>> thank you, madam chair. and i'm just going to be brief. >> sure. >> and ask my full statement to be put in the record. >> sure. >> but i also want to ebg what other members have said in terms of safety. the buck really stops with the nrc when it comes to safety. and i hope that you hear that message from us. it's tremendously important that you have that as a focus and when you look at regulating that you highlight that. and we don't have to look in the further than japan to see what happens if safety goes wrong. the articles i've been reading about, japan, as senator lautenberg said, 54 plants have been shut down. businesses are talking about overseas. the economy is collapsing. they're having serious problems. so safety i knowreacts with all the other actions that are out there. and with that let me just thank dr. macfarlane pore your service on the brc, on the blue ribbon commission. i know that you traveled to new mexico, you took a great interesting spw in that blue ribbon commission that's looking at w

>> madam chair, just to clarify these are the policy recommendations. the library is an agreement with all of the recommended cuts. these are the policy recommendations on pages 13 and 14. supervisor chu; what remains is primarily the policy recommendations for the custodian, a library one and a library tech assistance. these four positions are related to the expansion of library hours, correct? take of that is correct. - >> that is correct. supervisor chu: given that the department has agreement with the department recommendations, i would recommend we accept the policy recommendation by the budget analysts. i am a big fan of expanding the library hours and would hope the committee would not take the recommendations the we're able to expand the library hours. supervisor cohen: i want to echo your comments, and i also want to say thank you for your commitment, particularly the visitation library. we have seen as a destabilizing force that is forcing nonprofits, largely due to the economic climates that are no longer able to support the community, but th

>> madam chair, nothing at this time. supervisor chu: colleagues, can we meet kaine -- can we entertain a motion? we will do that without objection. department of public works. >> good afternoon. so, we were able to work with the budget analyst, and we are in agreement with the budget analyst. supervisor chu: the department of public works is in agreement with the budget analyst recommendations. supervisor kim? supervisor kim: thank you. i was so happy to see that. i did want to raise my own personal concern about the $1 million in reserve for the law library. given the discussions we have had come up we think that is a very high amount. certainly, we would not want to spend general fund dollars to that extent. we can look at this by relocating location such as the library, and i hope that that would be a consideration in the following year, and that this committee would consider such a large allocation. i know this is for the next fiscal year, but i wanted to bring that concern up today. >> supervisors, we will come back

let me get -- oh, thank you, madam. >> thank you, madam chair man. dr. macfarlane, let me first say how much i enjoyed just talking with you. and i appreciated that opportunity yesterday. i would like an actual answer for these questions. what experience and technical expertise do you have concerning reactor safety? i know that you have a doctor at in geology which can be helpful with regard to waste disposal or plant sitings. but the actual operation of a nuclear plant, what experience have you had or technical expertise? >> my expertise is on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle so that does deal with part of the nuclear power plants produce which is spent nuclear fuel which are on reactor sites. and so part of my expertise has to do with that. i think that in general as well as you pointed out, seismic issues are important. not just for plant citing you for plant operation as we saw in terms of what happened in japan. >> with regard to the 4,000 employees a chairperson is given some supervisory power. what is the largest organization you've ever man

brecht's madam chair and supervisor avalos -- >> madam chair and supervisor avalos, at the bottom of page 3 we point out that the total design agreement is for $53 million and that represents 9.2% of the total budgeted 580 four million dollars laguna honda hospital replacement project. our recommendation is shown on page 5. we recommend that you amend the resolution to increase the existing amount not to exceed an amount of $50.8 million up to $51 million. the reason for that recommendation is as you know, there was another modification inadvertently being requested being approved. since it was less than $500,000, it was not subject to board approval. our recommendation simply reflects the fact that the four hundred $77,000 has previously been approved. -- $four hundred 77,000 has been previously approved. chairperson chu: are we in agreement with this recommendation? rex we are. chairperson chu: why don't we open this up to public comment? are there members of the public that wish to speak seeing none, public comment is closed. spirit >> announcement for approval. chairperson chu: w

>> thank you very much, madam chair man. thanks for bringing us together to consider the nomination of dr. allison mcfar hand and christine svinicki. everyone knows it has been critical to meeting our nation's energy needs and it is an emissions free energy source that provides one-fifth of america's electricity. my state of new jersey, four nuclear power reactors provide the state with more than half of its electricity. but as we saw in japan last year, there are also many reasons to be cautious. in order to operate plants safely, the united states must have an effective policy for disposing and storing spent nuclear fuel. and right now most nuclear power plants store more than 1,000 tons of nuclear waste and spent fuel pools on site. it's not a sustainable situation. in new jersey, nuclear waste is stored on site for our -- at our fewer nuclear reactors. and some of it is in dry cast storage. but most is in spent fuel pools, which rely on a steady supply of water and/or electricity. in japan, when the tsunami knocked the p

. >> thank you very much, madame chair. i'll start with mr. ores. mr. mayer from the first panel recommended to freeze the pending reorganization until a full-scale program to evaluate a new strategic plan can be achieved. i know it sounds like the wounded warrior project agrees with that assessment. do you agree with that as well? or we'll start -- each of the panels can answer that question. and why. >> i guess i'm not entirely familiar with the differentiation between what mr. mayer is asking to be done and the current system. >> do you think we should ask the va to freeze the reorganization, bring everything in house? >> absolutely. absolutely. >> i'm happy to provide a comment on that. with regard to the reorganization, all of our concerns are provided in our written statement, but until i think that we can answer that, it would be great to be able to know the results and how things worked in the pilots that were implemented in january. it is my understanding that within those pilots, different -- the reorg was implemented in different ways, in dif

madam chair, you had some questions with respect to internships. you asked about work opportunities for youth. i told you last week the vast majority of opportunities in our office are four law students. that is in fact true. i do want to expand a little bit because i know it is of interest to your. of program does include undergraduate students and high school students and our law student volunteers received work study credits. we are working with political science and public policy programs, most specifically at the university of san francisco, and we have heard -- we have three or four graduates every year. we take from existing internship programs and the organizations we work with are generally san francisco youth works, which reaches out to try and find available candidates from a variety of high school programs throughout san francisco. supervisor kim, you asked a little bit about the line-item with respect to professional services. i wanted to clarify something i said earlier because i may have misspoke. you asked about the line-item in our

. >> thank you very much, madam chair. first, i appreciate you all being here and giving us some insight on what we need to do about our employment for veterans. you know, my state has about 11%, 12% of the population are veterans. highest per capita in the nation. so we have a lot of need and, as you can imagine, a lot of issues that come up. you know, when i was mayor, just to follow up on the guard issue, the esgr, we always signed up on it because we wanted to make sure people were taken care of no matter where they were. is there an -- let me just throw an idea, and i have a couple questions more specific. anyone who wants to answer this, and i'll start with you, ramsey, if that's okay. to create an incentive for the businesses to -- they know they're going to be gone for a period of time. the question is how long can you keep those kind of jobs open? is there a -- through tax policy is there an opportunity to create incentives to incentivize them not only to hire them but to keep that space open and creating flex sch

thank you, madam chair. >> thank you. i recognize the gentleman from texas, mr. reyes. >> thank you, madam chair. dr. beck, you mentioned the center of excellence. where is that located and how much of the work being done there is medical research as it pertains to prosthetics? >> the center of excellence that i spoke about is a joint va/dod center of excellence for extremity care. that actually will be a virtual center or is a virtual center. it will have locations in san antonio, texas and in washington, d.c. staff will be distributed across our system so that some of our staff will be in various centers, both va and dod centers around the country so that we are collaborating, coordinating our efforts and i think you mentioned research earlier, sir, and one of the things that we talked about that we will be able to do by leveraging the capability with dod and va is that we will be able to do clinical trial type of evaluations at a number of different centers at the same time and that is one of the missions of this joint va/dod center of excellence is research c

. >> thank you very much, madam chair. i just want to follow up, mr. doyle, on your comment that you made where you mentioned that contracting officers do not change what the clinician prescribed but actually, in testimony we heard earlier from pva, that is not the case, that their testimony states that contract officers when they do receive the orders, the request for the devices is modified and even denied in cases because of the cost. so that is a huge concern. there seem to be a disconnect from what you're hearing versus what the vsos are hearing because that is not the case. the cost is a factor. it's not the veterans' health care. so do you want to comment on that? >> yes, sir. thank you. first of all, contracting officers, all contracting officers do have a mandate under federal acquisition regulations to ensure that there's a price reasonableness aspect to the cost we are providing. i don't know if that is a concern or not. can't really speak to what may have happened before but i have put out to the contracting community that under 8123, if a

. >> madam chair, members of the committee, the recommendation is $54,009 in 2013, and 13-14, $59,628. we will work with the department. supervisor chu: thank you very much. thank you for coming to answer these questions. we look forward to seeing the director, as well as you and your staff. let's go now to the public defender. the police department is listed next, are we waiting for -- and we are waiting for the chief to return from the event. he said he may be running a bit behind. ♪ supervisor chu: i do not think that is what we were expecting, but thank you. ♪ >> [inaudible recording] supervisor chu: i think we needed that, thank you. [laughter] supervisor chu: thank you. >> good afternoon. supervisor chu: please begin. >> thank you. the mission of the public defender's office is to provide high-quality presentations every year. the right to counsel was guaranteed by the united states constitution. a mandated service that the city and county provides. as you might imagine, in this time, particularly given the economy, there has been a great demand for our services on every front.

i would like to thank the madam chair for giving me my opportunity to come and talk. i would like to be here to show our support for the staff, for the many years they have been keeping the department going. the budget before you today, i believe this task -- the staff asked for a 4% to 5% increase. i believe that the budget analysis is coming back with 1%. i am here to reinforce one very important factor. we have seen a lot of major changes in the city. the big department is an important part of that change. but the growth happening in the town, one of the things that we have right now, which worries me, going forward in the budget, we have a lot of positions we are trying to fill. we are learning, very lately, how hard it is to fill these positions. lots of stones from the department need to be met to meet these positions. this year alone i believe we will have almost seven new staff that are badly needed. you will hear testimony from the different department heads on the kind of volume we are experiencing. it is not necessarily just small projects, but very large p

rex madam chair, a deputy city attorney cheryl adams. we do not consider the transfer teach -- transfer fee to be a tax. we consider it to be enforceable. it is part of the transaction and a term of the sale. chairperson chu: supervisor chu, are you on the roster? supervisor kim? supervisor kim: i think it is a little disingenuous to include a private club as a part of a public benefit of the value. i would disagree with including that in the public's memory because it is not open to the public. putting the $12 million value should not be included, because we're also giving the value of a parcel that we are exchanging. >> if i may speak to that, supervisor kim, first of all, i agree with you that this is a gray area. the $12 million of improvements -- not land, but improvements to the facility for a new poll, they thought it was germane. maybe it should be put outside of the overall public benefits, but is still important to the area. some of the other differences are almost stylistically in terms of net verses growth analysis. you could

. >> madam chair, be only thing i would add besides that which you have already stated is on page 2 of our report. there are exceptions to the interim budget. in this case and the mayor's office is requesting 162 new positions, full-time equivalent. as you know, if those are approved, they would start on july 1 rather than august or september. so, we will be reviewing these positions in the ensuing two weeks on a department by department basis, making recommendations there. secondly, we point out that regarding the hotel tax allocation, the steinhardt aquarium does not get an application, but that is not shown in the administrative code. the recommendation on page 5 of the report, except for the exceptions to the interim budget, which include the hiring of 162 new positions as of july 1, 2012, positions that i stated we will analyze and make recommendations on in the next two weeks, we recommend that you do approve the ordinance, the 12-13-14 annual salary ordinance and 12-13-14 honoraria authority budget, and that you amend the business of the tax regulations code to include the annua

. >> madam chair, can we respond on each recommendation? on this is simple math. the department gave us the details. we have them here and can show them to the committee. they're absolutely wrong. our recommendation is not a cut in service in any way, shape, or form and based on the documentation that was provided to us and would be happy to show that in writing right out of the committee would like. >> just so i understand, you are saying your recommendation is based on the list of materials and supplies the department has provided for the upcoming year? >> that is correct. it was simply a mathematical error. totally. have to gsupervisor chu: is thee anything missing from the list? it sounds like there was a mathematical error. perhaps we could ask the cfo to check in and move on to the remainder of the areas where there is disagreement. >> sure. we're happy to do that. just to finish the point, what the budget analyst did was simply add up on the submission everything, and then came to that amount. station 35 is being reactivated. this is a list for next fiscal

. >> madam chair, are reductions total 503,000, to hundred $30 --$503,230. these are general fund savings. they allow an increase of 2.2%, $632,000. our recommended reductions totaled $117,000 their ongoing savings. those are general fund savings. we are still working with the department. we will report back next week. supervisor chu: thank you. i want to thank the treasurer -- treasury tax collector. we will see you next week. our next department is the comptroller's office. -- controller's office. >> thank you. i will be very brief. i will run through some of the highlights of the two-year budget. the committee is aware. you have on the overhead projector. our office provides a host of financial management supports -- services for the city. we audit and provide technical assistance for city departments. we perform the kind of budget and economic analysis that you see typically during the budget process. our budget for the coming two years is growing modestly at just about 3% in each year. $38.9 million next year. almost exactly 3% per year, as is the case

frelinghuysen: madam chair, i move to strike the last word. ntleman is recognized for five minutes. mr. frelinghuysen: madam chair, briefly i rise to oppose the amendment. i share my colleague's concerns that we should not be funding activities at the private sector -- that the private sector should do ons i own, that's why our bill cuts 24% out of this account. only preserving appropriate federal activities that are too risky for the private sector to take on alone. but the amendment goes too far, undercuts our ability to address gas prices and therefore i must oppose it and i yield back. the chair: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. for what purpose does the gentleman from indiana -- mr. visclosky: move to strike the last word. have already remarked earlier in the day relative to my support for vehicle technology and am opposed to the gentleman's amendment and would yield back the balance of my time. the chair: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is on the amendment by the gentleman from georgia. th

gregg's madam chair, deputy city attorney, cheryl adams.. it was whether the agenda had to have the electronic versions of all of the documents that supported the file. the ordinance does not require that. it requires that the file itself be available for public inspection as to the question -- for public inspection. as to the question of what documents you do and do not have relative to the port, i do not know. i cannot speak to that. president chiu: i think we received some high-level documents relevant to today's discussion, but there were documents on file that the board staff reported to the commission that are not in front of us today. if the board were to approve our decision, we would be a blessing those documents that are not in front of us. i would like to raise that as an issue that we can discuss but through the course of the hearing. chairperson chu: with regard to moving forward with our items today, item seven and eight, d you see any problems continuing forward based on the conversation today? >> based on the conversation, i

. >> good afternoon, madam chair and committee members. i want to start by saying the we're divided into four divisions. we have the protective service is part of our apartment, which is where adult protective services, the public guardian, a situated. we also have a community-base programs division, which contains our veteran services office. our intake counseling and screening office as well as our office on aging, and then we have ihhs and long-term care. i think in your pack, it is page 8. as you know, ihhs is the publicly funded program that goes into people's homes and provides those -- both personal care as well as chore services. when you look at the chart, you can see that we have had a lot of growth since 2007. some years it was up words of 10%. you can see that it is starting to level off. this number shows you through december 11, and it looks like it took a little dive, but by the end of -- it went up in subsequent months, but again, it is growing very, very slowly. that is probably due to the fact that most of the people in o

. >> madam chair, we would be happy to do that. incidently, it is the four recommendations that the committee is accepting as opposed to 3? there is the last one? supervisor chu: you are correct. they are the first four. so given that, why do we say we do not need you, district attorney to come back. thank you very much. >> thanks. supervisor chu: thank you. why do we not go to that? >> good afternoon, madam chair and commissioners. moon i am going to keep this very brief. the court used to be funded by the city for all our operations, but that changed when state legislation removed responsibility of all trial courts and placed it with the city. the court receives $80 million in state funding to operate the court, but we still operate two city functions that have not transferred to the states, and those staffing the grand hatchery and managing the defense program, and it is to provide recommendation in cases of public defender cannot take due to unavailability. these are the functions of that constitutes the budget, and we are in f

supervisor campos: thank you, madam chair. i want to thank both applicants for a willingness to serve the city of fran and i, too, have been very impressed with both applicants. with respect to the application of miss fransiz, i actually think that the work that she has done with fair trade u.s.a. where she led in the development of standards around fair trade and making sure that you have -- that you ensure that you're buying purchases from companies that are not exploiting workers, to me that's the kind of background that you want and not just the recent work there but also with other companies so i think it's precisely the kind of individual that you want to see working on these issues, and with respect to mr. maroquin, i think that his presentation speaks for itself. i'm more proud to see that we have that level of caliber in our community and that we have someone who is interested in these issues. the fact that nickey is here speaks highly of him and it means that you're extremely highly recommended and, you know, i say t

. >> madam chair, members of the committee, are recommended reduction total $653,700. that amount in ongoing savings, reductions would still allow an increase of $5.2 million, 6% of the budget. on a general fund redemptions. 13-14, recommended reductions total 819,000 for the $27. of that amount, 105 r one time savings. those reductions will an increase of 3.8 million, 4.1%. we are still working with the department and will report back to the committee next week. supervisor chu: colleagues, if there are no questions at this time, thank you for the presentation. we look forward to seeing you next week and would love to hear back from your cfo about your long-term strategy around your fund balance issue keef. colleagues, we have a lot of departments left. we are getting close to 12:00 when we generally take our break. i know the chief is here as well. i would like to go to the department of the status of women, doing those presentations. colleagues, do you feel like you need to take a break at 12:00, or do you need to go to the fire department as well? what do we do that

i would like to thank the madam chair for giving me my opportunity to come and talk. i would like to be here to show our

thank you, madam chair. thank you for being with us. let me begin for expressing a little bit, a difference in agreement with senator inhofe. let me respectfully disagree. i happen to think while i've had disagreements with chairman yatzco, he's done a good job. i'll tell you what i'm upset about, the legal of personal attacks that have been waged against, from within this committee and within the nrc him tself. i believe those personal atakss were a smoke screen for a fi philosophical divide that existed within the nrc and exists there today. in this committee we have fundamental philosophical differences. no great surprise. i hope and believe it's not necessary to wage personal attacks against each other to disguise our philosophical differences, and i fear very much that has been the case within the nlc, i believe the commissioner has been a strong defender of the most important task of the nrc, and that is to protect the safety and the well being of the american people. and sometimes he's cast a lone vote. he's been outvoted 4 to 1.

. >> first of all, good afternoon, madam chair, members of the board. i want to thank you for the opportunity. i also want to extend appreciation for the mayor's office, the budget analysts, particularly antonio as well as another office and in particular k'd -- for all of your support. i want to go through where we are at the office. beginning with the first slide, you are looking at our budget. we are doing a comparison between the general fund and our non general fund support. as you can see, the blue represents the general fund, and the white part represents the non general fund. roughly, what we're looking at is 2014 very similar to that. and when we look at that, it represents about 86% of the department budget. next, i would like to discuss very briefly where we are with the budgeting, because this has been an area where we have seen a shift in the national and local economy, and at the state level, there is a decrease in resources. we can see that just in the recent past, we have gone from approximately 15% of our budget to where we are now, whi

thank you, madam chair. supervisor chu: thank you very much. continue. >> of khaybar-1 to review our efforts on the veteran's building seismic upgrade -- ok, i wanted to review our efforts on the veteran's building seismic upgrades. it started in july 2011. we are completing the 100% in design development by june 30 of this year. we will complete the construction document phase and permit bid and award by june 30, 2013. this next year is going to be critical in scheduling, coordinating, and implementing to move out of building occupants and contents by june 2013. and in coordinating the relocation of our to mark -- our department's offices as well as the office and meeting room spaces for the american legion post. in the next fiscal year, we will also be completing the transition of our manual booking processes to artifacts online data base system. this is a huge transition for our department, and it will hopefully, in the long run, result in some cost-savings. during the next two years while the veteran's building is closed, we will continue,

. >> madam chair, may i respond? >> sure. >> i would like to as a great observation i wanted to say what mr. mayor was talking about earlier and what you just said is that a lot of these veterans are finding that system of care and they're not moving away or they're moving back to where they found that quality. so for example, they may get their care they're often walking and going back to regular life, but they're not finding the care where they have moved to so they wind up coming back to san antonio because they have that system of care. they don't want to get away frit. it's not just about getting back into athletics. that just happened to be what i did. it's getting back into school, your families, it's walking your daughter down the aisle. it's taking your son fishing. it's all those things that they had before that they want to get back to the high level of care. and having that in a centralized location where they don't have to travel so far to do it is paramount for that individual. >> thank you. i yield bac