job a lot of the time these are hard decisions, critical decisions. so i just want to take a moment to say thank you for your years of service. it's been a real pleasure to work with you. i think i speak for all the staff. we've learned a lot from you and you've had an incredible impact in your time here that you should be very proud of. i in particular i wanted to note a few projects that as we were talking in the office about you know what what's the what's the tice legacy? what is tice leaving behind the

things that came to mind our prop d that was a major project that you were very heavily involved in. it's one of the most popular ballot measures the city's had the single most approved highly approved ballot measure in 30 years. so i think you were really tapping into something the public cared deeply about with that ballot measure. you were also the chair presiding over the first hearing on the merits enforcement hearing that the commission did in ten years that hearing was very smooth. it went well. so i think that that spoke to you a good competency with the gavel and working with the staff in advance on that enforcement hearing guidebook. we now have that document that will last into the future to help guide future enforcement actions. you brought great insight as a former assistant district attorney and also from the enforcement work that you do at the sec. you were just meeting this week with staff to you know, with the enforcement staff to help them still here in your last

week think about how to deepen the impact of enforcement. so i think that program in particular really benefited from you. we've had very quick, efficient orderly commission meetings. we've trimmed down the time these things run like a swiss watch and i think everybody appreciates that very much in the last thing i'll mention is when you were chair the commission approved the e-filing regs and that allowed the staff to require e-filing for the final paper forms and we have now completed a 20 year project of converting all of the commission's disclosures to electronic filing 100% electronic filing, no paper, never again ever. >> not one paper. that's a huge milestone. >> so you know, we thank you for your leadership on that and we're very happy to be able to deliver that result during your tenure and that's that's definitely something we're all very happy about. so again, thank you so much. we hope that you'll keep in touch. you wish you the best son and what comes next for you in this

next chapter. >> and don't don't be a stranger. yeah thank you for those kind of words. you should have framed the very last paper filing that came in. i don't know if it's public but thanks for that, director ford. i didn't want it to say a couple of things even though it's recognition of me, i really want to recognize the staff because i think the things you just gave me credit for, pat, are really frankly we just sit here and kind of go if we assess, we analyze, we review, we oversee but the staff does all the work. i've been in public service for most of my adult life whether that's for the or for nonprofits and i think really there's no higher calling and that's the same for commissioners who are sitting next to me. it's a little awkward positioning right here because i was putting right my way was established here in the room. i really, really want to know that i appreciate what you do. we all do. but i got to speak now as a public servant right now it's kind of a hard time to be in public service. i think we maybe feel a little bit differently here in san francisco. i work in the federal. it's not a great time and i

think keeping your head down and doing the work is so important. so as a san francisco resident i really want to appreciate the work that you all do because we all benefit from it. you know, get thanked at least not in person i imagine from the work that you do. but it's so crucial and we all depend on it. we rely on it. so i thank you for that and thank you to my fellow commissioners who are really, really busy in our own lives taking the extra time to give back to the community by showing up here and doing what we can do to help advance the work that you all do. it's really gratifying. it's been great to be a part of it so thank you all and i know the commission is in good hands with the new director of the new commission we've got currently so that's it. thank you. and with that well even though you say i do not have any public comment but i think we have to take it because it's on the calendar. is that right? so okay. does anyone in the room wish to make public comment on this item seeing none. mr. clarke would you check the phone please in the there are no callers in the queue.

>> all right. thank you. well, i think your fellow commissioners also if they want to say something i think just to take a quick second bucket you're not going to break my time record. >> i know. i know. i think today would be the day i mean where i think i speak for all of us when i say that we're honored and privileged to be in this position and to serve the san franciscans in this way. but i think it's always a special treat when you get to serve alongside people who you can learn from who are innovative, who are committed and very focused like you. and so it's been a pleasure and an honor to work alongside you and hopefully our orbits overlap soon but that's very quick. >> that's what i was going to say. that's it. that's it. i'm done. thank you. but i just wanted to echo that and express my gratitude for your guidance to me as a new commissioner when i joined the commission really appreciated the expertise that you brought to the table in campaign finance regulations and enforcement of ethics rules generally and the inclusive manner in which you ran an efficient manner which you ran

all these meetings. >> so thank you. you're going to be sorely missed. thank you. thank you. >> i'd also like to echo that too. thank you so much for your service and for teaching us and guiding us in the right direction. thank you. thank you everyone. with that i close item nine and now call item six election of commission officers for the 2025 pre the ethics commission bylaws. director ford would you mind just briefly summarizing how we've done this in the past if i didn't expect that but for sure that that's fine. so typically the way that it's worked is commissioners can nominate each other. they can nominate themselves if a commissioner nominates another commissioner, the nominated commissioner should say if they want to accept that or not. and i know in speaking with you that you thought it would be helpful if if the commissioner wants to accept a nomination perhaps they could speak a bit about what their priorities or their approach might be if the

commissioner want to have some kind of conversation around it. in the past there hasn't been a ton of conversation about it. so if the commissioner wanted to have that that would help the nominated commissioner perhaps could initiate that and then each commissioner votes and you say the name of the commissioner that you want and i think we would just have kevin call a roll call vote and each commissioner would state the name of that commissioner they want to vote for i and do chair first vice chair second and basically as soon as one commissioner has three or more votes then that's that's it that commissioner wins. >> okay great. and i think from memory we complete that chair election in its entirety before we move on to the vice chair we don't take nominations for both at the same time. >> that's right. yeah right. yes. kathy just reminded me public

comment before taking that roll call vote of course. so after the nomination but before the vote. yes. got it. okay, great. well as one of my last official acts it gives me great pleasure to nominate vice chair flores fang as chair. i think anyone who's paid attention to our meetings will speak for itself but i think her wise engagement with staff and with the issue is just show what kind of chair she'll be. so i hope that she will accept the nomination and if you want to say a few words go for it. but no nope no pressure like the second that thank you. >> thank you. i do accept i'll start with that and i mean i don't have a list of priorities right now. right now i'll say that this is going to be my third year on the commission and i've learned a lot and i think that a lot has changed and so i'd be happy to engage in a larger discussion about you know, this is very helpful discussing the budget. i think that we're in you've presented materials that i think help orient me if i were to create some sort of agenda for moving forward.

but i'm happy to engage in a longer discussion and not out of confine myself to a list that i create today on the spot . great. so now we take public comment if i'm right do i have to nominate myself? >> i don't. thank you seeing no other nominations is there anyone in the room who like to make public comment on this nomination? seeing none. mr. clark would you check the new callers? >> chair i if there are no callers in the queue mr. clark at your convenience you can take roll to its right i can do i mean you want to yeah okay commissioners as i call your name please vote by stating the name of the individual for whom you cast your vote to serve as chair of the ethics commission

for the coming year beginning march 1st. >> chair friend of vice chair floor saying vice chair flora's feng vice chair flora sitting commissioner salahi vice chair flora swing commissioners ii vice chair floor sitting chair by a vote of 4 to 0 the commission has elected commissioner for fang to serve as chair for a one year term beginning march 1st 2025. >> congratulations vice chair for saying thank you. >> thank you mr. clark congratulations on now open the floor for nominations for vice chair yeah. >> i'd like to nominate commissioner salahi as vice chair on that third. >> thank you all. i accept the nomination and my priority will primarily be to support the new chair and setting her agenda and supporting her agenda moving

forward while working with director ford and other commission staff rate and i guess we have to take public comment on this as well. so does anyone the room wish to make public comment on this item seeing none. mr. clark would you check the new callers? >> griffin if there are no callers in the queue, great. mr. clark you can take the vote of your convenience 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 march 1st. chair finlay commissioner salahi vice chair flora's fang commissioner salahi. commissioner salahi. mr. salahi commissioners i wish just like chair by a vote of 4 to 0 the commission has elected commissioner salahi to serve as vice chair for a one year term beginning march first, 2025. and congratulations commissioner salahi thank you. >> thank you everyone. i think we've never had a not unanimous vote in my tenure in

my tenure on elections. >> i did that to the list. >> so i think that closes item six and i'll call item number ten items for future meetings. any of my colleagues? >> yeah, i have an issue to raise. it may not necessarily need to go on an agenda but i wanted to disclose that i received a phone call from supervisor connie chen earlier this week. um at the board of supervisors the appointing authority for my supervision for my position and she had asked whether the commission has any guidance or view on how the board of supervisors exercises their authority under subsection 3.6 20f of the code campaign code with respect to when waivers for the hazard payments prohibition is granted. so i just wanted to flag that that might be something that is worth engaging with members of

the board of supervisors as well as other interested stakeholders on as to whether that would be useful for the public and for the board and we'd be more than happy to engage with supervisor chan or anybody else at the board and also with the mayor's office or any other electeds that may seek that kind of waiver. definitely be always happy to help inform any processes that are touchy in the campaign of governmental conduct code. >> absolutely. thank you. great. anything else from my fellow commissioners? seeing none does anyone the gallery wish to make public comment on this item? seeing none mr. clerk would you check if any callers driven live? >> there are no callers in the queue. >> adam tennis close to item 11 is additional opportunity for general public comment is there on the room wish to make public comment on item 11? seeing none mr. clerk would you check the phones if there are

no callers in the queue? item 11 is now closed. item 12 adjournment and thank you. we're done

[music] >> welcome to the 2022 sfmta bus roadeo. today what we will see is competitions of different levels. we will see transit operators through a obstacle course. also see the office rfs maneuver the g4 cars through a course. (inaudible) [beeping] then also have a element of (inaudible) who are doing inspections and repairs and some of the equipment related to our buses. [applause]

>> i enjoy coming to the event because of the camaraderie with the staff and seeing the departments and everybody meeting arfbd so the more we can do these things the better we'll be and it helps the agency grow. >> the winner of the local bus roadeo the person goes to the national (inaudible) one additional item we add to the event and call it a fun event where managers at the senior level get to test their skills operating a bus. (inaudible) transfer officers (inaudible) basically maneuver the course and they (inaudible) >> interesting to see some of the main managers run the course out there. they haven't had as much experience but they did pretty well. i'll submit the bus damage for the bumps they did to the body shop for

estimates. [applause] >> behind us we have vintage buses that were brought out for folks to see. some of these vintage buses are sfmta, part of the historical fleet. two others belong to the pacific bus museum and a personal bus of a individual that owns it. we take great pride in the historical buses we have and try to keep it up to date. >> it is a way to bring employees together, work together as a team. a great morale booster something the employees have been asking for a year and it is great today because you can see how happy they were to once again do something they really enjoy. [cheering] >> first place (inaudible) [applause] third

place goes to monica collins. (inaudible) >> this is my last roadeo. i'm throwing in the towel. >> my name is carmen, the owner of the bakery in san francisco on 24 and mission. the bakery, usually typical mexican bread, sweetbread that is popular for the kids, for the families. big families. a lot of croissants. we have recipes from central

america-we are trying to keep up with the customers and neighbors. i bought it in 1993, so i was--i knew from my dad. for many years i grew up with the knowledge. now i know a little more. [music] >> (music).

>> (multiple voices.) >> landing at leidesdorff is as the new public school in downtown san francisco for people to come together for 0 lunch and weekends a new place to enjoy the architect and our culture. >> landing at leidesdorff one of several initiatives to the road map for the initiatives all about using your public space and network for now environments to 0 invite people adopted not just to the office but any time of the day. >> it shows there is excitement and energy and people wore looking forward to enjoying the space that people may want to end up in downtown. >> we've been operating in the financial district since 2016 with the treasury and coming up we had a small surge in business

in the leidesdorff and in about the financial district and a good time to grow here. >> as a small business the leidesdorff is making us being part of it as being part of in project. for me makes we want to be part of san francisco. >> so landing at leidesdorff for me represents hope for san francisco and the sense that this is become such a safe welcoming area. >> we local artists coming in and exercise boxes and live music but the hub of culture. >> the downtown partnerships has a studio in san francisco. they identified 6 locations throughout the downtown area we come together with new activity and spaces. >> is between us a place to tell our own story and history.

>> it was named after a captain one the black leaders of san francisco before that was called san francisco he was the first treasurer of the city and commercial street a cross street the hifblg original shoreline of san francisco was just a few feet behind where we're 12357b8z around opportunity to bring people to locations we have an opportunity to tell stories and for local businesses. >> (music). >> today wire he emergency operations center for england with one activation so oversight

board that one of the many activations have locations which probably has between to one hundred people at this time 340r7b 25 different city departments and hundreds of partner local partners and straight and fell partners we're in the echg a critical consultant of emergency center and surcharged with the single voice communicating with media about all issues with the apec and go a lot of preparation went into stemming up this e oc and little actuated managing things as they come up and the people in the room and making sure that everyone is in the next step and doing count work of a single set of objectives with a single idealogy in mind many is having

an apec that runs smoothly. >> i basically organ the agency projects and um, whatever this is in-person, transmissions have (unintelligible) to we're never (unintelligible) i will get a response right now and (unintelligible). >> please check in. >> my role here in the agency to help the cooperation and the way to do that is by sharing information corresponding activities and some cases requesting additional resources when the cfo steady the property of the departments working at the moment and one of the first agencies that was called the energy planning for the agency that we do streets and pipes and

others involving a to point b. >> and this activation there are parts of the city cut off limited access points and information is sometimes confusing and so the information that not necessarily always refined for their knowledge and this activation is different from the activation we're waiting for something to happen if or if we don't have the resources available we we have to piecemeal it because 6 departments we are able to make things happen and from my department is the 9-1-1 features and be able services which runs the emergency operation center where we are right now. >> by insuring the rights of

people to exposure the first amendment rights our job we don't want people to think that because the federal government was coming into town that for federal government will be cracking detain on protesters looking to demonstrate and also the law enforcement partners insures that people could do that while keeping everyone safe and something we are doing. >> the jet has responder to over two had the and advising people of the impacts and plan for delays and plan their travel of entertainment commission and wounding to do that without people. >> what is happening on event like this people love individually and because they find integrity in themselves that didn't go know was there

and have to rise to occasion they didn't know they'd have to and really across the board for us and the city to make us a better city. >> and really a good learning experience xrefrns city augment but amazing departments across the city working together or working together in the same room and part of this in a meaningful way it everyone is united truly everyone. >> what we do matters a lot of i can't take credit. >> when i'm done with that all we can tie the bow on that and send it off. >> i'm he getting an opportunity to find it exciting that's what we're here to do to serve the city we love and

wanting really great learning experience. >> extremely rewarding and the great relationships with the people

good morning. the meeting will come to order. welcome to the february 12th, 2025 meeting of the budget and finance committee. i'm supervisor connie chan, chair of the committee. i'm joined by vice chair supervisor matt dorsey and supervisor joyce gaudio. our clerk is brant halper. i would like to thank kaleena mendoza from sfo tv