ginsberg? >> mr. ginsberg, i have questions for you. >> yes, questions for mr. ginsberg. >> thank you, chair, hur. >> mr. ginsberg, what is the department's protocol on looking for back up files and back up data when responding to sunshine requests? and the reason that i ask, also, is it troubles me a bit that the request came in just weeks after the events in question. i think just a couple of weeks or a few weeks. so, what is the protocol for when you know that there were e-mails but they were deleted? >> very close with the city attorney's office on all record requests and when request was made to look at our back up data, i think that our custodian of records went did doing that in conjunction with the city attorney and i don't know that it is a routine practice that we routinely check back up data, i think that when we are asked to do so, we do. >> you waited until the task force called it to your attention and asked to you do it? >> i believe that that was the time frame. >> i am not quit

ginsberg mentioned something about 300 e-mails a day. but, some of those are just junk e-mails and there are going to be inquiries about what time the park opens or the swimming pool closes. and we know that this was an important issue, this was not trivial matter. the individuals involved in this correspondence and this lobbying back and forth are important individuals in this city. this is not the kind of correspondence that one deletes because it is of no value as a record. one deletes this information to conceal what it contains. mr. wooding said that there is a bigger issue here. the bigger issue is one of ethics. now, this matter can be reduced and narrowed down to a technical, legal point. that will make it much easier to dismiss this case as virtually every other sunshine case has been dismissed. but, this is an ethics commission. it would be nice if there were a professional emphasis here. even so there isn't. it would be good if once in a while the ethical dimension of the behaviors that you are hearing about would be considere

ginsberg? >> thank you, mr. ginsberg. >> any questions for mr. wooding? >> comments? thoughts from the commissioners? on this agenda item? >> i may have one question for mr. wooding. i think that it is in the records somewhere, but when you eventually got the documents from rec and park, after they went to their it people, did you get all of the same documents that you had gotten from the common wealth club? >> (inaudible) >> the answer would be no. i believe to memory, i received two or three of the documents, i did not receive the complete ones. all of the five or six documents. so, i believe that also they were given to me the day before, or the day of when sunshine was going to make their determination so, it was like 11th hour type of thing look at what we found, here they are. >> all right. >> so this, in that context, it was very insulting in that on the very last day, and it is interesting to see mr. buel and mr. ginsberg and sarah ballard here tonight as they sent olive gong, and never spoke for themselves. >> she seems to have a nice woman but did not have a

ginsberg, unfortunately for former president nixon there were back up tapes. when the sunshine request came in, the designated custodian of record had an obligation to search everything for the requested records. the suggestion in the good government guide that they are trash is just nonsense. if you look at the act it defines the public records as any writing containing information relating to the comment of the public's business prepared used or retained by any state or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics and the writing includes, among other things every other means of recording upon any tangible thing, communication, representation, including letters, words, and any record there by created regardless of the manner in which the record has been stored. the fact that the custodian of records did not look through to see if they had been saved is a violation in and of itself. and the fact that mr. ginsberg has been able to get away with it is a flagrant violation, thank you. >> good evening, my name is jamie quak and i know george becaus

ginsberg mentioned something about 300 e-mails a day. but, some of those are just junk e-mails and there are going to be inquiries about what time the park opens or the swimming pool closes. and we know

ginsberg whatever he gets off the hook he gets off the hook. but he was clearly comp lisit he either helped to plan it orchestrate it he may very well get 300 e-mails a day and only five from mark and i bet that he reads every one of them. so i think that when or what they were doing is they were working as a unit, ballard is the subordinate of ginsberg and acting at his request. it was pretty clear that this was done as a group effort. so, thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. gooding. >> wooding, i'm so sorry. >> ginsberg and wooding and i very much apologize for that. >> public comment on this matter? >> i am here on my own time. isn't it curious that mr. ginsberg is being disengenius with you and first he is saying in the testimony there were no documents and then he changes his mind and says that there is no essential records. then, when he reports to that he told miss gong that he did not have e-mails what he should have said to her was i have already deleted them because that may have said a lot. that little alarm bell, and the secretar

ginsberg as well. but held on to the or did not give the response in a timely fashion when she had them on june 6th. so, there i would find that there was a willful violation of 67.25. i don't think although i am some what surprised i must say that there is not a requirement and frankly, miss ballard, i highly recommend that you create some mechanism whereby you maintain important documents that are sent the notion that they are just deleted is not very... not earning a lot of sympathy from me on that. but i don't know that based on the decision that was made by the sunshine ordinance task force, i don't think that is before us. although, i think that it is a problem. so i would preliminarily find that there was no violation of 67.26, or 67.21 c. >> for all of the other reasons that we discussed. earlier. >> just to clarify, because this is a hearing under chapter two of the sunshine, you don't have to find a willful violation, this chapter just asks was there a violation? >> well, right, but the and m

ginsberg got a pass, not these people. miss ballard has been found guilty of doing something, she has not been forth coming to this body or to any of us. she did not come in and say, gee, olive i have records and deleted them now what i do? she just pretended like they never existed. this is an indictment, you can't ignore it. thank you. >> good evening, my name is nan clark i have never been to an ethics commission meeting and i think that you have a really hard job ahead of you and i like to speak to that just briefly. earlier tonight, in the meeting and i don't know who said it, which side they were on or even whether it came from you, it has been a long evening, it was something to the effect that the reason we have the brown act and the sunshine ordinance the california public records act is because government activity must be as transparent as possible. and i think that you found tonight and both of the cases that you have heard that the goment transparency is not very transparent. and whether we talk about it in ter

ginsberg himself did conduct the search and there were no responsive documents so i do understand that technically, the answer was correct and he responded in the way that the ordinance contemplates but at the same time, what troubles me about this particular instance is that the request came in only a few weeks after the event occurred and you know, there was, or there may have been and i understand it is now too years and so, mr. ginsberg does not recall specifically, but there may have been a recollection at the time, that he had deleted an e-mail and why he didn't immediately say, you know, i deleted the e-mail and so there may have been a back up tape available to go and look for at the department of technology, that is the aspect that troubles me. but now having heard from mr. gibner that there is no city-wide policy on directing agencies to the department of technology for back up information in response to sunshine requests, i feel like there can't really be a finding of willful violation because there was and there is no protocol on back up tapes and that is the piece that i a

the notification by the task force and says that the task force provides willful failure against ginsberg and sarah ballard. >> right, and just not, i believe that is the task force's long standing practice to forward complaints to you when the task force finds a willful violation, but, that question is not before the ethics commission under chapter two, the only question is whether there was a violation of the ordinance in this case. >> okay. >> what i was looking at was i think that we are all looking at the december 5, documents? where it speaks to willful failure and official misconduct against ginsberg and ballard and then a referal for failure to comply with the order for buell and gong. >> it would not change my view because i think that the... why is ballard included under willful failure? is there any... that just is how the complaint was... >> that is my understanding of how the task force operates. i have never attended a task force meeting and we refer may find willful violations if they refer them to you. but, i mean commissioner studley is right, they did refer this and did

ginsberg for some months now. but in addition to the information that you can now get about where our parks are, i think we need to take this one step further. we need to allow folks to do the online transactions that allow people to make reservations at the barbecue pit or at that picnic table. these are three of hundreds of ideas that i have heard over the last few years. my guess is you in your heads have the solutions to them today. and mayor lee and i are looking forward with this legislation with all of you to figuring out how to make our city government the best 21st century city government that we have in the entire world. so, thank you for being here, and it is my pleasure to introduce our mayor's budget director kate howard who in addition to helping to balance multi-billion dollar budgets every year, she will tell you about our plans around our chief data officer. thank you so much for being here. (applause) >> good morning, everyone. i'm kate howard. i'm the mayor's budget director. i'm here to just to

and my friend who hung without are ruth bader ginsberg yesterday.hat radio is, three hours of pulling stuff directly out of your ass. >> absolutely. [♪ magic wand ♪] >> stephanie: the obamacare ruling, and that's what he writes in "daily beast," remember the obamacare debacle they read too much into it and got it wrong. >> that's right. >> stephanie: not since karl rove's election night implosion. they ruled obama -- oh they didn't? on the supreme court super bowl everybody wants to know what happens. judges are allowed to change their vote before the vote is released to the public and they often do. gay marriage is a similar type of issue hotly controversial and one that may shape a justice's legacy. but he says oral argument in the supreme court has be as misleading as the sorer issest's mirage. one need only ask supreme court expert jeffery tuben. she said -- do you remember this. this was a train wreck for the obama administration. >> someone on twitter said see what jeffery tuben said and it will be the opposite. >> he's going to lose in a land

because then you set up a situation where some people have to flip justice ginsberg around, they have rich cream marriages whereas people who are same-sex couples in other states don't get any of those benefits. >> yeah. pete -- >> i think that opens up an attack in favor of trying to declare a nationwide constitutional right to marriage. what do you think about that, pete? >> reporter: i think that's an excellent point. and i think that's exactly why justice kennedy doesn't want to go there. because if they do go, as some justices today indicated that they were willing to say that the federal government can't make these distinctions, well, if the federal government can't make these distinctions between same sex and opposite sex couples, then how could the states? i think justice kennedy frankly isn't ready to go there. one other point that he made today, the -- remember who's defending doma. it's the house republicans. the obama administration has decided the law's unconstitutional. so their lawyer here today, paul clement, was defending it. he reminded the court of why congress pass

ruth later ginsberg said that that decision stymied -- ruth bair ginsberg said that decision got in the way of a political process and took it out of a political arena. it gave a lot of people the sense that they had been robbed of the opportunity of being involved in the process and that is why 40 years later you have marches. i hope they understand that to do this, as you showed with the pupil, with opinion changing so rapidly -- with the pew poll, with opinion changing so rapidly, the best thing the allow this to is change with the expression of popular will. even if they end up on the wrong side, they had a legitimate shot and a decision has legitimacy in and of itself. >> for the record, north dakota this week enacted the toughest restrictions on abortion in the nation. opponents say they are trying to roll back row versus wade. >> he is completely right. in the case of gay marriage, it is going to have been -- going to happen, but you can slow down by feeding the backlash. that is what happened in the case of abortion. they said a backlash that is alive and well. >> justice ginsbu

ruth bader ginsberg said it's not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far too fast. court made a decision nah made every abortion law in the country invalid, even the most liberal. we'll never know whether i'm right or wrong. things might have turned out differently if the court has been more restrained. i think it's shocking there thaw there is advocacy for rolling back the decision that the court made, too far ahead of its time. what do you make of that? >> of course, i respect justice ginsberg immensely and she does believe in the fundamental right of women to make their own decisions under the 14th amendment. what is so incredible, this is a constitutional right in this country for 40 years, but some states trying to roll back all of that progress. and i think what american people are, women's ability to make their own decisions, or a couple's ability to make their own decisions on their families shouldn't depend on what zip code they live in. that's what we're seeing in north dakota, seeing it in arkansas, where they have passed extreme measures to outlaw legal

and ginsberg and buel were able to start changing this meeting, they changed the title, they changed the panel by adding mark beul and they changed the content and they were clearly unhappy with this meeting and decided to unofficially add him as a speaker and so it was became a much different meeting and how they did it is they sent letters and they pretty much abused panel members by saying things behind our back, saying that we were inadequate, we were abusive, we were biased and we could not hold the meeting, all of this so what happens that works? the common wealth club basically caved in and what happened is i was up... i received a bunch of documents from the common wealth club. and then i did a sunshine request to olive gong and asked her in the same documents, she said, those documents don't exist. and i had them. so i requested to her process, she would go through these and let me know what each department said and if they had any of these e-mails and she went back and he said, no, we don't have any of these e-mails. so, it came down to, we were basically although i had all

we have here today general manager phil ginsberg to start off and litia from park as well. >> thank you, for introducing this. thank you for calling this hearing, this partnership that we have with the controller's office is really critical and invaluable to help us fulfill our mission, what you have before us is the clinical data, it relates to every single one of our 22 parks throughout the city, and this program has been continuing since 2005 and since what we have is a body of data where we can start to study trends and start to understand the changes in data and really understanding this and our director of operations and park superintendent and their staff is here today and may speak a little bit to deserve a tremendous amount of credit to really use this information. we do, park evaluations quarterly, what we are talking about is the annual report for fiscal year 11-12, the managers are aware of their scores in all of their parks four times a year, where we see changes or dips, our park service managers are on it and we investigate why and we try to makeshift resources. as you kn

ginsberg and his democratic counterpart bob bauer to come up with a variety of methods to make votingient and directs the commission to submit a report to the president within six months. that is what is happening at the executive level. an order from the president look for solutions to our country's miserable voting problems. >>> meanwhile, in the states, republicans are still doing everything they can to make the problems worse. new requirements banning people from voting if they do not show documentation that they never had to show before in order to vote. new rules to that effect are on the move in arkansas over the veto of the democratic governor there. republican governor bob mcdonnell in virginia, governor ultrasound, he just signed one of those bills for virginia, as well, this week. north carolina republican legislators there filing two bills to cut north carolina's early voting window in half and to eliminate same-day voter registration. and that's just this week. so far this year republican lawmakers in 30 states have proposed 55 different new voting restrictions to make vo

if the court decides to strike down doma, that is going to address what justice ginsberg pointed out.re it's legal in nine states of the district, because all of those rights and benefits that come along with federal recognition are not available to those couples. so that means those couples are finally going to be fully married in the eyes of the law. and that's tremendously important for those couples. but there are so many more in inequities inequities. >> and i'm one of those couples. i married one year ago to my partner, in vermont. and our marriage was one of symbolism because he didn't have the same rights at the federal level. this moves that from symbolism and actual substance, and it will effect me personally. >> john: let me ask you both do you foresee a domino effect happening if the supreme court strikes down this federal law which has been renounced by the very people who designed it and signed into it law, can you see a rapid succession of u.s. states coming in line? >> i certainly do. >> go ahead, brian. >> i was just going to say we'll certainly have to see what happe

two kinds of marriages, the full marriage, and then this other skim milk marriage. >> to justice ginsberg, a legal marriage of woman to a woman in new york state is not a full marriage, it is but a skim milk marriage because no other state has to recognize that marriage, and the federal government refuses to recognize that marriage. justice kagan tried to get at why congress passed that law in the first place. >> 1996, i'm going to quote from the house report here is that congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality. is that what happened in 1996? >> does the house report say that, of course it says that. if that's enough to invalidate the statute, then you should invalidate the statute. we're not going to strike down a statute because a couple of legislators may have had improper motive. >> everyone, including justice scalia agreed there has been a seat change since doma was passed in 1996. >> you don't doubt the lobby supporting enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?

allen ginsberg in maine said it is like watching a bad marriage come to an end, the recriminations, the blame, the bickering back and forth. even though the democrats are better off politically than the republicans, the process, politics and the public sector take an enormous hit. >> if it is the end of the marriage, at least you can divorce and go your separate ways. these people are stuck with each other. it is like being in a car with a drunk driver. you want to grab the keys. that is what i would like to do, but i cannot. nobody elected me to anything. the republicans just say no. president obama does not really have a plan. it is really kind of awful to watch and we will pay the price. >> beyond sequester, we have something else going on, and we saw it last year in the election. we really have two different views of which way the country should go, and that is what is holding us up. the election decided which way the country wants to go and president obama has a sense of where he wants to take it, but we have republicans resisting. we are going to have another fight later this year

tonight's cocktail moment is in honor of ruth bader ginsberg, easiest cream drink to make.randy alexander. if you know anybody that likes this drink, if you don't know if anybody likes this drink in your world, the person likely to like it is your mother, but your mother is right. equal parts cream. and cream decacao. it comes in dark and light. the difference is the color. other than that, they're the same. it looks nicer if you use the dark version. you take what you can get, it is not like we have supermarkets full of this stuff. what gives it its name, brandy alexander, the brandy. and because the bar car here at the show is getting a little thin, we only had cc

i want to thank rula and marc ginsberg. a quick programming note.hubris" hosted by rache rachel maddow. coming up, we will switch and talk about other bad guys. the coke brothers. it's the billionaire takeover and the preview of the documentary "american winter." first kid you ready? [ female announcer ] second kid by their second kid, every mom is an expert and more likely to choose luvs. after thousands of diaper changes, they know what works. luvs lock away wetness better than huggies for a fraction of the cost live, learn, & get luvs. how did i know? well, i didn't really. see, i figured low testosterone would decrease my sex drive... but when i started losing energy and became moody... that's when i had an honest conversation with my doctor. we discussed all the symptoms... then he gave me some blood tests. showed it was low t. that's it. it was a number -- not just me. [ male announcer ] today, men with low t have androgel 1.62% (testosterone gel). the #1 prescribed topical testosterone replacement therapy, increases testosterone when used dai

i eventually got judge ginsberg and we saw eye and eye. we had very similar experiences in law school. >> rose: you had different philosophy didn't you. >> to a degree. we didn't differ that much on what principles to apply to cases. >> rose: you really did not. >> no. >> rose: people would say you have a different record than hers. >> well my conclusion might be different than hers having applied some of these principles. >> rose: she said to be a great friend of justice scalia. >> i think she is, yes. that's good. >> rose: the court makes strange bed fellows. >> i know but just because your outcome in cases are very different doesn't mean you can't be close friends. you can and should be. the court is very unusual you might agree on one case and disagree on another and that's fine. >> rose: did you ever think about being chief justice. >> no. >> rose: not once. >> no i didn't. i didn't think that was likely. that just didn't enter into my thinking. >> rose: you liked the life in washington. >> well, it was okay. >> rose: did john work as

i guess the lang wan that justice ginsberg used at the closing of the vmi case is a an important thing. a prime part of the history of our constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded. >> several justices raised doubts. the case should even be before them and justice anthony kennedy suggested the court dismiss it with no ruling at all which could allow gail marriages to -- gay marriages to resume in california. and you can find a lot more of the audio recordings from the proposition 8 supreme court arguments on our website, ktvu.com. there are also transcripts to today's proceedings and tomorrow, the supreme court will be hearing the defense of marriage act. at the supreme court considers the arguments in the prop 8 case, public opinion appears to be leaning in favor of same sex marriage rights. a rhee cent poll finds that -- recent poll finds that 5 #% of americans -- 53% of americans think it should be legal for same sex couples to marry while 39% say it should not be legal. that's a big change from just one year ago, last may

and i just wanted to briefly go over some of the numbers for district nine and i know that phil ginsberg told me that district nine was going to be his priority and so i appreciate that. >> oh, really? >> he told me the same thing. >> i think that he tells that to every supervisor. >> you are caught. >> but, if you look at the presentation that is attached to the agenda, i am concerned about this district nine in particular, i think that we have seen a lot of improvement and a lot of good things happening. if you look at page 12, none of the d9 parks are among the top ten performing or scoring parks in the city. if you look at page 13, 2 of the district nine parks are among the ten lowest performers. you know, rolf and garfield. and if you look at page 18, district nine actually has the lowest cleanliness in terms of any district in this city. and you have a number of decreases in terms of scoring with some pretty, you know, ski parks, jose coronodo 20 to 18.8 which was a 30 percent reduction. 84.3 to 91.1, 5.1 reduction. and nenos from 93 to 90. so you can see that there is this trend a

and also phil ginsberg asked me to show up, my day job is america scores, we run sports and academic enrichment programs at public schools. at 20 different public schools. and we sit in that space between the school district and the city. and we do six-day a week programs at the school sites monday through friday and at the fields on saturday. the reason that he suggested that i show up today, sort to introduce an initiative that may dovetail at some sites. and that initiative is an attempt to change certain, what i would call microareas of playgrounds of concrete into turf fields. you know in the schools that we are working, low-income schools, kids are there during the school day. after school. and they are on pavement five days a week. and i find that unconscionable. when there is an easy solution. we are part of an initiative of public scores looking for private funding to take pavement to turf. and part of that i think is to open that to the community on the weekends. that's a big part. i wanted to introduce that and say thanks again. >> thank you very much, any other members of

i guess the lang wan that justice ginsberg used at the closing of the vmi case is a an important thing. a prime part of the history of our constitution is the story of the extension of constitutional rights to people once ignored or excluded. >> several justices raised doubts. the case should even be before them and justice anthony kennedy suggested the court dismiss it with no ruling at all which could allow gail marriages to -- gay marriages to resume in california. and you can find a lot more of the audio recordings from the proposition 8 supreme court arguments on our website, ktvu.com. there are also transcripts to today's proceedings and tomorrow, the supreme court will be hearing the defense of marriage act. at the supreme court considers the arguments in the prop 8 case, public opinion appears to be leaning in favor of same sex marriage rights. a rhee cent poll finds that -- recent poll finds that 5 #% of americans -- 53% of americans think it should be legal for same sex couples to marry while 39% say it should not be legal. that's a big change from just one year ago, last may