And it appears on the march 10, 2020 agenda unless otherwise stated. Mr. Clerk, call item number 1. Clerk a motion directing the clerk of the board to initiate a request for proposals process for special Investigation Services. Thank you. Supervisor haney, as a sponsor of this measure, the floor is yours. Thank you, chair marr, and good morning, everyone. I think that this is, you know, obviously a very challenging time for our city right now with multiple departments who have been implicated in a larger investigation. Clearly, you know, charges that have been levied by the u. S. Attorney against individuals in government and outside. And it is critical that we do everything that we can to investigate fully, prevent any future fraud or corruption, and to do everything that we can to restore the public trust. This is not a time for business as usual and i think that the public is looking to us as the board of supervisors to investigate fully to make some serious changes around accountability and transparency and to do this in a way that the public fully understands what is happening and why. I know that there are a number of things that are happening and i want to acknowledge supervisor peskins work in really making sure that were using our full powers as a committee and yours as well, chair marr, in restoring and bringing some role for a subpoena power here to the committee. Theres, of course, also the federal investigation, the City Attorney, the controller doing full investigation. And theyre doing their part. And its critical that we do not hesitate in doing ours as the board of supervisors. The audits and the investigations that are occurring now are critical. But they are also not intentionally designed not to be comprehensive in identifying all of the areas of local government where corruption or fraud are occurring or are prone to happening. There are clearly gaps that we can complement as the board of supervisors with thirdparty Investigative Services, which allow the board of supervisors to play a much more active role. Our constituents are looking to us to help restore faith in local government and i think that theres a general concern that we are going to fail to bring in outside eyes and outside role in helping to restore the integrity and trust. I think that theres a role, a Critical Role for thirdparty independent oversight and investigation in that. San franciscoians want us to stand up for them and i think that it would behoove us to do more than as we have been doing it would behoove us to actually be proactive in how this is done. Our city charter grants the board of supervisors broad powers of hearing inquiries so we can carry out our duties as the legislative branch of the city and county of San Francisco. And were also empowered to seek support in our role. To provide Invaluable Services to the board analyzing budgets and legislation, conducts research and helping to inform our policy proposals. The nature of the charges that have been filed and the potential for as of yet discovered illegal or inappropriate and unethical behaviors, and the need to restore accountability and transparency and trust require us as the board of supervisors to urgently procure thirdparty Investigative Services. With a special investigator we can investigate allegations that are coming directly to us that the City Employees or members of the employee have not yet felt comfortable reporting through the whistleblower problem or the current hotline. We can work closely together to identify certain policies to prevent misbehavior or corruption and how they may be violated. And we can pursue leads with the power of subpoena. We have the power of the subpoena now in this committee well, we will and with that complemented by the Investigative Services, would allow us to identify what sort of subpoenas are needed and to followup on leads. We can also look at broader systemic issues related to policies or oversight as they relate to contracts or permitting and understand what legislative changes are needed. And the important thing here is that we dont know yet exactly what will be revealed and well need to follow certain leads. For last few weeks my office in partnership with the clerk of the board, the City Attorney, supervisor ronen and other colleagues have thoroughly vetted options to provide the flexible, independent Investigative Services necessary for the board to actively respond. Today i have a set of amendments to proceed with a procurement process that relies on a pool of firms prequalified by the Controllers Office, rather than to begin a new solicitation process. Section 21. 4 of the administrative code allows departments to issue prequalified pools of prospective contractors in accordance with open and fair procedures and may have lists of prequalified contractors for commodities and services for future contracts as needed by the city. And the city controller maintains such a list of prequalified audit firms including those qualified for forensic auditing and Investigative Services. To be clear, it is not the intent of this motion to duplicate any investigations already occurring. We owe it to the people of San Francisco to be prudent with our resources. Over the next few months well hear regularly from the controller on their audits and likely see subpoenas and potentially cases filed by the City Attorney. And to complement those efforts well have the support of a special investigator. We should proceed with urgency to begin this work without delay. I have another set of sort of more specifics of how this will work and what this process would look like, but i also want to ask the clerk of the boar Angela Calvillo to come up and to lay out a bit on how this process would work, what the timing of it would be, and then theres a couple other quick things that i want to share and then we can open up to discussion if thats okay with you, chair. Sure, thank you so much, supervisor haney. Madam clerk, if you could just pause, supervisor peskin, i believe, had im happy to defer until after the clerk has spoken. Great. Members of the committee, chair mar, Angela Calvillo. If the board approves this direction for the clerk, our office will work with member offices to create to understand and to create the scope of work that would be included. Areas to be investigated, timeframes. And the expected deliverables. The Controllers Office has as heard an upcoming list of prequalified auditing firms that have been established through a request for qualification process. And that we will utilize instead of going through the r. S. P. Process which would take longer to complete. Well send a letter of intent and solicit a proposal from the top two or three prekawstled prd firms. We would assemble a informal pan to rank and to prioritize the qualified firms based upon the preset criteria. Criteria that would include years of experience, available resources, estimated costs special Investigation Services with regard to potential deception, fraud and corruption within local government. The panel would recommend the most qualified firms. The clerk would then bring that to the committee or to the board for review and your approval. And once approved, we would begin to enter into negotiations with the firms and would request parallel funding at that point if necessary through a supplemental process. Thank you. Supervisor peskin. Thank you, chairman mar, and thank you, chairman, for having this special hearing today on both of these items that have to do with one of the most sorted chapters of corruption that ive encountered in the 20 years that i have been an on and off again member of the board of supervisors, on and off again member. I absolutely appreciate everything that the proposer of this motion said. Yes, this body has an obligation, a responsibility, the charter authority, and the unlimited ability to inquire and to get to the bottom of things and i also appreciate your comments about not otherwise interfering or impeding with ongoing civil and criminal investigations. And i think and i just quickly read the changes that this all really comes down to what is the scope of work. And i believe that we may indeed need thirdparty expert outside investigatory help. But i dont yet know the scope of what that should be. The controller is doing their work. We have the budget and legislative analyst who we can use for policy recommendations and the City Attorney is doing their work and the u. S. Attorney and the f. B. I. Is doing their work. And this body has a role to play and, of course, the next item that has not been called is the beginning of what i imagine would be a number of different hearings delving down into this. But the only question that i have is what is the scope of work. And i would like to pause it that we dont yet know what expert things that we need that we do not have within our existing resources, be it the controller, City Attorney, and budget and legislative analyst office, and, indeed, the members of the board of supervisors and our staff. So i can foresee a need for this. Im not exactly sure how we can authorize the letting of a contract with a prequalified pool of vendors until we know exactly what services were requesting of them. So i just want to put that out there. I realize this is an evolving and an ever worsening set of revelations, thats the only question that i have. Supervisor haney. Thank you. No, and i totally appreciate that. And i think that, you know, theres a sense that from my perspective that we are going to need Investigative Services and support. And that the actual scope of it theres some things that we might put in the scope of it now but as you said a lot of this is, you know, being unveiled in various ways and there will likely be times in which we want to be flexible. One of the things, for example, i know that and i know that the controller is here that the first report which i think is on somewhat narrow focus on contracting within p. D. W. , and that we would have that first report come to us. And there may be things that we want to followup on further, specific things that come out of that that we want to have to be investigated. One of the things madam clerk, if you might just clarify in a little more detail this particular question of the scope and when we would really have to define the scope, how what is the timeline for that. Because, you know, it seems to us that we have to start this process to even begin to have a conversation about the scope. And, you know, the scope could be broad and flexible is my understanding. That is true, through to the chair to the members. I just had a discussion with our controller who indicated that his upcoming list should not be available for another month at least. So we would not be able to obtain even the list for several weeks. In the meantime as perhaps the g. A. O. Is having hearings or perhaps as youre having briefings by the City Attorney or the Ethics Commission or the controller, there could be items that come to light that then could inform the ultimate scope of services that youre working towards. And then we could hone our process a little bit further and then modify the scope as soon as you get more information. And this committee would have, of course, another opportunity to both weigh in and directly approve the scope of the services before this were to the committee could, certainly. And there seems as though theres going to be some time to do so. All right. So in just in terms of supervisor peskins question, i agree that theres still some work to figure out the scope. For us this was the first step to even to be able to have a conversation really about scope. And to begin to get the prequalified contractors on this and really start a process of discussing and defining what it is that we might move forward here. And i and i agree with supervisor peskin that we want to be clear about the scope before actually moving this. And thats something that i think that should happen here and it will happen also in informal conversations and happen in looking at what comes out in the next few weeks from the controller and other sources. And even other hearings that were having, there may be things that come up and say, you know what, this is something that makes sense. This feels to me that this is something that were going to need, even based on what came out before. I could make a list of some of the things that i would put in that scope, but i do think that we want to, you know, obviously use resources in a way that helps us to do our job better and really represent the publics interest in terms of getting to the bottom of whats happening and also how to prevent it. But, at the same time, not to duplicate some of the things that are already happening. Supervisor peskin . I absolutely agree insofar as just the technical process of procurement will take a while. That would allow us to get prepared about what that scope of work should be. And in the same way that were preparing ourselves by potentially super majority of our colleagues on tuesday agreed to give this committee the power to issue subpoenas, which hopefully we wont need to do because we will ask each and every individual that we want to talk to to come here voluntarily. But this is another preparatory action. So, yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Maybe we can go to Public Comment on this. So i do have one speaker card. Eileen spoken. If there are other members of the public that would wish to speak on this item, please get in line on the righthand side of the word. Eileen voken, here on my own behalf in strong support of this item. On my way here today on the streetcar i overheard two teenagers talking about learning to drive and the rules of the road. One said to the other, its only illegal if you get caught. I thought that perspective was fascinating and relevant to this item. Thank you. Clerk thank you. Next speaker. Hello, San Francisco city by the bay. This is ace. You might want to hear what ive got to say. As we here going through these processes i just came back from baltimore. And like i said before, before i traveled there i thought that San Francisco was the most racist corrupt city in the United States until i went to baltimore. But i went there and theres corruption there. And then i came back and i seen corruption here. But id like to put a word out in the beginning of this process in light that im a black man, in light that queen bee i call queen bee, the mayor london breed, we as African American oh, scratch that as black americans here in San Francisco are dealing with the most racist situation thats going on here, dealing with the reparation, outmigration and all of these other studies here. The office of racial equity. The removal of Justin Hermans name. So i want you all to be aware as we go on with this investigation, let it be fair, no racial overtones. Because my name is ace, damn it, and im on this case. So i know yall going to be fair because we going to be watching. And you know that our population is very low and were building up resistance right now. And like i said before, its progressive and the moderates got to get together and solve it. What is that . The black population going down. So all these efforts, energy, and all of this money is going to be spent on this investigation, and when it comes back around with the investigation with a lot of the departments in this city by the bay i hope that you get the same. My name is ace and im on this case. Thank you, next speaker, please. Well, lets say for the sake of argument that any District Supervisor who at some time in the distant unforeseeable future, would assist a Small Business owner by acquiring a monetariy subsidy for tens of thousands of dollars annually through the legacy fund program, imagine a proprietor then gets a Mercedes Benz for his or her daughters 18th birthday. And weighing Household Expenses against profit loss, and expenditure and income imagined in that the same proprietor places Campaign Flyers in the windows of their home or holds a fundraiser. And either or both of these places or donates funds towards the incumbents reelection or towards her political party. Can you tell me this would not appear to constitute an impropriety . Do you honestly not say that its an essential problem inherent with the dynamic of the program. Taking on the argument further, say the proprietor holds the premise under l. L. C. And runs under a separate corporate entity and the former raises the rent on the latter. And to assure that the enterprise succeeds on paper. And also most of small Property Owners hold their property under corporate l. L. C. Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on this item . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. So i just would like to thank supervisor haney for bringing this motion forward. You know, im happy to have been a cosponsor and to see this as an important step that we could take as a board of supervisors in our role as a legislative body. But also as the directly elected representative of the residents in 11 districts in our city to provide oversight and potential policy or legislative changes that will result from the multiple investigations into corruption in our city right now. And i share their concerns thatt supervisor peskin raised about needing to clarify the scope of the contract or the services, the special Investigation Services, but it does seem that with the amendment that supervisor haney brought forward today that that is that