studley? >> i appreciate that. there is no double blind test available and it's hard to identify patterns. i think there are some other things that we could all be watching or looking for over time. one that you've spoken to, but i wonder if you have a summary on this, is whether more candidates ran. overall, with all of these variations, one of the issues was would people feel more able to stand for public office. can you speak to that one? >> yes. initially it seemed that more candidates did run for office, especially in 2004 when we went to rank choice voting. a number of candidates, for example, in 2004 the supervisorial race was open. there was not an incumbent. and i think 22 candidates alone from that district ran for office. over time we've noticed whenever there is an open race, there will be more candidates running for office. and, yes, we have noticed a trend of more candidates running for office. >> and then some other things that we're ali equally able to watch are just qualitative things, including ho

studley pointed exactly the point that is troubling me because i think that mr. 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 willf

>> i concur with both commissioner studley and commissioner renne on the conclusion. i also did appreciate mr. chavey's historical perspective on this issue. because you know, i have only been on the commission for two years. and i did appreciate knowing what the history of it was. but, at the same time, i think that it also highlights that the ordinance itself is a little bit ambiguous and so i think that there has been confusing interpretations of it. and on top of all of that, the city attorney good government guide issued one interpretation and obviously the task force found another interpretation. and so, because of the ambiguity there, i would find no willful violation by the library commission because there was no clear path throughout the years as illustrated by all of the comments that we have heard from the public tonight. but i do appreciate the library commission's efforts now going forward and the library commission's commitment and its representation here tonight that going forward, it would incorporate the speakers summary in the body of the minutes to

commissioner studley is on her way and will be here. commissioner liu? >> here. >> commissioner renne? >> here. >> commissioner hayon? >> here. >> the first item on the agenda is public comment. appearing or not appearing on the agenda which is within the jurisdiction of the san francisco ethics commission. >>> hi, my name is charles grishom. my concerns are regarding dennis j. herrera and the records i have requested from his office or so my communications that i had made to this commission and the response i received saying the commission would take no further action on it. and i was not fully heard and i was wondering if i could address that with the commission. so, my concern -- my request of dennis herrera's office was for for several things, but -- in fact, i can put it up here if you want or i can try to keep this really brief. the bottom line of my concern is that his statement of economic interests for many years are not legible and that when i made my request, and this is subsequent to the time that i received e-mails from ms. argumeda saying t

. >> commissioner studley? >> i don't have any questions. i am prepared to speak to the issue when you are ready. >> okay. >> mr. hartz i have a question for you, assuming that a speaker says something during public comment, submits a summary that is radically different from the statement that they gave but submitted it as part of the summary. would it in your mind be satisfacotry to submit it? >> a summary is not the same words that were spoken, it is your interpretation of the words you spoke. and radically different is a very subjective term it is not an objective term. so, yes, if it was radically different, they could raise that argument. not once in 3 years, they have attempted to either say my statements or anyone elses were more than 150 words or that they varied from what we actually said. so yes, it may be a hypothetical question but it is a hypothetical question that has never come up and i am not sure why it is coming up now. >> it is coming up in my mind because in some ways, summary in the or at the time that the statement is m

commissioner studley is on her way and will be here. commissioner liu? >> here. >> commissioner renne? >> here. >> commissioner hayon? >> here. >> the first item on the agenda is public comment. appearing or not appearing on the agenda which is within the jurisdiction of the san francisco ethics commission. >>> hi, my name is charles grishom. my concerns are

but, i mean commissioner studley is right, they did refer this and did refer buell and gong to us for simple failure to comply with the order. >> mr. pilpal do you have something to help us through this? >> looking at the december 5th transmitter there was a finding of willful violation, the language is not as precise as it could be in regards to ginsberg and ballard, but a failure to comply with the order and presumably a violation. and i would also note on the page 5, 1 a, 1 a and d make some distinction between willful and non-willful violation and later on in your determination, that distinction is lost. so, i think that you could further delineate between miss ballard and miss gong. and mr. buell on this. >> okay. well, in my view, i would think that my view is that miss gong's failure to comply was willful, it certainly would be non-willful as well. it would still be a violation in my view. with, mr. buell, i don't frankly don't see the violation, it appears to me that he searched and did not find the documents and i don't find the deleting of the documents that he had to be pro

. >> commissioner studley? >> here. >> khi, liu. >> here. >> commissioner hayon is sick and not able to attend. >> as a result, we are going to defer item number five, we think that it is better to have the full commission here for the election of the chair and vice chair. the first item on the agenda is public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda that are in the jurisdiction of the ethics commission. >> the next item on the agenda is discuss... i am sorry. >> good afternoon, i'm peter war field director executive director of la bore users and if you could identify the agenda with respect to the public comment. you have under item three and four, a number of items subitems, so i wanted to ask what your ground rules would be for public comment. is there three minutes for each item, for example, 3, a, 3 b, or is it some other rule that you should in mind? >> and we will open that up for views from my fellow commissioners. my thought was that we would take public comment after each subitem.

certainly somebody that has red flags that wins an election, you know, the point that vice-chair studley made, we would hop on those right away. >> okay, right. >> but if it's somebody that came in ninth, it's not as urgent depending on what the staff's priorities are. >> okay, thank you for the clarification. >> we do assess the level of public harm when we make those determinations. >> and what happens if you get a public or somebody who is -- claims that there's been a violation? does that get focused on immediately? >> those are -- normally would be treated as a staff initiated complaint. and again, assess the level of public harm and that would give us sort of the level of urgency that the staff would pursue it. the investigation staff is allegation weighing their caseload of what they're doing and what maybe should be prioritized and those priorities do shift occasionally based on, you know, what we determine is the best public interest. >> public comment? >> we just have to do the drawing. >> let's dot drawing of the 7. >> the way we normally select the committees for audit is tha

i think that i agree very strongly with the commissioner studley's suggestion that we catalog these for further discussion between the commission and the task force and the city attorney's office and the various departments if we are going to require all e-mails and all paper records to be retained forever, that seems on its face to be unworkable. if we are going to allow some people to exercise discretion about what to keep and what, not, we need to have strong standards and meaningful mechanisms and i am not sure if the language of our laws now cover the record retention policies in the ways that they could. i think that as computing takes over more of how records are kept, whether something is on a server, in the cloud, hosted by somebody else, or elsewhere? these are all very difficult questions and i don't have all of those answers right now. i don't know that any of us do. but i think that these are things to be thinking about. i think at a very practical level where there is a question about a record being kept or discarded, if it is about a public issue for which there has been

commissioner studley is on her way and will be here. commissioner liu? >> here. >> commissioner renne? >> here. >> commissioner hayon? >> here. >> the first item on the agenda is public comment. appearing or not appearing on the agenda which is within the jurisdiction of the san francisco ethics commission. >>> hi, my name is charles grishom. my concerns are regarding dennis j. herrera and the records i have requested from his office or so my communications that i had made to this commission and the response i received saying the commission would take no further action on it.