commission. today's meeting is a live cablecast on sfgovtv two and live streamed at sfgovtv .org. forward slash ethics live for public comment. members of the public may attend in person or may participate by phone or on the webex platform, as explained in our agenda document . mr. clerk, would you please explain how remote public comment will be handled? public comment will be available on each item on this agenda. each member of the public will be

allowed three minutes to speak for those attending in person. opportunities to speak during the public comment period will be made available here in room 400, city hall for those attending remotely. public comment can also be provided via phone call by. calling 14156550001. access code is 26643680498, followed by a pound sign, then press pound again to join as an attendee. when your item of interest comes up, press star three to raise your hand to be added to the public. comment line. public comment is also available via the webex client application. use the webex link on the agenda to connect and press the raise hand button to be added to the public comment line for detailed instructions about how to interact with the telephone system or webex client, please refer to the public comment section of the agenda document for this meeting. public comment may also

be submitted in writing and will be shared with the commission after the meeting has concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file. written comments should be sent to ethics commission at sfgovtv. org members of the public to attend commission meetings, including remote attendance, are also expected to behave responsibly and respectfully during the public comment. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and not to individual members. persons who engage in name calling, shouting, interruptions or other distracting behavior may be excluded from participation. thank you, mr. clerk, and i'll call the meeting to order. clerk, will you please call? roll under item number one. commissioners, please verbally indicate your presence by saying i after your name is called chair finley i. vice chair flores fang. commission salahi i. commissioner ci is out with an excused absence. commissioner francois i chair family with four members present

and accounted for. you have a quorum. thank you. better call. agenda item two. general public comment. is there any public comment in the room seeing none. mr. clerk, would you check if there's any remote public comment? chair finley, we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue. chair finley there's one caller in the queue. welcome, caller. your three minutes begins now. caller, are you there ?

caller. you're unmuted. caller. if you're trying to call in, there'll be another opportunity for public comment later in the program. you can try again. then thank you, mr. clerk. are there any other callers in the remote queue? chair finley, we're checking to see if there are other callers. chair finley, there are no other callers. thank you. hearing no further, members of the public wishing to speak general public comment under item two is now closed. i now call the consent calendar, colleagues, as noted in the agenda, there'll be no separate discussion unless one of us remember the public calls for it. do any of my colleagues

wish to address any of the matters on the consent calendar? seeing none, any of my or, seeing no public comment, i think we will now take public comment on the consent calendar. seeing none in the room, mr. clerk would you check if there's anyone online? chair, if we were checking to see if there are callers in the queue. chair. finley there are no callers in the queue. thank you. i move to adopt the items on the consent calendar. and those are the draft minutes of the prior meetings on item four, three and four is the executive director's report, which is not an action item. but just for our information, i moved to adopt the consent calendar. is there a second? second? mr. clerk, would you please take role on the motion to adopt the consent calendar? chair finley, a vice chair. flores fang. commissioner salahi i, commissioner francois

i chair and live with four votes in the affirmative. you the motion. has it been approved unanimously. thank you. i now call agenda item five. discussion and possible action regarding the proposed stipulation, decision and order in the matter of david wasserman , we're going to have a thank you. thank you, i just want to really quickly take public comment on this item and then we'll hear from you. thank you, mr. clerk. would you seeing no one in the room, i will ask you to check if there's any remote callers. chair finley, we are checking to see if there are callers in the queue who wish to comment on item five. chair finley, there is one

caller in the queue. thank you. welcome, caller. you have your three minutes. begins now . it appears the caller does not have a microphone. caller has left the queue. thank you, if those are caller out there again, there'll be another opportunity for public comment later in the program. so if you fix your issue, feel free to call back, miss matthews, thank you. happy to hear a presentation. and then we'll open it up for any questions. sounds good. good morning. commissioners, so this matter was placed on the regular calendar following the request by this commission at the last meeting that going forward, all proposed stipulations be placed on the regular calendar, this matter involves respondent david wasserman, who is a member of

the rent board who failed to report the names of certain sources of income, $10,000 or more, that were derived from his business entity. after comprehensive review of mr. wasserman's form 700 filings over the past four years, investigators identified 28 violations which have been subsumed into one count, as noted in the stipulation, mr. wasserman acknowledged his mistake and took full responsibility for the violations and also amended his form. seven hundreds, to come in compliance with the law. the facts of this case are similar to prior matters that have been presented before this commission , and the penalty amount recommended per violation is the same as has been considered before and ratified by this commission. i'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have at this time. thank you. i think this is a great enforcement action. so i want to thank you and the staff for their work. i do have one quick question, but i first want to see if any of my colleagues have

any questions or comments. i might have a quick question or comment, but i don't know. it isn't. one of them is in. how about how this information was presented? and the other one was to second what you said about this being a i think, a well explained action. at first i was a little bit taken aback by the number given that he was, you know, a willing, you know, very compliant. right, i think in understanding what the staff better understanding the precedent and why the 600, per, you know, per penalty was applied and understanding that that's connected to srp and what we did there, that that was very helpful for me, so i think that given that this, this amount, this penalty is appropriate. so i share that in case anybody else is also kind of taken aback by the fact that somebody who was compliant may still be penalized, i would also encourage the public to, when filing, the, you know, form 700 to read the ancillary materials that are in support, even if you've done it several times

before. and i say that because there are some sections that say they're optional and some that aren't, but that isn't necessarily obvious from the form, so i would encourage all of us to, to have that handy when we are reviewing, and then as far as how the materials are presented, i think at the bottom it says it kind of implies that this is still part of the consent calendar. so i would just remove the last line, okay. where it says members of the public may comment on the proposed step, noting that the commission receives public comment once for all consent items collectively, which doesn't seem relevant right now, but that's all. thank you. thanks for that, yeah, i had one, comment. again, he, he became compliant, which is great, but he wasn't compliant. of course, at the time of the problem. so that informs part of the clarification. yes, but i think it's good that the staff considered the fact that he did then voluntarily and quickly become compliant once you all raise it, the one question i had, though, from the stipulation, and we wouldn't go beyond the whatever's in here, but it wasn't really clear what it is that he failed to disclose. i think that's a

matter of public record, because now it's on his form 700. my assumption is that it's a bunch of basically rental properties that he owned or interest in properties that he owned. is that and again, so i'm not asking anything beyond what's probably public somewhere. right. so it's i, i think, it's helpful that you, you know, didn't think that it was clear, but really, he didn't list the names of each individual source of income. he reported that he received income of $10,000 or more by checking that box, but he didn't go forward, further and list the names of each individual source of income. so, tenants or wherever that source derived from. but it was for him. it was tenants and real property. like, we're not talking about stocks and no no no no just right. so sources from real property great rental properties to his business. got it. thank you. yeah i think that's just a helpful fact. even though it's in the form 700, we can all see it. but i think it's helpful to because that's

helpful. i'm not sure that's reflected in the memo itself, but again great action. i think given the number of violations, i think the penalty makes sense, anything commissioner salahi or francis francois, i echo both of my colleagues comments and thanks. thank you for that feedback. we'll definitely keep that in mind going forward. all right. thank you, thank you, thank you. good case, is there a motion? i'll move. second, adopt the stipulation. approve the stipulation. second. thank you, mr. clerk. would you take roll, please? on the motion to adopt the stipulation and the pro stipulation in agenda item five. on the on the motion to adopt the stipulation on item five. chair finley i. vice chair flores feng i commissioner salahi i commissioner francois i. chair fan live with four votes in the affirmative. the

motion is approved unanimously. thank you, mr. clerk. i now call agenda item number six. discussion of possible action regarding proposed amendments to ethics commission, campaign finance regulations. good morning everyone. so for anyone that i have not met yet, my name is ryan abuza and i am the engagement and compliance officer for the ethics commission's campaign finance and campaign consultant programs , first time in person at the meetings. have always watched, but very excited to be here and glad to have the opportunity to present our proposed amendments to campaign finance regulations on behalf of our policy and legislative affairs manager,

michael canning. so before we kind of doing high level overviews across kind of all of our proposed changes, i just wanted to do kind of a quick summary of how we got to this point, and then we can pivot and start talking a little bit more about these proposed changes. so kind of within our department and our work as part of our ongoing efforts and review processes, as far as program implementation goes, we get a lot of feedback internally and externally and over the last handful of election cycles, we have identified several ways to simplify, streamline and increase transparency regarding the operation of san francisco's campaign finance laws. so kind of our our big ticket change here within kind of all of these suggested changes stems from the temporary electronic filing procedures that we had in place during the covid 19 pandemic, when our office was closed, our kind of big changes there are

set to modernize our processes to better match kind of both state level procedures and reflect the kind of increasing and now wider availability of secure document signing and electronic submission formats. in tandem with that, we have several other kind of proposed changes to the campaign finance regulations to clarify rules and processes and better allow our staff to streamline a lot of the commission's functions for sake of efficiency and kind of just our peace of mind when we're getting work done. as part of this process. we did hold two interested persons meetings during the month of march, primarily to discuss changes to our electronic filing program and solicit some additional feedback from members of the public and regulated community. kind of for these proposed changes as a whole. so with that, what i would kind of like to do here is do kind of the bulk of the detail here, talking about the proposed changes to our electronic campaign disclosure regulations and then

from there just kind of do brief, kind of high level overview of what the other proposed changes are. and then of course, opening for discussion, comment, whatever you all might have. if that sounds good, sounds great. okay, lovely. so this one is the one that i personally am most excited about because of its effect on my program. and we have also gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from members of the public and the regulated community. so when we are looking at our proposed amendments for regulation 1.112-2, the way that our elected sonic filing kind of process currently exists is very cumbersome for both filers and for our staff. of course, under the law, all political committees are required to electronically file their campaign disclosure statements with our office under the existing language of reg 1.112-2. all responses. officers for a committee are required to have a form 112 a signature

verification card on file with our office in order for any of their statements to be accepted. in order to complete this form. this requires one of two things either an in-person visit to our office or, if they wish to complete the form remotely, they have to do it in the presence of a notary public, which means seeking out a notary reasonably, making an appointment, paying their fees, and then either mailing the form to us, coming to drop it off in person, whatever kind of works best for them. additionally we are still currently accepting documents through, excuse me, a docusign based temporary transmission portal that we set up through the covid 19 pandemic. and although we are still accepting forms that way, we are really hoping that with these reg changes to basically move our process to be fully online and both compliant with kind of local code and then state laws, the way that this kind of current process looks to stand is full removal of the form. 112

a so we would be getting rid of the entirety of the signature verification process in a kind of an updated format that's going to more closely mirror what the city of oakland's ethics commission has done recently, where they would effectively be filing a kind of expanded version of the existing form 112 b that would give us all of the necessary information to register the committee, and we would then be able to set them up with their account so they could file all of their kind of following statements electronically, versus this kind of weird mix of what happens. hard copy versus what happens electronically versus what happens in hard copy that is then scanned and submitted electronically. kind of creating too many parallel paths when we could have one much more efficient and much easier streamlined path. here i will also mention that based on the feedback we received from the secretary of state's office and the fair political practices commission, these proposed changes are acceptable and not

disruptive to any of the state's practices. as they currently exist, one thing that i will also kind of mention about this process, when they are filling out kind of this updated form 112 b i would also like to mention that it does include kind of a designation of signer authority, of course, with the understanding that electronic documents that bear a person's signature are treated the same as original paper documents for purposes of all applicable state and local laws, those forms are similarly signed under penalty of perjury, and whoever is kind of acting in a signer capacity on that form similarly maintains responsibility for the security of any sort of file or id or password or signature info that our office issues to their committee. so that is kind of about as much into detail as i will kind of go pending any questions. but that is kind of our first big ticket item as far

as the proposed reg changes go here. i had one quick question on that. sure. you said getting rid of the e signature requirement, but then separately everything will be filed signed under penalty of perjury. anyways, so am i understanding that right. there's no kind of pre signature verification form. folks are going to submit things that are signed. so that one is kind of a yes and no. so what we are basically doing in lieu of having this kind of physical form that they need to sign, either in the presence of one of our staff members, we are basically folding it into an existing form that we have to expand the information collected to closely mirror the oakland ethics commission. i believe it's their form 300 that is kind of the same idea. it's a committee registration form where we are still collecting a signature, but instead of doing okay, we get a hard copy that we're going to have on file. this electronic one comes with a series of kind of attestations where they're saying, you know, i understand that by enrolling

in kind of this electronic version from the get go, instead of having a hard copy, i'm signing this under penalty of perjury. everything will be treated as if this were a hard copy, kind of under the original kind of intent of the law. got it. so kind of cuts out one step of the process and streamlines it. great. thank you. cool. awesome. so for the next one. so looking at the newly proposed, regulation for 1.108-4 about bank account locations, this one is basically just an attempt to provide some clarification to specify how our office seeks to interpret the law. as far as kind of the designation of an officer bank located in the city and county of san francisco, of course, with modern banking practices starting to shift increasingly online and with remote capabilities, just making sure that our interpretation of the law includes any bank authorized to do business within the city and county of san francisco, and acknowledging that bank accounts can be

established online, via phone or in person at a bank branch for the next two. looking at the proposed amendments, sorry to interrupt a quick question about that. is there any implication to the ability to subpoena information from a bank that doesn't have some local physical presence? oh, that i think i might defer to pat on that one, executive director pat ford, for the record, i don't think so. i think as long as they're authorized to do business here, they would presumably have an agent for service of process. and that's really what we need. we just have to be able to serve them and effectuate the service of the subpoena. okay. thanks thank you. pat, so for the next one, i'm going to kind of do these two together. so for the proposed amendments to regulation 1.126-7 and 1.127-3, these kind of propose amendments here basically just seek to kind

of standardize the language and make sure that we have a set uniform standard kind of within our regulations. so so the way that the language kind of ended up shaping up is having a safe harbor, basically, for candidate committees that are kind of trying to fulfill their due diligence requirements to ensure that any contributions received are legally acceptable, kind of within the law of our campaign and governmental conduct code, we basically have for section one, two, six under the city contractor ban and for section 127 under the contractor or, excuse me, the contribution ban for persons with a financial interest in a pending land use matter. we basically have kind of this safe harbor that exists where committees are able to receive kind of assigned attestation from a contributor saying, this is me verifying that i am legally able to make this contribution to your committee. and so these two

amendments basically just seek to standardize that language and make sure that it is kind of clear between both of them that the safe harbor exists, both within the language of the campaign and governmental conduct code, but is also made clear within the regulations, any questions on those? i'm just curious, was there already a safe harbor? there just wasn't standardized language for it. yes. so the way that it kind of existed previously is the safe harbor existed in section 127 of the code and then in the regs for section 126. so this basically just standardizes it to where it's clear in both the code and the regs for both of those sections. got it. thanks okay let's see. so next up just very briefly these kind of in the same vein we are looking at two new regulations. for 1.126-9

and 1.127-4, kind of in the same vein of looking at potential contributions from prohibited sources, one thing that we were also seeking to do is kind of, for lack of a better phrase, closing this loophole here with some of the language around home office or office fundraisers, because the our campaign and governmental conduct code uses the political reform act's definition of a contribution. shamann. this does include an exemption for home office fundraisers. so, any time that an occupant of a home or office, home gets any sort of meeting or fundraising event for a candidate as long as those costs are below $500, it is not deemed a reportable contribution. however for this kind of law as it stands, exists kind of within the interest of the state and not so much the interest of kind of our local laws and regulations here. so this kind

of created a workaround where current individuals that would otherwise be subject to this contribution prohibition as either a city contractor or someone an interested person with a pending land use matter would technically be able to host a fundraiser or an event for a candidate at their home or office. and what this seeks to do is kind of update the regs so that it more closely mirrors the state language around lobbyist contributions, effectively making sure that this prohibition ban for certain parties exists across the board and doesn't have any sort of workarounds. there any questions on that? one? okay. perfect. just to be clear, this is expanding the scope of the restriction correct here to include. yeah. or to effectively remove the home office fundraiser exemption. the next one. so for, for the amendment to regulation 1.142-6, this one

was more just kind of a clerical fix. there were some issues with the text that this would correct , and then for the last two, these two new regulations, 1.170, dash one and dash two based quickly, set up the commission to better specify and require the method by which any sort of documentation is delivered, particularly for sake of our audit team as well as our enforcement team, just to make sure that we have a uniform standard and that making sure that we are able to get through our work as quickly and efficiently and accurately as possible. and so with those, that was everything that i have comment wise. but i will stick around in case there are questions or any sort of discussion that i can provide some details for. i have a question. you mentioned there were a couple ip interested persons meetings. i'm wondering if whether any attendees industry folks so on express

concerns about any of these, and then to extend that did what you all thought of them or did to address them. yeah, absolutely. so from the two meetings that we hosted, the only kind of real point of contention that we reached were on these last two proposed reg changes for section 170, just because kind of an issue that we run into, in particular with the regulated community is looking at kind of the spectrum of treasury work that is done from kind of folks that do it either as a sole proprietor or on a voluntary basis, versus kind of the larger firms, be they law firms or treasury firms, and kind of their ability to respond to document requests. it's, with the only kind of real issue we ran into is occasionally individual treasurers that are kind of looking to complete this work don't always have reliable access to printers or scanners, and don't always have a reliable way to transmit documents electronically. and so that was

kind of the real only point of contention we reached is just making sure that any sort of implementation is mindful of kind of meeting the regulated community where we're where they're at, and making sure that at our discretion, we are also kind of able to receive these documents. but also making sure that we kind of have a uniform standard as opposed to not really knowing what, you know, we're going to get when we request documents from a committee or a candidate. yeah. well, to that very point, is there some process whereby if a small committee or not sophisticated is able to bring their documents in to the commission and have you all scan them or so that is? let me see. so that is included in the language of these two proposed regulations, is that the commission, at its discretion, is able to kind of set these protocols and procedures for requesting and receiving documents. so granted that that is outside the scope of kind of my position, that would be something handled more by our

audit team or enforcement team. so at their discretion, they are certainly able to kind of set that. got it. thanks, a couple more questions. thank you for the overview. so the last provision on 1.170-2, this is just fresh in my mind from our recent hearing on paul taylor. but if a person were to serve objections to a subpoena in a timely way, would is this intended to treat that as a withholding of materials? oh, that is a very good question. that one i might also punt to pat, if that's all right. i'm looking at the draft proposal for regulation 1.170-2, the very last one about provision of documents. and it says that failure to provide evidence, records, documents or information requested pursuant to a subpoena from the ethics commission constitutes withholding of such materials, and, you know, we had talked about this earlier about serving objections to a subpoena is

usually a one valid way of responding. it was just curious whether this is intended to. apply to a situation where somebody serves objections but doesn't serve the underlying evidence. yeah. honestly i'm not i'm not sure. i think you're going to depend on what the objection is, okay. frankly, i think if the objection actually dealt with the merits, of the subpoena and responded to it in a, in a genuine way that actually took issue with the subpoena itself, i think we certainly would respect that and try and go through a process, to , you know, respond to those objections. but in an instance where either there was no objection served or the objection didn't genuinely address the merits of the subpoena, i think we potentially would still try and make an argument that that was actually not a proper response to the subpoena. i think commissioner salahi raises a really good point, because you could already

make those arguments right. if someone's not complying with the subpoena. but i don't think i think the concern is that we're short circuiting the discovery process, right. by creating kind of liability for someone who's trying to respond to a subpoena, but maybe not the way that staff would like them to do it right away. but there is a process where you have objections, maybe meet and confer. maybe you move forward. i think i think that's what we're getting at or what the commissioner is getting at. and i share that thought, do you have a reaction to that? yeah. i mean, we definitely go through a process with any respondent. and i should say also that a subpoena is not something that we do out of the gate, we try to get the person to voluntarily provide the documents and i would say 90% or more of respondents do that. most of them are, you know, willing to work with us. and it's not an issue. it's really only the respondents that either ignore us and we just can't get them to engage with us at all. so we have to serve a subpoena in order to try and get their

attention and try and formalize the process, or respondent who will engage with us but refuses to provide documents that they're required to provide. so there's a process that goes on even before we get to the subpoena stage. but then once we do, yeah, we would still absolutely work with them. and the city attorney's office will help in that process. that will help, you know, obviously they review the subpoenas. sometimes they will engage directly with the respondent to so the respondent understands, you know, there is a city attorney's office that has authority to enforce the subpoenas in court, we i think the point of mentioning this in the regs is, is that people understand that there is a consequence potentially this isn't to try and make a really onerous or restrictive or overly intense punitive rule around subpoenas. we're really trying to put people on notice so that they understand this has the force of law. you need to you need to do this right. i think that all makes sense what you're saying. but i think that my concern is that looking at the actual language of the regulation as

proposed, it doesn't create all that nuance that you just discussed. it has more of a blanket. failure to provide evidence constitutes withholding such materials, short circuiting the whole kind of objection process. i wonder if we could cure that with a minor amendment that to add something like, right here where it says failure to provide evidence, records, documents or information requested pursuant to a subpoena , and then add or a timely response to a subpoena, comma, from the ethics commission constitutes withholding of such materials, and then that we could deal with the issue of whether the response was valid or timely. i would i would be fine with that. personally. yeah, i think it makes sense to build in something like commissioner salahi suggested, i have a timing question. i know that this is on for an action item today, but is there like a deadline for us to act on these proposed amendments, i mean, the only one, would just be so for

the proposed amendment, the regulation amendments for 1.112-2, at whatever point that is approved, that kind of sets, a 60 day window that we have once we provide notice of, here's what the new change is going to be. we have a 60 day window before the actual implementation. just because we have to legally provide that notice. so that is the only one that i think is really on any sort of timeline. just if it were approved today, we could be active in july, which would make our lives a little bit easier for november. but for you all, please, like whatever timeline you need to discuss is a okay. yeah, yeah, i think i'm generally fine voting today, but since we are live amending something, there may be a benefit to taking more time to make sure we have the right language that staff likes and that we are comfortable with on that, what are your commissioners? what are my thoughts is as far as that regulation is concerned. i'm comfortable with that. that language i propose if the staff is comfortable with that, i don't. could you say it again

the so it would be, to insert the phrase after the where it currently says pursuant to a subpoena to insert after that, a subclause that's comma or a timely response to a subpoena comma. and then it continues to what's written there. i like the insertion, but wouldn't it go after more information? so failure to provide evidence records, documents or information or timely response. oh. that's fine. yeah, that works too. yeah yeah. that's the danger of doing these things. yeah yeah, mr. ford, do you have thoughts? so the idea is, that this is specifically about subpoena, right? not about requesting other kinds of information. so maybe it should go after subpoena. maybe it would be, failure to provide evidence, records, documents or information requested pursuant to a subpoena, comma, or a timely response to such a

subpoena, something like that, so that you're specifically calling out the subpoena. that's what i had proposed. and i think what what, chair is proposing is that you could just add it to the first clause. so it's failure to provide evidence, records, documents or information or a timely response requested pursuant to a subpoena . yeah. can we just short circuit the whole thing by saying failure to provide a timely response to a subpoena, or does that, leave too much space? because that's really the heart of it, right? we want people to respond, whether it's by producing the documents or by serving legitimate objections, but they can't. you know, not engage, i mean, it's fine to listed more in detail to make sure that we don't inadvertently by putting it in a weird place in the sentence, kind of modify the wrong part of it. yeah i mean, i think as long as on on

interpreting really phrased language, i know as long as we're fine and interpreting what a response, what timely means, what response means. because if we want to provide like examples, evidence, records, documents, i don't know, so maybe we do need okay, maybe punting it would make sense. but if we want to spend, i don't know how many action items we have left, but i think i've got one suggestion. and if this doesn't stick, then we can skip it. so my suggestion would be, to insert the phrase after subpoena from the ethics commission. so it would go, i'll read it out loud. failure to provide evidence, records, documents or information when requested pursuant to a subpoena from the ethics commission. comma or to provide timely response to a subpoena comma, constitutes withholding of such material, does that work? sounds good to me. so great. mr. deputy city attorney, do you see any issues with that, those,

amendments make sense to me. thank you, were there any thoughts on any of the other. yeah, just whether there were reactions from, the stakeholders that engaged with you and to any of the proposals that you made and the one that sticks out in my mind as being most substantive is the $500, limitation on using. yeah. otherwise, no, those were really the only two. it was just folks were happy about the 112 changes and a little on the fence about the 170 changes, but that was it. that was really the only kind of feedback that we got from folks. and then the only other question would be, and apologies if this is something that, folks who are more well versed in these issues already know, but, the regulation on that issue, says that a contribution includes the value of the use of the home or office as a fundraising event venue is that will there be guidance out there for how to value that thinking? just private citizen

who doesn't normally do that. so there's not really a market for it. yeah. so that is something that we are kind of currently working on internally to figure out, pending kind of some additional guidance and feedback from the fair political practices commission, we are hoping to have guidance on that soon, but it is something. yeah, that's been in the works because it's it is a question that we get not infrequently, so making sure that we do kind of have clear guidance there is important. okay that's it for me . great, i think we'll be able to then vote today, but, we'll do public comment, anyone in the audience wish to make public comment? seeing no one in the room? mr. clerk, would you check if there are any remote callers? chair. we're checking to see if there are callers in the queue to wish to comment on. item six. chair there are no callers in the queue. great i move to adopt the proposed amendments to the regulations, discuss subject to the, verbal edit to the proposed

amendment to section regulation. 1.170-2 second. could you take roll, please? on the motion to adopt to approve the proposed amendments for item number six, chair a vice chair flowers, i commissioner safaí i commissioner francois i chair with four votes in the affirmative. the motion is approved unanimously. thank you, mr. abuza. thank you for being here. awesome. thank you all so much. thank you. it was a really clear presentation. thank you. thank you to meet you. thanks for coming. come again. i now call agenda item seven, presentation on implementation of proposition d.

far does this go here okay. good morning commissioners peter lotter. thank you, peter lauterborn, miss mike is a little broken. apologies, manager for the ethics at work division. i was going to be co-presenting with michael canning, manager of our policy division, but he is unavailable today, we're going to be talking about the implementation of proposition d, a, something that was in the works. and commissioner request that we bump it up. so we're very happy to do so and share this, we're going to start first by talking about the results itself and what's next for the policy, so as you probably know, the measure did incredibly well. it's one of the most successful measures in city history and the most successful over the last 30 years. so very excited and honored that we get to implement something with this amount of public support, the policy division, moving forward, i

won't be able to get into too much detail since i'm not able to download michael's brain fully, but there are going to be ongoing conversations with bargaining units. first, on the details around the transition away from the department's unique statements of incompatible activities, which will no longer be taking effect. there's going to be additional regulations also in the works for detailing some of the specific, details. and then, they're going to be playing a large part in working with the ethics at work team to make the trainings and the materials, make sure that the forthcoming forms are all ready to go and are able to be, you know, totally aligned with the goals of the policy here, my, pat, is there anything i'm gleaning over here that you wanted to highlight? no okay. just to make sure, also, i wanted to give a little bit of a closure to the last year of the ethics at work division's activities. when we last presented, we were just

kicking off our effort to engage individuals, departments and make plans with them to disseminate the materials about ethics, laws and regulations that they needed to follow, we had a wide range of materials made, including web pages, printable materials, videos and online courses that were developed, and we were able to get these out through these departmental plans, that include hundreds of views of, of online views of our videos, advertisement spots on sfgovtv, which they provided for us for, for free, as they do for city departments and a number of live trainings, particularly for members of the municipal executives association, our work with the departments was really wonderful. we were able to make a lot of great connections with departments, a lot of interest in, our work, a lot of grateful anise that this was starting to happen, that there was going to be more proactive engagement with them, the departments that

worked with us typically would come up with a plan to say what materials were most relevant. we'd work together on that, get certain materials to all staff. some things would only go to managers, particularly higher level materials. for example, our e-learning training on best payments was highly requested, doesn't the departments were able to make these plans with us a number? you know, either did not or engage with us, but the timing wasn't right for them, and it's a perfect point now that prop d does require this additional amount of training. so we've done the voluntary work. we were able to do that, specify provide targeted content for departments. we also learned a lot about what they value, what they need to see in educational materials and trainings, and now we're able to incorporate that into the mandatory trainings that proposition d is going to be moving forward with. as part of the proposition d implementation . so, there are six components which i'll go through each which includes the, updating the

general ethics training, education materials on the proposition d changes, the requirements around departmental departmental gift disclosures, the personal relationships disclosures and transitioning as we just mentioned, the statements of incompatible activities and then finally, updates to the existing guidance content that we have, each of these, by the way, i'll give a short summary of what we're, of the steps that we're looking at. and then there'll be a timeline. i'm going to pause on that timeline slide for a couple of seconds, not get into the details. if you do have a question though, just feel free to pause me, so for the updated general ethics training, this is a training that is currently required of officers, mandated by state assembly bill 12. 34. this training has been currently be, managed by the department of human resources with a lot of

input, of course, from the city attorney's office and the staff of the ethics commission. this is a training that we were already going to sort of take over the management of, from department of human resources. they manage many, many trainings. this is one that we could own. wanted to have updated content, updated scenarios that felt realistic based on the feedback we hear from stakeholders, and update it for accessibility and diversity, this is now going to be the baseline of the training that will satisfy the proposition d requirement that all form 700 filers will be taking a training, we are looking at how module we can make it based on the tools available so that certain staff, certain officers, perhaps commissioners, get something slightly different than departmental staff leadership, when it is appropriate. that's going to be our long time aspiration to include that. but at the very least, everyone's going to be getting this training and have all of not only the state mandated content, but also the content that is, locally unique.

again i'll use hazard payments as an example that applies to all forms of 100 filers. i think i just covered a lot of this in the last slide, so i don't need to say that again. brief timeline. you know, our goal is that this needs to be ready to roll for sure by the time proposition d takes effect in mid-october. is the current target date. it's something that we're able to update as necessary. so, for example, if it was able to go sooner, we could have it available sooner for new hires, minus the things that are unique to proposition d. but again, our goal is to have this go up simultaneously to the to win. proposition d takes effect education on the changes. so we want to make sure that all city officers and employees are aware and understand what is changing because of this measure. and so in general, we're going to make sure that we have materials,

faqs, videos available on a proposition d page. that is a, excuse me, available for anybody to access and get that education change, see what's see what's changed for them. but we are also delivering on the agreements that we made with the municipal executives association, which includes two two hour live trainings and four hours of optional self guided content. so these materials will all help each other. what we make for mta will of course be incorporated into what the general public receives and will be available for anyone to use if they decide that they want to do some self-education. there the timeline highlight for this really briefly is that the agreement, is that we will have these materials available for their use three months before the laws take effect, and so we are that's our first priority right now, is making sure that we're able to get these because, well, before the law takes effect, we're going to make sure that these are ready out there

and people can start getting ready for when the laws are real departmental disclosure. so proposition d requires that now departments need to, report all gifts from private entities. we are working on a, we're working with the eda division to create the form. and then as well as a communication plan to articulate two departments and their staff as they see fit, what those requirements are, how they can satisfy the requirements and do the reporting appropriately to us. again, this is making sure that we're communicating often to departments that they know the changes are coming and a communication has already gone out from our executive director, but we'll be wanting people to know that this is forthcoming. this is forthcoming. this is what the form is going to look like. this is how you ask for help about it, so there's no surprises when the law takes effect in october and then continuing to support them if they have questions or need a

technical assistance thereafter. personal relationship disclosure. so previously we, while there were, conflicts of interest rules around personal relationships, there were not requirements for or there were not penalties for disclosing them and not a process, for it. so updating that now there will be a requirement that we're going to develop, that personal relationships have to be or business relationships have to be reported to their department via a memo. this will be something for departments to manage. but the guidelines, will be set by the ethics commission. so working internally to set those standards, working with departments so that they can understand it, get any hopefully useful stakeholder feedback about what will and won't work for them. and so that a really common set of guidelines are able to be understood by all the departments and they're able to comply with it easily, again, the main target here is to

communicate to departments that it's forthcoming, let them know, early and often what it's going to look like, hear their feedback, and be completely ready to go for implementation in october. then transitioning to the statements, of incompatible activities. so in the past, each department could make their statement of incompatible activities sia, which would often include existing laws that already apply to everybody. but would also go and detail specific rules that apply to their departments. those no longer exist, and the most common elements were incorporated into proposition d, so come october, these will no longer take effect. in the interim. there's of course, still support to give departments over, you know, providing them advice and assistance with these, with these rules, but then also reminding people that these are phasing out, there's the addition of additional complications that some individuals might feel around the advance written determinations, where people had to understand whether or not a

certain activity did conflict with an sia or not. and so we'll be working with the departments to address the existing ones and what those will look like going forward. once proposition d takes effect, in some ways they'll still be covered, you know, it'll it'll be no longer permitted because the proposition d in other cases, that unique departmental entity or rule will no longer be covered by sia because they won't exist, really? a communications exercise as well as advice and guidance and support activity. lastly, we have a lot of content on our website. we have a lot of materials detailing gifts, conflict of interest, secondary employment, joint post-employment restrictions, all sorts of issues. we want to make sure that all of these are 100% up to speed with the proposition d changes. a lot of our materials are high level and don't need to change, but some of them do go into many more specifics. so we're auditing the

website to look for the materials, some of which predate many of us, or even all of us here. we want to make sure that there's nothing on the website that misleads somebody to, you know, oh, i found this is a great way i can take this home. no, we want to make sure that any content on the website is either updated or if it needs to stay, you know, say there was a press release or an announcement that people are able to find the current information, even if the old content has to stay in place , yeah. and we also are identifying things that are particularly public facing to make sure that we're meeting the language access ordinance requirements for translation on the website too. so anything that needs to be updated in multiple languages that we're doing that as well. that's the proposition d specific point. we're going to talk a little bit about advice guidance. but any questions or feedback at this stage i have one question. please if employers are doing the training, do they do it during their workday or do they do it after work hours and are they compensated for that? it is

a work activity. it is a requirement of their workplace and they can do it during work hours. however, their managers need them to organize that if they're, you know. great question. thank you, any other questions? oh, if we could go back to the slide deck, please. thank you. so we also want to talk briefly here about how we're growing the ethics advice program. we've always been advertised to city officers and employees that were available as a staff to provide guidance. but knowing that with several thousand more people taking required trainings with a lot more content going out there and new rules, we wanted to make sure that we were staffing up to make sure that we could handle the additional expected, incoming requests. so, we're as i said, we're expecting an increase in that demand. and so the ethics at work team is going to adopt a new system for our advice. this is going to include a new online portal and a

articulating more protocol so that we have timely responses, and consistent responses that we're giving the same advice to the same questions consistently, not to say that didn't happen in the past, but a system that could rotate between phone calls, emails, teams, messages was, was harder to track than something that now is going to be all based on the portal, a system that we already use for form 700 support and other elements of our external advice. we're going to bring that for this sort of conflict of interest ethics advice. with that open again to any other questions or comments or feedback i haven't, i have another question. i'm sorry, is there a timeline for them to complete the training, so new employees need to take the required training, is it 30 days from their hiring, or from their

taking their position? so that'll be so in october. once the property takes effect, we'll have it up there for any new hires, then others will have to take it on the same timeline as their form 700 requirements. so sometime between january 1st and april 1st, or if it was this year would have been april 2nd, depending on those variances, so the annual requirement would be concurrent with their form 700 expectations. will there be new training that we take? you will be taking the same training that would be available, that you would be taking it as part of your annual requirements. so you'd be taking it next winter, spring. lucky you. thank you. this is great. thank you. good presentation. great. my pleasure . thank you. even though there's no action, i think we still have to take public comment on this. so looking in the room, seeing no one. mr. clerk, would you check if there are any remote callers? chair. we're checking

to see if there are callers in the queue, chair finley, there's one caller. welcome. caller. your three minutes begins now. good morning, commissioners, this is debbie lerman from the san francisco human services network. we're a public policy association of about 80 san francisco health and human service nonprofits who have contracts with the city and county to provide services over the past about ten years, the city and voters have approved multiple laws and measures with enhanced ethics requirements, and many of them apply to city contractors or other members of the public who interface with government, whether they're property rules, campaign contributions, bastard payments, or others. these rules are often very detailed, and they require action by contractors to remain in compliance. i've raised repeatedly over the years the need for training to ensure our

nonprofits are aware of these rules. i do what i can to educate our members, but i guarantee the vast majority are unaware of things they're supposed to be doing. so once again, we have a new set of laws and regulations with no effort to inform all affected stakeholders and a focus only on training city employees. i would ask this commission to prioritize the development of training and written materials to educate non profit city contractors on all of the changes in ethics rules, and i am always happy to offer assistance in any way we can to organize training sessions or do outreach to non to the nonprofit sector, or ask departments to do that. and i hope you will take this under consideration. thank you. thank you. chair, there are no more callers. thank you. i

will now call agenda item eight presentation on campaign finance dashboards. good afternoon. or good morning commissioners i'm here i'm tyler field a senior ice engineer with the commission. i'm here today to give you an overview of the campaign finance dashboards, as noted in the agenda memo, these dashboards are one of the ways the ethics commission is trying to make it easier for, the public and interested people to review and compare campaign statements and assist voters in making informed electoral divisions decisions, these dashboards distill a large number of filings into an interactive set of charts and graphs that answer common questions on campaign finance. but before i dive into demonstration mode, i'd like to quickly go over a couple of concepts around campaign finance disclosure, when we talk about how much money is in a election,

how much money this candidate has spent, how do we know where do those numbers come from? from this form, the fppc the form for 60 local committees, groups that raise and spend money for an election have to file this form with our office, it lists how much money committees raise. who is giving it to them, where they're spending it, how they're spending it, while they're active. all committees have to file this form semiannually twice a year. and during an election year, there are a couple extra pre-election deadlines, the semiannual deadline always falls on july 31st and january 31st, and covers activity during the period before the next semiannual filing, semiannual deadline will be on july 31st this year, which will cover january 1st to june 30th and then the january 31st. deadline

covers the second half of the prior year, july 1st through december 31st. pre-election deadlines are for committees that are primarily formed for a candidate or a ballot measure. in an election, they cover the time period between the last semiannual filing and an election here in san francisco, we have three pre-election filings, in september, october and november. this slide is just another way to visualize the reporting periods and deadlines for the election. so now you know that campaign finance data comes into our office by political committees filing statements, which are up there with tax returns on the boring to fund scale statements, get filed over the course of a year. they cover different time periods. and if you're interested in a particular election as a whole, you'd have to identify all the individual committees for all the candidates and ballot measures in that election and examine all

the filings by those committees over the preceding years, now i want to shift gears and show you how our office makes all that a little bit less confusing and a little more accessible. here's our web page for the, november 2024 election dashboards. we keep track of all the committees for an election and organize them by contest, candidate or ballot measure and position. we aggregate and tally all the information from the committees filings and present it in an organized fashion. this this tab is, total funds received. and up here at the top , is an overview of totals by committee. and then down at the bottom, the, contributions are

broken out by individuals. you can use filters if you're only interested in a certain contest or a certain candidate, and the transactions are organized by type. so if you're interested in monetary versus non-monetary or contributions coming from another committee, you can also explore how committees are spending money. this tab is organized in a similar fashion to the to the funds tab with general overview up top and itemized individual expenditures down on the bottom. we can explore a lot of the other data that's included in the form for 60 disclosures, but that might not be as evident, this tab groups, contributor by locations and totals inside or outside san

francisco, inside or outside of california. and then by zip code and state of the contributor, we can use the filters here on this page. we'll filter down to the mayor election. and then just the candidate controlled committees. and you can see most of the contributions are coming from individuals within san francisco and overwhelmingly within california, the other tabs on this page, go over some other information about contributors, their occupations and employers, the payments made by, committees through directly or through vendors, expenses that they make on credit and then some timelines of committee

, expenses and contributions. another time based visualization of their estimated cash balances . and then finally a public financing tab which shows, or will show the funds that are disbursed, to candidates participating in our public funding program after june 17th, when those fundings, when those funds can be dispersed. the biggest drawback to all of these, from my perspective at least, is that there's a manual step involved. i have to click a few buttons to upload, any changes to these dashboards. so if you remember the filing schedules i talked about, there's only a it's not usually a big deal. there's only a couple dates where lots of changes happen, but what i didn't mention is that during the 90 days before an election, there are some additional

disclosure requirements. and during that period, site visitors don't want to wait for me to get my morning coffee and click upload. so this year, we have introduced an automated version of automated and simplified version of the dashboards, which shows contests , or is broken up by contests and shows control sessions and expenses by individual candidates, but their candidate control committees and supporting and opposing committees. supporting and opposing here. and this year we also unveiled an additional set of dashboards for committees that give money to the committees in the main dashboards, this this page shows , campaign finance for

committees who file locally with san francisco and contribute to the committees that are primarily formed for this election, there contributions there payments and then also committees that file with the california secretary of state, those committees contributions and payments. these tools that i've gone over today, show you some of the ways that our office is making it easier for, for the public and for reporters and interested people to understand some of the complexities of the campaign finance disclosures. and with that, i'd open up to questions or comments or i think this is really cool. i think the more ways that we can break down the way campaign finance works, where it's coming from, where it's going, how it's being used, the better we engage folks. i

love the, all the different kind of charts and formats that we have. one thing i'm curious about is there any way to connect any of it to the precinct level kind of voter registration data? that department of elections connects? i'm just thinking out loud, like potentially where contributions are coming from, mapping it to a map, i don't you don't have to respond now. i'm just kind of planting a seed. and there may be physical, logistical, all kinds of hurdles, but it'd be a fun way to connect different agencies data. if you have a reaction, go for it. if not, just take it back and, no, chair finland. that, that does sound like a very exciting, idea. there are some, some things we've been tossing around, some ideas we've been tossing around to be able to do that, but we will have we will have to be conscious of, state requirements or state laws requiring us to not publish individualized addresses, i believe, i can't remember exactly, but we'll have to make sure we're within the, the realm

of the law. of course, i'm also just curious. do you track how many folks access this data, we kind of do. we have, some analytics set up, and the for the, for the main dashboards, there is a counter that runs, it shows how many times it has been downloaded, but it doesn't individualize. those downloads. so if i were to look at it from my computer at work and then the next day reload it, that would probably be two counts. so i see there's some interpretation. open up. got it. yeah, i think as a follow up to that, as long as i think i'm most concerned with monitoring engagement and ensuring that the way i mean, these charts, i agree, these tables and the many ways we can see this data is very, it seems very easy to me, which is nice and it seems accessible, but i'm wondering if one we've like how we receive feedback and how we've incorporated that feedback

in order to change the way we represent information, and whether we can monitor engagement generally from it sounds like we can, given the analytics, you know, platforms that we may rely upon. but i'm wondering about feedback otherwise, yeah, we're always open to hearing feedback, you can email to ethics commission at sfgovtv. org, and i will also mention, i and ryan and michael canning a couple of months ago gave a presentation to a set of journalists, local journalists about how to think about campaign finance and how to use the tools here generally. it's very they're very enthusiastic about it. and i have since gotten some emails from from journalists saying, hey, what does this number mean? so. thank you. any other comments, mr. field? thank you for being here.

thank you, public comment seeing no one in the room, mr. clerk, would you see if any remote callers on item eight? chair, if there are no callers? thank you. public comment on item eight is now closed. i now call agenda item nine. discussion on possible action on items for future meetings. does any commissioner wish to speak to this item, just one thing that occurred in response to the prior public caller. i would be interested to know what kind of training, resources we have for non-city folks. so nonprofits, city partners. i'm not sure if it's an agenda meeting item. maybe it's more just an informal conversation with me, so i'll leave that to staff to figure out what's the best way to what. i'm just curious. what, because i think the caller raises a fair point. there may be a bunch of resources out there that i'm just not aware of. i mean, i think the prior presentation on property, you know, mentioned that there would be website

materials that'd be updated. and so i think that that's it's all like forthcoming, but but i agree with you that i, it would be nice to know more specifically how we're targeting that audience, and then i think we have to do another public comment on item nine, seeing no one in the room. mr. clerk, would you check if there are any remote callers? sure. we are checking to see if there are any callers. sheriff in live. there are no callers. okay. item nine is closed. finally. item ten, additional opportunity for public comment. seeing no one in the room. seeing no one in the room. mr. clerk, would you check if there any remote callers? sheriff, we are checking to see if there are remote callers. there are no callers. okay. public comment on item ten is closed. i call agenda item 11. adjournment gavel down. thank you

people deserve a gentleman this works for them. this means that decisions are med with the publicy interest in mind and not for personal gain. to make sure this stele resources and titles serve the public and are in the used for personal gain. there are restrictions it when can be done with stele titles the public resources like official letterhead and business

cards or [inaudible]. stele positions and resources cannot be used to, ask for favors or seek treatment. advocate for person advantages or enengage in playical activity by campaigning. that's a summary but up to you to know the lufor questions contact the ethic's commission for ethics. commission

>> good morning everyone! and welcome to china basin park. [applause] my name is jack bear and for the last 30 years i had the honor of working for the san francisco giants and for a great many of those years, i had the distinct pleasure working with many of you on all of this. we are still putting a few finishing touches on the park, some light, way finding signs, picnic benches and will reinduce