john gollinger, speaking for myself. i was pleased to read the report and appreciate the staff's good work on this. i know the board of supervisors is looking at the issue, too. my understanding from talking to folks there is they're waiting to see what comes of this meeting today. i think the intent, as is understood, is to move something forward in the next month or two, not to wait longer, so i hope this keeps coming. let me comment on the proposal. i wanted to touch on four areas. first and most important, 100% excited that the commission -- staffing commissioners who spoke seem very bought in on the notion of both raising the matching ratio and lower the amount that's matchable for all the reasons discussed. i think empowering small donors in my experience as an advocate and campaign manager speaks to what was said, that regular people can give 100, 200, 300 maybe, but 500 is a stretch. the 6:1 is at least -- new york voters just voted 8:1, so i encourage the commissioners to even consider a higher rate. but 6:1 for

gollinger, i wanted to call you back. >> supervisor mar's office is on his way. >> chair chiu: okay. commissioners, did you have any questions? >> commissioner ambrose: yes. i don't believe you raised the point about moving it up to the 240th -- >> oh, yes, that was one of the reasons that i wanted to touch on. i think for reasons laid out in the staff proposal i think it's good to make available the matching grant. i would make available the matching funds. in my experience, the more -- you know, it's both to make grassroots campaigns more viable and effective, the ability to hire a person or people to go knock on doors or to organize town hall meetings. to be able to do that with enough of a window that you're not in the heat of the campaign when you're just bringing someone on board makes a huge difference, and i think that's what the candidates who are really going to care about the time difference between getting the 60,000 or what-have-you in the summer and at the beginning of the year, it will make a huge difference to them. i also think -- i was talking about this earlier wit