Transcripts For SFGTV 20130221

Welcome to our regular rules Committee Meeting for thursday february 21, 2013. I am supervisor norman yee and i will be chairing the meeting. To my right is supervisor london breed and the clerk today is linda wong. The committee would also like to acknowledge a staff of sfgtv who are mark bunch and nona makonian who recorded each of our meetings and make the transcripts available to the public online. Madam clerk, are there any announcements . Yes, mr. Chair, please make sure all cell phones and Electronic Devices are off, and any documents that are to be included as part of the file, items acted upon will be on march 5th supervisor agenda unless otherwise stated. Thank you, were going the move an item out of order. Can you please call item number 6. Item number 6, ordinance amending the missal elections code sections, withdraw of canadian das si, change the public Inspection Period for candidate materials change requirements for petition circulated badges to meet the requirement of disclaimer, the board of supervisors argument, incorporate state law provision governing signatures in lieu of filing feels, candidate files fee provisions and make other technical amendments. Thank you. And i would like to welcome supervisor malia cohen. So, supervisor kim, would you like to make some comments on this. Thank you, supervisor yee, and i appreciate the rules taking the time to hear this cleanup legislation, as many of you know in june of 2011, the Supreme Court made a decision in a 54 vote in response to independent expenditures, substantially burdens the First Amendment rights of these independent expenditures and also stated that leveling the Playing Field for candidates is not a compelling state interest justifying a restriction in any type of First Amendment rights. Many members of this board were saddened by this decision and spoke out in opposition of it, but despite that, we did have to make changes in our current public in our previous Public Finance program in order to be legal under this new Supreme Court ruling. This legislation passed last spring in april of 2012, thank you, supervisor cohen for your support last year so that we could continue this very important program, but have it be under the guidelines of the Supreme Court ruling. We did have to do some followup legislation, some cleanup on the department of elections side as well, so our legislation last spring reworked the Public Financing program but we also need to do accompanying legislation to clean up some of the timelines and dates with the department of elections and i do want to thank Public Relations of elections, also to speak on the legislation for their work in helping us really going through everything and ensuring that we dotted every i and crossed every t and i know it was a lot of work for their staff. Largely, the proposal would amend the municipal Election Code to incorporate the state law allowing the nomination procedures for city college and board of education for example to continue to be governed by state law but also changing some of the dates for the board of supervisors and for other our may yoirl race as well sx, also we made some other nominations according to the advice of elections, around the circulation of badges and filing fees, i would also like to ask the rules committee to consider making some amendments today, further cleanup of this legislation, one is to section 205 and this would push back the nomination deadline for all candidates to match those of the mayor and the board of supervisors so this would be by the 146 day before the municipal election, it also specifies the period by which the candidates and the mayor of supervisor may circulate their nomination papers. Section 220 and 260 follow along the lines of this cleanup just specifying the date for mayor and board of supervisor Must Withdraw their statement and specifying the dates by which all other candidates Must Withdraw and many of you remember this conversation from last year when we were reforming Public Finance, there was a concern that the way the previous deadline had been that we often trapped candidates into continued to run for a race because they had already received Public Financing disfigurement, the ghost candidate issue, and we had found that candidates who not knowing who other candidates were, once finding out what the broad array of candidates were realized they may not have continued running, but then ended up running, so we did move up the declaration of canadian candidacy from june, and it wouldnt occur after the field has been set, and im not sure if mr. Arts would like to come and speak further on this legislation. Thank you, i dont have any sort of prepared comment, i was here to answer questions mostly, but the department was trying to put together some changes to the imc amendments at the same time as the campaign and financial reform legislation was moving through so this is sort of a combination of the two different changes to the campaign and to the Election Code in San Francisco. What were proposing, wi ear not trying to make any policy statements with the changes we put forward, i think the only thing that might seem like a policy statement by the department would be the removing of the disclaimer in the voter guide, if supervisors support or oppose legislation, that they already voted on, i can give you an example of that if you have time, i dont know how you want to structure this, but were trying to tighten the deadline to make the language more clear, thats all were trying to put forward. So, if you could give an example. With the disclaimer that goes into the voter guide, whenever the legislation places measure on the ballot, theres always a i dont know if this works or not theres section in the voter guide right here, this is for prop c that was on last novembers ballot, this indicates how this measure got on the ballot, if the supervisor were to vote yes or no or was excused at the time of the vote for that particular measure, it would go into the voter guide already, thats established and its separate from this, its a different one, its been in there for years, were not proposing to change it or remove it, what we want to remove is language that whenever the board assigns an argument for a measure on the ballot, theres a disclaimer that has to go on the voter guide indicating if supervisors support, oppose or take no position on the measure theyve already voted on. This i think this started in 2002, this is relatively new compared to how it got into the ballot section, this confuses everybody, because supervisors feel like they voted on it already, why do i have to fill out something separate, and this is the same time of the fall recess, its difficult to get a hold of people to ask them if they still support, oppose or take any position on a measure and nobody knows what this is about after this many year, so we want to end this process, well send forms to you or call you, and youve already taken your vote, made your statement on this legislation so we want to remove this extra step from the voter guide, thats what were proposing to move this pr the voter guide, but not how something got on the ballot from the voter guide. Are there any questions from Committee Members . Supervisor breed . I just had a question, thank you, supervisor kim for your leadership on this issue, i think just in general, this is a lot of cleanup and something that from experience that we had over the years on elections that make the process work better and make it more efficient and i care about efficiency, so im excited about this piece of legislation, but i do have a question for clarity, the logic behind making it harder for candidates to withdraw. Does it have anything to do with the printing of the ballots and i know some of the issues that have existed in the past is there are candidates that have withdrawn from the race but their name still ends up on the ballot and im just trying to understand because that date has been changed as well, the number of days, so does that have anything to do with anything that makes this more efficient . It does. Were not trying to make it more difficult for anyone to withdraw from a contest. I think its 102 days before the election is the date thats in the proposed legislation now, i think thats 42 days after the new deadline, the new june deadline for the mayor and board of supervisor candidates, but for all other candidates, its 21 days after the deadline to withdraw, so were trying to match the 21 days thats established in state law to withdraw from a contest to a change were making in San Francisco for the mayor and supervisor. I got it, so in terms of the pamphlet, the printing of the books because i know theyre really expensive, how will this impact that . It wont because the june deadline is really not that wed have plenty of time to note on the ballot. And the previous deadline wasnt necessarily enough time to make any changes in that regard . The 102 . The current deadline . The current deadline, we can still make changes, theres 25 days for the nomination period for both deadlines for the june, for the august deadline, theres the 21 days after that deadline to withdraw, both for candidacy and your candidate statement, so were trying to keep uniforms as long as the law is concerned. So, this impacts Public Financing by making sure that until someone files and is declared a candidate, they wont be able to obtain Public Financing . Yes, and theyll know the complete fields of candidates that theyre running with before they get the financial disbursements, so that will all i do appreciate the cleanup regarding department of elections suggestion. It often happens during recess and i know its a big scramble to get signatures when supervisors are taking off for different places so i think this is a good fix. Great, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Supervisor kim, thank you for bringing this cleanup legislation and its very logical and its always very nice to look at logical legislation, and one of the things that at least for last year, we ran into an issue at a point maybe its not an issue anymore, and this is more a question of people that want to run, by changing the dates, we would then not have a problem with people who are running to basically collect signatures in lieu of because last year there was a question whether because of the dates, whether you could do that or not, and so by moving the dates with this cleanup legislation, we wouldnt have the same impact that we had last year. Can you xlair fi . The lou of filing fee signatures, theyre tied not to the election, theyre tied to the nomination timeframe, so moving the nomination timeframe to june for mayor and supervisor would also move the time allowed, Time Available for Gathering Signatures for in lieu of the filing fee, so you would have the same amount of time to gather signatures for a june nomination deadline as you would for an august nomination deadline, theres no impact whatsoever. Okay. But just to clarify because i understood supervisor yees question, but it does push back the sixty gathering, so currently the process is you start Gathering Signatures around the end of may, roughly the 3rd of july, but this will push it back. Er it would begin 45 days before, and end 15 days prior to the nomination deadline, so then youre going 45 from june into, yeah, may. Okay. So, we would allow the same number of days to gather sixties sixties last year. That wasnt the case last year. Okay, thank you. Any other questions . Seeing none, any Public Comments . Seeing none, public seeing one. Good afternoon, supervisors, this is great, but im just wondering, maybe i may have this wrong, but i think that going out in the community and Gathering Signatures is a good thing and with the filing fee, i dont know if its somebody missing something about the Supreme Court, but i think the filing fee should stay out and have people gather signatures because i know i was thinking about running for the College Board and i had a ball Gathering Signatures, and then i think that youll find out if people like you or not because you have to go out there and compensate and meet your neighbors, so maybe i have it wrong and im looking at this wrong, but i think the filing fee shouldnt be added back into it. People should go out and collect signatures. Supervisor kim, direct me if im wrong, you still will be able to collect signatures, that feature is not going to be taken away. You will be able to collect sixty or pay the 500 filing fee, the 500 filing fee remains the same with all the candidates. It was never gone . You can always file either in lieu sixties or signatures or pay the fee or a combination of both. Good afternoon, supervised sores, my name is douglas, ive lived in San Francisco for 61 years. I wasnt planning to comment on this, but since this item was taken out of order, i may as well say a few words. Since were talking about the municipal Election Code and making amendments, i would like to offer two suggestions, a bit controversial, but why not make it for the record. First suggestion for the code is require winning candidate to have mandatory drug test before taking office, a lot of people in washington dc keep talking about how many candidates are under suspicion for drug use so i thought i would bring that out to San Francisco. Second suggestion is that in an election where there is a residency required, ie, board of supervisors, if there is a written question about whether a candidate lives in a district, then its public information, how the investigation goes and then the candidate thats being questioned is required by the Election Code to put in writing that he does live in the district. Now, this was in regards to a situation that was done entirely in writing in 2008 and to this day, the particular person im talking about still refuses to put in writing whether he lived in the district or he was running to be supervisor, and the only thing i have to say, if you cant put it in writing, that brings up a legitimate question. Thank you. Okay. Any other Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. Colleagues, any thoughts . Is there a motion to forward this item to the full board . [inaudible]. Could we first take a motion to make the amendments that i had . Thank you. Is there a motion to amend . Excuse me, andrew shawn, deputy city attorney, good afternoon, rules committee, chair yee, as a matter of procedure, given the more recent amendments that supervisor kim read into the record, those are substantive amendments so well require an additional hearing, so you can move to amend the ordinance and continue to the next rules committee and forward it then on to the full board. Sorry to interrupt. Thats good, so well continue this. So, can we take the motion to amend first though. Okay. Yeah, so moved. Seeing no objection, moved. Thank you to the members of rules committee and i look forward to coming out with recommendations at the next rules mitt tie. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Lets move on to item 1, can you please call item number 1. Supervisor, just for clarification, would you like to continue this item as amended to the call of the chair . Yes. Thank you. Item number 1, motion appointing supervisor london breed term ending january 31, 2015 to the golden gate bridge, highway and transportation district. Is there a motion to [inaudible]. I would like to make a motion to support the appointment for london breed to the transportation district, to the goldman gate bridge, highway and transportation district. Public comment . Are there any Public Comments for this . Good afternoon, supervisors, my names douglas yal, i would like to speak in favor of this motion. I think ms. Breed is the type of person we need on this board. If i remember correctly, supervisor elsbernd used to be on this board and i think in my opinion that she would be doing a lot better job. The only thing i would like to question publicly about this agency is how efficient are the tolls being used so i would like to suggest that our represent question very closely how those tolls are being used and whether theres any waste and corruption involved. Thank you. Thank you. Any other Public Comments . Public comment is closed. Theres been a motion. Okay, with no objection, well mover this forward to the next board. Great. Thank you. Madam clerk, can you please call item number 2. Item number 2, motion confirming the mayors reappointment of tom nolan term ending march 1, 2017 to the Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors. Okay. I believe mr. Nolan is here today, mr. Nolan, please approach to the microphone and if you would like to say something. First of all, congratulations, supervisor breed on your election. Yeah, im delighted to be here in afternoon and delighted to be reappoint by the mayor for your confirmation and a little bit from my own transportation experience, i served 28 years on transportation boards starting with the san fran board, i was on the mta board for 7 days and was reappoint last year to the joint powers board yet again, and i served as chair of the mta board, every time i get a chance to speak about the mta, im proud to be part of it, it is an amazing organization, i think we have a terrific board, our vice chair is with me here today, our secretary, outstanding public servant, my other colleagues on the board, everybody takes it very seriously, works very hard and very conscientious and i think the goal weve always had is to look at the city as a whole yet being mindful of the particular areas and interesting all around San Francisco but more importantly than all of us, the 500 thousand men and women that work for the system every day, a tough job out there and they do it with a lot of hard work, im happy to be nominated, and im cutely aware of how vital this system is to San Francisco, particularly last year when we were alerting about providing free immunity for youth, how vital that system is, the system for the city is, and theres so many parts of the system that are so vital in my ways, muni, bikes, traffic, taxi, all work together, i think, to serve the city very well, so i would appreciate your thoughtful consideration on this and i would be honored to do another 4 years, thank you. Thank you, supervisors, any questions . I have a question. Go ahead, supervisor cohen. Thank you, i would make a motion to accept were going to have Public Comment, thats right