Transcripts For SFGTV Ethics Commission 20240712

This meeting will reflect that due to covid19, Health Emergency and to protect Commission Members to the employees and the public, the meeting rooms at city hall are closed. However, Commission Members and staff will be participating in todays meeting remotely. This pursuant to the various local, state and federal orders declaration and directives. Commissioner members will attend the meeting through Video Conference and participate in a meeting to the same extent if they were physically present. Viewing today and todays Commission Meeting may vary depending on the method used to connect to this remote meeting. Viewers watching, will see only the speaker on their screen while those viewing in web ex will see commissioners and other individuals participating in todays meeting. Public made will be on each item this agenda. You will have sf gov. Org are streaming the dialin number for Public Comment across the screen. You can call in 14084189388. Again, that number is 408 4189388. The access code for this meeting is 1469350205. The access is 1469350205. Followed by the pound sign. And then press pound again to join as an attend. You will hear a beep and you will be muted and in listening mode only. Dial star 3 to raise your hand to be added to the public line and um hear you have raised your hand to ask a question. Wait until the host calls upon you. The line will be silent as you wait your turn to speak. To ensure you are in a quiet location, before you speak make the sound of any criminal around you that is important that you make your computer if you are watching via the westbound link to pre vend feedback and echo when you speak. When this system message says your line has been unmuted, this is your turn to speak. You will hear staff say welcome caller. You are encouraged to state your name clearly. As soon as you begin to speak, you will have three minutes to provide your Public Comments six minutes if you are on line with an interpreter, you will hear a bell go off. If you change your mind and wish to withdraw yourself from Public Comment line press star 3 again. You will hear the system say you will have lowered your hand. When your three minutes has expired, staff will thank you and mute you. You will hear your line has been muted. Those who wish to speak during other Public Comment periods may stay on the line and listen for the next Public Comment opportunity and should raise their hands to enter Public Comment line by pressing star 3 when their next item comes up. Public comment may also be submitted in writing and shared with the commission, after this meeting has concluded. And included as part of this special meeting file. Written comments should be sent toll ethics. Commission sf gov. Org. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, moderator. I just on that last point, it will be made available to the commissioners prior to the meeting. The point he was making is that if subject comes up that you want to submit additional written comments on during the course of the meeting, that information will also be provided to all the commissioners. With that, i have my trustee u. S. Supreme court souvenir gavel and im going to call the meeting to order. Now, moderator, if you would proceed with item 1, the commission roll call. Please unmute your microphone so you can verbally 2002. The staff has been very, very hard at work and. As a public employee, everyone is required to serve as a Disaster Service worker if called upon during an emergency and some 20 to 25 of that is Commission Staff has been called to the Emergency Operations center to serve in a whole variety of capacity but im sure they and we never anticipated start this meeting in honor of all their service because its a trying time and im prout of the work that theyve been able to do. I came on after she taken the responsibility of chair and for my viewpoint, it was a very substantive, productive time on the part of the commission. 14,2 ther14,2there was accountay perspective that made its way through the commission and the board prior to my arrival but then of course, there was the implementation and regulations for ha important piece of legislation and follow on to that there was a major review and update of the the Public Finance campaign program. K. And try and work through a backlog and i will look to you for guidance and help as we go forward. This is still a lot of important work to do but i appreciate everything that the commission has accomplished to date and i also want to recognize commissioner gray who was with us for too short a time. He had to resign in february because he cant wear two hats with the city and county of San Francisco. He was appointed by the new charged of the Investigations Bureau and a really important policy initiatives on part of the District Attorney and im hoping given his relationship with the Ethics Commission that will strengthen the relationship between the District Attorney and the Ethics Commission as we move forward on various enforcement matters. He was replacing commissioner gray as their appointee. I will add that truly larry bush needs no introduction because he is the founder, really, one of the original charter drafters for the creation dating back to the mid90s when he was in mayor angos senior staff and since that time, he has been a fierce that time, he has been a fierce he was the founder of the friends of ethics. I think i saw in the notes in 2010 so thats a good decade of effort on the part of friends of ethics, to improve the situation here and were looking forward to having him bringing his expertise and his energy to the commission to address the many challenges that were all aware of here in San Francisco and in the country at large. So thank you very much commissioner bush for joining us. We appreciate it and look forward to working with you and with that, i want to get the meeting started. So, im going to call agenda item 2. Although, im looking at this and wondering if no, ok. Public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. Members of the public, who are already on the line, and wish to speak, should now dial star 3, if you have not already done so, to be added to the Public Comment line and moderator, can you please proceed with Public Comment, including the directions for how best for the public to participate. Thank you, madam chair. The Ethics Commission is now receiving comment on agenda item number 2. Remotely in this meeting. Each member of the public will have up to three minutes to provide Public Comment. If you join the meeting early to listen to the proceedings, now is the time to get into the line to speak. If you have not already done so, please press star 3. Its important that you press star 3 only once to enter the cue as pressing it again will move you out of the Public Comment line and back into listening mode. When you are in the queue, and are standing by, the system will prompt you when its your turn to speak. So its important that you call from a quiet location. Please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members. Madam chair, were checking rit now to see if there are callers in the cue. Again, if you have just joined this meeting, were currently on agenda item number 2. Public comment on matters appearing or not appearing on the agenda. You will have throw minutes to r Public Comment and six minutes if you are on line with an interpreter. You will hear a bell go off when you have 30 seconds remaining. I see that we have one caller in line. Thank you. Hello. Welcome to the ethics Commission Meeting. You have throw minutes. You mathrow minutes. I just wt out to the new commissioner, larry bush. Ive known larry since 2013 when we served on the civil grand jury together on the Ethics Committee which was the meeting of the new director, when i served on the civil grand jury in 2015. Larry has been a good Friend Coalition for San Francisco neighborhoods throughout the years that ive been associated with him and before our government and elections meeting and we honored him two years ago at our annual dinner and we will hear him speak again this month. Congratulations. Thank you, caller. Next caller. Hello can you hear me. Yes. Welcome regard ago again da item number 2. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. My name is ali. I am failed to see theres been some movement, at least slightly, in the right direction, in San Francisco. What i do want to bring up to your attention is the following. We have been facing issues in the ethical and illegal inaudible in the city and county of San Francisco has been going on continuously in the same direction for the last 20 years as far as i can remember. I am one of the victims of this system. And i can tell you that there is no way, on this earth, that anybody can get a contract fair and square and if they do they will go after you for not playing the game. My humble request to you is the following i dont think any of you underestimate what were facing right now but somehow the city or the system or whatever wants to clean up this system, really needs to go after the contracts that have been executed. I just discovered a commissioner in the city and county of San Francisco that was the president of the commission of the San Francisco Public Utility Commission and later on he was a commissioner at this Civil Service commission who had a partnership in a Development Company with one of the primary vendors that worked for harling kelly and d. P. W. And among others, including San Francisco and others. How come this went undetected for years and years and years and no one raised an issue. Why does this vendor continue to get the work and win on every job they submit to. Theres something wrong here. Id love to get feedback from you. And find a way how to resolve this issue and thank you so much for your time and listening. Thank you, caller. Next caller, welcome caller. Good morning, commissioners, its mark sallow man calling from the north mission. I dont think can you do Public Comment by webex and channel 26 is not showing this commission so im not sure this meeting is compliant because you have to have a computer to do it. You want to look into that. Ive done a lot of activism in the city for the past 20 years and on a wide range of issues and i bumped into it qualitative but havent been able to kwan ta fie it but theyre kwan defying the texture of corruption and San Francisco through contracting and the board of supervisors has no idea what to do because their hip deep in the corruption. The City Attorneys clients engage in a crime spree and the City Attorney is investigating their clients crime spree. Is this ethical . I dont think so. This conflicts. The controller was supposed to be the responsible one in the room. How can that be ethical . We need to figure out a way to take this away from the Political Class and create a structure in the community that investigates and concert with the u. S. Attorney and how corruption is wired in San Francisco and device a charter reforms that insulate our government from this on going corruption spree through transparency and shared power. Were in the middle of a pandemic and this government is holy i am capable of delivering basic services to people to make us whole during a crisis and thats because every single god damn contract goes out to a favored nonprofit to do the Service Provision that are d. P. H. Should be doing itself. We have this privatization regime of Public Function being outsourced to private non profits and since were in a paytoplay environment the non profits are in paytoplay as well. There are no progresses here and moderates here, there are those who pay to play and get the gang and those from the game is kept away. The ball kept away and thats the majority of san france. So the commission is one of those who is positioned such that you have some independence and it can really go through and do the heavy lift to figure out how were being corrupts and how to defend against corruption structurally over the longterm. Thank you very much and im so glad that the commissioner, larry bush in place, go larry. Thank you. Thank you, caller. I just want to check the caller had said that we are not available to the public on sfgtv. Is there anyway to verify that we are in fact live and recording presently . Yes, we are live and recording on sf govtv, however, we are on channel 78 instead of channel 26. So, i want today share for the record that that was an error on our part. Ok. Good, im glad we clarified that for those on the computer there are two sfgtv channels you have to chose from when go to the live button. Make sure you check the channel 78 or i think its called sfgtv2 so that you i mean theres not much to look at, such a bunch of commissioners faces staring from their computers but its important you can hear and participate through that mode. Thank you. Are there any further callers. Madam chair, i see no further callers for this agenda item. Ill give them a few seconds. On the assumption that there are no further, im going to close Public Comment and call agenda item number 3. So, agenda item 3 is the discussion of the executive directors report and update of the various program attic and operational highlights of ethics Commission Staff, activities since the commissioners previous meeting including an update by the office of the controller on its june 29th, 2020 report on public corruption and just to be clear, we dont ordinarily take the executive directors report at beginning of the meeting but we are going to do that so she can bring the commission and the public uptodate on all the work that the Commission Staff has been doing while weve been in this covid19 hiatus. And i also want to point out, were going to have presentation from the executive director and then we have the representative from the Controllers Office to present the materials that they have re leased to the public concerning the public corruption investigations that are on going by the f. B. I. And by the city. We will have commissioner comment and questions after the executive director speaks and again after the controllers representative speaks and well open it up to Public Comment and so im hoping any members of the public you can keep tags on all the things you want to raise so that you can bring them up when we get to the end of this item 3. Thank you, very much. Thank you, good morning, commissioners, its very good to see you and we welcome you back to your business. And we welcome the public for joining us as well. This is an opportunity, as you mentioned, chair, to provide you with a brief about the commissioners activities over the last several months. At the top of the agenda. This is highlights since the commissions last meeting and it is an information item only so theres no action required on your part as always, we very much are interested in your feedback and comments and any questions and so, our virtual staff are also available to answer questions that you might have for us. It has, of course, as mentioned, been since february that our commission was last able to meet. And those five months, theres been more change than probably any of us could have imagined at the time. I also on behalf of the staff want to acknowledge former commissioner grays service. We also wish him well and look forward to seeing him at some point in our paths. I also want to echo chair ambrose welcome to commissioner bush. Commissioner bush is not a new face to the issues but were really looking forward to working with him and his new capacity as a Ethic Commission member. During the past five months since the Commission Last had the opportunity to meet, our daytoday operations has continued to be guided by a focus on advancing the best we can and the circumstances are core mission. On the goal of providing excellence in our service to the public. Those things have been challenges in ways we con have imagined five months ago and its a humbling time to be a Public Service and i do want to thank everybody across the city on behalf of our department, for the work that theyre doing on the front lines in support of those in the frontlines and the kind and compassionate to everybody who tried to do that work. There are so many pressing needs that i know everybody is familiar with and they have our gratitude and i know the commission extends its gratitude as well. I also want to thank those who have been particularly engage with our office and over filing dead lines. We can shifted our operations into a fully remote Work Environment and as chair ambrose mentioned, it will be for the for zoo able future. Lastly but not least, the commission, for each who have been supportive in your encouragement and responsiveness its been essential to us all and we really thank you for staying with us and moving forward in this new territory. Today, coupled with agenda item 4 on the budget, which we will move to after this item, there are significantment developments from the past five months to report that have been shaping how we do our daytoday business. For just some brief background and context, i was thinking back on the last five or so months, and theres a recap for our newest commissioner. There are several things from our february executive directors report that i wanted to just bring back into focus for a few moments. First we just welcomed our cohort fellows. This is a Competitive Program that pro voids recent grabs, who have a clear and Public Service commitment to make a contribution to City Departments and services and many of them have stayed in the city throughout asking to have a career in city service. Its been widely recognized as a really rich pipeline of diverse and talented candidates for professional positions throughout City Government and we were delighted to have the benefit of them this past spring. We did just learn yesterday from the department of human services, because of the Economic Impacts of covid19 the city has suspended the program for the coming year. The city has over 100 fellows that are still with the city who remain, continue to serve and are developing strategies for how we move forward in Public Service and i just want to take a moment to get this meeting. We did not have a chance but i want to acknowledge our San Francisco fellows, and samantha sam and sam and david and victoria dedicated their wednesday afternoons to our office through early april and on a project that helped us envision new outreach materials to broden awareness of the commissions work and what we were unable to introduce them to you personally they have continual on throughout the city the past year and i want to acknowledge them and the impact 6 our work. It has Lasting Impact with us on this wednesday afternoons. My february report also, want foundations of the city of ethics program, Financial Disclosure of interest by the economic interest i just reached a milestone before february meeting. By continuing to prioritize projects that provide the public with disclosed information in the most acceptable format possible, we were able to provide the public with a rich history of records of over 600 plus city officials from over sixyears whose records are fully available since the portal. It meant the public had new degree of transparency into searching and viewing across the filings, more than 20,000 reported financial interest that had been disclosed electronically and over 3600 filings by elected officials and Department Heads between 2014 and 2019. We also had just scheduled and were undertaking new inperson life in the information sessions established in contract between the city and the citys executive association that represents many in partnership with the City Attorney office we did sessions on february 20th and march 5th to support m. E. A. Members by refreshing their awareness of highlighting various resource and tools that help them promote compliance that apply to them. We were gearing up for our annual april first filing deadline for these statements from 2019 and those sessions again are designed to help the departmental staff who administered those programs and those file becomes thei filingso support electronic filers giving them information about how to file the tools and how to file and also highlight recent changes that answer questions that they might have about how the laws work in practice. At the time, our hiring plan was continuing and we were in the process of gearing up to do interviews for one of the positions on the investigative staff but we had four open positions that were still part of our hiring and plan open at that time. On january 28th, my report to you last meeting noted, the board of supervisors had just adopt aid motion to require the office to conduct a performance audit of the Ethics Commission as a priority in this fiscal year. It got underway in early february and the bla was designed to be out prior to the time of board of supervisors would have to be attorney its regular focus to the development of the fy21 budget hearings and as also reported that month, there have been on january 28th, as well, public announcement charges against former director of public works director nuru who resigned his position in early february. That has prompted our Department Like many others to assess whether and how any operations or laws need to be strengthened to reinforce Ethical Practices and to help restore the public stress. So in part, these unfolding events under scored a clear need to invest effectively in resources to support the highest standards of ethics and City Government and equip the public with information to hold us accountable. Our recommendations were part of the fy21 budget that we submitted on the last day we met on february 21st. Today, in many regards, were seeing a different world. Its a clear understatement. Its a different world. We have different patterns to our daily lives and a different economy. Some Critical Issues of governance are at the forefront. Theres been the Unprecedented Health crisis impacting all levels of government and the emergency proclamation and series of operations and City Government to make sure the city was in a position to respond. We are now delighted to be able toll have the technology that the city is offering to enable the commission to begin again to meet and resume its regular meetings through new technology. We appreciate sfgovtv and the department of technology for really working with us to understand this. We appreciate the patients as we work through these kinks and there may be technical glitches but were committed to staying visible and engaging as much as we can through this new platform. Obviously there have been new deeply constraining Economic Impacts that are tightening the resources that are available across the City Government and there was a new Budget Proposal that the departments, ill talk about it in just a moment and in our next item have had to submit to reflect the targeted cuts of 10 in fy21 growing to 15 . In the next fiscal year and how these developments will impact and shape our ability and our capacity to prioritize our programs and our operational needs. That will be discussed again more under item number 4. How are programs and services are shaping and delivered have also been impacted by challenges that we are confronting about how we are dealing with strong structure equity and creating systematic approaches for meaningful and lasting change in that regard. Systematic change, it also speaks clearly to some of the other issues related to the health of our governmental institutions. We are accountable to a broad public as we all know, there have been a number of developments in the past six months that is really calling out of focus and showing theres still a continuing crisis of concern that we are not being as accountable to the public as we should be. Last week in parallel with the City Attorney separate investigations, stemming from wrongdoing doing, they released the first report of findings and recommendations on policies and processes that they have identified to prevent fraud and violations of local law and were very happy that Mark Delarosa from the city kohlers Controllers Office will be with us to provide an overview of findings for information. Theres no action required but we want to make sure the commission is comprised of these developments and we really appreciate the Controllers Office being here today. So with this back drop, the mowly and and all ill be welcome any questions or comments that you might have for me. As i mentioned in february of the mayor on february 25th she issued a declaration of a local emergency and that was shortly after by the board of supervisors with a and it prompted our office to engage in an Emergency Operation planning. We started looking at the Emergency Operations communications, started monitoring what was going on and what we for saw ahead of the city and our office developed an on site Coverage Plan should we have an impact on our ability to have staff in the office Going Forward. By march 3 rd we identified a Electronic Submission process for certain forms that are routinely used, particularly campaign year, and are not yet in digital format so we can allow continuity of process and those filings should on site processing not be possible. On march 6th, the heath officer to the city and county declared a publicHealth Emergency. Groups, meetings in the city started being ro restricted over the next week or so and by marcf events of 1,000 were prohibited by publichealth order to slow the spread of covid in the community. On march 11th of the we received our first request to fulfill disaster Worker Service assignment. We canceled as developments continued to emerge. Our planned filing officer sessions to help people understand and be equipped to file their annual disclosure statements and by friday, march 13th, the Health Officer issued a revised health order with non essential of 100 or more. The city, anticipating the great need it had ahead financially, the mayor and city administrator added the creation of the give to sf fund allowing the city to accept monetary and related to the covid19 response. Preparing for our planned march 20th Commission Meeting. The shelter in place order was issued. Effective the next day at midnight. We then initiated our emergency staff planning. We announced the physical closure of our offices and canceled the Commission Meeting and we districted all staff to not report to the Commission Offices effective march 17th and telework until further notice. It did not stop. City hall was closed to the public and board and commissions were required to cease Public Meetings to slow the covid19 until further notice and the mayor of the was zooming sessions. So, we were able to several days issued for board and Commission Members who might be raising funds for the emergency give to sf fund. We adapted our website to create a special corner of our real estate to provide special updates related to Ethics Commission filings and information and including the launch on the 19th of a tool to allow for electronic filings where they had not been previously permitted. And on friday march 20th, with the annual flight and Financial Disclosure form, process final low just deadline days we issues and how our office would approach and they have not yet and about the and deadline was going to change. It had not been extended and and others and so we issued guidance to help people understand how we would treat filings under the parameters of the ffpc and what they have been talking about. Fast forward to april 1th, the Commission Meeting was canceled. We started meetings with trainings with department of Technology Just days later to try to figure out how we can do Remote Technology for a Commission Meeting. And in an event, as we moved into may, we again had to cancel again our may meeting with the publichealth orders remaining in place and as of may 15th, in an event that recognized the continuity of the election we certified the first candidate eligible in a board of supervisors race to receive public funds for the november election. Although we canceled the june meeting, when we moved to the june, again, in the continuity and continued and as of june first when the state they filed on time. Its the same as the percentage last year. And i have wanted to say, how hard it worked to receive and listen to the information we were providing and our office was in touch with filers over a number of communications for this year and after expected that we always want after and i was notable and we turned back on our engagement of compliance staff led the effort to produce and to launch our first online remote candidate and treasure training so we were able to do that and we know that will be something that we are in the motion to do more of as we still need to provide information to people about what the compliance rules are and how they can comply with them in practice. As of mid june, 87 of candidates that have been qualified by the department of lexes, file statements with our office indicating they decided to participate in the citys Public Financing program this year and its 87 as of mid june. That is a very high percentage. I think that may speak to the new rules in place and the board last year and at the end of the fiscal year, they qualified to receive public funds had qualified to receive roughly 800,000 in Public Financing by july first. June 12th we submitted our budget cuts and impacts statement to the Mayors Office and as we wrapped up the year and other program areas, eight of the 11 discretionary audits that our audit staff was working on this past spring, the work draft audit reports were completed and provided to committees for their review and comment. One other audit, discretionary audit was issued and we anticipate the completion of the Public Financing audit to be the 14 candidates of the external auditors are doing within the next completion of those within the next month and two more audits have been put on hold, spending the return of one of our auditors who have the Disaster Service work assignment since midapril. And nichation of the two mandatory campaign who ran in 2019, that remains pending until were able to get through this 2018 Campaign Audits that we expect will be in the near future. I mentioned the audit requested by the board of supervisors to look at our performance as an organization. That was conducted as a priority this year. The bla we met with them on february the 5th to discuss the scope and timeline and our staff worked through late june to prioritize as much as we could. The collection and the providing of documents, data and analysis for a broad range of area in our work to support the blas work on this project well meet with the auditors in the next week as they work to provide their final report that would include our formal response to the board of supervisors in the coming weeks the physical distance cal year last quarter, it wasnt easy and and, as chair ambrose noted n. Addition during this time, 40 of our staff have fulfilled d. F. W. Duty since march 24th. You mentioned this is a responsibility of Public Service and these assignments help ensure the city has the capacity that it needs to impact to respond to the impact of a local emergency and city staffer asked to step into these roles. These duties are not optional. The needs are identified through the citys Emergency Center and requested through the department of Human Resources but together, the eighth individual stepped up to serve these past months and have been able to serve and collectively provided 157 days of coverage and 1250 hours by the end of june. To support the citys publicHealth Emergency response and i mentioned its a humbling experience being in Public Service these days and no more so when we realized the challenges are doing the work that we know we need to deliver for the public that established the Ethic Commission to do the work we have to do and theres also one main priority for the city and the region and that is to address the covid19 pandemic. So it is been challenging, i know, for the Staff Members. I know its been challenging for families of Staff Members who have been assigned duty and uncertain of balance when everybody is stepping out into these roles. I really just deeply want to appreciate the Staff Members who have been able to provide the service on behalf of San Francisco and to the region because San Francisco obviously is leading the effort and doing so much to help the region and the details of their assignments and rachel gage, jeff pierce, eric will et, jared, our moderator today, john kim, Thomas Mcclain and pat ford. Im grateful for the work theyve done. At the end of the fiscal year and when we start looking at this new year there are changes that reflect how were going to continue to adapt operationally and structurally and both with all of the on going dfw needs and other changes that we have to assess and to put into place. As part of that, we have staffing related changes and i want to just provide you with before turning this over to questions or comments that you might have as you may recall in our original Budget Commission we requested a new manager level position for daytoday responsibilities for districting management duties that we need to ensure that we have an appropriate photographic us and attention on very critical budget, financial and Human Resource operations and the required target cuts in the budget dont permit that and to secure that information so what were doing is rearrange our assignments and they will be continued to be performed both by Deputy Director and myself and others and and we want to recognize that rachel gage will take a broader role in managing the engagement and compliance division. She will be our engagement and compliance manager starting this month. She will be supervising that team and she has tremendous background and experience with managing multiple complex projects so were delighted to welcome rachel to this new role and her expanded leadership in the office and supporting the engagement compliance operations. I also mentioned in my report, our Deputy Director and chief operating officer is guy and we are shifting some of her work to enable her to have a broader focus office wide on providing focus on daytoday operations and Human Resource and she weapons an extended and plan to difference and that will be for a period of roughly six months so while were delighted well have a new team ethics member with us, she will have time and we will put this practice in place when she comes back from her leave so if you want to wish well and acknowledge that as well and while shes out just pierce will be acting as a assume deposit you dedirector for the financial budget related duties. We also were able to appoint, as a senior Information Systems business annalist, within our electronic disclosure and Data Analysis division. This is a position that is critical to our ability to help engage and with our office and local elections. This position is also essential to commissioner operations and so we were very pleased to be able to secure necessary approval of the department of human ruses and the mayors Budget Office to fill the position for fiscal year 21 on a little itsed basis. He is immediately focusing on building and maintaining dashboards and other tools for the public to help everybody engage and the Information Available. I know this is a lot of information and its lengthy. I will stop there to see if you have any questions for me. I am happy also to introduce to you our controller guest, mr. Mark delarosa to find the findings of that report. I will stop and see how you wish to proceed. Thank you very much. Thank you for your report. I really appreciate the scope of work that you undertook in this past few months and the many issues you keyed up to address Going Forward. Im going to let the other commissioners go first and ask you following questions or comments. So if you all want to raise your hand, i see that commissioners hand is raised so if its ok, i will figure out how to acknowledge. In 1989 i was working in the mayor eves office when the earthquake hit. I understand what you were going through your staff on detail for Emergency Services with the virus now. And, a lot of people to tear down the freeway and a later debate about the central freeway and the thing about the s. R. O. S that were temporarily housing homeless and they were no longer stable and had to be torn down. That was the creation of the multiservice centers. All of which leads me to think that what ethics has been going through for these last few months. Also, its not going to be a quote return to what was. This is an opportunity to recalibrate what it is that is going on and you have several emphasises and free and with the controller and with the annalist and the board as well as your own agendas that are Going Forward. So i would just like to say that i respect and acknowledge the work thats been going on and urge people to respect that that will continue to go on. Its not going to be fixed quickly. Thank you. Do i have questions and comments. Commissioner chiu, if you want to unmute your of before. I wanted to echo commissioner bushs comments in terms of thanking the staff for the tremendous work that everyone has been doing in this unprecedented time. And to also acknowledge that i think that we will come out. Can we speak up a bit and you are holding your microphone and its just my im having is that better . I will speak into it. I wanted to acknowledge the tremendous work that the Commission Staff has done in order to keep the ship running during this unprecedented time and i cant believe its been five months since our last meeting. Just because we havent met doesnt mean that work hasnt been on going and the fact that the commission has been able to pivot to a virtual work space and to have a 93 form 700 filings and support all of those filers to be able to do that and to provide so many tremendous hours and Emergency Services to the city is just really remarkable and i think speaks to the commitment and the energy and the spirit of the Ethics Commission and i for one, hope that we will be on the other side of this sooner rather than later and have confidence in the ability of this team to get us there and to forge something new. We wont go back to b. C. Before covid times. It will be different. I believe that with this team and this commitment, and the energy [please stand by] welcome. We look forward to having you back here again in the future as the Controller Office continues on the topic. Theres fire engine going behind my house. Commissioners, this is the moderator, youre getting him set up for his presentation. Just bear with us one moment. Can everyone see the presentation . Yes. Great. Good morning everyone. Thank you executive director and mark del rosa for the Controller Office. Ill be providing you Key Highlights of the assessment that we issued last week june 29th. Regarding the public works contracting processes and procedures. Theres seven key areas that ill be highlighting today and about recommendations to which will be directly related to Ethics Commission and were definitely we welcome any input that you have as we refine these preliminary recommendati recommendations and findings. Just very quick background as many of you know, back in february, late january early february, was when the mohammed investigation started. It became public. Thats when the controller set forth a number of assessments related to controls surrounding what happened and what transpired in the investigative reports. One of the key things that we did immediately was to look into public works contracting, processes. Alongside our efforts, we do collaborate with City Attorneys office as part of their investigations. They have as part of what they have uncovered during the initial few months, issued subpoenas to various organizations, nonprofits and entities that relate to the investigation. There were also key efforts that they initiated based on review of the data related to some of the contracts including canceling one as well as other City Employee and officials related matters. One of the key things that we did at the Controller Office, we also started a Public Integrity tip line. This is to supplement our Whistleblower Program and this is specific to any tips that the public has in relation to the Mohammed Duran investigation. As of june, we have received over 50 tips related to the investigations. Some of which we sent out to the City Attorney as part of their investigation and some were taken on as investigations at the Whistleblower Program process. I want to emphasize, the report that we issued last week is preliminary. Meaning that they are bound to change as we complete our assessments. Really, as you can notice in the recommendations that weve set forth, some of which are very general in nature. That was by design so that we can get and gather input from entities such as yourself who has the expertise and the ethics realm of our report. Just very quickly, this is just to provide an overview of contracting at public works. This is lays out all the contracts they had since 2017. This amounted to not to exceed amount 1. 4 billion. Most of which Construction Contracts that is what we refer to as chapter 6 which refers to the admin code section. Theres professional Services Construction related contract and there are those that are more general that are notconstruction related. Theres a category that they have on grants and that amounted to 19 or 24 million as of reporting. This is just to give you kind of the breakdown of those 366 contracts by the type of contracting method that they used. Most of which were competitively bid. They actually followed the formal solicitation process that the city has and the department has in terms of providing for competition, following procedures. That amounted to 298 or 366 of the contracts were 1. 4 billion. Theres also a subset that were informally solicited. Those the ones more on the lower value and there were 26 contracts that totaled 4 million. There was a category that we basically honed in on as part of our assessment which are those had no solicitation required. There were two that were sourced that were six that were under the Emergency Authority and then there were 15 contracts that amount to 24. 6 million related to projects addressing homelessness that did not have any requirements in terms of solicitation. Ill go through the key findings in our presentation. At the first very key point we want to emphasize unlike the chapter 6 department, which have contracting authority, the department of public works did not have a commission or oversight over it. Other departments that fall under chapter 6 department, are Airport Commission, port commission, recreation and Parks Department and all of which have external bodies that are charged with overseeing the approval of contracts over a certain threshold. Within public works, what happened was that in 2011, the mayor at the time, mayor ed lee, designated mr. Nuru as head of public works to be the mayors designee to approve the contracts within a certain threshold. Thats what we call the mayoral delegation. Mr. Nuru designated three Deputy Directors to serve as contract approvals. Our key finding is that public works is not overseen by any external body in terms of approving its chapter 6 procurement. Especially those that are over a certain threshold. Our recommendation obviously carries forward from that finding that the mayor should delegate the final approval of public works to an official other than department director. That the mayor and the board should amend chapter 6 to prohibit such delegation and the Department Head for these contracting activities. The next set of findings that we had related to projects addressing homelessness. You may or may not know but in 2019, admin code was revised to add chapter 21b and section 6. 76 of the admin code. This basically allowed for departments to bypass the standard competitive so solicitation process. Within this context, these two sections of the admin code define projects addressing homelessness process to prevent homelessness through housing and projects that provide shelter, housing food and other social services. The code stated that competitive requirements maybe waived for such contracts that were led to under 21b in section 6. 76 of the admin code. Given this waiver, the usually controls that would see in minimum solicitation under qualification and selection, were not uniformly applied nor required in letting out these contracts. Public works alone, there was 15 contracts that fell under these categories of projects addressing homelessness that total 24. 6 million. 11 of which that amounted to about 14 million, as part of our assessment, we did not see any documented or discernable Selection Process to let out those contracts. For recommendation here is basically for the department under those two admin code provision to revise new procurement provisions. Initiated a controls in letting out such contracts. Adhering to procurement procedures and implementing them citywide is our recommendation. We had a finding on prequalified pool as provided by the admin code. Departments can set out prequalified pool of vendors using a competitive solicitation process. What we found, the city does not have the standard procedures for selecting vendors once they are in a prequalified contracting pool. According to some of our conversations with public works as part of our assessment, there were instances in which the same vendor would be selected repeatedly from a prequaled pool in a times that the direction of the director mr. Nuru. The recommendation then is to establish clear guidelines for selecting vendors in procurement situations. We had a recommendation and findings related to grants. There were no we found that the city provided insufficient requirements for guidance to procure services under grants to nonprofit organizations. This is one that we have emphasized for the mayor to establish minimum requirements to ensure that competitive solicitation of grants are happen similar to how other contracts are in the city. Theres also findings recommendations on central oversight given that chapter 21 procurement which happens to fall under the office of Contract Administration is distinctly separated from the delegated authority that the chapter 6 departments have in procuring public works related services. Theres no one central entity that basically oversees procurement in the city. This is to basically recommend closing those gaps in having some sort of central monitoring entity as well as promoting datadriven decision by using our sf procurement, which is a citywide centralized procurement system that we have that is not always used by the department. Our recommendation is for the departments to consistently use them so we have sightline into the live cycle of the contract at the very beginning of the solicitation to the end. One key thing we wanted top emphasize tone at the top. This is really one that kind of served as a root cause for some of the key findings that we found. In this context, refers to the ethical atmosphere that is created in the workplace by the organizations leadership. According to our discussions with public works staff, really the tone that mr. Nuru was one that prioritize that caused expediency and lack of transparency among staff. That really impacted the way that some of the contracts that were let the public works to have happened and occur. Last but not least, i want to emphasize today are the findings recommendations we had that relates to the Ethics Commission. This is the gaps in the gifts and enforcement. Just as a background as many of you know, city officers sent us employees required to submit the forms statement of interest to disclose financial interests. What we found, despite these requirements, there were certain gaps that existed related to these restrictions. For example, City Employee acting in bad faith could circumvent city procurement controls and avoid detection. Mr. Nuru in the fbi report allegedly violated public works statement of activities by receiving gifts from individuals who had contracts with or seeking contracts with the department of public works. There are provisions and activities that no officer or employees of the department may knowingly provide as assistance to individuals and in one of the allegations mr. Nuru provided information behind the scenes information to bellmor hernandez, related to an r. F. P. That was ongoing at the time. One of the loophole loopholes te noted in our report is that, related to the regulations and fair political practice commission, allowing a payment provided to an official by an individual with whom the official has a longterm personal friendship unrelated to the officials position with the agency. That was key area that we noted as an area that had the potential for fraud and for abuse. We also note in our report that the Ethics Commission may take steps to initiate enforcement as late filers of form 700 and may conduct random audits. Any person that violates as such ethic laws maybe subject to penalties. Two findings that relate to that, we kept very general to get input from you as the Ethics Commission as we finalize what recommendations really make since in terms of practicality in terms of its effectiveness. The two related recommendations are that Ethics Commission to examine and close loopholes for state laws do not great avenues for unethical behavior. Our next steps, this is one many assessments well be issuing related to the mr. Nuru investigations. One that is upcoming is our assessment. These are nonprofits that working with our City Departments in meter maintaining noncitaccounts to fund for various activities. We will be issuing a report on that one. We have an ongoing thats looking at the Airport Commission approval process for contract and the ethical standards surrounding it. We also have one Contracting Department process as well as d. B. I. Or awarding permits. That is lot of information. With that, ill turn it over now to the commission if you have any questions or comments. Thank you. I really appreciate the work that the controller done language with other City Departments and figuring out the corruption and trying to identify some of the causes. I do appreciate your recognizing the responsibility of the Ethics Commission and certainly calling for the funding to be provided for the form 700 filing to become available for all citywide filers, not just commissioners. As you pointed out, the identification of the potential loopholes in the gift reporting is necessarily broad. Im sure we can work with the ethics Commission Staff to potentially identify any information that we might have about past violations and how any confusion might have led to those violations being committed. I do think that the tone at the top is really significant factor there. Person of ordinary intelligence can understand pretty clearly when things should be reported as part of their ethical obligation and just their Ethical Practices in general. Nevertheless, should there be any confusion out there, were happy to try and clarify and tighten up the regulations. When we talk about the budget, i do think that the training that the Commission Staff was attempting or initiating with Department Contracting staff so that those members of the various commissioners who are working with contractors who have obligations under the campaign and government code understood what they were so that they, whether it was under payments or reporting solicitations for campaign donations, not only our city staff but consultants and contractors who work for the city as well know what the rules are, know where to get advice if theyre confused about the rules. Take those obligations and responsibilities seriously. We have lot of work ahead of us to improve the Education Training to review to continue to with you and the City Attorney office as you pursue these other avenues where the corruption has come to light. Thank you very much for your time. I want to ask other commissioners who unfortunately, i didnt get a chance to see who raised their hand first. I will do it alphabetically and recognize commissioner bush first. Unmute your mic please. You are live. Commissioner bush thank you chair ambrose. Thank you for your presentation. You mentioned several loopholes and going through the issues that have been brought forward, it occurred to me that we have rules that says that lobbyist, both contact lobbyist and expenditure lobbyist and contractors cannot give gifts or make contributions. We did not do the same rule when it comes to permit expediters. Two of the people who have been charged are permit expediters who were apparently involved in sending gifts to the people who approved the permits that they were seeking. We have the same kind of rule when it comes to campaign consultants. They do in fact make gifts especially to other officials in order to encourage them to endorse the candidates they are being paid to help. Theres a third category which isnt in our law at all but probably should be called strategic advisers. Those are people who are senior officials in the city who then take the expertise they gained in those positions and offer themselves for hire [indiscernible], without making direct contact with city officials. Youll find them on the internet for example. They advertise themselves under the term strategic advisers. You will recognize the names of many of them. Have there been such restrictions in the past, would that have helped the Controllers Office better identify loopholes that need to be closed . Thank you commissioner bush on that information. One thing that we will definitely take into consideration as were finalizing our recommendations and findings. Take that information that you have. We did not focus on what other restrictions actually specifically on the permit expediters and consultants. Well take that and well see how we can incorporate that in our final report. Commissioner bush thank you. The same way you talked about the need to better review the form 700 filings. I took at look at the mohammed 700. He diddies close that h he dd disclose he was being paid, he did not report that he was as the chair of the joint transportation authority. Which is place that was as involved in some of the questionable activities. Nor did he report on there that consultant for the refuge setting and so forth. He makes the recommendations, he holds the hearings. Hes setting things in motion. Im not sure to what extent those things will be covered in form 700. Im not sure when you have someone whos a board member of a nonprofit, which city law says if they are associated with other people who have business before your commission or your agency, you should disclose it. Theres no place to disclose on form 700. Im asking the question about whether or not its not simply improving who files but also improving what gets filed. I dont know what your views are on that. There are provisions as i mentioned what Ethics Commission can do in terms of conducting random audits of the filings themselves. That looks at whether it is filed and not so much the quality what is actually in there, whether or not its accurate and complete. I think theres room for improvement in terms of how such reviews for attestation by the filers themselves. Thats one area that can be improved. We know it exist base the on whats currently existing. Commissioner bush thank you. Chair ambrose i will recognize, commissioner chiu, if you want to ask your question. Thank you. Commissioner chiu , thank you for your presentation. The question i have goes back to the loophole that you identified in the report that the Ethics Commission can close. The recommendation is to enhance, or revise the laws. That is on paper. I wanted to ask if the Controller Office given any thought to how these new laws and regulations would be communicated to the City Community as well as contractors and other members of the public. I think that we can have great laws on paper but if people dont know what is allowed, what is permissible, who do i go to if i have questions, what happens if i dont comply, then the effectiveness of the laws is really compromised. In the absence of training or even a culture of compliance in the work needed to create and foster that culture of compliance in the city, i think any kind of reform effort will fall woefully short. I would love to hear your thoughts on training aspect and the communicat communication ant aspect of any upcoming changes to rules and regulations. I think thats very good question commissioner chiu. This is where the work of the department, the Ethics Commission comes into play. She mentioned efforts this they are doing to improve outreach and communication of certain key rules and provisions. I think theres definitely opportunities there within the department that can revamp or make more communication thats going out to the community. Theres various facets. Theres a community of contractors that are out there in the city based on the different trades. Theres different targeted communications and outreach that can be done by the commission itself. From the controllers perspective, we do have within the City Services auditor, Whistleblower Program. One key thing we try to do is to educate not just the City Departments on what those key rules are and what they can do when they see something, that can be another avenue that we can certainly amplify some of the key rules that exist. Thank you. I will just encourage the Controller Office to consider adding to the recommendation that in addition to reviewing and closing loopholes in the laws and regulations but to add additional training. Its about really to your point, creating a culture where whistleblowers will feel comfortable coming forward because they know that its wrong, or they see something and they will feel that it is important to do something. In the absence of concerted effort by Ethics Commission and the department and obligations to put upon the leaders to create an Ethical Culture of compliance, i think it would be very difficult to make progress against this type of widespread corruption. I would have to imagine that there was at least one person, if not more, within the department of public works who saw what was happening did they not know that this was illegal behavior that this was unethical behavior. If thats the case, thats concerning. I would imagine some of them did know and they thought it wasnt right but the culture prevented them from acting. In the corporate world, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Unless people know and feel comfortable that this is the right thing to do, they will do it. I cannot agree with you more. Thats why we certainly emphasize the section on tone at the top in our slides. This is really one that does impact the transactions that occur within that organization. Commissioner chiu thank you. Chair ambrose thank you commissioner chiu. I will recognize commissioner lee if you want to unmute your microphone. You have the floor. Vice chair lee thank you mre presentation. I echo what my fellow commissioners said earlier. Especially on the whistleblower protection area. It is really hard to think that no one knew what was going on. The fact that people may not feel comfortable, they may feel their job at risk. Form 700 is good. Vast majority of folks file it and they file it honestly. I think the training, the audit and everything good. I like to ask your opinion to see if an additional level of accountability would be a consideration. My understanding is, form 700 is available to everybody but most everybody do not access that. They just file and they just thought somebody else will be auditing or reviewing it. Every year, supposedly, all employees, most employees have to go through annual review. My understanding the thought that i have, we need to add more accountability and also awareness that you need comply with all these rules. If theyre in the part of the annual review, form 700 also being reviewed between the supervisor and the worker to make sure that the worker knows that she or he, whatever they putting on the form, is being reviewed by somebody. Theres a potential that if you somebody will know. Going through the Whistleblower Program, somebody will know. When youre discussing your annual review, what you done well, what you need to improve, this is form 700. Is that the correct information that you put in. I think that until theres stronger legislation, this maybe a good shortterm proposal to really keep people in line so to speak. That they know that, its just not a piece of paper they file and no one else sees. Very good point commissioner lee. The extra level is certainly one we can have. As you probably know, internal controls including the filing of things, only provides for a certain level of reasonable assurance that theres always opportunities for one to take advantage of them. I agree with you on the additional level. This is when we actually really defer to you as experts in this area and i want to hear your thoughts and working with director in finding what that looks like. I know theres efforts we did presentation of the same slides with the board of supervisors government audit and Oversight Committee last week. They certainly had similar questions and comments and certainly the room for additional improvement in the way that we have our Ethical Culture within the city. In interest of time, im going to let you go. But with the understanding, we all have a lot of work to do. We will work with the board. We share legislative responsibility on the government conduct code. Were looking forward to continuing to work with members of the board. To the extent that legislation is required, we have the Budget Discussion coming up and well have that at the board as well. Thats going to be absolutely key because if were going to take the leading role in educating or refreshing the understanding of the city family about what their responsibilities are and then also making that Information Available and transparent so that its not only the whistleblowers but everyone in the city can see directly whether or not theres been accurate complain compliance. We have lot of work to do. We appreciate the first step on the part of the controller. We will absolutely look forward to having you come back as each one of your additional subject areas are addressed. Because they all concern the work that were doing as well. Thanks again. I think were about ready to go to Public Comment on this. Can you tell us whether or not we have any speakers in the queue . There are currently three speakers in line. Chair ambrose if you want to give them an opportunity to get ready and maybe perhaps provide Additional Information for anybody else who might want to call in at this point. Thank you. For those already on hold, please continue to wait until the system indicate you have been unmuted. If just joined this meeting, were on agenda item number three. Discussion of executive directors report. If you have not already done so, please press star 3 to be added to the Public Comment. Youll have three minutes to provide your Public Comment. Six minute it is youre online with an interpreter. You will hear a bill go off and you will have 30 seconds remaining. Ill go ahead and call this first caller. You have three minutes. Thank you. I want to thank you so much for all the effort that you guys are putting in. If i may just share a few comments with you for your benefits. From an insider who had dealt with these issues for the last 20 years with various departments in San Francisco including the d. P. W. You spoke about enforcement. Im telling now, no one cares. No one is going to jail. Nobody cares. Unless the system have teeth in it. And people know theres repercussions what their actions are in filing form 700 or whatever actions they are taking. Nobody cares. As we speak today, right now, theres a 40 Million Contract for Construction Management that has been scammed so badly to make sure a former a. G. M. Can get this contract. They issued the contract december 31st to circumvent statue that will take effect. They delayed it for six months. Right now were in july. They still have not made an award to make sure it goes through to a person. Number two, mr. Del rosa, you spoke with the audit the Controller Office is working on. Unless you bring in an insider thats part of your team that knows how the Construction Industry work, how consulting industry work, you will not be able to get valuable information as to how things are being scammed. Let me give you one example. The azure case that was awarded by the port of San Francisco in cooperation with nuru and the way the project was fixed. This had federal money in it. So the federal guidelines to extend. The qualification based election should have been paramount of the Selection Process. If you read the fbi wiretaps, you see that the team that won, clearly indicated on the wiretap that they were not qualified to do the work. When you look at this election and scoring of Election Panel by three engineers they rated that team with 70 plus points and everybody else in 30 points. How can three professional engineers deem a team that is the most qualified when the team itself has not has admitted they are not qualified to do the work. With all due respect, theres a lot of whistleblowers including myself that went to the p. U. C. , went to the Mayors Office and but nobody listens because nobody cares. Theres absolutely no they dont want to lose anything. They were going to doing what thethey are doing until there ae rules in place above and beyond. Again, i understand you to bring in individuals have the knowledge of the Institutional Knowledge of how the contracting work. Not just rely on documents and files that the controlle controe gets from the selection team. Thank you so much. Next caller. These patterns of corruption are not new. They are pervasive, widespread across Contracting Departments. More filing of forms without investigation are little use. Problems are structural. Open secrets are not secrets. They have been known for decades. D. P. W. Commission, the deal was play ball, no one crossed nuru. You talk about how contained to districts 6, 9 and 10. Thats an open secret. We all know what really happen. The m. T. A. The board has people who have been beaten back and denied many times. They slow walk these contracts to maximize cause. These things take forever when they shouldnt take forever. Theres milking to make sure proper contractors get their money. Theres got to be accountability here. The City Attorney he should be disbarred and resigned. This is organized crime going on here. City attorney the guy whos authorizing it. Controller likewise has to step down. Hes down scoping this investigation to form 700. The problem is structural and not minor. The public does not have confidence in the Political Class to investigate itself cure the disease because they are complicit. Entire board of supervisors was in jail for corruption along with the mayor. That may end up happen again. We need independent investigation and charter reform process to get to this structural. How about more inhouse government work and less outsourcing of contract. There got to be high bar. Thats where kick backs come in. Thats what the deal is. Theres compliescy, theres denial, everyone gets something. You got a class that is going to guard because theres so much money at stake. Thank you very much. Next caller. Commissioners mynname is francisco. Let me first state to all of you all that corruption in San Francisco has reached a point. I heard controller talk to this committee linked to the board of supervisors. Really if any whistleblower does all the heavy lifting and gives it to the controller on the platter, they can do nothing. The City Attorney really pulls the strings. You commissioners know that Ethics Commission itself is a joke. Same case adjudicated by the political practices commission. Then brought to the Ethics Commission, the San Francisco Ethics Commission who did nothing. Now theyre trying to tell us. They should be ashamed of themselves. Sunshine task force is important. So the Ethics Commission. The Controllers Office is only place they can go to. Millions of dollars have been wasted. More by the San Francisco Public Utilities commission. You just kick the can down the street. Kick the can down the street. Im checking to see if theres any additional callers. If you are just joining us and actually are using the webex application, you can raise your hand by clicking on as hand icon in the participant panel. On the video feed, theres a navigation bar. Theres a small raised hand icon to kick on. I dont see any new members of the westbound who tho public. Chair ambrose thank you, i appreciate the comments by the public. I encourage you to continue to engage with us as we work to address these issues. I hear the frustration and these commissions take these issues very seriously and actually intended to do something about it. I want to encourage you to continue to participate, bring forth your ideas and your recommendations and we appreciate your engagement here. Im going to ask, since its 11 30, we can take a five minute recess before we call item four. If we can take a five minute recess and then well come back and i will call item four, which is to discuss the budget going City Attorney, do you think we need to take roll again . Oh good, the chair is back. I turn it over to you. I was asking the question whether we needed to take roll again. Since we had taken the fiveminute break but i dont remember we needed to do that. Thats not necessary, thank you. You got my heart rate up there. And the sunset where theres lots of available parking on both sides of the street. Ok. So, moderator, if you can let me know where were at. Are we live at the moment . I am going to call agenda item number 4. That would be discussion in our possible action on the fiscal year 21 and revised budget that was submitted by the Ethics Commission on june 12th, 2020, as required by the mayor of all City Departments and unfortunately in the wake of the covid19 Health Emergency. Im going to turn it over to the executive directo director to ma presentation. We dont have a specific motion recommended before us. The provision in the agenda for possible action provided the commission with an opportunity should someone so desire to make a motion and its not required. If theres a motion that wasnt provided to the public in advance, we will then following that, give the public an opportunity to comment on that, just on that specific motion. All right. Is that clear . Is everybody ok with that . Thank you. Executive director . Thank you. Thank you chair ambrose. As the chair noted, this is an item on the agenda to provide an update to the commission and public about the status of the commissions fiscal year 21 and 22 budget process and planning. You will recall that the City Departments were required to submit fiscal year 21, 22 budget request for the Mayors Office in the normal course of city business back in february when the mission last met. Our Budget Proposal we submitted to the Mayors Office outlined 1. 3 million in what we believe are essential new investments to begin in fiscal year 21 for the commission to achieve the organizational capacity that it needs to meet the voter mandate in our role as an independent and objective oversight body in City Government and our current operating budget is around 4. 5 million and we have 24 authorized positions and four have been vacant and 87 is attributable to salaries and basically our personnel. We do work with personnel. We do not have a lot of overhead. After our last Commission Meeting, you appreciated commissioner chiu and commissioner lee and we met directly with the mayor and her chiefofstaff and the budget director to share background about the basis for the commissions budget request and we discussed the essential need to continue to right size the continues so that w conditions n strong laws that are enforceable in practice and we can support heightened compliance and strengthen Public Engagement in city elections and how we govern ourselves. It is, improve accountability through timely, thorough and fair audits, investigations and administrative enforcement when the facts of the law take us there who. We appreciated in the midst of all the other things we had the ability to speak with the mayor and just share those objectives and i want to acknowledge the timing and the focus that office provided. As these Budget Discussions were occurring, of course, the number of publicHealth Emergency related changes were happening in the city and i discussed those previously in agenda item 3 so im not going to repeat them here. We do know that since march, since the last Commission Meeting, where we had a discussion about our budget of the pandemic and publicHealth Emergency is up ended and daily life, commerce has looked very different and the demand for how we deliver our local Government Services has had to adapt significantly. The Financial Outlook and budgetary also have been fundamentally altered. On march 31, there was a report that talked about projected revenue reductions that the city was facing in the final quarter of fy20 and called them staggering. Theres comprehensive report that the Controllers Office gentljoint issued with the boa. Due to the citys on going response to covid19, and the continuing healthcare and Financial Impact in the city, anotherred end of march, the mayor announced a city wide freeze to hire essential workers and the revised budget season that included the rebalancing of our current fy20 budget and interrogate a roughly threemonth delay in being able to finalize the y f fy21 budge. In anticipation of the new budget for fy21, which is expected in early august, the board of supervisors will consider that budget through the month of august and september and in order to finalize the budget october 1 of this year. Theres a stop budget thats been enacted to carry through through october first. When departments received budget instructions, departments were required to submit new proposals by june 12th and they needed to meet specific requirements and it would detail how those targeted cuts would be met and what the Service Impact of those cuts would be. The Ethics Commission, based on our annual budgeting process, the targeting cuts were 450,000 for this coming fiscal year and for the next year, roughly 686,000. This was the 10 cut in fy21 that would grow to 15 in fy22 with a five percent in that second year contingent, it should be this years Financial Outlook worsen, even yet. The instructions were we department has to prioritize core service thats provide critical government functions. We needed to reevaluate our Current Operations to realign them with the needs and demands that covid19 was placing on how we operate in terms of publichealth guidance and we have to also look at how we prioritize and particularly our Deputy Director and steven massey, our director of Technology Services in taking what is necessary to examine and assess where this would come from. Both guys are participants in this meeting i meeting so if the specific questions you have about the budget, after my brief comment that are available as well. Just please know weve got some subject Matter Experts on hand should that be a helpful to you today. In short, as detailed in our revised revision, in the face to absorb 10 cuts in fy21 and 15 in the following year, they would be required to prioritize its most essential, select mandates. And to pause or forego work on all other mandates as resources would be eliminated. Were Public Servants and we have work that needs to be done and were also Public Servants that are here in the midst of an unbelievable unprecedented pandemic. So Going Forward pro programmatically, in essence there are four areas that i think program atticly will have to remain in our budgement judgt the top of the list to sustain in whatever way we can with whatever resources we have. First, sustaining our voter enacted campaign Financing Program based on what we know the experience to be. We know what the persons of that Program Brings and other jurisdictions in terms of diversity of voice and in terms of candidates and terms of engaging the public in campaigns and thats critical to ensure we have that canada dates so that they come to office tethered only to the Public Interest in terms of the money they raise in connection with their campaign. It engages diverse voices, we need to continue to serve that program. I think our most recent numbers that show a very large candidates says theres an appeal to this program for people who want to run for office and be a part of the government. Secondly, ensuring that we have meaningful access for Public Information promote campaigning activities and and the pressure and brought to bare particularly and its really important to make sure we understand the kinds of influences that may come to be brought to approximate that range of activities or the financial interest of those who are making those decisions on behalf of the public. That also needs to be sustained. Toward that end, prioritizing the immediate conversion of all remaining programs and services into a digital environment is essential. We know were going to be for the foreseeable future, we need to plan to be remote for 12 months, that is what the city has advised and districte direc. We need to plan to make sure that people can access our services digitally through phone calls to reach live people but that needs to enable we have a conversion remaining programs into a digital environment. The fourth area is it touches on the things weve been talking about this morning with the reports that youve heard so far. Work in the shade by the commission internally and the commission itself is initiated in fiscal year 20 to improve its core oversight and its accountability programs and through more robust compliance reviews and more effective audits, more impactful enforcement and that has to continue, those efforts need to continue to be the focus of our work so its embedded in how we do our work and we see on going improvement this is the work that were doing for the public. So, in the letter, we did describe the impact of being faced with absorbing the targeted level of cuts, there are a number of impacts we wanted to just highlight there, details and the communication that we provided but just to go over them briefly, the on going form 700e filing forral projects will need to be halted. We have identified and know the areas not sufficient Staffing Resources and other necessary support to make sure that the 3,600 designated departmental form 700 filers can move into an Online Filing environment by january 1th of 2021. You will recall the Commission Just this past year adopted a regulation that required filers to file on that date on a format provided by the Ethics Commission. That electronic format is on pause. Its not going to be able to be delivered on that date. So that is something that we arf projects are being paused around the city but again, the interests and the ability of people to file particularly in this kind of a climate remotely, remote working, its essential that we provide those tools so that we can have the level of compliance that is necessary and also the level of disclose your and transparency that is necessary. We also know that another impact is with the continued vacancy in our policy shop of two. We will have resources that we have now. Only 50 of our existing policy staffing almos will continue tot because the resources for that second position will be defunded and not able to be filled. That in turn compromises the commissions independent policy making role in our ability to shape ethics, lobbying and other Campaign Laws under our jurisdiction that will be undermined because we wont be able to a timely and thoroughly conduct the legislative reviews that commissioner ambrose was talking about, commissioner chiu has led in the past and others have known that we need to regularly look at our laws and make sure theyre strong and effective and enforceable. This is going to be a hit to that ability and so it will be limiting our effectiveness in that area. Also, our effectiveness in independently and objectively investigating, through our administrative Enforcement Authority is also something that will be under fined an undermine of the four existing investigative positions that we have gained over the past several years and 1822 investigator, will be defunded and will not be filled. That also has a spill over to impacting the on going changes and process improvements that the commission and the staff have been identifying over the past year to put in place improved measures to prioritize and get through our cases so that the most important and serious of cases get our foremost attention and we have ways to handle things that do not require as resource intents effort to resolve them as other cases. So the scope and the pace of case resolutions investigated by the commission will also continue to be impacted. The other area that is impacted is in our oversight, our general compliance oversight role. We heard mr. Delarosa speak to some of these issues and his presentation and to ensure that we have regular and robust audits, that we have regular and robust compliance of other financial interest disclosures that help people know theres an eye on these forms, not just to see if theres an individual error or misfiling or problem but to see if there are patterns that are emerging that tells us we need to look back to our engagement and compliance and outreach efforts and form those efforts by what were seeing. If there are patterns of non compliance that we handle them through an administrative enforcement role we have. Our lead and is it there will not be daytoday direction of management able to the audit improvement and to the need that we have to establish a really deliver the kind of compliance reviews we know are necessary. And the part of the conversation in the last discussion again with the Controllers Office, looking at the question of tone at top. One of the things we were aggressively identifying in our budget submission earlier this year, which also under these circumstances, would be defunded, and not be able to move forward with any Staffing Resources to it, was a new program that we had hoped to launch called ethics at work. Under the circumstances, with the pandemic and the great needs that the city has, there is a pivotal opportunity that we may be not able to take advantage of because of those extraordinary demands being placed on the city. Ethics at work is an idea to put in place the kind of training and outreach and regularize the kind of support that leaders at all levels of City Government can benefit from and i think weve seen that through the initiation of the m. E. A. Sessions and the Municipal Executive Association and cities agreement that at least one or two live sessions a year is necessary to help remind people of the laws that theyre subject to so they can comply. Its beyond that. Its not just a runoff training. Its something that had envisioned to make sure that we could support leaders at all levels. Orientation training, 24 plus supervisor training, leadership training for emerging leaders through out City Departments. Theres a need to be able toll do more of that and i think the controllers reported address that and i think commissioners comments have addressed that. That is something that we will not be in a position to take that opportunity to move forward with. Let me add one comment related to this that as we think about the kind of work that the Ethics Commission needs to be resourced to do, it is not solely and singularly about passing new laws. We need strong laws. We need will the and the resources to make those laws effective in practice and you all know that as youve spent much of your time focused on that. And, the question of the controllers report and our work everyday really grapples with what does accountability look like . Its ensuring we have good laws and strong frameworks. Its about compliance reviews. Its also most certainly about publicly acknowledging when violations of the law have occurred and making san franciscans whole through fines and penalties when a body of independent adjudicators have found that theres a violation of the law and that someone needs to be held accountability. Its also critically about reaching out to support culture and integrity as your City Government. Its something that this commission has never been resourced to do. When we think about how we prioritize our work when we have 10 to 15 cuts, that is going to be challenging to be able to make sure that we are ensuring the citys ethics programs are firing on all pistons to the extent they can or we will to realize some are just going to stop. I do want to say im an optimist and i think there are hopeful signs and the controllers report has provided such valuable information and in sight that i think will help shape how we approach what we have to do with the resources that we have and at the end of the day. In its presentation to the board of supervisors last week, the government audits and Oversight Committee appeared to be interest on the part of the Committee Members to also look at how we ensure that the work that they would like to see us did can be done in practice we look forward and. Mayor was released, also was very clear in the commitment of her office to take action where possible to move forward and implement the recommendation and reforms recommended by the City Attorney and controller that we need to passing laws or identify other areas that erodes public trust that this was something she was committed to seeing through. Its a very hopeful sign. All of us know our work cant and doesnt stop in the midst of budget certainty and we will keep working with eastbound as we can across the city to try and leverage all the resources we have and whatever we are left with at the end of the day, there are a couple of next steps i would highlight. Were still an ongoing discussions with the Mayors Office. There was some indication that there may be more budge a certain expectations and whether it will cause another revisiting of what the cuts look like. I dont know. But, i dont think one thing we know is to expect the unexpected so thats another challenging piece and its fluid in terms of what we understand the Mayors Office and well recommend Going Forward. And, also, again, working with the Controllers Office to general and as find more and its something we want to do and work with the commission and public input of what essential for the coming year. I guess i would just close and there are detailed information about the budget request im happy to have them jump in as well with. I think its one of the things that has been the most challenging in leading the department operationally over the last five months, is the recognition about how much we do not control and knowing that the work that we all have to do is taking an extraordinary amount of balance between peoples lives and childcare and daytoday work and i have been struck and heart end by the flexibility the staff has shown and our colleagues around the city has shown in trying to solve these difficult problems. Its humanly and theres a Human Element to this and its taking a lot of focus to make sure were managing as best we can within this environment. The wor were bringing at the end of the day, you will see your staff continue to be a focused and delivering everything we can working as collab are actively and creatively as we can. I do appreciate the patients and compassion that we all have to show to each other in a time when there are difficult challenges and decisions to be made about how we achieve everything that we are set up to do and please know that on behalf of all of us on the staff, we will continue to do our part. Im going to pause there and im happy to answer any questions if you have specific questions about the february items, funding, priorities or detailed questions and im happy to defer as well. So ill pause there for now. Thank you chair ambrose. Thank you. Its very challenging circumstances that we move forward both with the heightened needs for work on the part of the Ethics Commission in the face of the most extraordinary budget shortfall that i think the city and county of San Francisco has had to grapple with. I do appreciate your highlighting the priorities that you recommend that you direct your staff to stay focused on and highlighting for the mayor and the board. Those important functions that would not be able to adequately addressed should the cuts that are being requested as part of the departments proposed budget back to the Mayors Office. I think unless the mayor and the boards fully understand what are the consequences theyre not able to best perform and against the needs of Health Department or so fourth. So, thank you for the good work of the staff on this. I am obviously concerned and the Ethics Commission i recognize its a general Fund Department and you are more of a beggar than enterprise departments from the city budget process and you have many other general Fund Departments who have important Public Functions to perform and your budget is minuscule compare to many others for that reason any 10 to 15 cut cuts deeply. There was no fluff realty begin with as far as i can tell and your staff and so the we wish you whatever good Going Forward with the Mayors Office and we are available to help in anyway we can to ensure that those few position that you were able to take on the important functions you have identified when we were back in the so with that i see the hand of commissioner chiu and im going thank you chair ambrose. Thank you director for i dont know if its just me but you need to lean into that little microphone that you have. For the presentation and i wanted to make two observations and one is that yes, and the city is experiencing and theres been a fire offered if funding is cut to undertake the review recommended by the Controllers Department to close the loopholes that allow for pre vision and corruption in gift giving and if the phone at the top is allowed to continue because we dont have the if enforcement divisions are left unfilled enhanced enforcement and i think what this does is it spends a message to the rest of the City Government to city workers and to residents and to contractors that the corruption that was uncover by the f. B. I. And the that its ok and its encouraged. I would like to ask my fellow commissions in addition to following along as requested in terms of the budget request with a. I cant hear what you are saying and i dont want to. Ill have to invest in another headset. Whether its advice able and worth while to send a letter, or to the board of supervisors and to the mayor as well as to the to highlight what at stake in terms of funding and i think theyre modest proposals and i remember asking you, is is that enough, right, is this enough that has been earmarked for creating the training and the outreach and the education that will be helpful and necessary and to creating that culture a and . A counter narrative its too easy to say the city is facing and im in no way under cutting or dismissing the magnitude of the financial crisis that San Francisco and they are facing right now. Our mandate is to focus on creating transparency, accountable and enforcement of clean government and theres a problem with clean government right now in San Francisco. To have it fire rageing and turn off the water supply to the agency that is best decision to address it is the wrong thing to do. Chair members, you are on mute. Thank you. Thank you for your comments and i do see commissioner bush and commissioner lee want to speak. I want to briefly i agree with you the circumstances highlight the necessary of funding the Ethics Commission in a way that will allow us to not only better perform all of the many tax that we have had previously plus have taken on the past two years with the new programs and addressing the Corruption Scandal and to use much quoted government to meet the moment and best how to do that is the only thing we can talk about from here because im sure everybody agrees i would not be inclined to go with an on ed because i think the its not the public that we need to persuade of the necessaries for the city to investigate and address the fire as you put it. But i do think that its appropriate for the commission to send a communication to the board of supervisors and underscore the importance with which we hold the objective staff in the identifying with some specificity as director palm has, what we need in order to do certain things. I watched the Government Audit Committee when the controllers report was presented to that Board Committee and they specifically addressed the recommendations for form 700 filing and the budget related to that although we did also insist that the Ethics Commission show how we have been utilizing our resources to date and that regard number and so Going Forward, we dont have a letter drafted for everyones consideration and were not going to meet until august 14th, again. Which is going to be two days after the Board Hearing only the Commission Budget if i understand that correctly is that right . The commission is meeting still a 17th and we are currently scheduled to be before the board in the budget hearings on the 12th. Around we on the 14th. So were not in a position right now to adopt a specific letter. What we can do is we can we can certainly individual write to the board if we chose to express in our role as individuals commissioners to express our support for funding the commission at level that there were before and specifically to the points that you made getting the additional funding to address the culture, the tone at the top and the training. I know from my Prior Experience as General Council for the commissions that there is a hunger on the part of Department Staff to get guidance to understand contracting proteasome coms and the gift rules and other provisions of the government code, the sunshine ordinance and there is limited capacity in doing that so its something that you were working on this ethics at work program and we might not be able to do all of the aspects of the with respect to targeting leadership teams, et cetera, just the bare minimum of explaining to the very dope bench we have of ethical city workers how to comply with the rules as they know exist and to help us identify things that we might do to clarify. I would be prepared to do that individually to communicate to the board and so, because we cant take action on something that we can represent was the commissions text, and while we dont ordinarily recommend that individuals members of the commission go fourth and speak out independent leon issues, you know, in reference to Commission Business it might be under the circumstances, if you wanted to, having a communication to and im assuming it would be a chair of the finance committee is who new what addressed our desire to and you are going to leave it in that and go to the other commission whos have their hands up now and ask them for their questions, comments and thoughts. We are going to take Public Comment on this. Im going to go to the commissioners first. Then we will take Public Comment and then well go back to the commission for any final questions or comments following Public Comment. All right. So i am going to recognize commissioner bush. I believe our City Attorney has raised his hand. All right. Well let City Attorney shan advise us about whatever he wanted to speak to thank you. Go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. This is andrew shin calling in. Thank you. So just very briefly and i dont want to jump ahead of the commissioners by any means, but i want to put another option out on the table. I given the possibility of what the commission may do here. We have delegated to individual commissioners working with director pelham to work on letters or other communications in the center of time. Its another thing you can consider instead of having individual commissioners sending individual letters. Ok. Thank you. I didnt realize it was a protocol this commission has followed in the past and im certainly amenable to do if that ends up being the wishes of the commissioners. We can entertain a motion after the fact we have heard from the commissioners and the public. In the past theres been communications from the Commission Chair speaking on behalf of the the body so that could be something that the chair takes on or if the chair wants to delegate, those are options as well but i appreciate the City Attorneys additional comments on that front. Thank you. Im happy to be the scribe without action on the final document, i would be happy to take the thoughts and points as long as that our City Attorney says its consistent with the Commission Practice i would be happy to do that if its the desire and also if anyone else has their pen in hand and theyre already drafting those points, im certainly going to go back and take note of commissioner chius very well spoken admonition this is not the time to defund the Ethics Commission. I appreciate that and, now, im going to go back to commissioner bush, who has been very patient and you can go ahead now and give your commentary. Thank you. People dont praise me for my patients too often, ill tell you that. Thank you, chair ambrose and executive director pelham and i want to associate myself with commissioner chius remarks as well. I think is that there are a couple of points that need to be under scorescored as we go forw. One is how much the city has lost because of corruption and because of poor management. Which is far in excess of what the annual budget for ethics itself is. You go to the u. S. Attorneys office to see both for them and for City Attorney her eras suit to try and recover misspent money. How much it has cost us not to have a stronger, system for oversight and monitoring and accountability. It is certainly into the tens of millions of dollars. So, that is the first is how you are going to weigh the cost of the ethics budget should be weighed against what has already gone out the door because of the Ethic Commission being unable to do all the things it should have been able to do and those things were pretty well outlined in district pelhams budget submissions for the last four years. She enumerated things that the commission would be unable to do. Now, having said that, there are things that did not make the list which would be set aside but we do not know a figure of what the dollars and cents are for those things. For example, we are required as our City Department to do an annual report. What would it cost to an annual report. Ive never seen a figure on it but for five years weve not done an annual report for the Ethics Commission. We are charged, bylaw, to do at least one audit of a lobby every year. Weve not done that for five years. Whats the cost of doing an audit. Weve just been told we cant move forward on a robust filing of form 700s. What would it cost to do that . We know it cost too much but what is it specificall specific. I know that when i was working in the Mayors Office, many, many years ago, there was certain budgets that the mayor was not in a position to effect and for example, the budget for the courts and so that would go over to the board and the board would then make cuts out of that and transfer some of those funds to other City Department and agencies as they saw fit and that was figured towards the courts and theres no reason to think that the Ethic Commission has to absorb all these costs without explaining what the cost would be and we know it was a number of years ago the board, the Ethics Commission voted to transfer late malars to ethics and we have yet to see what they would cost to do that other than be hold that its not something that we can afford right now. Its a simple transfer the districts being if its a slight mailer we have a different reporting schedule and different disclosures than if its ethics. We know that we havent really seen a tickler system established on referrals because when you have a complaint Going Forward, and it has to go to the City Attorney and District Attorney we dont see a list of what was sent over there and when it was due back. We dont have a list of commissioners who are disqualified from voting as commissions. Were told there are a number of them. It looks like a quick glance about 120 city officials who are disqualified from exercise their offices about who are they . For full transparency, we ought to be able to list these people and say who they are. We also ought to have a system of prose releases on discloses of complaint resolutions just as the sppc does. These things can be contracted out. It may be that we dont have the money in our own budget or someone would add additional money and the they have the authority and undertake these same and on behalf the local governments and local laws. We do enforcement but often theyre Enforcement Actions that result in a thousand dollars or 2,000 or sometimes 570 5,000r sometimes 200. Meanwhile, you have this other corruption going on in other City Departments that are out of sight. And here we are spending our resources tracking down something thats going to result in a thousand dollars fine. So, the question is, what is the return on the investment that were making in how we decide what are the priorities that were going to take up. So, i think that those are all issues that need to be taken outside of the hot house of our own Commission Discussions that shown as well to the mayor, to the board, and to some extent fully disclosed to the public. Thank you. Thank you commissioner bush for those very specific comments. Now im going, i guess i see City Attorney shin, are you raising your hand again or are you not just taking your hand down from before . Sorry, i will take my hand down. No worries, were all learning the ropes about hand raising and that brings me to commissioner lee. If you could unmute your mic and you have the floor. Thank you chair ambrose. The director has presented a realistic picture. Since the city revenue pot is not going to incres any time soon and in fact it will continue to subtract. I know that we have been discussing ways to find additional Revenue Sources and them was lets explore some of the permanent fees and the different pods that have drick connection to what we do and see if there are ways through legislation or other means we can tap into these sources. So i do go that we should send a letter and maybe do a motion later on today that in addition to stating why the Commission Budget cannot be reduced, because the work that were doing is more critical than ever. Maybe we can add the suggestion, that hey, were in together but were also looking for ways to really support this work on the longterm basis and maybe asking ways and look at the permit fees and look at the other filing fees that could i know its been done before. [please stand by] they are being paid for bad behavior. Thank you. I think im live. I want to second that. I think that commissioner bush, you had also raised in context the possibility of Grant Funding. Thats a little less certain and would take some staff work even to start to identify outside sources of funds and apply and contract further receipt and appropriation of those but its something we need to keep in mind. Most of the thinking, if the control ser still on the line theyll jump in and tell yus that money is accounted for but the Controllers Office gets a percentage of all Capital Funds for purposes of auditing contract and if its at least worth having the conversation with them about whether or not some of that money might be available to support staff, for example, on the forms 700 efiling so theres an electronic digitalized data base that one could measure against the contracting entities and the enforcement of the gift rules. We are thinking outside funding but part of that is we need to retain the staff that we have that we need to fill the positions that were otherwise would be forced to keep vacant in light of the cuts that are being imposed on City Departments in order to pursue those funding objectives amending the law in terms of creating set a sides from permit fees and its a legislative engagement which we would have to add to mr. Fords already significant duties if were not going to be able to add to the policy and legislative staff. So, anyway, i hear all that though and im happy to everyone it. I want to make sure that we agree that we also need staff to help to identify outside sources, not just that we will do it but we need support in our commitment to pursue that. And i see no further hands. I would i do see a hand. That would be you just took your hand down. I want to go to Public Comment. I hope people are not too frustrated. I cant actually figured out how to see how many people are on the line. I will work on remedying that because i dont want to leave people on the line too long while we talk among ourselves and i want to give them a chance to jump there so, moderator flores, can you let us know if theres Public Comment . Thank you, madam chair. There are currently four callers in queue for Public Comment for this agenda item. Can you provide them with the mic . Very well. Caller. Yes, thank you so much. Good afternoon, again, this is ali and i would like to comment on commissioner bush regarding the costs of corruption in contracting. I would say im an expert in how much it costs and what is the cost of corruption and im going to give you examples that you can actually verify. At a bare minimum the could have of corruption in public work and public contract askin contracti . My name is ali. May i proceed. Please continue. Thank you. So the cost is roughly about 40 . And there are two areas and i can tell you right now that the Controller Office will not be able to pick up. Number one, when you issue a bidding contract and for example a puc and this is a true story that i have experienced myself, bidding on a job, that the contract requirements required a specific type of equipment from a specific manufacturer which is normal. Im ok with that. Here is where the corruption came in. The local vendor for that equipment, in the bay area, was selling that equipment roughly about 60 higher than the same manufacturer rep in los angeles. So when i call los angeles, they would sell it to be me for a million dollars. In San Francisco they would sell me the same equipment roughly about a million and a half. That money is coming up from the public money from the public budget for this. So that is a huge area of corruption. The second one i want to bring up to your attention and im going back to a case, and specifically the sfmta or muni, the brt project on van ness, so part of the original bid documents that came in and what are accepted is a bid for roughly about 19 million for a company, for a local contractor by the name of synergy. Now, nuru and the gang came up and they decided include the mayor unfortunately. They decided to go after synergy for a lot of reasons. They ended up with high 20 more seconds. They took synergy out and they awarded the contract to a zul. It was 19 million. The contract was 30 million. That is way above and beyond 40 . Just to give you an example. Commissioner. So these things, again, im going to stress again, unless you bring in inside who know how the game is being played, it would be impossible to take action. Thank you for your time. Thank you, caller. Welcome to the meeting. Caller hi. So, some of the commissioners mentioned writing to the board of supervisors and i feel theres a problem with transparency in San Francisco government. So, if the commissioners do chose to write to the board of supervisors, i think that would be important that these letters be open letters and is i dont know how theyre done in closed doors and i dont know how what is going on in the government so i would highly encourage that the cost be as transparent as possible and so thats all i have to say. Thank you, caller. Welcome, caller. Caller so commissioners, at one time we had a director st. Clair, and we got rid of him and now we have this director who is doing everything possible, and there was another director who assistant director who left us, who did a lot of good work to put the Ethics Commission on track. And now we hear the word defund and you commissioners do not have the guts to come up with a plan so that the president of the board and the mayor knows exactly what is happening. Millions of dollars are wasted by the sfpuc. Millions of dollars. And there are crooks all over the place. Why would, for example, the city administrator and the manager of the sfpuc have special contracts that they make 400,000 a year . And the Ethics Commission says nothing. Why doesnt the Ethics Commission create laws, ordinances and inform the amendment of the charter so that we can keep this operation checked. We have a mafia operation in the in the city and county of San Francisco, its not a joke. All the whistle blowers who go to the controller, they can go anywhere. None of them are compensated. Do you think people are stupid to waste their own money to do their own research and investigative reporting and not be compensated. Why doesnt the Ethics Commission say, to the whistle blowers, if you sue our city, so many millions of dollars you will be given so much. Why not . What incentive is there. You have the Contract Monitoring Division but we dont have a commission. Have you looked into that . We fought for the Sunshine Task force but we have the mafia now defunding us. Think about it. Thank you, caller. Caller thank you, commissioner. With respect to acrosstheboard budget cuts, willie brown, barb could have man, was engineers to neutralize ethics at the whim of the city family. 2005 Charter Amendment to give dedicated independent funding stream was successfully fought by the family. Largely this was because the political clubs recoiled in empowering ethics the small committees and ignoring the big fish of the regulated community. The City Attorney refused to certify charter language for an independent council for ethics in this measure to form as well. Charlie mars. Idil is the processdale andm budget pressure. Given the decades long record of the city family exerting political control over ethics. The payments debacle less commissioner resignations. We know them by the actions and we know who they are by their actions. The commission should consider petitioning the u. S. Attorney to investigate the city family for trying to as fix eight ethic ay allegations of corruption, and indictments and guilty pleas swirling around city Hall Contracting the city family is plugging along with another enormous bond for this november, much of it which will go to d. P. W. The ethics budget is not an expense. Its an investment that pays dividends and in cost savings and honest government. Thank you very much. If you are joining by the webex browser extension, if you wish to raise your hand for this Public Comment and other Public Comments, you may do so by clicking on the raise hand icon. Its located in the participants panel on the lowerright corner. To access that panel, you can click on the navigation bar located in the video screen by clicking on the participants icon. I do not see any additional callers concerning Public Comment. Im going to close Public Comment first, i want to say in response to the Public Comment, to the first specificker who had substantive points of information concerning City Contracting i do hope that the whistleblower and the Contact Number for the Controller Office is available to that individual so that information can be presented to the Controllers Office who is looking at those specific contracts. Second with respect to the second call fer we decide here today to it should be public as part of the boards records. I mean, ive been able to navigate the boards website to find letters to the board and just to be clear, we will post it on our own website so you will be able to find it and im trying to think if director pelham knows where that might be found. You can let us know if we decide to send a letter. And then, its good to hear you are an active participant that i am familiar with. With that im going to recognize commissioner lee, whose hand is up, if she intends it to be up and commissioner lee are you ready . I want to make a motion to have the board send a letter, the Commission Send a letter to be signed by you chair to sign the points you had made and in addition to add the recommendation the board consider designated certain parts of the money specifically the permit fees and other areas that have a direct connection to the work of the Ethics Commission. I think you are on mute. Im going to unmute myself and recognize commissioner chiu. If you want to speak, you have the floor. I would like to amend the resolution with commissioner bushs suggestion that we highlight the amount of the cost to San Francisco of corruption and the millions of dollars and compare that to the budget request the commission is making to really make the contrast clear and its worth pounds of pounds of cure. I am going to recognize commissioner bush. If you want to unmute your mic. Commissioner bush, you are still muted. Am i unmuted now . You are. Ill get it right one of these days. I just think we need to also visit the question of under what circumstances we can solicit outside contribution to our work. We looked at the coalition that completed major work and it was supported by groups like the California Press foundation, the craig newmart philanthropy, the first look media, there are options that are out there to the ethics work so i dont know if there should be or a sign off saying i would like to reach off to these following groups and do i have permission to do that and maybe andrew shin has thoughts on how to proceed on Something Like that. Also, sending and so fourth and if you could circulate that a number of that and before it goes and that would be great. Im going to ask you to hold and well take up the issue about outside Funding Sources and one of the things that while were finishing with the so everybody understands how the city works in terms of the intake of a nonprofit and back to the motion on the letter, this is one of the i was struggling with, if we can, only two commissioners can communicate outside. I dont want to, since we dont have time to meet again for everyone to comment on the letter, i want to be really clear in the motion and the delegation, if you want to review and comment on the letter. The two of us can go back and fourth in that regard and work with the executive director. We wont be able to share it with all five commissioners and be commenting back and fourth without violating the brown act and i want to make sure that in the motion im happy to post. I mean the letter to not ive not done this before with the commission where and i i understand about making the point that commissioner i can go back and replicate those. With respect to the permit fees, commissioner lee, i do have a question we could the board can take whatever permit fees and have them in a fund and have them deemed appropriate for the Ethics Commission but that 90,000 or whatever amount it was, it isnt going to i mean, if they just substitute in that money that would otherwise go into the general fund money, theres no net benefit to the Ethics Commission. What we really want, and i think we ought to focus on for purpose of the letter is saying, that at this critical time, we need to have the Ethics Commission fully funded and be allowed to take on the requirement that we have and not been able to achieve because of the levels of funding in the past as well as this new initiative to address culture. We can work ourselves to come back at a separate time to say that we want special funds created for our permit fees. Unless im missing something and theres a lot more money to be found in that source. Im just afraid, theyre capable of saying you can have your permit fees and thats where you are supposed to get your additional funding and that wont do it for us. Thats not going to solve our problem, right. Can i Say Something . I was going to recognize director pelham if she has any thoughts about how much money were talking about in that realm. I want to give commissioner lee the chance to explain, educate me further about what we might be able to do in that realm. So if you dont mind, commissioner bush, im going to go to director pelham or lee about thinking about how they would have the resources to think about creative Funding Source and do the leg work to think about where might there be other fee source thats could fund operations. In essence, the commission is looking back at the original proposal from february 21st. We talked about it at the top and having a level of resource thats can do the financial critical budget work thats necessary that we currently do not have inhouse. So, i think when we can look to those levels of funding to get that specificity to letter to the board and we have those examples. If that isnt sufficient we can work to try to identify more specificity. Were certainly looking at a minimum at what we requested in february in my judgment. And i guess, i mean, one of the things just in acknowledging the point, if we had the additional enforcement capability, its conceivable that our permit fee might be a more significant source. Its something we can reference to the board. The importance of everyone in government right now to be both ways we can identify sources of funds that will make up for the lack of tax revenue that we know sim pacting the general fund right now. You are raising your hand again, director pelham. I do understand from staff who were here back in the days before i was, that there was times where the city, other City Departments actually provided funding for the eth i guess commission to hire training staff. We can do some further research on that and see if those might be models that we should be suggesting as well and obviously all Department Fees need to hold on to their resources but there could be places where they might be partnerships available for a defined period of time and top undertake department training. I think we can add that to the list of Grant Funding and permit source funding and probably it would actually i know that in some of the hearings on the corruption of public works, that was one of the first sort of corrective measures that was identified was to bring in the contracting staff there and this is an important point. Theres a good chance, i guess, at least in my mind, that the board is going to be receptive to this and the mayor. I want to make sure that we can deliver if the Funding Sources, you know, become available and one of the challenges is that this vacant position problem that you have had for at least for the duration that ive been on the commission. It seems, you know, either through transfers to other City Apartments or people moving on with their life and certainly under this pandemic the pressure on families and individuals. I want to be i want a request that you keep us apprised and you are sort of clear and honest with yourself too about whether or not were going to be able to do this. We have to be able toll fill positions and if we get that budget authorization, there is no coming back at the end of this fiscal year in saying well, thank you for the money but we really couldnt quite get it together and we need to step up. So keep us a surprise apprised. One of the issues that the controllers recommendations raised is exactly that point. In order for the commission to do the work before us with the controllerrers recommendations, the legislative recommendations and the work we know we have to do to fill those positions it cant be just the money, it has to be an expedited hiring process. Think about the framework were looking at. October 1st is when the new budget will be finalized. Positions wont be authorized and funded for any department until october 1st. Theres tha a hiring process and were able to have funding. That is at best, 150 days, 130day process and its taken six months and seven months in the past to fill positions we know there are its possible to conceive of a world where there are expedited hiring procedures in place they are when the city takes what they call a little itsed Term Position or permanent exempt position to be like a threeyear limited term role and that means you have maybe not all the same sorts of requirements for the Civil Service exambased testing process, which does take that time. I guess my point is simply that to yours, if we were to be in a position to have these positions or new resources, the only way its going to be effective in any expedited manner is to also have an expedited hiring process and its something that i think has been elevated, its on peoples minds, to question if this is something that is possible. We know that that would be required. You are right, if were starting in october, the bestcase scenario under an expedited hiring process with greatest flexibility is four months. Throw tthree to four months, and bringing people on board and training. Were looking at the end of this coming fiscal year. In terms of managing what we think is possible, i think what is incumbent on us is to identify the sequencing of bestcase scenario, here is what we can deliver over the following time horizon because we know that even when theres not a pandemic the bestcase scenario for hiring can be challenging so we would have to look at ways to alleviate some of that so we can get people in the chairs and get the work started. I do see some hands. I did want to say, i want to give other people a chance to talk. I want to come back to you i hear all that. I do think it needs to be reflected in the letter. I think that its important to say to the board in order to address corruption thats been identified and prevent it from happening in the future, were already i agree, the fact that and they are staffed away in some filing cabinet in each one of the respective departments, its not the kind of sunshine we need right now as we build our culture of ethical behavior and i want you to be prepared to speak to exactly what position, what funding is necessary in order to get that up and rolling by the time the next filing deadline comes up which would be april of 2021. So, if you are going to im going to start back alphabet tickly and recognize commissioner chiu. You have the floor if you want to unmute your mic. Thank you, chair ambrose. I have thro three point to make. There are many topics that we can cover in the letter but that the in the absence of having fully vetted research and being comfortable that these are avenues that would be viable for the Ethics Commission. To your point earlier, they could you can use your lobbying expenses and then just wash their hands of it. Two other points i wanted to make were, whether or not if you are consideration as you work through this with the director is tying our budget requests to the recommendations in the controllers report saying the controllers, preliminary report has identified a, b and c and this ties directly back to the budget a asset we made in februy of 2020. Not only by not funding the budget request from the Ethics Commission, it would also be not funding or pursuing the recommendations made by the controller after its investigation. And second, it would be whether or not i dont know enough about the city budgeting process but since d. P. W. Is the bad apple here, in terms of the acting, can parts of their budget be redirected to fund the Ethics Commission around the training, around the policy and legal and regulatory review. Since they have kind of blown everything up and that they have a budget as well and that they can help fund some of the remedial work. Its a question, i dont have the answers to it but its i do remember from the mayors meeting that it was floated. You are sure about the mayors meeting . At the mayors meeting, the mayor or someone had suggested or had proposed that in the past, the departments that the departments part of the Department Budget or im not clear on all of the budgeting inns and outs but the gist that i took away from it was that is it possible for d. P. W. Budget to fund to have some of their funds allocated to the Ethics Commission to finance the specific education outreach and regulatory and legal review that are identified as a result of this Corruption Scandal. Im going to director pelham, if you want to speak to that. I mean, i think those are all first of all, your main points, the message should be focused. I will definitely attempt to draft this reflect the controllers recommendation and how it ties into the february 20212020 original budget submittal. I think the points that you are making about alternative sources along with the points that commissioner lee made, and the points made is that we should work on to get a satisfied for oversight and i think its worthy of further investigation and discussion. Its something that is not really on the agenda right here so we should put that on for further review just maybe all of these topics. Grant funding, nonprofit funding, permit set aside funding and set aside work orders funding from other departments and i think maybe even august would be a good time for at least for the commissioners to think about and bring back further ideas along those lines and im not going to expect staff to have identified and we can put it on so we can have more flushing out of the opportunities and what would be required at the city level and i see that macali practicalities i will recognize our deputy City Attorney if you want to unmute your mic. Let me be very brief. So, speaking to what you just raised, chair ambrose, yes, there are ways City Departments could receive money from grants and such and those would be subject to board approval as well as other contracting would ned to address and in terms of the letter and obviously only two or fewer members of the commission could review the letter or draft the letter and it couldnt involve more than a quorum in the drafting process. In the past, the commission has trusted whoever was delegated without Authority Just to leave you with his or her own. So thats something to keep in mind. Just very briefly lastly, the budget is before the commission at this point. So i dont know if the Commission Also wants to formally approve the budget as proposed. And as part of its final action on this matter. Although i do understand it sounds like the Commission Approved under protest or some sort of obligation. Thank you for deputy City Attorney. Well come back to the motion that is standing on the floor with respect to the letter. In terms of approving the actual budget attach, which is the budget that the Mayors Office required the executive director to submit reflecting across the board cuts that is part of what the mayors do every time theres a budget, you know, reduction, every department is supposed to show their work in terms of what they would eliminate if they had to eliminate 10 and i think based on the discussion that weve been having here today, that im unlikely to hear a motion that we recommend that reduced budget that is what the executive director was required to submit to the mayor on june 12th. Fell free to correct me if im. Thank you, madam chair. The main content of the letter is not protest. Its our strongest statement possible, that given the circumstance, we con operate with a reduced budget and nevertheless, it is what it is. You know, outlining everything that commissioner chiu has mentioned would be a very strong letter and the reason why i wanted to add onto the permit fee