st. croix. and we need to decide whether or not we want to go into executive session. >> executive session for the evaluation of mr. st. croix. >> is there a motion to go into private session? >> i move that we go into private session. >> second. >> all in favor? >> public comment? >> of course. >> commissioners ray hartz director of san francisco open government, and i do believe that these should not be in closed session, they ought to be open to the public so we can see what your directions to the directive are and how well he concludes in your opinion his job. wonlt i like to be a to be a fly on the wall in this closed session. my real feeling is that neither executive director st. croix would want the documents produced in the closed session to be see the light of day or the public to it overhear the discussion. i am certain eb that the (inaudible) intended, and has for many years evaded any real enforcement of ethics in the city of san francisco. one only has to look at the public record t

st. croix, so i was looking at the work chart. and that is his, so we have come up one fte. right? and i think that i saw that there was a special project assistant, is that right? >> yeah, that is not, here, but not there. >> and there is, was there a... >> restructuring of the existing staff? >> no, we have 18 statutory positions, the special project assistant is a temporary position. >> i see. >> i had a suggestion. and i think that it will be helpful to include to the extent that we have records of them, the vote for each thing that we passed, whether it was 4-0 or 5-0 or 4-1 or three to two. >> okay. >> unless that is not in an inordinate about of work. >> we will let you know. >> if there are no questions or comments on the annual report at this point, perhaps we can move on to the next agenda item. >> i had one comment. that i want to thank the staff, i think, that you guys it has accomplished a lot this year and i think that we have made a lot progress in several areas and i appreciate

st. croix included on 3 b is that he was concerned about wanting to avoid imposing more or other ethics agencies. and how noble of him. and you know what? it is not his job. and your job is not to worry about imposing work on another agency. your job is to enforce, orders of a determination, that are sent over here for enforcement. so the handling part is... we are not dogs, we are not horses. we are people, we don't need to be handled. what you should do, is introduce a motion to change the title of this regulation to the ethic commission's regulation, for enforcement of sunshine ordinance violations. your job is enforcement. and your job is not adjudication, it is not just to simply dismiss the cases at all, i mean, routinely and all 39 of them, xh is mitigated. and crossed out. your job is enforcement and the title of the document needs to reflect what it is that you are supposed to be doing. >> given my three minute limitation on my earlier remarks i want to annotate them a bit for the regu

st. croix. and we will not vote on 3 b. we are going to throw it out. >> thank you. >> >> do we have a gentleman standing in line? >> pris wolf just speaking as a member of the public. i am concerned about this because i think that it creates a slippery slope. first what is the precedent set for non-sunshine violation and what about the ethics violations by a staff member and how do you deal with those? and so you already have some precedent and some process for dealing with that. and at the same token you have a process for dealing with yourselves as commissioners. and when it comes to ethics violations, so why wouldn't you reflect on those things. also, the task, the sunshine ordinance does not provide any ability to specify or cherry pick any one or another public employee or official when it comes to being examined or ruled on such violations. and so i don't think that it is appropriate to have staff say just because it would, we don't have a process above us, to just say that they are exem

st. croix. the proposal to botch the sunshine complaints against them would make sense, if those complaints were very common. and but they are rare. and as far as i know there has only been three in the last 13 years since the sunshine ordinance was passed. and one was in 2004, and when the oakland ethics commission handled a complaint by oliver nuby and kevin (inaudible) against the directors (inaudible) and maple (inaudible). and last year, the san jose election's commission had a city attorney, handling the patrick shaw claim against mr. st. croix. and now, we have allegrossman filing a complaint against mr. st. croix. you know that the attorney general rejects all of your sunshine referrals because they are local matters. and but the district attorney has not acted and even has not responded in writing as he supposed to, to your referrals. also, it is much, much harder for a citizen to retain a sunshine competent attorney, than it is for your staff to retain an outside ethics agency. and yo

st. croix was referred to the same violations. they violated my rights and the rights of other citizens of san francisco for a period of more than two years by advogating and censuring our public comments and preventing them to show up in the minutes, and yet you guys did not have any problem knowing that you had a case against your own executive director finding mr. herrara not in violation without looking at the facts and without reviewing the law, you did neither and i pointed that out in my case, because your investigators only looked at what they wanted to look at to let mr. st. croix off of the hook and give you an out. who will watch the watch man? >> any further public comment? on matters appearing on the agenda or not appearing on the agenda? >> the first order of business will be discussion. and possible action on a request for a waiver from the campaign and governmental conduct code section 3.222. and he is an architect that on occupies two of the architect seats on the commission and has requested the waiver, >> the de

st. croix? >> you do have a staff report making a recommendation on this.ore you, i would point out that, at approximately 3:00 this afternoon, pastor gavin sent an additional request for a continuance. this item has been continued three times, already. and at the june 24th meeting, the commission granted pastor gavin's last request for a continuance. but specifically stated that another continuance would not be granted absent a showing of good cause, the memo that went to the respond ant and complainant pointed out that it had to be in write and show good cause and had to be delivered no mater than monday, september 9th and since this game in today, and it is absent any reliable information as to the validity of the request, the commission will be well within its right to go with the hearing tonight absent pastor gavin. >> this matter has been pending for quite some time. i am disappointed that pastor gavin is not able to attend our hearing based on her complaint. commissioners, any discussion? >> commissioner hur, you said that we should continue and give

st. croix? reaction to those comments? >> well, i think that we could probably also give on the turn around time. and i would not and i don't see, an issue with extending the amount of time to the 14 or 15 days, there. but beyond that i think that the rest of it is straight forward and so i am not, confused that we need to delay this to get additional impact. this is pretty basic stuff. >> am i correct in understanding that the forfeiture is provision and it is not something that the staff came up with, if somebody accepts a contribution in excess, it is forfeited. >> correct. >> so that the due process question that was raised has been resolved in the statute and if there is litigation, it has been resolved in litigation. but i mean we are not creating the automatic forfeiture that is just enforcing the statute. >> again, would i venture to say that this is an administrative and bureaucratic process and not really policy issue. i assume that there have been opportunities for the public to it comment on this. and to provid

st. croix? >> most of these are for the purposes of clarifying some language that is not precisely clear. and we can go through them section by section. the commission considered the decision points individually or in block or you can do them section by section. >> so the first decision point deals with show cause hearing. the section is not clear as the memo points out whether each respondent will make a 5 minute opening statement or if it has to be shared. so we are proposing that each respondent are able to make 5 minute statement and three minute rebuttals when the commission hears these cases. and then, decision point 1 b, clarifies that a party that fails to submit written documents by the deadline, is allowed to bring them to the actual hearing and request permission from the commission to submit said documents. and so it gives each party a little more latitude in responding. >> that is section one. >> okay, i think that we should take them one by one. >> okay. >> the first one, decision

st. croix, a caseload, do you have an optimum kind of caseload that you would be going for i suspect for this moment that it is higher that you prefer it to be. >> i don't have an actual number because we don't have any control over that. the number of cases divided by the number of staff, tempered with the with the case. and three is well and probably five or six, you move forward and you have to wait to move forward and several of our investigations are pending audits and they move at a different pace and at any given time we have 30 to 50 cases and the number of cases come in at a rate and a lot of them are dismissals and you are going to see many of those. for various reasons, mostly of non-jurisdiction and so i could not ideally what it is because it we do not fit if an ideal mold. >> okay. >> and am i glad to hear that. >> and any items for future meetings? >> public comment on the ada report? >> public comment on the executive director's report? >> hearing none, we will move on to any pr

good early evening, matter chair person and members of the ethics commission and executive director st. croix, my name is justin true, and i am the legislative aid to chiu and this is a long-standing case. and i did appear on the matter before the sunshine task force some years ago as well. and i officially only represent supervisor chiu, at least, some of my other colleagues are aware that i am here this evening and they can obviously see it now. and i don't want to go into a great deal of detail around the item, i think that the staff report is clear. and i think that the main point that i would make is that, at the land use committee meeting in question where supervisor chiu announced and introduced essentially changes to underlying development agreement that was before the committee through a resolution, that those changes, were within the scope of the noticed hearing. and very clearly, the hearing described that there was a development agreement and not much else about it and the changes themselves, and technically, they are probably more changes than amendments and although president ch

st. croix. and treat it not only with the complete incompetence about the underlying issue but no attempt on mr. st. croix to learn what the issues are. and in fact, treats the entire controversy with nothing but arrogance as a self-defense. of course, mr. grossman got a sophisticated law firm and a high powered law firm to take his suit because not only is it a dead bang violation, but of course, there are attorneys fees that us taxpayers have to pay for. this is repeated time after time after time after time. we are almost put in a position now, of looking like we are unkind or we are inhumane and we want to start our sentences with poor mr. st. croix. but, unfortunately it is not about mr. st. croix. when you say that you respond to an automatic defense of st. croix, and every other department in the city says well, the ethics commission is just as bad, you know? we support our administrator for matter what, you know? the ethics commission does the same thing. >> in fact when you say that it

st. croix. >> i just want to do one highlight about the attachment to the ed report on the open data, and this third party report about how expanded the excessbility and user friendliness of our campaign finance and other align data are. and this is a good testament, to the city and of course, to the ethics commission, and making information easier to be available. to the public. and not just to reporters, but to everybody who is interested and to point out that because of the easy access, there is more interest than ever in the information that we have. and in the charts that we are generating that we did not have the capability before makes it much easier for the people to understand and comprehend. and so the user rated is increased at a rate that we can appreciate. >> and you know it seems like the public is really benefiting by this and because the people can report on the data easily because we may not necessarily get a lot of credit into the work that we are putting into it and it does a