Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20180221

Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Im going to first start with a roll call, and commission [ roll call. ] and so everyone is present, and id like to congratulate commissioner lee. She has been reappointed to a full term by mayor farrell. Great to have you continuing to be with us. So let keal ae start with Public Comment on matte well start with Public Comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. Come up, maam. Good afternoon, commissioners. Thank you for serving our city. My name is ellen lee zhou. Thats ellen lee zhou. I represent Public Workers in seiu. I brought five Public Workers who experienced retaliation and skram nation to Ethics Commission between april 2017 to june 2017. We made initial interviews and provide a lot of reports and documents to Ethics Commission staff. I am here today to follow up with you to see if you in your discretion have started yet on the ethic commission. Our records and audio recording are missing. We have six people did the intake interview in recent days. Many of the members of seiu testified before the Ethics Commission, august 2016, september 2016, december 2016, september 2017. I myself also came to you to speak to the Ethics Commission in october 2017, november 2017, january 2018 about extortion, bribery, retaliation, discrimination and ongoing harassments. The last contact we had with the employee who contact us the eeo department and whistle blower department refused to take action. We were told our records will only be released only by court order, but now our records are missing from the Ethics Commission department. As some of you remember, the District Attorney and fbi has been investigating bribery and extortion for many, many years, and many of us, the Public Service workers stood up and worked with the fbi and agent management staff. We will told we will not be retaliated, but some of us who spoke up going through retaliation, bullying, discrimination since reporting those problems, many of those people are asian, Chinese People and people with limited english skills and people of color. Some of the hr and dhr leaders instead of working on the problems to improve our hr, they have said theyre going to do better policy, but yet, nothing happens. They turnaround on those who took the courage, like me. I stood up for the members because im a Bargaining Team members and union team steward. They make the people who report the problem into problem employees. We are victimized by court staff, and thats not ethical. Ethics commission was setup to address corruption, and we set this department up to help people to have eeo, equal opportunity employment. So im here today, please. Investigate the complaints that have been filed with the Ethics Commission. Maybe you can help tell us what to do, and how can we hold those people, the Public Workers, who violate the law, accountable . Tell us, the residents who pay the taxpayers who pay the tax and who are residents and who are workers that we standup to fight for corruption. You guys are important to fight for corruption. I make a commitment. I will be here every month until you guys do something about corruption. It is not acceptable. You are here, appointed by the public. We want investigation. Tell us what to do when Ethics Commission supposed to be ethically keeping our records, but now, our audio record is gone, our written record is gone, our Public Record is gone, and the eohr refused to put out our record, even for release. You guys are judges before, and you guys are lawyers before, and you are appointed for public. Tell us. I have hundreds of people stood up and came out and spoke to you in recent days, many years. Please help us. Teach me what to do. Lead me what to do so the public can be protected by people who extort the employees and those are repeated cycles, and you know that. It happens in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today is 2018. If the hr people refused, then he they should not be at their job. Do something else. Let somebody who is able to do the job and stop corruption. Thank you. Miss pelham, last time when the lady was here, we had a question about the assertion that we had lost their records. Have we resolved that . Have we found the records . Did we ever have the records . Whats the story on that . Weve done a diligent research, and we dont have records of any of the individuals that miz zhou identified of who filed a complaint, except for one, who filed a complaint on her own. I would like to call weve asks miss zhou to come to our office again and talk to us, and id like to call on her again to have those five individuals who have filed complaints to our office. We know theyve come once, but were sorry. Mr. Pierce, who is handling her case, will talk to her after this today, to get more information about those five individuals, so we can follow up with them. Names, contact information; anything else would be helpful. Is there any indication that you received any records that are now able to be found or available to you . No. Every physical record no, im sorry. Im just asking okay. Those conversations happened in a closed door meeting with another investigator whos no longer with the commission, so the only witness would be miss zhou. So if she says there were reports that were nhanded over and recordings that have been made, i would assume theyre in the file. So does she know about what happened with regards to that former employee, and any difficulty in talking to that former employee or getting information from that former employee . Yes. Can i ask, what i think what you want to do is mr. Pierce is over there, and if you like i understand that. Hang on. I havent finished. I would suggest that you go talk with mr. Pierce right now. Hes available. The two of you can go outside, have a full discussion about it, and then, if youre not satisfied by that, come on back in, and then, at the end of our meeting, well talk more about our staff people. But in the first instance, why dont you you have a discussion with mr. Pierce, okay . Theres nothing we can do about missing files . Im sorry . Youre telling me theres nothing we can do about missing files . No, im not. There may be a lot we can do. Okay. Happy new year. Talk to mr. Pierce. Yeah. I have a question. Did you keep copies of the documents . I keep all official records except the audio. Wait. Did you keep copies . Yes. Well, whats the problem, then . Bring the copies with you. But the problem is theyre missing some things. Shouldnt they be held accountable because the employee is missing, thats the problem. I dont understand. Mr. Pierce, if you will. Im sorry. Im sorry. We are dealing with corruption in here. We have an employee who is missing from the department and lost everything that we have. That is the department problem, on purpose, cause we were told you may be right on that, but were going to try and sort that out now with mr. Pierce. Okay. All right. At some point, when you start dealing with the Ethics Commission, you move from a petition for the redress of governmental griefances to they arent going to do a dam thing, so all i can do is document the fact, and this seems to be another case of it. You say oh, well, one of our former employees left, and everything is gone. Oh, what a miracle. Basically, the law says youre supposed to have those documents, and blaming it on some document thats no longer here is really a b. S. Excuse. The city grand jury of the city and county of San Francisco for 20102011 issued a report entitled the San Francisco Ethics Commission, the sleeping watchdog. The report includes the following because of the Ethics Commission lack of enforcement, no City Employee has did not disciplined for failing to adhere to the sunshine ordinance. The commission has allowed some City Employees to ignore the rules of the Sunshine Ordinance Task force. Because of the lack of enforcement, no City Employee has been disploined for failing to adhere to the sunshine ordinance. Not once, ever. The commission has allowed some city officials to allow the rulings of the Sunshine Ordinance Task force, and here are the three dozen orders i have personally, so i know where of i speak. As the civil grand jury reported in 2010, so it is now, and so it shall continue. These three dozen orders of determination i personally have, and a number of them have been sent here, most of them dismissed without a hearing, and those that did have a hearing were held on the most bizarre circumstances, and done in ways that no reasonable person would think they were fair hearings. None of these has been enforced, as that is your responsibility, and you simply refuse to do it. You refuse to follow the law because the Ethics Commissioner is on this list, including commissioner kopp, who is deciding he is going to abuse his public power by interrupting me, and commissioner keane aiding and abetting him by letting him do it. Why would you want to bite the hand that feeds you . The people on this list are the people that hurt you. Anybody who approaches you with a reasonable expectation that youre going to do a darn thing to bring ethics to this city should look at the history. The history shows you never have done a thing. Good afternoon, commissioners. I just wanted to acknowledge that this is our second anniversary for our executive director whos been working so hard, as we all know to craft an organization unlike anything this city has seen. That doesnt say its perfect, but i think shes on her way, and i did want to thank her for her hard work catching up and doing such superlative work. Thank you. Any further Public Comment . If not, then, well move onto item 3, which is discussion and possible action on the draft minutes for the commissions january 19th, 2018 regular meeting. Commission, is there any discussion on that . I move that we adopt and accept the minutes. Second. And a motion thats been seconded. All those in favor, say aye. Opposed . Public comment. Oh, im sorry. Public comment. Commissioners, and members of the public, these minutes are the official Public Record of the proceedings of this body. Unfortunately, they give a very slanted view of what goes on in the San Francisco Ethics Commission. The minions of the Ethics Commission put in for the most part what the officials want in the official record and exclude anything they dont. If you praise them, the very best of that will appear. If you are critical, however, that just doesnt make the cut. So what you get is these minutes in these minutes is a completely skewed presentation of what thoese commissioners do and whether or not it has any effect whatsoever on the ethical conduct of governmental business. Ive dared you a number of times to come up with one example of anything this Ethics Commission has done in all these years that has made the city more ethical, that has caused our politicians and basically, everybody looks at it and goes pay for play. It just keeps getting worse and worse, and you can do all the song and dance about 40u67 better it is now than it was, but thats a bunch of b. S. Thats all it is. These commissioners wholly confuse discussion with meaningful result. Ive been coming here for years, and i say these things to your face, and the only thing i ever get is reactions, and theyre usually just ones that expose how corrupt most of you are. Youre lawyers. You know what the law is, and yet, youll let one of your members interrupt a member of the trouble in their Public Comment and give it a blessing, and say nothing about it. You all took an oath of office to support and defend the constitution, but unlike you, when i took that oath several times, primarily the one that i took when i joined the United States navy, i meant it, which is why i come back month after month to point out the fact that i see nothing in your behavior that shows that you mean it; that you intend to follow your oath of office, and the worst thing about it is you all have law degrees, and you all come out and do this, im a former superior court judge, im a former dean of a law school. What good does it do to the public if you dont do anything with the skills and abilities that you have. And again, give me an example of anything that youve done over the years to make this city more ethical. Yeah, didnt think so. My names ray hartz, and im the director of San Francisco open government. Members of the public may contact me at ffopengovernme ffopengovernmentbs comcast. Net. Thats ffopengovernmentbs comcast. Net. All right. The minutes i think we voted on it, did we didnt vote on the minutes. All those in favor say aye. Opposed . Minutes approved unanimously. Lets go now to item four, discussion and possible action on proposed anticorruption and attached documents, and mr. For the record is going to take us through it. Matt . Good afternoon, commissioners. Matt for the record, policy analyst. Agenda item four really encompasses two distinct components. Theyre combined here in this agenda item for reasons that i will explain, but i will kind of tee these up for you as two items. So the first is the anticorruption and accountablity ordinance that you approved at the november meeting; however, this has an attachment that is a version with some of the staffs recommended amendments, and i will go through those amendments shortly. The second item is a proposal that was recently put forward by supervisor peskin. This involves Financial Disclosures by major donors, and this this has been proposed to be potentially amended into the the ordinance, and we have mr. Hepner of supervisor peskins staff to speak on that item shortly. So the acao, anticorruption and accountablity ordinance you had approved in november , this was sent to the board of supervisors for them to engage in their process, and ideally, for them to pass this into law to send it to the mayor for his signature. Part of the reason or you reason you took this action was you wanted the board of supervisors to engage on some of the more controversial aspects of this piece of legislation. Commissioner lee in particular was concerned about that. I can report back and say over the last three weeks staff has been engaged with the budget and finance committee, as well as supervisors peskin and tang who are not Committee Members but have taken a lot of effort to engage the ordinance and really provide a lot of thoughtful feedback, and were appreciative to both of them and the members of the budget and finance committee for that. Staff has also worked with commissioners chiu and renne to kind of preview some of this feedback to them and also try and formulate specific amendments to the ordinance, and a lot of that is reflected in the draft thats before you today. Staff believes that these amendments in attachment one are fair compromises that address some very salary i had concerns that the boahad valid provisions that the board has raised. So just to give you a little procedural background so this ordinance has been heard twice now thank you budget and finance committee, first on february the 1st, and then, yesterday, again on the 15th. We also met separately with supervisors tang, peskin, and mr mr. Hepner of supervisor peskins staff. What the current status of the ordinance is at the board, yesterday, the file was duplicated, so there are now two files that are pending before the budget and finance committee. The first one is being called the ethics version, and thats essentially what is attached here as attachment one. Thats the version you approved in november with the amendment. The other version, which is being called the Committee Version, has certain amendmented that were proposed by supervisors peskin and tang. Some of those overlap with staffs proposed amendments, some are the same. Some are different, and they go further, and we can go over that, but not in this presentation. And then, also, the Committee Version of the acao does have supervisor peskins major donor Financial Disclosures piece. That has been amended into the Committee Version of the acao. So before i go through the changes that are in the new staffs recommended amended version, ill just mention that our recommendation due today is to accept this amended version, to vote to approve those changes, and additionally, to vote to place this item on the june 2018 ballot. You could also accept the changes and not vote to put it on the ballot and merely approve the amendment that the budget and finance committee made yesterday and basically adopt that version and then allow the board to continue through their process with that, but staff is recommending that you vote to place this on the ballot. So if i may, i will refer to the memo on this item, agenda item four, to walk you through the major changes. All right. Mr. For the record, fellow commissioners, i suggest following procedures. We have the ordinance itself, and we have the various amendments beginning at page two that we since weve adopted the ordinance, and now we have these proposed amendments, i would suggest that we start with each of the amendments. First, the amendment thats listed at section 2 a , discuss that, and vote as to whether or not we want to approve the amendment or not approve the amendment, and then go onto the next of the amendments oh, yeah. Well have Public Comment, because i think we have to vote separately on each one of these one of these amendments. Im getting a series of ambiguous head motions from people in front of me. Thank you, chair. We were just clarifying if the Commission Takes the approach, there will, of course, be Public Comment on every item the board chooses to act on individually, although i think its the consensus at this able that the commission is not to take oh, yeah. Id just like i was actually just saying to the executive director, sorry to disturb your explanation, but i actually agreed with your approach, chair keane. And that we need Public Comment on the yeah, i think we do, before we vote on each one of them. And then, after weve done that and dealt with the ordinance itself, we then take up supervisor peskins matter. Thats my suggestion. I agree. Members. Thats fine. I just want to suggest that the Public Comment be limited to the subject matter of the specific section were dealing with, and not a general statement about the approach. Boy, are you an optimist. Ill go along with that. I think under rules i totally agree with you. I totally agree with you, until we get into the practicalities of what happens during Public Comment, you know, in our group. Commissioners, so is that the way is that okay that well proceed. Yeah. So pat, why dont you go ahead and address and take us through the first of the amendments at page 2 a , and well discuss that, and then, well take Public Comment and vote on it, okay . Great. Okay. So the First Amendment is to section 1. 114. 5. In the november draft that you voted on, this would have required that for any contribution of 100 or more, that the committee receiving the contribution collect a signed contributor card from the contributor that would essentially attest that the contribution does not violate certain provisions of cfro. So we heard from the budget and finance committee, particularly from supervisor peskin, same anxiety that this requirement would actually suppress small dollar donors, that people that were making small contributions would perhaps not do so if this requirement were placed upon them. So in response, the amendment in this version would make the contributor card not compulsor re. Compulsory. However, it would hold that if they did sign the contributor card, that that would not violate cfro. But now, this would be voluntary, so the committee can choose whether or not on an ad hoc basis to collect the krrdor card. Question. Commissioner kopp . Through the chair, do you know of any other jurisdiction that requires a contribution card . I dont know of one that hassa compulsory contributor card requirement. Many jurisdictions use it, but im not sure use it what . Voluntary or compulsory . Yeah. They make one for use, but do not require it. So its voluntary in other jurisdictions. I believe so. Okay. Thank you. So if there arent any questions, i will have you finished addressing that amendment . Yes. That is exhaustive of 2 a . 2 a , you have . On the memo, which is section 1. 114. 5, the contributor card requirement. I am before we get to further discussion of it, i want to thank commissioner renne and commissioner chiu for last week when i was gone, and the week before, a number of meetings were scheduled with supervisor peskin and other people relating to these matters, and commissioner renne and commissioner chiu did a lot of work attending those meetings and dealing with the questions and the discussions, so i want to thank you both very much for that. But i want to thank you for the compliments, but it was the staff who did the work. I was present, but the work was done by the staff. Likewise. You still werent struggling to deal with the beach and kauai as i was, so to that extent, i thank you. All right. So commissioners, why dont we get your thoughts, then, on the amendments that mr. For the record has ju record mr. Ford has just addressed. I would move that we would adopt the amend. I second. Theres a motion and its been seconded. Commissioners, any further comment or discussion before we go to Public Comment and vote . I mean, i i thought i think there was merit in supervisor peskins belief that the swearing that was necessary, that the contributor that if i were a 150 donor, and i was asked to sign a card swearing that i havent violated sections of the cpro, which i might i have no idea what they are, i might say to heck with it. So i think it makes sense. Its a committee who has the benefit of getting [ inaudible ] and if he wants to run the risk without them, thats his decision. So let me comment. I dont think its a burden, but i dont know. Unless its been used somewhere where theres information as to whether it constitutes a burden, and i would ask through the chair that not today, of course, but the staff specifically investigate other jurisdictions which might have such a provision. Thank you. Okay. We can get that information from the star ff at a later meeting. All right. Well take Public Comment now on the amendment. Good afternoon, commissioners. Lee hepner from supervisor peskins staff. I was actually hoping to back up a moment and provide a little bit of a more more generally from the board of supervisors, if thats okay. I mean, i can certainly limit my comments no, go ahead, whatever you want to say. Wonderful, so commissioner president keane, welcome back. I wanted to start off by thanking you all for agendaizing this once again. Youve been considering this for well over a year, and ive been engaged in some of that, and supervisor peskin has certainly been engaged in a lot of that. This really is coming at an essential time in San Francisco. We believe in this accountablity ordinance and working together on this. Before addressing, though, staffs specific recommendations, i wanted to kind of at a very high level address the process as supervisor peskin sees it relative to the Ethics Commissions own deliberations, and you know as has already been stated, weve convened several meetings over the past month to go over these amendments, and i just want to appreciate staff and the commissioners and actually stakeholders on every side of this issue for attending those. So supervisors supervisor peskins office, as weve expressed in those meeting, is committed to getting this done right and getting it done fast. Weve held two lengthy Committee Meeting in the past two weeks, proposed several amendments, many of which are before you in your packet today, some of which are not. On a procedural note, though, at the end of the day, because of this commissions charter authority, whatever the board did yesterday is not before you today. In a sense, we were kind of in a vacuum operating in our own silo yesterday, and im not sure of the measure this staff was able to incorporate what happened at committee yesterday for the commissions hearings today. Simile, the budget and finance committee the next time it meets will be bound by whatever this commission does today, you as your independent legislative body can and cannot do with this tile, and there in lies a little bit of the absurdity in the process right now. Because while this should be an iterative process, it seems as if were considering amendments to clarify and to in fact indeed strengthen this ordinance in our respective corners and not really having the productive and procedurally clear dialogue that is necessary for this to pass effectively. So yesterday at the bhoord, supervisor peskin expressed a desire to put forth a joint commission between the board of supervisors and this commission, and it was the best and elegant means of conversation between these two bodies and producing an anticorruption and accountablity ordinance that wo works and is implemented as quickly as possible. Yesterday, we did introduce an amendment that would have deleted the date of january 1, 2019. In the interest of instituting a lot of these forms before the november election. We are in a historical election cycle in june. We should certainly be able to get these amendments implemented before november. Now is the time to be implementing this immediately, so i understand that this does pose an implementation hurdle for staff, and to that end, supervisor peskin, has hinted that if we go down this path, to give the to give the Ethics Commission all of the resources that it needs in order to achieve that implementation, and certainly relative to the prohibited activity in this accountablity ordinance, some of this can be implemented immediately without any back end function on the part of ethics staff. Certainly, i understand how a disclosure requirement may require the developing of a new form, and Electronic Filing process, and thats a bit of a labor intensive process. But as to a prohibition and what comes to mind is the prohibition on contributions by folks with land use matters pending before the board of supervisors or another commission, that prohibition can be implemented immediately. It creates an enforcement issue and notice issue that would be given to the public. So im happy to dive into more of these each of these, actually, amendments one by one relative to the one that was just raised. I dont know if this body wants me to address that. Im here all day to answer any questions that you have of of supervisor peskin and our offices perspective on this. And additionally, to present in more detail the major donor disclosures piece and the realtime disclosure in television and advertisements that i think is something that we could implement in april of this year, if things move quickly. Commissioner chiu . Yes. Thank you, chair keane. Lee, thank you for coming. As i understanding from what you just said, supervisor peskin would like to engage in further dialogue with the Ethics Commission to advise and amend the ordinance. A couple questions. One, would that also include his proposal on the major donors piece . So procedurally, what is taking place with the major donors disclosure piece, we did introduce a standalone piece tuesday to the board of supervisors. Weve been advised by our City Attorney that that in fact would have to come to this Ethics Commission. It would sit for an independent 30day hold and then elicit your feedback back to the board of supervisors. Because that is just going to take a lot of time, weve also recommended that this body amend the major donor disclosures piece into this accountablity ordinance, consider it simultaneously in the context of all these forms that are in the same spirit, and that yes, that be in the conversation between the Ethics Commission and the board of supervisors in the context of this accountability ordinance, or if this Commission Sees fits, in its communicate with the board of supervisors in its itreative process. Could pass this piece out independently and have it approved independent of the broader accountability ordinance while we address the more detailed and granular parts. Our goal is to get this process passed immediately and implemented as soon as possible. And with regards to the Ethics Commission, the ethics version of the ordinance, what is the expectation or the hope on the board i dont know if you can speak for supervisor peskin or your general sense of what the board or committee is thinking in regards to a timeline to wrap that up and presumableably approve such an ordinance . As to a timeline, i think thats the Real Advantage of this proposal, to convene a joint board of supervisors and Ethics Commission meeting, because that will cut out what were currently face with, the board of supervisors making a recommendation, and us taking it up at budget and finance. If there is any problems, it sends it back, and its just back and forth, back and forth, and that results in a delay. If this commission acts to send forward to the brs the accountability ordinance with staff recommendations today, there are a lot of the budget and finance Committee Supervisor peskin is not on that board. I cant really speak for what they would do, but that back and forth is going to take a lot of time, and certainly my hope is that should you choose to put this on the November Ballot and have that leverage over the board of supervisors to act on this legislation before the deadline to remove it from the November Ballot, my hope is the board of supervisors could act before then. My proposal is that we could act even quicker. Supervisor peskins joint proposal for that meeting would accomplish that issue. Thank you. Commissioner kopp, when would this joint meeting occur . Its a bit hypotheticalal right now. I think that we would need the support of supervisor peskins colleagues in order to initiate that meeting. All right. So you dont know. I would hope by the first week of march. All right. Secondly, last month, supervisor peskin told me that he recommended that this be on the November Ballot. Has he changed his mind . I think the logic to putting it on the i agree, i agree, so i infer he changed his mind. Im not sure what his mind was in the first place. Well, he wanted it on in december okay. I mean, november , and so as a good soldier, i said alreal right. Thats fine with me. Okay. Thanks, mr. Chairman. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioners . Okay. Thank you, mr. Hepner. Thank you. We have any Public Comment . Chair keane, members of the commission, im larry bush for friends of ethics. We have a comment to make the amennt making the card voluntary puzzles us because this same card is required any time you make a contribution. If you go online and make a contribution to act blue, you have to certify that youre american citizens, your employer, your address, that this is your own funds. Its the same thing on any kind of candidate contribution fund, and why it suddenly becomes voluntary when the law makes it mandatory is something that i dont understand. Secondly, it fails to talk about prohibition of contributions to defeat a candidate. Its only about contributions to elect a candidate, and yet, we know its negative campaigning that draws the greatest amount of money. And finally in 1. 114. 5 b . It deals with independent contributions only when it is at the behest of election officials, and we know thats where the majority of money comes from. People do not need to be coached when theyre writing a check for 100,000 as to why theyre doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Chair, can i ask yes, commissioner chiu. Mr. Bush, i had a question. In these online contribution forms, are the donors swearing under penalty of perjury that theyre not violating other other Campaign Finance laws, to your knowledge . Theyre affirming it. I dont know if it includes a statement of perjury, but when i give it, i have to give it in writing. Mr. Bush, my understanding is the card i fill out when i give a political contribution has no language in which im making any affirmative recommendation, other than saying this is my name, this is my address, this is my employer. Most of them have a check mark. You check, and you put in the name of your employer. You check and say enthuthis is money. You check and say this is a u. S. Citizen. Yes. So this is all were talking about here. No, the form we proposed had a specific reference to certain sections of cpro, and that you had to swear that you hadnt violated, and i that was the concern that was voiced by supervisor peskin was was there an option then to just strip out the references to cpro and just say that youve affirmed it, rather than making the whole thing voluntary . That would seem to me an option. Im bob planthold. As a former Ethics Commissioner, im often concerned with process and making sure that whatever you folks decide doesnt encounter some follow ups, so i want to bring to attention something that may be a problem. In looking over the staff memo on page two, it talks of the in addition to the members of the committee, the hearing was attended by well, supervisor cohen is chair of that committee but was not present yesterday during any part of the hearing, nor was any staffer present indicating any intent to speak. It may seem minor, but i want you to understand that even those details, you know, she was not there. So from that, i started to look at the statements that comments were made by supervisors peskin and tang. On page seven, youve got a heading that says proposal by supervisor peskin, major donor financial disclosure. During the hearing, supervisor tang made some oral statements of amendments she was proposing. I dont see anything in here specific to those. I dont know whether theyve been formally incorporated into the memo or into the text. After the end of the hearing, i went to the office of supervisor tang and asked staff to print out copies. They said there was no text on those amendments, that it was just general outline. So i asked could i have it by 5 00 p. M. Yesterday or at the latest by 10 00 a. M. Today. I got nothing, not even by 1 00 p. M. , so from this, i cannot tell that supervisor tangs amendments are part of this packet, and what im suggesting if you start to pass something today that may lack her formal significant amendments, could that be a term later on in terms of what the budget and finance committee wants in terms of the expectations of the board. Again, if its in here, its not clear. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to note that a part of your remarks had to do with an analysis of the supervisor peskins major donor thing. What id like to do and what was suggested and what the commissione commissioners agreed to is we leave anything related to supervisor peskins proposal separate and get to that later after we discuss the amendments. I understand how you link them in terms of the procedure. Theres nothing about supervisor tang. That was my concern. I understand, but if we can, as supervisor renne patted out, in our remarks relating to the particular amendments, lets focus in on those amendments as we talk about them. Commissioners, so the amendments by supervisor tang are not incorporated into this draft. This is the version that has staffs recommended amendments. Right. And thats part of the duplicated file process, so this is part of the duplicated file. The version with supervisor tangs amendments in it are not before you, so thats the distinction there. And then, also the explanation of what happened in the hearing, that was the first hearing with regard to the budget and finance on february 1st. Supervisor cohen was there. What were talking about there in regard to these amendments have nothing to do with the discussions at the supervisors meetings. That in terms of what weve got, weve got our original ordinance, and weve got the staff recommendation as a proposed amendment, and were looking at those. They may have certain similarities relating to what the supervisors have been discussing, but those are really extraneous to whats on the floor, as i see it, unless someone wants to correct me. No, thats correct. Staffs recommended feedback are based on what we got from the supervisor. The actual version is in the committee, but thats not before you. What weve got is attachment three, the board of supervisors version Committee Version. Attachment three to this agenda item . Yes. Theres a document that says sorry. Yes. Attachment three are the comments and proposed amendment by supervisor peskin. Is it just its not the a proposed amendments that were the subject matter of yesterdays meeting . No. Okay. Apparently not, because as was discussed by supervisor peskins aide, it was just done yesterday, and we really didnt havent gotten the benefit of that. Well, thats what i wasnt clear on, when i saw where it says board of supervisors. Right. And also just to clarify, this memo came out on wednesday, and the second hearing at budget and finance was thursday, yesterday. Okay. Fine. Were trying to orally fill you in on whats happened since this memo came out. Okay. Moving target. Okay. Further Public Comment. Ray hartz, San Francisco open government. Before i comment specifically on this point, id like to raise a question as to whether mr. Hepner is appearing here as a Public Citizen making Public Comment or a representative of the board of supervisors, in particular, aaron peskin. He cant have it both ways. The public needs to have an understanding of what he is saying in his official capacity as an aide to his supervisor or whether he is including his own personal public feelings about this matter. And i sincerely hope that this before you and youve really thrown some confusion into it, it doesnt include anything that happened at the meeting yesterday, because then youre in a Public Notice quandary because you didnt send out anything, and ill be honest with you, i at this point have serious questions right now issues are being raised that were discussed yesterday, and the public was given a representation that none of this wouldnt have been there, and you said that it isnt, but now, its being talked about. So you cant have it both ways. Either it includes something from yesterday or it doesnt. Either hes speaking as a representative of the board of supervisors, in particular, aaron peskin, or whether hes speaking as a Public Citizen, and his Public Comment should not be during Public Comment unless theyre his personal Public Comment. Now as far as the actual agenda item, i agree with commissioner keane, telling them that i have to sign this form that im not violating cpro, as 99. 99 of the citizens in this city wouldnt have an idea if that was the case or not. They wouldnt have the faintest idea because they wouldnt know what those things were. So to put that on them before making a political contribution that theyre in violation of some law theyre not even familiar with is the ultimate absurdity. And the reality is, the only thing this will do if you require people to certify assist turn this public contribution issue into the same thing we have approximate publapproximate with Public Finance of elections is only the big people with money can afford to go into the paperwork garbage that you force them to put in, and the only people that seem to get caught in the machinery are the small candidates who get small donations and a few hundred people who sign them to get to run for office, and thousand they get a fine because they cant find all the points of the law. This i agree with aaron peskin, it makes no sense to make this mandatory, but it makes no sense to do it if its not. [ please stand by ] of my money. If you ask me me to look up th law and determine if i am, thats going to show my contribution. So either put a threshold in or make it voluntary on the committee. As we get to each point of Public Comment on it, if you want to publicly comment on it and give your opinions on it. Well be happy to hear it. I dont think we can have this continued colloquy in regards im not blaming you for anything. I think its our fault. We got into it with you. When we get to the last part of this, which is supervisor peskins proposal, at that time, we would like to hear quite a bit from you. Okay . But until then, as we go through each of these amendments, dont keep coming up, unless theres a question. Im not faulting you for anything. Youre very helpful, but its better so we can get through these particular amendments if we all address it, the public addresses it, each one of those amendments, and you address it and give your opinion on these amendments as well. Otherwise, what youve done so far, youve been terrific. And i want to thank you for it. Now well go to mr. Marcella. I would draw you back, again, where we started with mr. Bush. He made very salient comments for amendments to 1. 114. 5a as well as section 1. 114 in general and 1145b to simplify the process, making it blue to avoid some of the pitfalls in legislative attempts in the past where weve had, for instance, people filing a complaint take a sheet and check what violation of the laws, chapters and verse, they were citing in their complaint. People were clueless. The other thing that happened was that we passed a bill, a Charter Amendment in 2001 that did, in fact, say, any advocacy by the City Attorney is prohibited on the year in which hes on the ballot, whatever the provision was. It was on the modification of the election law in setting up the elections commission. So you have to added add