we ask that information because help the san francisco -- healthy san francisco is designed for individuals who are uninsured, who lived in san francisco, and who are between 18 and 64. there are many individuals who work in san francisco who do not live in san francisco. many of those employers would not be eligible. in addition, because healthy san francisco is for individuals who are not insured, there are employers who use it to make supplemental expenditures above and beyond what they may choose for their employees. that individual would be ineligible for healthy san francisco. they would get an mra. finally, because it is for individuals between 18 and 64, if that employer was making contributions on behalf of someone under the age of 18 or over the age of 64, irrespective of their county of residents, they would also get an mra. those are the principal factors we would use to decide whether they would get healthy san francisco. commissioner yee riley: are their standards in terms of access? >> we use the guidelines that are set out by the internal revenue service, the tax code. we us

>> so that money is utilized by healthy san francisco? >> is utilized by healthy and san francisco. >> thank you for being so patient. that is one of the longer segments, so to echo supervisor campos, thank you for that. we will keep it to two minutes as much as we possibly can. there are quite a few people here, and it has gone on quite a bit. >> public comment will be limited to two minutes. with the exception of one request, we will go in order that they are received. [list of names] you can line up on the side wall there. welcome. >> good evening, commissioners. i am with the workers alliance. i am speaking on behalf of this to -- miss hu. she has been restaurant owner for over 10 years. she is the mother of two. she never had health care, and she developed a pain in her leg. she was not able to be a doctor, so the pain got worse. she was not able to -- only able to work part-time. my aunt died because she was not able to see a doctor for a curable disease. she is also an immigrant worker. low-wage workers need health care. everyone ne

san francisco. that means they will have to be met by the san francisco text pair. that's one of the main reasons why healthy san francisco was enacted and passed because we want to make sure that burden is not unduly placed on the taxpayer here in san francisco. that's why this is also a pro taxpayer piece of legislation that has the very modest effect of simply having the original intent of the law followed. that's why we're here. so, i can go on and on and on about this legislation, i want to end my presentation here. we have a couple of other folks here to present on the piece of legislation. i can either take your questions now or wait until the other individuals present, however you would like to, mr. president. president o'brien: i'll leave it up to you. i think it would be more effective to hear all of them. supervisor campos: why don't i call upon matt goldberg from the office of labor standards and enforcement. i want to thank them for their objective and unbiased assistance in providing information and facts which is critical when you're drafting a legislation as complicated as this one. so, mr. g

i know the restaurant charges a percentage for healthy san francisco to their customers. i know people are very happy to pay that because there are good intentions with the program. i am here to support the loophole about healthy san francisco. i also need to mention, at this time, the restaurant charging 4% to customers, that money, i think, went to the owner's pockets. instead, that money is going to the pockets of one person instead of the everyone. i have documents to prove that the rest from made over $2 million. just do the math. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker please. >> director of the office of small business. at the small business commission, you have the commission's response in your packet. we are not recommending -- the commission is not recommending approval, but does recommend the fact that the needs to be strengthening in notifications. we checked with our city attorney. the city can require employers to provide some regular noticing of these hra accounts. a particular note i want to draw to your attention, on paragraph 4 of the commission's resp

san francisco health care ordinance works. more than 50,000 san franciscans, residents have access to health care through healthy san francisco. the health ordinance saves taxpayers money. a loophole cheats workers, as we have seen in the committee today. another point i would like to make, closing the loophole in the health care ordinance create scalable playing field of san francisco businesses. currently, the local creates an incentive for employers not to comply with the spirit of the legislation, and that is a devastating thing. not only the you have the intellect and knowledge of it, but the spirit of it. i hope you will improve this area and make sure the people of san francisco will be adequately represented. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker please. >> otis charles. i speak on behalf of the episcopal diocese of california. we wish to show our support for the amendment that you are proposing to the current san francisco health care insurance. nationally, the episcopal church has urged a single payer, universal health care system. what we have in san francisco is very close to this ideal. healthy san francisco

so do we have the director of healthy san francisco here? >> good evening. the director with the san francisco department of public health. i just wanted to take this opportunity to give you a sense of how the city has approached the m.r.a., which is our medical reimbursement account option, how we administer it and how readminister it to ensure that not only employers but also employees understand what is available to them and now they can use those accounts. when an employer decides to select the city option, they are able to submit information through an electronic web-based system. that information that employers submit, essentially the address of the employees, the birth date of the flow and whether or not that employee currently has health insurance will determine whether or not we give them access to a medical reimbursement klt account or to healthy san francisco. the employer in no way makes that decision and once those funds have been transferred through our system, the employer is not able to recapture any portion of the dollars that are submitted o

you can pocket the money by cheating your workers out of what is due to them out of healthy san francisco. and then the city picks up the tab. when workers get sick, their money is not in the hra's, they do not have insurance, they do not enroll in healthy san francisco. they end up at the general clinics and it is the city picking up the tab. this legislation does not pave a new road. this is nothing new. this only reaffirms what the previous board passed unanimously. it is time to pass this on. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker please. >> vice-president of the labor council, founding member of jobs with justice. we are all here to say one simple thing. five years ago, some of us in this room worked hard to get this health care legislation passed, unanimously, by the mayor. i just heard the mayor's speech about what a great law it was. in my opinion, these are unscrupulous employers who are not living up to their obligation and taking our money, at the restaurants or small retail stores. this has got to be stopped. the reason it has got to be stopped is because it is growing. th

and% of businesses in san francisco are spinning out their money buying health insurance or paying healthy san francisco -- 90% of businesses in san francisco. by closing the loophole, that is how we even the playing field and make sure workers have access to health care. thank you. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker please. >> i am a restaurant owner in san francisco, and i would like to address my remarks directly to some of the questions president chiu ask. i appreciate it. some of the questions you ask were really good. i would like to shed and on the ground business owner's light on those questions. we have an hra. we fully notify our employees. we provide any coverage that can be covered. dental, medical, so on and so forth, but utilization rates are still low. president chiu ask the question about 20% compared to 55%. there may be an assumption that is incorrect. we are assuming all things are equal. in healthy san francisco, i believe these are people who sought out health care and applied for it because they knew they needed to access the health care system. in our hra's,

need to get this back in meeting with the health department, which held the san francisco, with the office of labor -- with healthy san francisco. the important part of this is job loss in san francisco. i was surprised to hear your experts say that our economy has 600,000 jobs. supervisors, we have not had 600,000 jobs in this city since 2000. has been 11 years. it costs a minimum wage employer hiring entry-level " sanford cisco 40% more to employ folks in the city than it did six years ago. higher minimum wage, health mandate, sick leave mandate. those are good public policies, but you have to understand it has an impact on employment. during the recession in 2002- 2003, we will -- we lost 90,000

need to get this back in meeting with the health department, which held the san francisco, with the office of labor -- with healthy san francisco. the important part of this is job loss in san francisco. i was surprised to hear your experts say that our economy has 600,000 jobs. supervisors, we have not had 600,000 jobs in this city since 2000. has been 11 years. it costs a minimum wage employer hiring entry-level " sanford cisco 40% more to employ folks in the city than it did six years ago. higher minimum wage, health mandate, sick leave mandate. those are good public policies, but you have to understand it has an impact on employment. during the recession in 2002- 2003, we will -- we lost 90,000 jobs in san francisco. there was a recovery, but we never got back to 600,000 jobs. the first recovery from a recession we track at the chamber that did not get us more jobs than we had before the recession. will we have another jobless recovery at this recession? this city has more people living in it than any time in the history of the city. 805,000 people in the last census, but we have 80,000 people less that work i

there is the help the san francisco element of a law that everyone is familiar with -- healthy san francisco element of the law that everyone is familiar with. a second piece of the ordinance will be the employer spending requirements. this has been in place since 2008, enforced by the office of labor standards and enforcement. thus, we are going to share our perspectives on it today. we collect data from the business community every year. most recently, based on the 2010 calendar year. we have a more detailed report on that available from our website, which is at the end of the report. broken down into a single sentence, the spending requirements simply requires covered employers to make required health care expenditures on behalf of their employees. define those terms here briefly. covered employers are those who have more than 20 employees. that is approximately 4000 of san francisco's 51,000 businesses. the other 47,000 businesses with between zero and 19 employees are exempt and not impacted. covered employees are those who work in san francisco primarily, more than eight hours a week,

complying with the law. 7% make contributions to help the san francisco -- healthy san francisco, and 13% choose these reimbursement plans as the primary way in which they meet the spending requirements. that is a slight trend we have seen. we have done this for three years. we have collected the data. the primary allocations have stayed consistent at 7%. we have seen applications to health insurance dropped a little bit, from 84% down to 80%, and an increase in using reimbursement plans. that is laid out in table 8 in your chart. forgive me. there are a lot of numbers here. looking specifically at the money allocated to reimbursement plans, as supervisor campos indicated, $62 million was allocated to these plans. in this context, the allocation to a plan constitutes an expenditure. this is what is being addressed in the legislation. only top% -- only $12 million, 20% of that, was reimbursed to those employees over the course of that year. it is 29% of employers who use these reimbursement plans in some way, shape or form. 13% of them have it as the primary method of meeting the emplo

that employees who have hr a's as opposed to employees who are covered by insurance or by healthy san francisco are at a disadvantage. they are at a disadvantage because of like an employee or worker who has a guarantee of coverage, a guarantee that extends to specific procedures, specific things that happen, the employee covered by these accounts, the ability for them to actually get their health care needs addressed is very limited. the accounts have a very small amount of money that can be accumulated. even if they are able to accumulate the entirety of the amount for a year, that entire amount would not be sufficient to cover one day, one-night at a hospital. so going back to the point that you made about maybe we would not be where we are today if the rate at which expenditures happen was similar to what happens in healthy san francisco, 55%, i don't know that i agree with that. i think the nature thinkhra -- i think that the nature of hra accounts is such that the employee is at such a huge disadvantage that you want the expenditure rate to be as high as possible. even if the entirety of

i have here a receipt from a restaurant which is in this case charging a 2% surcharge for healthy san francisco. i have a receipt from patsies pizza, a 3% surcharge. tony's pizza. frances -- $1.50 surcharge. 314 sutter st.. 4.3% surcharge. if anyone wants copies of these, you know, there are so many of them. i think that many of us have probably seen many of these receipts if we had dined out in san francisco, but i think most of us would be shocked to learn -- i was shocked to learn that 80% of this money in fact never goes to the worker. with respect to the specific restaurants i mentioned, i do not really know of those restaurants actually spend the money on the employee or not, but when you look at the totality of what we know, which is that for that one year that we have that information, only 20 cents of every dollar actually win to providing and spending health care -- actually went to providing an spending health care on the worker. from a consumer protection standpoint, you are talking about consumers in san francisco being told that they are paying for something that in fact is not ha

san francisco pride at work. the majority of our members are young people who work in san francisco, and i say the majority of them -- probably over 80% -- use healthy san francisco and otherwise would have no access to health care at all. when the legislation was originally passed, we never expected that the accounts would be used as a loophole for employers and by closing the loophole, we will be bringing the legislation in line with the original intention, which is to provide health care for everyone who works in san francisco that otherwise would have no access. this is really important to young lgbt people and the city, and thank you, campos, for introducing it. supervisor campos: thank you. next speaker. >> i am an elected officer with seiu local 1021, and i work at a nonprofit in the tenderloin. over the last four years, we have suffered millions of cuts. we had deskilled our workers and reduce the availability of cyc beds. we have merged clinics and seen many layoffs. our public health system has been cut to the bone. we cannot allow anyone to continue to cheat the system. the taxpayer's burden is about $600 for every blood pressure check. s

citywide, however, we are proud for what we achieved with healthy san francisco, health benefits forotel workers, health benefits and insurance for city workers. there are three big problems related to fairness and honesty with this legislation, which can be cured by separating out the health services measure. , which affects the governance of the health service trust fund, to allow disclosure and discussion with those affected. we have heard this called the consensus measure. it is not true, in terms of the hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries dependent of health services. it is a multi-employer trust fund and not all employers, school districts were there. certainly, retirees and their dependants were not. rank-and-file members of the unions involved have not voted on this consensus package. second problem is it is just not good government to hide measures, taking away fiduciary protection of health benefits in a larger measure changing retirement contributions. it is a disservice to democracy, a disservice to your own reputation for honesty, a disservice to your constituents. i

go down in the road where there is a possible legal question, we know the track record on healthy san francisco is that we were sued, so it knocks -- it would not surprise us that we could be sued again, which is why we are trying to put together a piece of legislation that can survive a legal challenge, so we have gone as far as federal law allows us to go for discussion of these accounts, but let me say that i will continue to have an open door, to meet with small business and to hear the concerns. we are going to meet with them tomorrow, and i would be happy to get any suggestions common -- to get any suggestions, and we have lived -- and we have listened closely. the dialogue will continue. >> one comment i wanted to bring up is that the burden of creating a business that is going to employ 30, 40, 50 people certainly has no connection to profitability, and profit margins are so slim. plenty of company has an -- companies have been one employee, to employees -- two employees, and i can hang out with a buddy of mine who has a smaller business. maybe they have two employees, and i know they a

what about healthy san francisco? but there's no yard. so i said these kids need a place to live, so we can make it work. but then once i asked, so is this project only for san franciscans? is it for kids who are in this room right now, the 4700 or the 5700 of youth who are looking for places to live in this city? no. there is no requirement that kids for this project get prevens treatment if they're from this city. it doesn't mean they have to be born and raised in san francisco, but there should be something said for people not getting off a bus from whatever town they're from and applying for this program. we need to focus on the youth in san francisco who have want to be here and made a long-term commitment to be here. that was a request we made of the project sponsors. they were unable to incorporate that into the overall plan and that's something in your position today, i think we should move forward with this project at 16 units and i hope we can ask that we make requests for the people of our town first. president olague: thank you

san francisco. they do not care that we are paying for healthy sam francisco. they do not care that we are paying a payroll tax. those things put it at a disadvantage. you have to look if the bigger picture of how the city isn' supporting legislation that puts it at a disadvantage. one person was talking about a dealership. didn't we just read about the last dealerships leaving san francisco? there is no more. if i want it fixed, i have to go out of the city. the city is putting all these burdens on us. you have to look at the vigor picture. -- the bigger picture. >> thank you. next speaker. goo>> my name is william. i was born and raised in the nation as district. i was able to partner. our goal is to give people an opportunity. most of the people by employer are all young, and even though we pay full benefits, it is too low. this would be a growth us. we would go broke. this is all we have superior -- all we have. this is it. this is all we have from mark and i know every day this is all we have, and i know we intend everyone to have health care. i know when

talk about are the views, the ambiance, the water, the parks, the spaces, and the healthy looking people in san francisco. we have very healthy looking people. i went on to the website of the planning organization to figure out what i'm trying to say. the first thing i came about was one, they said the planning department places protection and preservation at the very top of its list of priorities. interesting because this is a club that is going to be demolished. second, improvement in the city as a place for a living by aiding and making it more healthful promise is pleasant and satisfying with representing good standards for all residents and providing adequate open spaces and appropriate community facilities. the third point i found was that the established priority policies says our parks and open space and their access to sunlight be protected from demolition. here i have this health club that is going to be demolished propose. it is helpful. it is pleasant. has been there for 50 years. right now, if i was not here, i would be swimming with 50 other tenants. i live at market and castro. i go on mun

san francisco bicycle coalition that helped make that happen. how we organize our communities and make sure we can share the information about how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, live more healthy lifestyles. that is what the san francisco by coalition does, and i am happy you are doing this work -- that is what the san francisco bike coalition does. thank you so much. [applause] i want to thank the mayor, supervisors, the tremendous support for connecting the city. i also want to bring up our next speaker, the censor recorder phil ting. >> thank you. i rode in today with supervisor chu. as a big shot up to the bike coalition, thank you so much for your advocacy on the bike lanes. i took my 4-year-old daughter to school on the way, so i had to peel off. it is one thing when you are writing by yourself. it is quite another when you are bringing your children through the city. we started seeing the median coming in. what a difference it makes on that street. thank you for all that advocacy. even if you do not see it, those of us in this city feel it every day. thank you. [applause] >> finally, none of day achievements we are celebrating today would be nothing without the san fran

san francisco. encouraging people to seek healthy alternatives. the donation has no strings attached. the city facing huge economic hurdles, $250,000 is a lot of money. even if it makes for somewhat strange bed fellows. >>> still to come at 5:00, san francisco is embracing soccer fever, if you missed the chance to watchoday, you have another chance coming up. s nottoone? nope. but it is a job well done. what are you reading, sweetie? her diary. when you're done, i'd love some feedback. sure. your mom and i read that thing cover-to-cover. loved it. thanks. would you mind if i cut the lawn this weekend? only if you let me talk to your mother on the phone for hours on end. done. [ male announcer ] u-verse brings peace to the family. at&t u-verse lets you record four shows at once from any room and play them back on any tv. get u-verse tv for only $29 a month for 6 months. in the network, everyone can get along. >>> the ninth annual avon walk for breast cancer drew thousands of people today. they raised funds for local, regional and national breast cancer organizations. tonight they plan

healthy happy meal. see you later. >> san francisco has lost a movie mecca. after the showing of harold and maude. they. >> nearly all of san francisco's neighborhood theaters have closed and owner of the balboa says they may be next. >>> 6:48. it's great you on there but it's localized. >> it's trying to spread around and will do so. it's about over and more sunshine. here is a look at some of clouds that are rolling in the coast this morning. they finally made night the east bay valleys unlike yesterday but very thin and retreat rather quickly. we do have delays at sfo. it's noise abatement that is causing 15-30-minute departure delays at sfo. let's take a look at those temperatures. we still have antioch 62 while everybody else in the 50s. clouds around the monterey bay to salinas, mid to upper 50s there. more around gilroy, you are at 49. i think we'll see more sunshine. clouds will remain locked into the coast. cool in afternoon because of the strong sea breeze. patchy drizzle is possible and more sunshine and bring us the warming trend for the weekend.

. >> adding more healthy options to those happy meals but it's not enough for san francisco. >> i'm spencer chris chichblt if you'd like an extended period of warm weather you'll like the accu-weather forecast. coming up. >> women want good game. >> can a woman's touch in a male-dominated industry. how women are changing the game. the news continues in one minute. >> closed captioning brought to you by mancini sleepworld. >>> the man whose judicial nomination was blocked has been nominated by governor brown. goodwin lu was nominated but the nomination blocked by conservative republican who's called him too liberal and inexperienced. he's never served as a judge. brown says that is not important. >> there is no requirement people come from court of appeals, superior court or anything else. and it's good among seven people to have a diversity. and different views, different back grounds. he brings that. >> this 40-year-old law professor taught at uc berkeley for eight years. >> mcdonalds is changing its kids menu cutting back on amount of fries and adding apples to the meal. changes taking af