Transcripts For SFGTV 20121028

Commissioners . No objections. If we are going to go on for an extended time i would respectfully request a rest room break. But if you think that we will. That would prolong things undually. I was thinking that we would not need much additional time to get through the rest of this. But, i am happy to take a break. No. I dont want to make anybody uncomfortable. That is okay. The next item on the agenda is the annual report for 2011, 2012. Mr. St. Croix would you like to introduce this matter . In the interest of brevity, the report is selfintroduction torrey, most of you are familiar with this process. So, i present the draft for your consideration. Public comment . The report says that there are over 400 twitter users who get updates and 250 facebook users get updates but it does not tell you how much whistle blower retaliation complaints were reviewed by the Ethics Committee in the whole year. Thank you. Commissioners, ray heart, San Francisco, open government. Despite all of the complaints in this report regarding the low Staffing Levels it is hard to see what benefits the public gains for expenditures of millions of dollars each year. Even the budget figures listed in this report are impossible to understand. The latest six years of figures range from 3. 6 million, to 8. 4 million. That is an average of 6 Million Dollars a year. What do the citizens of San Francisco get for this 6 million amount . Honestly, reading the report there would not be seen to be much bang for the buck. I have heard estimates anywhere from 1. 2 to 1. 8 million just for the investigation of the sheriff. The referals for the Sunshine Ordinance Task force are still after 14 years not being heard. The civil grand jury report is dismissed in this report, with only a link to the report and a link to your response. And so basically you did not even feel it was worth commenting on the civil grand jury report. What exactly do the citizens of this city get for this 6 million a year . If you kind of price it out, this commission, its operation costs us a half a Million Dollars a month. Half a Million Dollars a month. And what we just saw, which to me was just a rude goldberg throw it together we have no idea what we are doing, so lets just put something together now and hope to hell it works. I think that the board of supervisors saved your behinds because if they had voted to remove the sheriff it would have gone back to court and the judge would have said, recall is the way that you over turn a lawful election, not this put together, juryrigged mistake for a procedure that you somehow tried to publicly defend. And if you break it down another way, we stand with your 17 employees in this report, 352,000 dollars per employee per year. And i will be honest with you, i come to these meetings and i cant see you doing a damn thing to make this city any more ethical, or any more open, in fact, what you just did in the last case was say, well, we are. We have not seen the file, and they wont tell us what is in the file, we dont know what is in the file, we dont know whether it is confidential or not, but we are going to find that the people being charged for withholding documents are not guilty and then we will go and look to see if there is anything in there that might be. Talk about back asswards that is. Now let me just. Is there any other Public Comment on this . You know, let me just say, i did not reiterate the analysis that was provided by miss herrick in the memo and that she stated in response to the questions, but there is an important need to keep investigatory files confidential and the basis, i think are quite clear. Any individual who files a whistle blower complaint is going to be subject to pressure to make a disclosure if such disclosure is possible and we need to protect not just dr. Kerr not just mr. Revera and not just any particular whistle blower, but we need to protect future whistle blowers from a come pull son to disclose and the investigatory files if any part of them were disclosable you run a very serious risk of not being able to conduct the investigation. Who is going to talk to an investigator if they think that any part of their interview, that the fact that they were interviewed, the time that they were interviewed, that it could be disclosed and i think that there is an important Public Benefit to being able to protect them from such disclosures so that we can do the very work that we are talking about. So, you know, the notion that we just you know, we dont care about what is in the files and we just want to rubber stamp, you know, the analysis, is totally, unfounded. I think to the contrary, we have spent an enormous amount of time trying to get this right and frankly i recent the idea that we have not given it detailed thought. Additional Public Comment . Paul korer again, i want to respond thoughtfully to the statement that you just made because i sat in this room all the way including to the bomb threat and when you left the room on june 29th i stayed in this room, this exact room and i wanted to mention this argument and apply it to lopez because you know what her attorneyclient privileges were breached and she claimed that her attorney husband presented themselves as lawyers and that she. While that was confident and you know what . And then they disclosed everything against her will and then you guys went ahead and took all that have and adjudicated based on it. So i see the hypocracy, thank you. Thank you, chair for clarifying the record and the basis for our decisions tonight. With respect to the annual report, thank you for putting it together. Staff. One thing that i thought could have been or could be done differently, and is the highlights dont appear to be in order of importance or Chronological Order. I think that they should be in either Chronological Order or order of importance. We can do that. A like the notion that there was a section on future initiatives and the kinds of priorities and values that we are trying to address. I think that in addition to carrying out the very specific responsibilities allocated to the commission, Like Campaign audit and distribution of Campaign Finance funding and so forth, that we are obligated to do and we are also to make these things clearer and make them understood and carry out initiatives that we did not craft or ask for. But, responsibilities that are put in our laps that we tried to carry out as thoughtfully and responsibly as we can. At the moment i dont. I am simply saying that i like that there was a discussion on 19. I think that one thing that we might do, is consider how to bring particular items on this list back to us in the course of the year, so that we can, you know, some of them already will be the cfro revisions and the Sunshine Task force collaborative project for how we handle those proceedings. But, so i think what i am simply suggesting is that we look at it and see which ones would not naturally come to us as a ago agenda item and see which one of those deserves our perception of fairness or the public understanding or matters that dont have a fiber of a decisional action to be taken. That is a good suggestion. I would particularly pleased with the commissions from what thankless handling of the procedural mechanisms relating to our mekarini hearings, the documents were publicly available and quickly available and easy to use, as easy to use format as i think as the circumstances. The way that the summaries were put together, i think was efficient and allowed the public to understand for the most part, what we had done and what we were planning to do. It was the behind the scenes and thankless task but it was an important task. And particularly for Public Access to those documents in a quick, efficient way was valuable and i appreciate that. Any other comments on the annual report . No, thank you, i was just going to say thank you for putting it together and i do like the suggestion of bringing the future items back through the year as it makes sense so that we can revisit and see where we are and if we are on track with the goals ta we set out. Can we identify in here, the number of similar complaints that we have handled yeah, what i will do is there was actually a separate annual report on the whistle blower program. In fact i received it last week. So, what we will do is at the appropriate place in the report, we will mention that report and add a link to it so that the people reading this know where they can get comprehensive information about that. And i just like to clarify that our operating budget in the last six years is averaged 2. 3 million that is all of the expense of the commission, all of the other funds are dedicated solely to public financing. And all of that money goes to candidates. Could you take a look at the document and see if that seems crisp enough for readers to make that distinction. Sure, yeah, thank you. Have you been clearer . Should we. Is there any action that needs to be taken . Is there a motion to adopt the report as amended by comments by the commissioners . So moved. Second . Second. All in favor . Aye. Aye. Opposed . There being none, the motion passes. The next item has to do with minutes. I want to bring something up regarding the minute policy. Okay. In general. In the past, we have not published draft minutes on our website. Simply because when there are changes made once you publish something on the website it is out there in the ether we did not want the people to confuse the draft ones with the permanent ones. That never has been a problem before at the last meeting the last two meetings, i guess the members of the public were concerned that they didnt have the ability to see the minutes in advance. Now, the minutes are available to the public at the office. But, we. There is a simple answer to that concern, so in the future, we will actually post draft minutes on the website in advance. We are going to do it in a format that permanently reflects a draft status and when the permanent ones are posted they will be the final version. So we are going to change that policy to make it more user friendly. I think that is a good change. Any questions, any Public Comment on the minutes . Minutes. Paul, korer again, i was one of the citizens of the city that complained that all through the mayor coreni hearings i did not see one meeting where the proposed minutes were ever published as we went meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And the sunshine ordinance states that draft minutes must be made available within ten days of the meeting. So the whole Ethics Commission is in violation of the governing law of this county which is the sunshine ordinance and i say that in a sense that in 6736, the sunshine ordinance reads that it is supercedes all other law in the county. So that is with regard to Public Access and information, and the minutes of meetings definitely is not something that the Controllers Office can say is privileged and confidential and we cant share with anybody. These are minutes of open meetings, that belong to the public. You know, so i complained about that, and when i filed my sunshine complaint, because i was really upset about the bomb threat. Personally i was upset about not being warned to leave city hall. I mean you guys thought it was. I listened to the sheriff and the sheriff, and the mayor before he left and the sheriff saying who stayed here, he said, we never got any protocol to clear the building. And i was surprised that vicki henisi, the acting sheriff had called john st. Croix and told him on his personal cell phone according to his statement made to kcbs in this room that she called over because there was some threat on the mayors life. So, now, it was turns out that it is a bomb threat. And i would like to think that the mayor cares about the citizens of this city and county. And i would like to think that if there is a bomb threat in the city hall that the whole building is evacuated. I was upset in the minutes that we could say easily on the 29th. Mr. Hur that you recessed the meeting and adjourned it at the end. But i personally witnessed it in the meeting as soon as the bomb threat came in this meeting was adjourned i saw him do that with my own eyes, next there to mr. St. Croix and to here it adjourned and reconvenes and this is unusual and none of it is in the minutes. So the actual record of what actually happened in this room is not accurate. And i object to that. And when i said that this was done inclusion with the mayor and steve cava and mr. Sure. Captain over at the sfpd and i said that there was collusion going on and all of this was done to keep the mayor who was per jering himself and protecting himself and this was done in the conclusion, this is organized crime and i have been talking about this publicly in meeting after meeting because it is time to stop and i have been asking for the feds to come in and start arresting people. I would like to see supervisors arrested. A believe the organized crime that went on with partner said and all of you will go home to a bed tonight. There are 300 people at partners said that are section 8 cases that should have been heard in federal court that have been evicted in the court right here. This incredible and for you to allow the illegal minutes. Processes. Commissioners, ray heart, director of San Francisco open government. I believe that it is time for someone on this Ethics Commission to show some level of integrity by asking the executive director john st. Croix in public why he is so determined to keep the actual thoughts of the public out of the official record. Im talking particularly about the case about the Meeting Minutes of july 23rd where i brought up this same issue and i was told by the commissioner that we follow the law, i read you the law earlier. We are talking about constitutionally protected politically free speech. Mr. St. Croix takes that free speech out of the official record, appends it somewhere else and in the place of where it lawfully should appear. Substitute his approved censored version of our comments, anyone can read these minutes and see that what i said and what mr. St. Croix says that i said are not the same. I am censored as are other members of the public. I continue this. To continue this, the Ethics Commission must show a compelling state interest. If you try to take what a member of the public says and their free speech is protected in its writing and its publication in the government document. Mr. St. Croix does not like what members of the public have to say, and wants to retain the ability to marginalize that free speech and substitute his own interpretation. That is viewpoint discrimination. It is what is specifically under the law not permitted. And mr. Hur, you, tonight, made it very clear that you dont like what i say. And i have been before bodies before because i was questioning what they were doing or how they were doing it and they come back and they kind of make some short of speech argument which you did tonight, which did not even address what i was talking about. You just explained away your own behavior and you can sit there and smile all that you want, it is what you do. You dont like what members of the public have to say and you want to make sure that it does not actually make it into the record. And ask mr. St. Croix, all that he has ever said is that the City Attorney said that we can. What is the purpose . If your free speech was misrepresented in the record and you felt that the reason that you had sat for two hours and made that statement so that your Public Comments would be accurately reflected, how would you feel if a functionary was allowed to simply put it somewhere elsewhere people were less likely to see it and put in what he says you said. And just look at us. Look at what i wrote in my summaries and look at what he put in the record. And tell me they are the same. Any comments on the minutes . I have a very small correction. On september 24th, page 3, paragraph one, third paragraph, the next po last sentence says that i suggested that the commission will be able to amend. I think that it would read more accurate to to be able to amend the regulations if the task force meets and has suggestions. What i was trying at the time was to say that or suggest that we could go forward with the amendments and that when the time comes, that the Sunshine Task force is able to comment, we could revisit and incorporate recommendations that they have but not to hold up while they are not able to meet. That is my point. I think that we should make that change. Any other changes to the minutes . No. Can you hear the rain . Yeah. Is there a motion to adopt the minutes of the july 23, july 24th and september 11th . Is there a second . Second. All in favor . Aye. Opposed . Hearing none, the motion passes. Executive directors report. Okay. Two highlights, one is i expect that the november meeting will probably run kind of long. We are going to go back to sunshine. We have the item that we kicked over from tonight. Which deals with the run and red issue. November 26th . Never mind. I can check. Yeah. I guess. And it is the first monday after thanksgiving. So, if people are on travel and Everything Else, you might want to remember that, too. Meaning what . Remembering that we have a long meeting. What we are going to do our best to do and i think that we be able to do is have packets ready, the week before thanksgiving, so that you will have them during the rush of the holidays, you will have extra time. The monday before . Hopefully the week before. Even the week before that . I see. I see what you are saying, that would be great right. And i had trouble trying to schedule a december meeting because our normal meeting date would be the 24th, the night of the 24th. So i am going to. I am going to give that one more go around but we may not be able to have a december meeting. The final thing is one of the requests for the future meetings at past meetings was that we do a discussion of the report that the budget analyst harvey rose did comparing us to la. We have decided that before we have that discussion, here at the commission, that we should have interested persons meetings with the public. And get some input from them. So we schedule two of them for december. And then we planned to bring that report before you for the january meeting. That is a good idea. To answer your question, going back to the scheduling. Sure. So for december, we dont. There is nothing on tentatively schedule for the 14th, december 14th . No. There is not. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Anything Public Comment . On the executive directors report. Thank you, dr. Kerr again. This chart on the first page of the directors report, that has 6 categories of investigations and enforcements, mr. St. Croix introduced that chart in 2006, but the first month that this chart was introduced that was whistle blower sunshine ordinance. Since then, in the last six years, the word whistle blower has not appeared. Now whistle blower retaliation is arguably a more serious problem than any of these because it involves the destruction of someones professional life and personal life, too. And it is part of your responsibility to over see whistle blower protection. So i would suggest and plead that whistle blower retaliation be one of the categories so that you know how many complaints come in, and you can track whether any of them gets substan ated. Thank you. Commissioners, ray heart, director of San Francisco open government. I do read these reports. I read every one of them, front to back and i go back and make notes on them and Everything Else because i really do want to come here and make meaningful comment. For example, category number two investigation enforcement programs number of complaints what does that tell us . How long have those complaints been sitting . I know for a fact that the 9 for the Sunshine Ordinance Task force have been sitting there for god knows how long. So basically, i could have to. I dont think that it is unfair to assume that some of these other complaints may just be sitting in someones desk aging and eventually someone will get around to it and someone will put it up. These really are meanless statistics. And nine people filed a complaint, and how many were referred from sunshine . How many of you heard, well, we know that. One. Gomez, where did that go . Nowhere. Because the mayor only wants to use you if it suits his political ends. I told you that before. He hung you out to dry, he wanted to get rid of the sheriff. I personally think that he wanted to take control of the sheriffs office. Get rid of the sheriff put his own person in and say look at