Working with the governor and i know your central wanting has met with him with the Apprenticeship Committee and on the state level we are in load as is regulation passed and come into the regulated system that all the workers exist have protection they know theyre right and have these good jobs no matter what happened there will be workings we want the workers to be protected as they communitybased introduce the many changes. I was wondering which automobile was stepping up and taking the lead i know the tooerms have been involved i dont know the technology planets i guess. Thats material product so, yes there are other units involved. Who are they. I believe the usc w and the tooermz are the main unions and in other states seiu. I dont know. I dont of any other questions its looks like were done you guys are a lot of work ahead of you, we can roll up our sleeves xhesh if we could make a motion to continue this item we can continue this item. Madam chair. As a matter of housekeeping. Ill move to continue the item. Without objection as well. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, mr. Clerk further business. Theres no further business. Thank you very th, 2016 special meeting. Any of the commissioners have any comments or corrections . I have got a couple of either grammatical or literary additions. One suggested rearrangement of language and one question. On page 4, commissioner could you speak into the microphone . On page 4, under discussion for enforcement and report. The end of the second paragraph theres a reference to ms. Blome noted that bdr attempted an assetb search of mr. Chris jackson and the courts investigation determined that there are no assets. Is the court the right word . Do you remember . I didnt think you said court. It should be bdr. Good catch. Bdr, okay, may i propose that change, mr. Chairman . You may. Then on page 5, above the words Public Comment, and maybe should ask what how we phrase this as a customary practice, is present tense or past tense . Because that sentence says, the individual commissioners acknowledge in the present tense. And im going to suggest this change the individual commissioners acknowledged, and congratulated. Of the executive director pelham on her election to the governing board of the council on governmental ethics. I have written this out. And then also above that, the last emphasized point in the first paragraph in conjunction with the controllers office, it should be present tense there develop definitions of the types of activities. Not past tense developed. All right. Any other commissioners comments . Corrections . Assuming those corrections are made, ill take Public Comment on the minutes, if there is any Public Comment . If not i will move approval as amended. Second. All in favor . Aye. Opposed . Hearing none, the minutes are accepted unanimously. Turning to item no. 3, no. 4 im sorry, commissioner, did you ask for general Public Comment . I did ask. You did . Yes. No comment. My apologies. Thank you. No. 4 is come to the microphone. Because i was trying excuse me, first, my name is alpha buie and im mentioned in item no. 3 and i raised my hand and i think, if im looking at the agenda correctly, this is the item that you are speaking of right now . No, that is item 4 that were coming for. 3 was approval of the minutes of the last meeting. I beg your pardon. No problem. All right. Thank you. I will call that item. Thank you so much. And that is hearing on the merits alfalfa buie treasurer and the African American Democratic Club sfec no. 1313 111 2, and ms. Blome, do you want to outline the complaint and ill take testify from you, ms. Buie. Thank you, chair. Actually, the Oakland Ethics Commission is here to represent staff in this hearing because it involves a presentation of evidence and he is barred in california. So he has been kind enough to come over and i will ask mr. Daju to present the staffs case. We worked through come before the microphone. As far as the process goes, did you want me to present our hearing and then the respondent will have an opportunity to respond to it . Or make any kind of statements . Yes, you each have ten minutes, and then ms. Buie will have an opportunity for her presentation after yours. Good evening, commissioners, mala daju representing the San Francisco Ethics Commission enforcement staff. As you know in the matter of alpha buie and just as a little bit of background, the African American Democratic Club is a general Purpose Committee that was active in 20112012. In 2014, the enforcement staff had opened up a case and found that there was three failures to file semiannual statements for 2012 and 2013. Commission staff reached out to the respondent, and when i say respondent i mean ms. Buie and the commission she is treasurer for. Unfortunately the semiannual statements, delinquent semiannual statements were never filed, and the staff didnt wasnt able to reach out to the respondent anymore. Since then, commission hasnt been talking to respondent. They have attempted to resolve this matter, and in 2014 because the matter they werent able to resolve the matter with the respondent, a probable cause hearing was held by the commission. The Commission Found probable cause that the respondent did, in fact, fail to file the three semiannual statements. An accusation was issued by the commission for those three failures and that is what the brief is here today about. The respondent in this matter was served with this brief back in december, and also with notice of this hearing would be held today. The relevant statutes were also served on respondent and she was given the opportunity to submit any evidence to the Commission Staff for this matter. And also, to respond to the brief. Until now the Commission Staff did not receive any evidence or response brief or any type of communications from respondent. Based on the evidence that was issued or that was submitted to the commission in the brief, we recommend that commission find that respondent did fail to file three semiannual statements and that the commission issue a 1,000 fine for each failure to file semiannual statement, and also, that the Commission Order that either the committee or the respondent file some type of paperwork indicating what the status of the commission of the status of the committee is right now . Whether one one of the issues was whether the respondent in this matter was still the treasurer . In order for her not to be the treasurer, the state law requires that she file a form 410 which would delegate the power of the treasurer to somebody else. Or if the committee is no longer active, if they would like to terminate the committee so that the semiannual statements dont continue to be due, they can file a terminating 410, but it would require them to file the semiannual statements all the way up until the date that they indicate in the 410 that the committee was active until. I have one matter i would like to address with the brief. Unfortunately, in the brief we have both ms. Bui and the African American Democratic Club as respondents. The probable cause and the accusation that was issued by the commission only applied to ms. Bui as the respondent and therefore i would like to strike the African American Democratic Club. I would be happy to answer questions. Doesnt the club have an obligation to file the termination statement . All filing obligations by the committee that the treasurer the treasurer and the principle officer is liable for any failure to File Campaign statements, including form 410 to terminate. Any commissioners have any questions . I would like to hear ms. Buies testimony and obviously ask her a question or two. Thank you. Ms. Buie. Good evening once again im alpha buie and thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to come and speak. First of all, going back to 2012. During that time, it i was asked to turn over the books. Now the only thing that im probably guilty of is not being aware that i needed to file this form that he spoke of, to remove my name of being the treasurer. There wass a period of time where the African American Democratic Club from the time i was asked to hand over the books to the incumbents, there was a period of time at that point in time between that moment and the time that they actually had the election, which i havent had time to go through, because im going through some stuff with a whole bunch of water damage in my home, and displaced and a lot madness going on in my personal life like now. So a lot of this i havent been able to address. But there was this period of time. And so when i contacted after first being aware these filings needed to take place, i contacted mr. Saint croix and he was on the phone for me, we probably spent an hour on the phone, trying to get the records from the wells fargo bank, where we had done business with and our banking. So that i could reconcile these records, and then file the reports that needed to be filed. At that point, wells fargo told mr. Saint croix and i at that time that they had no record. They couldnt go back and find the records. So i asked mr. Saint croix, who signed on one of these things, what am i to do at this point . He said, i dont know what you can do if wells fargo cant give you the records. At that point in time, i handed over the books, in 2012. The reason i know it was 2012 i was also runing a phonebanking campaign for president obama at that time for him to get elected. Reelected. So i had my mom checking on a ill month and the phone bank and when they asked for the books i gladly handed them over. I called this this gentleman indicated that i didnt contact anybody. I called the Ethics Commission, mr. Saint croix and a couple of other people, just trying to figure out in this time what can i do to make this go away . What can i file . I dont have what you say you need. I havent been the treasurer i havent been involved with the African American Democratic Club really since 2012. So all i wanted to know was what do you need me to do to make this go away forever and not come back . And nobody has responded to me. From the time i got the first one until now and at the time that i got the first one, had i not been going over to my house, where i cant live and checking my mail and picking up stuff, i wouldnt have even known this, because i havent been able to live in my home where my mail was been going since may of 2016, based on other damage that is going on. So whatever i can do to make it go away, i am here today, because that is what i would like to do is to be able to get rid of this once and for all. I dont feel in any way, shape, form, or fashion, that i should be penalized and i certainly dont have 3,000 to give anyone something im not totally responsible for and even if i was responsible at this point in time in my life i dont have 3,000. Commissioner kopp . What took so long for you to appear . This has been on our calendar, what . Two times. Four, today. When i actually read through it, i did see something that said if i wanted to respond, if i wanted to file something, and i did call somebody, and they said that i didnt have to appear earlier. The form notice does say you dont have to appear. When i got when i got. If im going to face a fine, im going to appear. I got the second one, the second thing, then, im like, okay, its not im not its not going to go away. Then i saw mr. Saintcroixs name at the top of it and i really felt because he was the person who was on the phone with me to wells fargo. An hour. So i was really surprised to get this, and see that his name was up there whether when he was on the phone with me to get records or to try to direct me as to what i needed to do. When did the club end its activities . That i really dont know. As i said, i did not have any real involvement after 2012. After 2012. Yes. The reason i didnt have any real involvement after that, as i said, i was running the phonebanking and then from that, i was back and forth from San Francisco to memphis, tennessee, where i was caring for my mom, who later passed away. So i was not trying to keep up with what was happening with the club. I was trying to keep up with what was happening with my mother and unfortunately i didnt bring that. Its in my car and i left the funeral thing and im not standing before you just to say here is that. I had some reallife crisiss that you needed to deal with and i couldnt be here dealing with that. As far as you know, does the club still exist and is active . You know, i dont know. All i know is that the person that i last know who came in as the Vice President , i did get just a text message from her about this, saying you need to handle this. So i dont know what i have not i have not in any way been involved. How did you initially get involved with the club . Initially i got involved with the club because i really wanted to have a voice in what was happening in the local politics and in terms of being able to hear what peoples platforms were, and to just be able to be a person that had some kind of input and stood up for something in terms of trying to make my community better. It should be known, i mean, i am not only am i a responsible citizen, i am a San Francisco peace officer. I dont go around ignoring and not obeying the law and i have been since 1989, i have been. So i am not a person who walks around and just takes things so lightly. My plate during this time was very, very full, as it is overflowing right now. It is overflowing. And i just, as i said, with everything that i have got going i really am here because i would like this to go away. Well, one of the problems is that the club has not terminated insofar as the Ethics Commissions records show. Can you shed any light on why that hasnt occurred . No, i really let me ask it another way who was the president , or the leader . When the 2013, 2013 the election, which was supposed to take place in 2012, the 2013 eelection, i think it actually took place in 2013. I went back and found an email to that effect, but i didnt bring that in today. But that email suggested that the election actually took place in 2013 and at that time mr. Karl williams would have been the president and Joe Eli Jackson would have been the Vice President. Are either of them here tonight . No . Hmmm . No. No. Anybody else you can tell us who was an officer . Besides them and you . The only other person who is here this evening was the outgoing president in 2012 and that is mr. Charles spencer and he is here. I have a question to somebody on the staff how did we get rid of an organization that no longer functions and nobody appears to sign documents to terminate it . Ms. Buie continues to be the treasurer, so she continues to be responsible under the Campaign Finance reform ordinance. So she can file a termination statement. I know she is, but nobody is doing something. Right. Can we do something and say you are no longer recognized . We dont have that power, but that is something that is on our list of things to add to actually. If i may, sir, i just want to be clear . If there is something that i write or something that i say . You fill out a form . I fill out a form. To terminate. But if you are not treasurer anymore. Fill out the form and terminate it. I may be wrong and staff correct me, but i think one of the problems is which you file to terminate, you have to say you have no funds or if you have funds what you have done with them . You have to have a Financial Statement about it and that is what i understand she is saying the problem that they had initially to get wells fargo to cooperate and she says wells fargo didnt cooperate. Right. I share your frustration. It just seems that we have a number of these cases where the party being charged is told that you have to do x. And they dont do it, and we penalize them every six months, because they didnt do it. Just seems to me there has to be some way not to keep up runing up the fines to get it closed . Chair renne, may i ask a question . Paul . Sure. Ms. Buie, can you go back to the discussion you had with wells fargo along with director saint croix and shed a little more information on what you were asking for and what they were not able to provide . And then what director saint croixs advice to you was . Yes, what i was asking for i had Bank Account Numbers from when we had accounts during the time i was actively acting in the capacity of the treasurer. And during that time, when i was calling to get that one of the things let me back this up a little bit, so ill real clear on why. When i was not acting in the capacity of the treasurer, the whole books and all the binders and stuff that i had, there was another person during that election, when they asked me to turn the books, that was transferred to. If i had brought that box with that stuff, i could show you the box, where it was shipped back from the person was outofstate who was elected as treasurer. That box was shipped back to me with all that. I still have that stuff in that box. It was shipped back to me. In the meantime, this time that you are speaking of, had already passed and was already delinquent. So i didnt have anything. With the information that i had, the old Bank Accounts, i was asking wells fargo to give me Bank Statements. So that i could go back over the Bank Statements for the period in question . If i could go back over the Bank Statements to reconcile with statements to see what was spent and if anything was taken in and deposited . And wells fargo along with director saint croix on the line with me said they had no records of these accounts. So when we were on the phone as i said approximately an hour he was on the phone with me and from one person to another person to another person and they still said they couldnt they had no record of these accounts. So then as far as you know, you do not have and wells fargo does not have any records of the accounts for the African American Democratic Club for the time in question . The time in question, yes. The only wells fargo statements that i have, i have them in a binder, which i didnt bring, which was up to the period when i was no longer acting in the capacity of the treasurer. So that is all i had was what i had shipped off and what came back to me in a box. I didnt have anything else. Other than, the only thing i got was communication from the Ethics Commission. I hadnt gotten anything since then. After your conversation with wells fargo with director saint croix and they indicated that they dont have any of this information regarding the accounts or accounts statement, what was his advice to you . He said if you cant get the statements, i really dont know what you can do. He says, because you need to be able to show what the balance that you are showing, the cash balance that i showed in the last statement i filed, what happened with that money . I said i dont know. You know, i want just going to make up something to put on there. I didnt know. Thank you. Im sorry in regard to that box with those materials in it, did that show the existence of a wells fargo account and checks and numbers . Or a number of an account on there . Yeah and i had those when i called them and if i had brought that box in that i created a binder, a zip binder. And everything that came to me when i was acting in the capacity of the treasurer, everything that from filings to statements, to everything is categorized by the month when i was acting in that capacity. So you had materials that indicated accounts such and such exist . Ahhah. At the time you and mr. Saint croix were on the phone with wells fargo and you are telling them this it is the account and they are saying those accounts are no longer in existence and mind you its 89 months since that time since there was any activity on this. What they had done was closed out the account. And what i needed them to do was go back, like where they kept it on laserfiche or whatever they kept it, even though they closed them out to, go back and get me copies of what they had up to the point that they closed the account out. Im a little confused. Did wells fargo tell you and mr. Saint croix they didnt know anything about any such account . They didnt see they didnt know anything about the account because i had the account numbers, but they said they no longer had any records pertaining to the accounts. They didnt have any records pertaining to those accounts. Okay. I wonder if you could just on the calendar, clarify some things for me. So you were treasurer of the local African American Democratic Club in 2012 . Um hm h. With a what was your periods as treasurer . I think from 2011 at least 20112012. So you were treasurer for one year, is that correct . I may have been longer. Im sure it was 20 i see i filed something 2011. 2012. 2011 is when i took it over and looks like the first one i filed and its in your package, because i didnt bring any of the documents that i have. The first one i filed was in 2011. So i would have been doing it 2011 through 2012. So during that period, where you did not file these forms, and where you accumulated this debt of fines that of forms that you didnt file and therefore, have been fined during that period, is that correct . No, the period i didnt file is after the period that i was no longer see im looking at your packet. Who succeeded you as treasurer . The person who succeeded me was sun seri i cant remember her last name. And i dont remember her last name because as i said, i was not once i was no longer active in that capacity, i was not active with the organization and i was not active because i was running a phone bank. Okay. I understand. Is this club still active as a Political Club in San Francisco at this time . I have no idea what they are doing. I just know i havent been active since 2011. A thousand things could have happened since 2012, i just dont know. Okay. For me, i mean as i listen to this, it seems to me that no. 1, i dont know how well we train entities of this nature in terms of what they have to file and what they have to do and do they understand the kinds of fees that are going to be applied to them as fines if they dont comply with either the dates in which they have to file information . And otherwise its just this morose of people that nobody know what is going on and i dont understand why wells fargo wouldnt have records of that bank account. That to me is completely bizarre. Im just completely at a loss what is going on here and how were going to resolve this . Ms. Buie, you at one point went to somebody at the Ethics Commission to say that you were no longer treasurer . Exactly. And you were told at that time, were you not, that you had to get something from the club saying that you had been relieved as treasurer before they could the Ethics Commission and its staff could treat you as no longer the treasurer . Because that is the way it was originally when the committee was setup, that you were identified as the treasurer. And they wanted you to get something from the committee telling them, telling us that you were no longer treasurer. Why didnt you do that . No one ever told me that i needed to do that until all of this stuff came up. No one has ever had i known that i needed to file something, to say i was not and that is the first thing that i think i said when i came up here, the one an only thing that im guilty of is not knowing that i needed to file whatever it was to remove my name as treasurer. I didnt know i needed to file paperwork to remove my name. Somewhere in some old emails i have some emails that said that the election took place the election actually took place in early 2013 and list who had the incoming officers were in 2013. But i dont have that with me this evening. Mr. Chairman . What i would like, i would like an opportunity to submit that information to you and whatever else that is in that box that you need to see. I would like an opportunity to submit that to you . Im going to sum up as what it looks like to me, but first Charles Spencer was the president in 2011; right . [inaudible] in 2012 as well; right . [inaudible] do you know if he is still the president . I know he is not the president. He is not the president. All right. Then ms. Elias jackson was president by 2014, is that correct . You know what . In 2013 i know she became the Vice President. I dont know if she actually became the president. She may have at some point, but i didnt have any contact with her or the africanamerican Democratic Club. If you read one of the documents attached to the file, this is from jo jackson, dated august 22, 2014 is that in the packet that i have . Huh . What page is that on . Exhibit 6. Exhibit 6. Respondent has been given all of these documents . Yes, she is looking through them. All right. In there it states that you met on july 1, 2014 with garrett chatfield, who was i dont know an investigator or something with the commission. And and indicated that to him with documents that the committees documents were forwarded to a new treasurer, remember the name of that new treasurer . . Sunseri gosh i cant remember her last name, sunseri something. Anyway, and you assertedly agreed you would attempt to get the Bank Statements at wells fargo to determine how the committee used the balance of 5216. 51 to file the form for to termainate and august 11, 2014 is Elias Jackson identified as the president contacted mr. Chatfield. Mr. Chatfield met are her on august 22nd, 2014, went through these issues, and nothing happened. You are still on the hook, so to speak, because on the Public Record you are still the treasurer, which makes you a respondent. The club is the other respondent. Now its recommended that because of a technical omission, the club be deleted as the respondent. Which leaves you as the remaining respondent and as far as the record shows me, it leaves about 5213 or something in a bank account somewhere. In the meantime, its probably eaten up about 100,000 of staff and taxpayer time and money to go through this. You know of any other individual in or out of the club, who could provide information on its current status . I really dont. You dont . I really dont. As i said, i have actually, honestly, sir, so much chaos in my life with having lived in a hotel for four months after water damage to my home and then in an apartment and trying to make sure that i get asbestos and mold and everything out of my home. My life is the last thing on my mind other than this right here has been the African American Democratic Club. I have just been trying to bring some peace in my own personal life. Im curious, is there anybody else here who is a member of this club . I desist. Any response that you want to make . No, im just here if the commissioners have any questions. You have to speak into the mic. I dont have any comments unless the commissioners have questions for me. Why did you arrive at 1,000 per violation . So im happy to let staff respond to that if you like to, what do you think . We can. Looking at past fines for this type of violation, when folks entered into stipulations, the penalty was about 500 per violation. But we felt that since the case had to go to a hearing we would at least double that. We did try to make it as reasonable as possible from our perspective because we did have some information to indicate these mitigationing circumstances and we did not think that the maximum penalty was appropriate and that is why we recommended 1,000 per violation. Any other comments or questions by commissioners . Just another question to staff to make sure that the only way to terminate the committee would be to file the form 460. There is no other way to terminate the county . Its form 410. 410. Yes, i think that as a practical matter the commission could probably and maybe josh could opine on this, the commissioner would probably accept a letter from ms. Buie that the Bank Accounts are closed and there is no way to account for the money that shows on their last form 460. In conjunction with the form 410 to finalize the case. I would be willing to accept that. Is that okay . Well, the problem with that though is how can she sign such a letter when she doesnt have any idea whether there is still 5,000 or whether the 5,000 is pilfered. She doesnt know how it was spent, but we at least know that the account is closed . The account is closed . It sounds like there is no record existing past the year she was treasurer and i would assume that the account she had control over is closed. [ inaudible ] i cant hear you, can you talk into the mic . Im sorry. The accounts that i had control over and that i had any connections w they have been closed for years. If the African American Democratic Club started conducting any activity, after the closure of the club through the termination statement, then we had have another enforcement action against the new commitment for not formulating correctly. When you were treasurer and the account did exist, were you the one signing the checks that the club would expend for various things . Yes i was. Okay. Was anyone else authorized to sign the checks besides you . The president. Mr. Charles spencer. Okay. So one would assume then, in regard to that 5300 whatever it is, was that in the account at some point, did you write any checks on those amounts . You know, when we had elections and that is why i dont ever recall there being 5,000 left in there, when we had when there was ever a politician running or anything like that, we paid for ads. We paid to have, like copy people to brint print out door knockers to put on doors and gave kids stipends to pass out things. So usually we were in the hole, but according to the dates that the cutoff fell on, if i filed it according to the cutoff dates for the monies taken in and money spent and it looked like there was money, but in essence the money was gone. Its just the checks came in, or checks went out after a lot of times after the cutoff date, the terminate date i should account for. So it was always on the statements it may have looked like there was, but a week or so after, i filed coming up to the next time to file the next statement, then that cleared out the next money, but there was never any money leftover for anyone to do something with. We were always in the hole for something. Did you ever see a balance of 5,000 on account on any of the materials sent to you as treasurer . Not really on a bank account. Well, on anything . Did you ever see any kind of documents sent to you by wells fargo that said, ms. Buie, treasurer of this in this account, which you are the signatory of, there is now 5,000 or any kind of statement, do you remember seeing . A statement not with a balance of that amount. What i probably remember seeing is we took in a check for 5,000, we showed there would have been a deposit, but on that same statement the money would have gone out almost as fast as it went in. So statement could show the deposit of whatever it was, 5,000, would have shown that deposit, but immediately from that 5,000 would have been withdrawals of the monies that were spent. So it would not be a balance ever of 5,000. I dont know if that make goods sense. Listening to the discussions earlier, i dont know if it was your statement it was shown at some point that the club had an account with 5,000 in it its the last form 460 showing 5,000 exhibit 3 in the brief right okay. Its the very last form 460 filed for that committee. Okay. It was filed by ms. Buie. It was received on october 25th, 2012, a week before the election. Okay. It shows 5,000 and some change left in committees funds. So ms. Buie filed that and said we have got 5,000 in this account . Yes. The exact amount 5216. 51. And that was for the october 1st20, 2012. That was filed october 25th, and ms. Buie resigned in november 2012, so a month later. I will call for Public Comment in a moment. Thank you. October 1st through october 20th and that is the ending cash balance there. That was filed i have in mind, lets see, how would we accomplish this . Writing to wells fargo asking for a history of this account and a, did it exist and b, if it did not and wells fargo says that is not permitted by law, but i would like to see what wells fargo does, and maybe the City Attorney can figure out some way we can get that. Im sure you would consent to it, but i dont know you have standing to consent. Im not sure that would be germane to the issue here and that is whether there should have been a filing . To close it up . Its clear there should have been, what are you going to do . I guess before i call for Public Comment, does anybody want to make a motion, either to accept the staffs recommendation or object it or some other alternative . Ill make a motion to accept it, but i want to include the club and he says that we cant do it. I have an issue. Are we going to discuss the staffs recommendation . Pardon me . Are we going to discuss the staffs recommendation now or no . Well, well, i will make the motion and call for Public Comment. Okay. Is that motion seconded . Ill second it. Any commissioners want to comment on the motion . What is the motion . Whether or not we should i accept staffs recommendation . Find the violation and impose the 3,000 fine. My view is that i think 1,000 per violation is excessive. I think that during her time as treasurer, ms. Buie discharged her responsibilities in filing form 460 as required. The last one october 25, 2015 and she resigned thereafter and believed she didnt have any further responsibility as treasurer. So therefore, didnt file any additional statements. And then there when contacted by the staff in 2014, i believe it was, i think she worked in good faith with executive director croix to resolve this issue and then when she was told by the director i dont know what you can do, she didnt take any further action. Until now, when she received the information and has come here. And she said very clearly im here to make it go away and take responsibility and the amount in 5,000 in a committee that only raised 13,000 i, believe n total and was intended to go Campaign Outreach and as ms. Buie said to make further contributions to the community and have a say in what is happening in our political life, i commend her coming here after so long to take responsibility for this. It seems like she is the last one stand based on her testimony and i would find that 3,000 is disproportionate to the actions she has taken and the gravity of the violations that have occurred here, i think our commission has considered violations of larger dollar amount and also with much more sophisticated players. And so i think that the punishment really does need to fit the crime here and that i think to your point, my fellow commissioner point, i think commissioner hayon said what is our responsibility based on the facts of the case and outcomes and i think piling on with a 3,000 fine doesnt serve that purpose. So i would recommend and would feel comfortable observing the letter of the law with a 1 per violation. You are proposing to amend the motion . Yes. To reduce the fine to 1. Yes, per violation. Commissioner hayon . The only comment i want to add to this, i totally agree with what commissioner chiu just expressed. But the problem for me at least is twofold. One at the beginning, where i questioned how we educate people especially small groups. Were here to see there is ethical conduct in the raising of money for particularly in elections. And the have big groups are very sophisticated and now how to deal with this and you have this massive groups, small groups that dont know what they are doing and unsophisticate treasurers not an excuse, but we need to make sure that they know what they have to do prior to beginning these groups or these efforts. At the other end, we have this problem with not enough staff, not enough personnel at the Ethics Commission to deal with things, with these issues from a timely manner. I mean this is 2017. I mean, this woman barely if i am to believe you, barely remembers who was in the African American Democratic Club at that time. These things need to be resolved quickly, and efficacy and what kind of advice the executive director was giving ms. Buie in 2012, this is not what we should be spending our time on. There are far more serious violations and issues that we need to spend time on. This is not one of them and im fine fine her 1 and this whole thing is ridiculous and embarrassing. I will call for Public Comment. Hi. My name is Charles Spencer. I was president of the African American Democratic Club sorry i didnt hear you. My name is Charles Spencer. Mr. Spencer . Right. I was president of the African American Democratic Club during the period that alphabuie was treasurer and she administered her role in a way that made me feel comfortable and we had an election and handed all the information and po box keys and twitter and handles and handed off everything and expected the financial wells fargo account information would have been handed off and taken care in a similar manner as the website. I had a couple of followup meetings with the subsequent president and Vice President. We discussed strategies, priorities, and we i assumed that everything that needed to be taken care of would have been taken care of, with the new president and Vice President. I am at least a little bit concerned that alpha buie is being held responsible for not filing for the clubs obligation when i would have expected the subsequent president and Vice President to take care of the file filings. Who are they . Carl william and joe jackson. Pardon me . Carl william and joe jackson. I have a question n terms of the groups fundraising. Yes. How did you fundraise and from whom . We tried to raise from members, and our primary financial activity would be to prepare state card and fundraise with candidates and prepare and disseminate cards and put they will on car windows and we had pretty much never had a net free and clear balance of 5,000 and were were pretty much zero all the time. So most of that money, 5,000, or whatever the amount was, was money that the members contributed . That is correct. Let me ask you this, is there any explanation one of the investigative documents indicates that the committee had raised about 9200. I think it was the year 2012, that january 1october whatever it was and spent over 13,500. Does that ring a bell with you . I cant tell you the exact balance, but i know that again, during each election cycle, we would go out to candidates and members to raise money and our primary expenditure would be the slate cards. We would use spotlight printing, and other than a po box and website. Do you know if the club still exists . I do not know. I know a do you know a couple of years ago joe jackson was trying to organization the club i dont know at that time if she was still president or Vice President . But no, i do not know if the club still exists. Do you know any of the people who were officers after you . Do you know them today, so you can say to them, why dont you go down to the Ethics Commission and filed a statement terminating the club . I have telephone and email address as of a couple of years ago and i will do that tomorrow. I will call them tomorrow. Mr. Williams and miss jackson. Ill do it tonight. All right. Any other Public Comment before we vote on this . Did you have a question . Good evening. David pilpel and i had a couple of comments on this matter. Four things specifically the woman referred to as jo Elias Jackson i met her several years ago. At the time i believe she was a City Employee and she still may be. So perhaps some outreach could be done to her through the city to determine her status and if she has any information that might help in this matter . The second point, the exhibit 1 of the packet indicates that the 410 filing was an initial statement, the first 460 exhibit 2 doesnt list the id number, but the second 460, exhibit 3 lists id number 14706 for the committee and that suggests to me this was either mishandled by the secretary of state, or theres Something Else to this story, because an id number starting in 98 would suggest that the committee was initially formed in 1998 under the previous numbering system. And that the that either the initial filing was for a new organization that should have been issued in a different number, or this was actually treated as an amendment to a prior statement of Organization Form had 410 with that id number. So im not sure about the history of the organization, but it trigers the question based on that id number. I didnt hear about outreach to the fppc and how they would handle a similar matter involving nontermination of an entity, when there are missing files or some disarray in the record keeping. I would suspect over the 40plus years of the fppc that they might have some suggestions or protocol for how a committee can how termination can occur if there isnt a responsible officer that can file the terminating 410, and finally, i think i heard from a couple of commissioners that training for entities like this, general purpose recipient committees really is needed. That i think we have a good system for training treasurers and other officers for ballot measure committees for candidate committees, but these entities jprcs otherwise known as pacs, its difficult because you have a lot of volunteers and a lot of turnover and perhaps some additional effort in training and resources to do that through the commission would be helpful . They also mentioned slate mail activity, those are regulated under state law and not local law. So there is some confusion there and often confusion in not filing statements. Hope that is helpful. Thanks. Any other Public Comment . That is a good thread of an idea, but ms. Pelham must know, how are situations like this handled, los angeles or elsewhere . You are on the board of governors of this famous organization. So this case you know, i was as frustrated as you all are with the circumstances. So i did reach out to the fppc and learned and read their current administrative termination regulation, which allows the fppc to administrative terminate those committees nonresponsive filers with activity below 3,000 and also reviewed their proposed legislation to increase that amount to 5,000 and so nonresponsorive filers with 5,000 in Bank Accounts or less and i reached out to the Enforcement Division to express support and ask them how we can refer our nonresponsorive filers to be terminate by state and were working on that right now. Its assigned to one of our staff members, johnny hosey to go through and refer all of the nonresponsive filers who meet the criteria for termination. I thought why not give our commission the authority as well . So that is something on our list of amendments we would like to ask to cfra to give you the authority to administratively materialinate a committee that meets certain criteria, so this situation doesnt happen again . As it is right now, we dont have a really good option, because these strict liability violations. As a staff, we cant really make decision about just letting things go. That authority will come as we bring policies to you that gives us that, but right now we dont have the policies in place, which is why its before you. All right. Commissioner kopp, you were the author of the amendment, which ms. Chiu proposed amending our accepting, but reducing the fine to a dollar to 3 . That is commissioner. You had the original motion. Mine is the original motion. And you dont accept her amendment i will call the question, all in favor . Aye. Opposed . No. Wait what are we voting on . On the amended motion . The motion without amendment. In other words, the motion without the amendment. To accept staffs recommendation and impose a fine of 3,000. I dont know why commissioner kopp is voting no on his own motion . I thought you were calling the original motion. Yes. My vote is aye. And mine is no. No so the original motion does not carry. Does anyone want to make another motion . I would move to amend staffs recommendation to reduce the fine to again 1 per violation for a total of 3. So that the motion is that you would find that there was a violation . Yes. Impose a penalty of 1 for each violation. Do i hear a second . Second. I will call for Public Comment on the amended motion. Hearing none, i will call the question, all in favor of the motion . Aye. Opposed . Motion is carried. 50. That the Commission Finds there has been a violation, but imposes a fine of 1 per violation or 3. Okay, i just want to be clear on what i need to do other than pay 3 . Do i need to file form 410 and 460 . Do i do that . And then pay 3 . Is that what i do . That leaves the legal question if you are no longer treasurer. Counsel . I just want to be clear. Why dont we extinguish this entity. She just wants clear instructions, legally she is still treasurer because the club has not filed a form 410. If you file 410, which i can give you a copy of when we step out. So just a 410, which is terminating and put in the date you believe it was terminated and file the 460, up until the date it was terminated and i can talk to you more about that if you like and help you. Thank you all so very much. How can she do that . She is longer an officer. She hasnt been affiliated since 2012. She doesnt know if there is money in another bank account. Im sorry, the reason we just found in her violation because legally she is still the treasurer. We find three violations. She can terminate the committee, if she would like . I mean, she is still obligated to work with whoever was around the committee, who was in the charge of the committee it was term innated in order to produce documents and we can accept a letter of explanation for that. So she just needs to carry out her obligations to conclusion and file form 410 and pay 3. Hopefully the staff will work with her to get that accomplished. Turning now to item 5. Which is presentation and discussion from the bureau of delinquent revenues about its collection process, status of the Ethics Commission referrals. Yes, thank you. Commissioners, this presentation is in response to judge kopps request last month for more information about how the bureau of delinquent revenues operates and an opportunity to have specific questions about our cases answered. Three individuals from the bureau of delinquent revenues have come tonight to present that information to you and i will let them introduce themselves and explain more about their roles. Thank you very much and welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Im sorry you had to sit for a while. Very interesting case to listen to. My name is Jeff Michaels and im one of the assistant directors for the bureau of delinquent revenues and this is sheila, one of our collections supervisors and supervisors the collectors who handle the collections on the Ethics Commission debts and were here with our policy and reservation manager, amanda freid, who you probably already know. Welcome. I promise to keep this short and respect your time and give basically a highlevel overview of the Collection Services that we provide on your cases, and try to address any questions that you maybe have about the work that we do. So really briefly, the bureau of delinquent revenues being the official Collection Agency for the city and county, has multiple departments who are referring delinquent accounts and accounts age to 90 days of delinquency and after that 90th day, well have that department notified the debt or referral or email communications. Once we received them for your particular cases since we dont have a very large inventory at this point in time, we manually enter them into our collections system and do our immediate collection followup process. Normally opinion the accounts being referred to us, letters are automatically generated by our collection system. So normally within the first 35 days they are already getting a letter from us, welcoming them to the club, and we do all of our initial collection reviews. So the collectors will also if we have phone numbers available and email s available to Initiative Contact with the debtor. Normally after the first letter goes out we get a response and get them to pay the entire amount in full. If they are unable to pay the entire full amount, we probe and continue our collection efforts including setting up payment arrangements or giving them extensions whenever they can pay the entire amount . There many cases we also get bad address information like some of the information that you may have could be old or from six months, a yearago. So well also do skip tracing if that is needed and add them to our auto dialer. That is part of what sheila does and we dial on these accounts all day, from 8 00 a. M. To 7 00 p. M. In the evening. For people who have not responded to our initial welcome to the club, we will send out a final affirm financial notice that contains stronger language as far as the actions we can take [tkprbgs ] they are not compliant. So for debtors not compliant, we do advise that can refer them to a Collection Agency if the balance is not large value. But still pursable or cases that they are higher balances that are owed, or there is a higher propensity to pay in case where we take them to court. The general i guess i would say the general guideline we follow as far as value is concerned we look at cases 1,000 or greater. These cases will receive a more indepth review by collectors and well pull their Employment Information and property that may be owned. Any information that we can find on assets. That review is pretty much done extensively throughout the course of our collection process, from the very beginning making phone call and sending out letters up until whatever the resolution for that debt might be . So for candidates that are qualified, lets say they owe 2,000 on a bill, and we find that the person is gainfully employed and or owns property or runs a business in the city, we will send them a demand to advise them that our intent is to sue them. If they dont comply. We normally give them ten additional days to respond to that demonstrate. Demand. And if they fail to do so, the collectors are extensively trained and they are trained to file the case in Small Claims Court, and will handle the entirety of the process. So making sure that the debtor is served, appearing at the hearings. We try to do negotiations even at the hearings. Sometimes if debtor try to avoid having a judgment entered in their record because once its obtained it becomes Public Record and could affect their credit reports and could hit them in a number of ways, they tend to be pretty client there. Ompliant there. If not. Yes, im sorry . I may have missed this, how long from the time you initiate collection proceedings against a debtor to the time that you would file in Small Claims Court . Normally well try to do that within the First Six Months. First six months. Yes. Thank you. Well do what we can to try to work with them and make multiple efforts to contact. We do what we call sloppy payers, that they make a payment arrangement and well work with them who are working with us, but those not compliant, normally within the First Six Months were looking to obtain a judgment to enforce it. Once we have obtained they are trained for postjudgment work. The main criteria for any cases that we choose to take to court, there has to be an ability to pay and enforcement of judgment. If we find there is Employment Information, our first action is going to be doing a wage garnishment against them. If we receive any payments via check, looking to levy their Bank Accounts. We do find at the very lisa least, if there is not enough information to give us a clear picture of what their assets look like, well record that typically in San Francisco well look to see if they own any property in any other counties and have it recorded there as well. Our goal is that in the event that they try to go into escrow transaction, well do what we can do collect on the lien through the escrow process. For largebalance cases, where they may owe 2500 or greater and have assets we have attorneys within our office to work with to file civil action against them. So the similar review process happens on our anne. Normally they want to see all of the active we have done up to the point of the referral to our Legal Section team. What information we have found that makes it clear this particular debtor is a candidate for legal action at that level and from there they do postjudgment enforcements to collect on the judgments. The judgments are good for ten years. And well renew them twice. So for a total of 30 years. So were not going away any time soon. We try to pursue them, as much as we possibly can. Sometimes you cant find information on them immediately and may not be able to enforce the collection right away, but over the course of the time to make efforts to for collection efforts on that process. In addition to that, we also have quite a few of these case that are City Employees. If they are City Employees well do offsets against their wages. Other points to make we have cases if they are uncollectible and these are cases that we have already hit the wall with our research. There is no property. There is no employment. They dont have a business. We made 67 passes of reviews and not finding anything on them and for cases like that, if they are low value, a few hundred dollars those cases are not going to be able to be fully pursued. Its not costeffective to pursue them. We have cases that they file for bankruptcy and in that case we have another team that handles all bankruptcy proof of claims and will handle that depending on which chapter the debtor has filed . So that includes if were going to do a reorg and be able to get installments from assets in the trust account. Many cases they file for chapter 7 because there are no assets and were waiting for the debt to be discharged. So once the court says that is the case, that will terminate our collection efforts at that point in time. For debtors who are deceased, we do the research to see if they have any probate that is estate and the collectors are trained to file creditor claims to collect through probate as well. That is very highlevel. So forgive me if i wasnt detailed enough. If you have any questions for me . Commissioner kopp. Did i hear you mention orders of examination . Yes. So i didnt mention it here, but i mentioned to jessica in our discussions. You can see it in the agenda report. We have got a case we acted on last october november what was it about 75,000 penalty item just puzzled why you wont use order of examine of judgment . . } if we obtain a judgment against them, the order is an option to pursue. I want to say the last case we got for that size was a real recent transfer the last several weeks, maybe two, three weeks. So it has not reached the stage of a judgment just yet. Were still in the initial contact phase, if were talking about the same one im thinking of. When a matter is presented to you for collection from an agency, whether its the general hospital, or the Ethics Commission, what involved, if any, do you expect from the agency who has referred the matter to . Normally we have a liaison or contact within the departments the referring department that we will work with. So periodically well still checkin to see if you received email address . Did you receive a Mailing Address or any recent phone number information . Or if they made any payments to you . A copy of a check . So well still collaborate with that department to get updates that may help progress the collection effort. How about negotiating a settlement . Some settlement . Does the agency refer the matter to you have to approve the settlement . It depends on the nature of our mou with them. So some deferring departments like the hospital, for example, they give us the authority to settle on those obligation as we deem appropriate. And then we have some clients that well consult and get their approval on all Settlements Negotiations that we do. Any commissioners have any other questions . Thank you very much. Actually. Go ahead. Are you prepared to take specific questions on the outstanding matters that have been referred to bdr from the commission . Im hoping so. So in the matter of the committee to elect normal for supervisor, and bob squarey for district 7, isabel and Chris Jackson two from 2015 and the latter two from 2016. Have you filed in small claims for these matters since its been more than six months since the matters were referred to you . Okay for Chris Jackson, yes. So we have three different obligations in total for him. One from that was assigned to us in 2011 and one assigned to us in 2013. Both of those have judgments against them and liens filed for those obligations. Okay. The third one was referred to us in september of 2016. And that one is not yet suit just yet. So we have communications out to him and do our normal collection process and looking to sue him in the next couple of months if he is not responsive. Which was that . Chris jackson. Isabel irbano, the difficulty is finding good contact information. We havent had success finding viable numbers or addresses and wont be able to sue until we achieve that. Bob squarey is pending asset review. So we sent him notices. Have not located good phone number contact for him just yet and he is currently under asset review. Before we had the collectors commit to taking a legal action against him, we want to make sure that they found something to ensure its costeffective to take that action. And then the committee to elect norman for supervisor. Is there Jacqueline Norman . We have collection calls that have been made, but as of today, we have not found assets for her just yet. I see. Which one was that . The committee to elect norman for supervisor. Any Public Comment . Thank you. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Dont leave yet. Okay. Thank you very much. Hi im larry bush for friends of ethics. On occasion the commission will accept the stipulation for a payment over a period of time. I think you had julie ellis, i believe for payment of 500 a month for a period of time, but i have never seen in any of the subsequent reports whether those payments are being regularly made . So i would like, if in the future, when those kinds of arrangements are made, the report will show it being paiddown as the agreement was made . Thank you. Thank you. David pilpel again and i agree with larrys comment and i think its very welltaken and would be good to followup with those stipulations, and payment plans. I just wanted to comment further on the Chris Jackson referral matter. I heard from the bdr staff just now that they have three different items related to mr. Jackson. I only see on the chart page 4 of jessicas report for item 10, two items. So perhaps they broke it up into three, but it would be nice if the two staff had similar dates and all that . My understanding is that mr. Jackson just ran this past november for school board in oakland and is currently a resident of oakland. So i dont know if that helps or hurts their ability to discover his assets, and attach anything . I have nothing personal against him or any of these other actors, i just hope they would pay their debts and get out of the doghouse and be back with the rest of us in a better place. I have talked to staff before about having a larger way to figure out who has fines, forms, fees, et cetera . That are overdue, or have other outstanding obligations to the commission, and find some way to sort of tag all of these people. So that we can publicize them, maybe encourage folks to contact the commission, and provide the funds or forms or whatever is outstanding and get out of that bad place . So perhaps well have a larger discussion of that when we get to enforcement. I appreciate that we have now heard from board of bdr about their process and better communication between the commission and bdr and treasurers staff. Thank you. Good evening commissioners, my name is ace washington, better known as ace on the case. This is my first time coming before this commission and i have read about this agency and i see you are on the case. The reason i said i came before the Ethics Commission some five years ago, and the dates that you were all talking about excuse me about the African American Democratic Party you had Charles Spencer back there and the deal is im just trying to get some information here. I know i have been to a lot of commissioners meetings and the agendas im familiar with and this long agenda it looks like im here until the 12th item. I am African American as you can see here and i would just like to identify myself. I was on the outmigration task force and im the czar of the outmigration. I am 62yearolds and my kids got kids and my question to this commission, i will probably come back at a another date to ask for help from you on some discrepancies on the fillmore, the outmigration and efforts going on. I was surprise to see charles and other people here and im trying to find out what is the function of this junction, what you really do . Do you really have backbone you will go after people who make complaints about commissioners, and other issues here . Im not how can i put it this way . Im not sure what the Ethics Commission i know what ethics is about and i know we need change at city hall and you all call it city hall and i call it silly hall. I just wanted to compliment quentin kopp, a no one sense who will bring credibility to the commission. What i was coming to find i read last year and find out what the mayor is doing, ed lee . Because it seems like ed lee has no problem doing anything in the city and county and nobody wants to bring him up on any charges. I have seen some things happen in 2012 with the elections with some people im not going to mention right now that i know personally. But i just want to know if this Ethics Commission is going to be from az upanddown city hall to make sure that the things that have been going on for a number of years be corrected . Because im going to be watching. Im ace on the cases and im watching now and i will wait for another time to speak. Thank you. Thank you. All right, turning to again i thank the people who came over from the brt bureau of delinquent revenue and good luck and continue with the good work. Turning to item 6 that matter will be determined to the next meet due to Health Issues because of his failure to get notification that would enable him to appear earlier. Mr. Chair . Yes, david pilpel, i wanted to point out in one of the attachments, exhibit 1 to the warning item. There is an email to mr. Warne, and i couldnt find it in the packet and perhaps the packet for next month could include staffs response to the hearings request . That would be helpful thank you,. Youll note that jessica . Yes. Turning to item 7, discussion and possible action on proposed enforcement policy for investigation suspension, and parallel proceedings. Ms. Pelham, do you want to address that . Okay. Thank you, chair. So in the past couple of meetings, judge kopp has requested some discussion of a policy to potentially refrain from indefinite suspension of our administrative investigators while District Attorney or City Attorney investigations proceed. That effectively is a request for parallel prosecution. So that the Ethics Commission would proceed on a track that is parallel to a District Attorney or City Attorney investigation and not concurrently. There is a lot of excellent policy reasons for doing and this most important preservation of evidence and freshness in mind of memoris for witnesses and just to prevent the staleness of investigations that were seeing when the District Attorney retains an investigation and prevents or least requests that the Ethics Commission stand down on their investigation for long periods of time, sometimes multiple years and judge kopp suggested a period of 90 days for an Ethics Commission suspension of investigation at the request of the District Attorney and City Attorney and we considered that timeframe and think its a good timeframe and the District Attorney should be able to get off on a good start for the investigation at that time and we would support that suggestion by judge kopp and set forward the policy reasons and just justifications and policy for you today. Any discussion . Mr. Kopp . I refer to page 4 of the report and the specific language under Ethics Commission investigation suspension policy. I have one addition on item 11. Which now reads that the City Attorney or District Attorneys request, staff will suspend its administrative investigation for 90 calendar days. I recommend adding, and then resume such investigation. Period. Secondly, in the following unnumbered paragraph starting with the words the executive director reserves the right to decline any request. I ask other Commission Members here, and of course, the director, and ms. Blome and anybody else who wants to offer an opinion on it . The executive director and or commission. Which raises the question of whether the commission has such authority . If it does, then i would recommend that amendment to add those words. If it doesnt, then thats the end of my suggestion. Yes, the commission doesnt have the authority to initiate an investigation. So you are not informed when an investigation suspension is requested. So i dont think that i dont think that is practical. Its not feasible . Right. Im sorry, im not following here. Well, i would recommend, if its legal, and its feasible and practical, the executive committee and or the commission reserves the right to decline any request to suspend an investigation. Okay, but were not saying that commissioner kopps original observation that as to no. 1, that we should add the language will suspend its administrative investigation for 90 days, and add the language will then resume the investigation. Were not saying that is inappropriate . Okay, i got it. That is fine. Chair renne, i had a question. Is there a definition of good cause . No, it would just be the general standard applied as a term like, if there is like an example of good cause if we have reason to believe that an employee is about to quit and their emails might go away . Just certainly imagining circumstances that could decline a request for investigation. We didnt want to make it absence. Absolute. Thank you. Commissioner kopp. Page 4 refers to the fact let staff continue negotiating with City Attorney and District Attorney to develop strong parallel proceeding practices. On that point, you are going to let us in on how those discussions are going . Yes. Absolutely. I will include updates in the enforcement report and if you would like to be briefed more often than that, feel free to call me personally. Okay. The idea generally is that as our relationship becomes more built on trust and mutual trust, and Mutual Respect for investigative techniques that perhaps we would be invited to sit in on interviews or they could be invited to sit on our interviews and informationsharing would occur cognizant of due process and 4th and 5th amendments and to proceed jointly on the investigations and nobody has to sit on the sidelines. I did mention in the memo there is sometimes justification and quite frequently naturally a criminal proceedings of disposition, like the actual trial would occur before an administrative hearing, just through the nature of how criminal proceedings occur and the speedy trial act and things like this. So we do recognize which investigations would im sorry, not the investigations, but the actual legal proceedings. But in terms of like the early investigative methodologies of interviewing witnesss and gathering information and collecting emails or data through subpoenas, this is all things types of the investigations that can occur parallel. There is no reason to suspend investigations in our opinion, and we support judge kopps suggestion for this 90day policy. Commissioner keane . I think there is no way to actually articulate it in the language, but there certainly should be a recognition of a couple of realities of the interagency relationships. And that is, for example, District Attorneys offices. Someone who is a line prosecutor involved in investigating something is almost by nature going to say no, no, dont get in my way. Your agency should stay out of it. And i think recognition of that should be important and im sure will be by the executive director in terms of the fact that no, no, we have a whole different set of criteria and priorities, and you are proceeding upon the fact if you determine you cant prove something beyond a reasonable doubt, you are going to stop. Whereas, we may well be able to prove something far beyond a preponderance and we have established our case. So there should be just to shorten this there should be a lack of deference to those actions. I mean there should be professionalism and all of of that, but the idea, particularly in the past, there wasnt just deference, but oh, they have told us to not do anything. So that is the end of it. That state of mind should not exist, and should take a critical look at these matters every time you get a request from either the District Attorney or the City Attorney that its important that we stay out of it. Because i think in most situations they do it reflexively and without thought. That is just one persons opinion here. One thought i had of the amendment that you wanted to make to paragraph numbered 1, it would make it mandatory that the staff would have commence or continue its investigation at the end of 90 days, and there may be circumstances where in the judgment either of the commission, if it came to us, or to the executive director; that we ought not to be immediately proceeding. In other words, 90 days is sort of our default, but there may be good cause why we dont want to . And i just wondered if we shouldnt just say, assume its investigation unless the commission or the ed decides otherwise. So its a default position. That is acceptable. Yes. So add unless the executive director determine otherwise . And commission. Im prepared mr. Chairman at the appropriate time to make a motion to adopt the recommended suspension policy. I associate myself with commissioner keanes prior remarks. Do i hear a second . Second. All right. Commissioner i will ask for Public Comment. Any comment . Commissioners may i just make a point as well for additional consideration and discussion . I think one of the balances were trying to reflect in the language is the way the enforcement process and investigative process and authority is structured under our existing laws. And part of that is a balance of the commission has a role to adjudicate matters, but doesnt have a role in directing investigations. There is say strong oversight that you have to ensure that were doing our job appropriately, but i would suggest that the recommendation that you just made, it isnt in alignment with the language that i think we have in the charter and the ordinance about how we go about investigations and probably shouldnt refer to the commission, but refer to the executive director and you continue to use your oversight role for this policy to ensure were doing it properly. I will accept that. Mr. Chairman, i stated that is certainly acceptable, but i reflect on the fact that youve got a 10day period of time before the da or the City Attorney says suspend, were going in. I mean what do you do in ten days . I dont think as a practical matter you have done much in ten days. That is why i said that maybe resume isnt even the right word . Or proceed with such investigation . Commissioner kopp im not suggesting changing that at all. Im just suggesting that the language not refer to the commission. Because the commission is prohibited. We would support that. Okay, i will subside. Any Public Comment . Larry bush for friends of ethics. Two points, the recommendation no. 2 deals with the fppc, but i didnt see any real discussion of the fppc in the body of the report. Had this been in place, we might not have had the problem we did with a recent case that lost itsability to move toward because of timeliness. So im glad to see this. Its also true in my understanding that the fppcs action and enforcement doesnt match in every respect what San Francisco law has. That we can take action simultaneously because we have more authority in some cases . For example moneylaundering is really a separate San Francisco offense, even though its also a state offense. You have a separate thing to do. On the first thing of resuming after 90 days, i immediately am reminds of the fact that the District Attorney filed charges in february against several members of the commission or staff of the Human Rights Commission over illegal acts that were also illegal under the jurisdiction of the Ethics Commission. And that has been 11 months. And there has been no action that we have seen during that period of time, undoubtedly they are busy compiling their case. But the public hasnt seen it and i dont know how long it will go on . It seems to me at some point, the Ethics Commission has a role to step in and say were expecting some action or were going to be undertaking the part of the action that relates to our authority as Ethics Commission. Mr. Chairman, to reply to that, does no. 2 finance bar us from proceedings . Or no. 1 bar us from proceeding in that kind of situation . You are saying its 11 month, the case hasnt gone to trial and were sitting here and doing nothing and who knows it will be another continuance, et cetera, et cetera . That doesnt stop us from taking it into consideration and the executive director says were going proceed to the extent that we can. You are not going to get anything out of defendants, but maybe other avenues of investigation that can be done . Do you think that no. 1 prohibits that from happening . I do not and i think its probably time to do it. Thank you. From the fppc, i havent dealt with the fppc in 100 years. Any other Public Comment im sorry . I gathered the executive director is satisfied with that language; right . Yes. David pilpel again. A couple of comments. I think this makes a lot of sense and i think it shifts the default to concurrent investigation rather than sequential and potentially reduces some of the problems or potential problems that we have seen or might see. I agree with leeanns comments about the executive director and its in his or her orbit to determine how to proceed with this particular phase of an investigation. And that the commission retains jurisdiction for overall oversight of the enforcement program, but has specific roles at later stages of enforcement. It also occurs to me maybe adding either adding language or just having a practice that the executive director shall report to the commission any time when the suspension policy is implemented . So that you are aware that there was a request for a delay and that you are just informed that the executive director has chosen for good cause to implement that delay. That seems appropriate to me, i dont know if you want to codify it. And the final point without referring to a specific investigation, i think this language as you have amended it, should be either codified into the procedures for handling investigations, or just exist as a standalone policy and be posted to the website. So there is knowledge that this is the new practice Going Forward . It may not make a lot of sense to anyone who doesnt otherwise understand the procedures of the commission, but its certainly a worthwhile endeavor and all to be congratulated for their contributions to it. Thank you. Thank you. Ace washington again. You know, im just sitting back and trying to feel what this commission is and how the process is and see if it goes like the rest of the commissioners meetings. So i guess i can speak now. Talking about investigates and suspension of investigations, and i just talked to the gentleman from oakland, because i didnt know he was from oakland. He informed me i should talk to you afterwards. Im not sure if im going to because it looks like this is going to go after 8 00 and i will speak my peace now. Im interested in next time on the 4th tuesday coming back with some evidence and also complaining and requesting that this Commission Look into some of the citys commissioners like for instance let me start as i said before im the czar of outmigration and i dont know if you know about the African American outmigration and our population goes down to less than 34 and the budget has gone up to billions of dollars. When newsom was here and put the committee together we were in 500 million deficit and all of the recommendations and everything that we had put forth in that report just went blank. And all of the Department Heads they have not reported to no one and last its been ten years since the outmigration and newsom i think is going to run for governor and i know he will be one and ill be knocking on his door and this commission, i will ask that you open the investigation or find out how i do it into the Human Rights Commission . Now this outmigration was turned over to ed lee. Ed lee turned it over to the Human Rights Commission, which he was a director and i worked closely with him. I know ed lee real good and he knows me, but since he has been in office he wont sit down and talk to me. He has put money towards every segment in the county, but not for the African American community. He is in violation and im going come to this commission to help me put them ontrack again. I go to board of supervisors, which london breed is the president and she was on that committee, too. Im not going say nothing bad about her, but she is the president now. Im going to try to put her in line, too and put together a reunion, to find out what is going on with that . I only got a few more seconds, but ill be able to speak a little bit longer when i have a chance. Right now im just very concerned about my issues and what do i do to file whatever papers i need . I would like to open up some investigations on the oecd ocii, San Francisco Commission Housing authority. I would like to invite whenever trump put downs the new director of hud to find out what they are doing. So i got 8 seconds here. My primary objective this year is dealing with the African American community, specifically. Moved as amended and seconded by commissioner im sure ms. Pelham will let us know in her report. You give us a report every month and have space in there for that. I will call the question, all in favor . Aye. Opposed . Its carried unanimously. Turning to agenda item 8. Its a presentation and discussion on new Ethics Commission website and plans outreach activities. Do you want to go ahead . Steve massey, electronic disclosure and Data Analysis manager and for those on the commission in 2015, you may recall that i gave a presentation about a new vision for the commissions website, and im pleased to announce we launched the new website last year and im hoping that we can get the presentation up on the television. Perhaps we could call there we go. So the new website is really complete rethinking of the way users interact with our site. We wanted to make the site more userfriendly and more usercentric and as far as the homepage we wanted users to be presented with relevant content pertinent to the particular Filing Season or election going on, rather than bombarding them with all potential services and offerings on our website. So just to reflect on where we have come from, this is our website as it was in 2005 when i started. And was pulled down in 2009. Its hard to see there, but there are a number of choices on the screen. It pretty much represents all of the potential services we had at that period of time. What we found users would go to the site and would be lost in the sea of links as far as which section pertained to them . And during a particular Filing Season, the most pertinent links were not really brought to their attention. They just had a choice of all of our services. Now in 2009 we replaced the website with the department of technology, and we did reduce the number of choices on the website, but over time our mandates have changed. We brought on new regulated areas such as permit consultants Major Developers and expenditure lobbyists and tacked that on to the existing website and also the way people file statements has changed. Back in 2009 most forms were filed in paper format and most people downloaded the compliance information in paper. Manuals were printed. And now most users file their statements electronically. They pay their registration fees or late fees electronically online, and they can even sign their campaign statements electronically. So that has all been tacked on to the existing website as well and its been disorganized and somewhat difficult to use. In december we replaced the website and unfortunately its difficult to see on this screen you may see it better on your monitors. I wanted to focus on the topsection of the page, because that what most people see when they pull up the website they wouldnt see the entire website all at once. So this is the main section of the homepage that would appear on most peoples monitors and there is a great reduction in the number of choices on the screen. At the top here, we reduced the number of sections on site to just five. There is the commissions section, where we have all of the information about the activities going on at the commissionlevel. We have a new compliance section. This is to try and educate those in the regulated community about the actual actions that they need to take to comply with the law. We have a new disclosure section, targeted towardses the public, who are consuming the statements filed with our office. We have an enforcement section where people can go to file a complaint or learn about the activities or Enforcement Division. We have a law section, where can you learn about the pertinent local laws that apply to the commission and Research Advice letters. Then on every page we have added a new efile button, where can you can go to log into your account or pay fees or sign your electronic statements. The main focal point is the banner section. This is what the website looked like december 21st when we launched it. What we plan to use this section for is to draw attention to the most relevant information for this period of time. So it may be difficult to read on the screen there. But the banner on the homepage right now is targeted at users who need to file their final semiannual Statement Due january 31st to close out the activity for the campaign for when they were active during the election. That is why the banner there is the campaign is over, but disclosure is not, meaning that you have disclosure obligations even after the election has ended. The learn more button you can click there that tells you what you need to comply with the january 31st deadline. Over time well change this banner, depending on the Filing Season. For instance you can imagine that before the form 700 filings are due on the april 1st deadline well have a banner that is targeted at those users. So people do not have to hunt and peck around the website to find the most relevant content. We have also added four links at the bottom to target our most frequently used services. The old website didnt really have very much information on requesting advice from the information. So we added a section to get guidance from the commission, whether its informal advice or formal advice and we discuss how to request that. We have a section here for efilers to set up an account to register as lobbyist for form 700 to open a new Campaign Committee and to log into accounts and to sign their campaign statements. We have a button here which says, view disclosures. As you may recall there were changes made to the Campaign Finance reform ordinance that requires campaigns in mailers to put a disclaimer on the mailer that says that you can View Financial disclosures at sfethics. Org to find that information in any of our data formats. And finally we also wanted to provide a more obvious file a complaint button on the homepage. The complaint section on the previous website was really lacking. So now we have a new complaints section that i will go over in a few minutes. Another thing it has changed about the users would come to our website since 2009 in 2009 most users used a desktop computer. According to our statistics, no users had mobile phones who were accessing our site. At this point, one in ten users are actually using a mobile phone to consume the content on our website. And so if you pull up our previous website on a mobile phone, what it will do is scale the website, which is designed primarily for a computer with 1015 computer to 4 size and becomes completely unreadable. So the site is now designed to scale the content to appropriate font size and interface, depending on the device that you are using, tablet, phone or very large screen. We have actually imported all of the content from the previous website. There were about 4500 pages that were brought in. We reorganized it and rewritten a lot of the content. We have also add new sections to the site related to the commissions activities. We have added a section on our budget requests, that we made last year and well be making Going Forward. We have a new policy issue section. That is a page that will be maintained by our new policy staff. Its really targeted at making the public more aware of the different policy discussions that are going on at the commissionlevel. One thing that i have become aware of over time is sometimes when the commission has a policy discussion that spans multiple meetings, sometimes folks come in late to the discussion, and they want to get up to speed on the current status that policy discussion. What are the relevant documents . What is the current proposal . And going back and researching prior agendas and minutes is very timeconsuming. So we want to put all of the relevant documents on that policy page and get someone up to speed quickly, so they can participate in the discussions at the commissionlevel. We have also added a staff page. So there is no mystery now as far as whatevers role is at the commission. There is an organizational chart there. We have listed everyones working titles, and email addresss for all staff. So if you need to contact a particular person, that is now listed on the website. We have a new complaints section, which i will talk about in a minute. We have also added a new compliance process walkthrough. So before we had these printable manuals to be downloaded on our website. Now we have come up with a more standard template for how to proceed with going through start it finish for any of the different disclosure processes. For instance for lobbyists, there is information about how to register. How to pay your fees . How to comply with the Filing Requirements . And then how to terminate as a lobbyist, and following that, what happens if you are audited . Or what happens if an enforcement action is brought against you . So we have documented this for each of the different types of regulated entities that file with our office. We also have reorganized the disclosure section on our website. Back in 2009, when our previous website was put up most users came to the website and downloaded the pdf versions of basically paper Financial Statements. And now there is different types of users who access our content in very different ways. Some people still access the more traditional Financial Statements, but other people will also download or content in spreadsheet formats and various data formats. They may also be sort of the citizen programmer or researcher, who makes actual queris in our databases and using an application interface and we documented each of those sections and well continue to work on that section of the site over the course of the next year. One of the requests was made at the last meeting when i initially presented the website was to add a searchable advice letter section. So we have gone about and done that. You can now search all of our past advice letters by category, by law, by section, by data range and key word to help you find any relevant advice letters that may have been issued in the past. The site is now being transmited securely. Before we only securely transmitted Sensitive Information such as credit cards or your actual forms that you are filing. But now we have secured all transmissions with our site. There are a number of security benefits to this, but one of the primary ones is that a user goes to our site and sees they are secure connection and knows they are on the official Ethics Commission and not a fake website or another website mimicking our content. We have also added new sections to our site to be in compliance with the Language Access ordinance. Now we have sections for content in chinese, spanish and filipino. We have translated information about the commission and our contributor guide into these languages, and as the new content is written, and resources are made available, well also be adding that content to those sections as well. Now going back to the complaints section of the website on the previous version of the website, if you went to the complaints section, you could download the form to file a complaint and you could also download the Ethics Commission regulation for investigation and enforcement proceedings which is about a 20page document of regulations about the process that a complainant can go through to file a complaint and what happens after that . And its a confusing document. The first page of that document just goes over definitions, defining with city means, what credible means et cetera and its not the most userfriendly document to get through. So we approached uc hastings and some of their students were tasked with drafting a plainlanguaged version of these enforcement regulations, and we took that document that they worked on, and we made some additional improvements to it, and we posted that to the website. So we now have a new section on filing complaints, which goes over General Information about filing a complaint. What types of complaints can be filed with our office . And then also, a deepdive its hard to see here but there is a submenu where it talks about what is involved in preparing a complaint . What happens when you submit the complaint . What happens after you submit the complaint . What happens during an investigation . What happens during a settlement or a probable cause hearing . And hopefully that will demystery the process for some folks. Some of the feedback we received over time is sometimes people are confused after they file a complaint, what their role is as being the complainant and what exactly is supposed to happen after the complaint has been filed . So hopefully this will help. Before complaints are filed, and if it doesnt, at the bottom of the page, there is a button here. Im just going to zoom in on this section that says was this page helpful . There is a button to provide feedback to the commission and if you click that, a form will appear and you can provide feedback about that particular page. When staff receives that feedback well know what page and when we received that feedback to provide very targeted improvements to the site. Just in the past month since we had the site up, we have received both critical feedback and positive feedback. We have also received feedback via our social media pages. Some of the positive feedback we received hallelujah, motto ethics on the movie. Love the site. So easy to use on mobile, much improved website as part of the reboot of the Ethics Commission and i want to talk about some critical feedback we received. On the commissioners page, someone wrote less helpful page and user those scroll to find that information. On our lob ist disclosure page, someone said they couldnt figure out how to view the actual filed reports and found the links confusing. On the homepage, someone wanted us to list the up coming meetings rather than just listing past meetings. So these are actually very targeted feedback that we can look at that page and if we start seeing a lot of feedback about a particular issue, we can prioritize it and start to make improvements to that section. And so at this point, the website project is not done. Its a project that will always be under Continuous Improvement. We like to incorporate a lot of Community Feedback through a variety of different methods, and so this year, were really blessed to have a senior fellow working on our staff. That person has been added to our staff through the senior pello fellow program and will work on the website until next october. In the past few months she has brought a lot of new ideas and energy to this website project and i would like to give her a moment to talk about what she is working on the website through next october. Thank you, steven. Good evening, commissioners. I want to provide a brief update on the different initiatives that im working on. Over the last few months i have been working with the staff to learn more about the programs that we administer and also the online tools that we make available to filers and the public. Based on our current priorities, we have identified three key areas to work on in the upcoming months. The first one is form 700. Were currently working on preparing for outreach and training for the filers as part of the our upcoming filing deadline. In the process im looking at our online content on the website. Our communications strategy, as well as guidance and detail. So ill be looking at ways to redesign the content, to make sure that our filers and filing officers are able to find the information that they need to comply with the Filing Requirements. The second area that ill be working on is data disclosures. We have a lot of Data Available on our site. But then sometimes it can be challenging to understand and interpret the data. So im going to be looking at understanding the user needs and identifying different types of user groups who consume our data . And look at ways in which we can supplement our data with additional documentation and content . That will help them better understand the data. So make it more readily available and easy to use. The third area is Continuous Improvement of our website. As steven mentioned earlier in his presentation we have a feedback option imbedded with every site and ill be figuring out how to incorporate them in our site . In addition to that im working with coit to participate in a tech program that they are working on called public voice program. I can go deeper into that on the next slide. This is a coit initiative to bring together city agencies and local partners to facilitate users testing session where local residents can provide feedback on City Services and websites. Were really excites that they have selected the Ethics Commission as the initial candidate to conduct user testing sessions. Right now were working with a few local partners and civic makers in the civic innovation and they will be coordinating the program, logistics and management to conduct the user testing session. Lighthouse for the blind is an organization that provides accessibility services. They will be providing us guidance on how we can make our site more accessible for persons with different abilities. Were also working with microsoft. They are going to be providing Us Technology support to support the user testing program. To give some more context on the [aourgs ] testing section to give you an idea what were trying to do is reach out to a wide range of public members from the communities with different backgrounds, different Digital Skills and different understanding of local government. And get them to sign up to participate for testing sessions and were going to be conducting the sessions in our San Francisco local libraries and well identify certain test scenarios to identify on the site and testers will get that information to us. We can then look at the feedback and test results and identify improvements to the site to sections on the site and hopefully that will make it a better experience for the community atlarge. Apart from this, were also looking at our website accessibility. So accessibility is ensuring that our content is accessible to differently abled persons. And as a part of our launch, we did some accessibility testing. We have also taken into consideration Different Things that we need to provide, different types of support we need to provide for accessibility. For screen readers and making sure that the content is displayed in a visual manner that is easy for people to consume. Were also going to be getting professional consultation with lighthouse for the blind later this week, where well have more feedback on how to improve our site with respect to accessibility. So were excited and looking forward to these initiatives working with local partners and continuing to improve our site. Later on once we have more feedback well come back with more information. Were happy to answer any questions you may have. Any commissioners have any questions . I went on the site and i did find it easier to deal with than the old one. So much of what you are telling me is wonderful. Commissioner keane . I just think what you have done is very commendable. Its a big improvement on the site. Its a big improvement on the way the commission is able to facilitate things for the public, and i want to thank you both very much. I would like to echo that. I think that now in 2017, people access information not through paper, but going online and looking things up on the internet and my kids and i do it and its important for us as government to keep pace with the innovations coming out and the accessibility of information that you are literally have at your fingerprints and i think the site is a great leap forward from 2009 to now, eight years ago it was launched and revamped. So i say thank you, and kudos for the hard work and keep it up. I feel the same way. Particularly like the complaint portion of it. That is great. That is really important. Thank you for that feedback, commissioners. It is really notable, i think from the staffs perspective that this is intended to be a work in progress. So were very excited about having our executive director fellow to lead that effort and outreach and were looking forward to getting more feedback how the site can speak to users need it in the way in which they need it . The other observation i will share, its been wonderful for us as staff to be challenged to start thinking how we communicate . Not in the way we think about delivering services through programmatic channels, but again, how does the user want to find the information that is most useful to them . So it really is kind of provoking all of us to think fresh with this tool that is so important. I did want to underscore all of our appreciation for the work that steven and gija has been leading us that started prior to my arrival and hats off to staff who did a great job getting it started. Thank you for your comments tonight. Commissioner keane. I just want to add one observation, as to how much things have changed. I think it was about three years ago or so, where the suggestion was made that we put all of our materials in the various languages that we have in San Francisco, spanish, and chinese tagalog and all of that and i remember the executive director being bitterly opposed to that and being able to get the board at that time with commissioner renne and myself and commissioner hayon were able to vote that we do that. But somehow that was grudgingly done and certainly the attitudes relating to the changes and the modernization of something has important a multilingual city like San Francisco having the materials in all those different languages and you did it automatically and no question in your mine you were going to do that and you did. Its just an observation and i think the things are changing quite well. Did you say you also have it in chinese . I heard spanish and . Philippine . We can now support chinese, spanish and filipino. We have translated some initial content. There because also content that was previously translated that is no longer relevant because those elections have passed. So the information that is currently posted is just information about the commission, and the contributor guide, which is really relevant to any election. And as new guides and new information is developed for upcomeing elects, and new programs, as resources are made available through the budget, well have those translated as well. Are you talking about cantonese . I think its more the issue of traditional or simplified chinese and i dont remember which it is. I believe San Francisco is mostly cantonese. Its the spoken language, not the written language. Thank you very much. Appreciate all your efforts. Turning to agenda item 9, discussion and possible action. We have Public Comment. I guess i didnt ask for Public Comment. I didnt wait for you to ask. I just wanted to suggest a number of changes to make this specifically valuable to larry bush your page could include a link to sfgtvs when you have the videos of your commission meetings, it would be nice to see that link on our page. I would like to see a onestop search. So if i were going to follow an action, lets say the larry Bush Development corporation has got a Development Going and i would be able to put in that entity, and follow the lobbying that was done for that entity . Where it goes to the board for votes, contributions, any behests and gifts so i can follow actual the way in which city decisions are made and each of the steps that they are going through . In that respect it would be good to include on the Commission Page links to upcoming board meetings where the commission is providing input. The executive director is mentioning three different measures that are pending before the board. Supervisor farrell, supervisor breed, supervisor peskin, and i know there will be input coming from the commission. So if i could go on the Commission Page and immediately see here are pending issues at the board of supervisors that the Ethics Commission has scheduled a discussion of those issues so i could see those right on. I would like to see links to the Enforcement Actions taken by other jurisdictions affecting San Francisco. For example, when the fppc fines somebody that is a San Francisco entity, i would like to be able to see that in one place. And finally in that same respect when other jurisdictions are taking up issues that are relevant to us for example the fppc announced an ip meeting on rewriting the cal access web pages that woefully out of date and woefully probatic. That data is certainly important to San Francisco people trying to understand the flow of money and other issues. If you would put on your web page, Something Like the upcoming cal access meeting under related relevant information, that would satisfy me for this month. Thank you. Thank you. David pilpel of. A again want to thank steven for all of his work over the years and we talked about
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