I am Councilman Joaquimartz and I'm the chair for the committee.

It is now uh 2 30, and I'm pleased to call this meeting to order.

I'd like to start by recognizing uh my colleagues that have joined us today.

Um here in council.

We have Councilmember Ramirez online.

We have Councilmember Huffman and we have staff from Councilmember Peck, Councilmember Kamen, Councilmember Castillo's office, Mayor Pro Tim Castics Tatum's office, and uh Councilmember Sally Alcorn's office.

I think I got everyone.

Um as a reminder, the council members please hold your questions uh until the end of the demonstration.

When you're recognized, um if you could uh speak clearly into the mic, I will let you uh know when your three minutes uh for questions has come to an end.

Uh and I want to switch over to the uh meeting agenda.

We've been joined by uh staff from councilmember Tiffany Thomas's office as well.

Uh today's committee meeting will receive a demonstration from one meeting, public speaker and public comment functionality and council rural regulations.

Uh this is something that uh many of you all have kind of participated in, but we want to talk to you everyone and to the public to make sure that they understand uh the public uh side of this uh program.

Uh the second item is to do is a demonstration on RFD campaign finance lobbying and personal financial statements management system.

This is something that we've been talking about uh beginning of last year.

Uh we've been anxious and and really wanting to see how we can change uh modernize uh our campaign finance reporting, lobbying and personal financing means and so um with that I'm gonna turn it over to our first presenter, yeah.

Martha Cornejo to introduce the new system and Granica's technical trainer, Susan Spencer.

If you can introduce yourself for the record as well as anyone that you have with you today.

Good morning, council member.

Thank you very much.

Um council members and staff.

Uh, thank you for allowing us this time to do this quick presentation for you.

Um I have been working uh with the IT team and my program, my uh project manager here at in uh hits um Brittany Tate's for goodness, probably six months all together getting the statement of work and everything processed.

So we're down to the end.

I know several of you have had taken the training for the user training for one meeting.

This, however, will specifically be about public interaction with that system.

Um so I wanted to introduce Susan Spencer, who's with Granicus, so that she can walk you through what the functionalities are that the system currently has.

Susan, uh I know we tested earlier, but are you online?

I am, yes.

Wonderful.

Yeah, if you'll go ahead with your presentation, please.

Okay, I'm gonna share out my screen and just make sure everybody can see that.

Okay.

So on the screen right now is um what we call our public portal.

This is where your constituents would go to view meetings um and to sign up to speak or comment.

You'll notice on the left-hand side of my screen.

I have current and upcoming meetings, and I have this sample meeting right here.

City council meeting for member training.

If I scroll to the far right-hand side of the screen, I'll see the options column.

I have a little uh microphone right here and a little speech bubble here.

If I click on the microphone, it's kind of hard to see with my mouth, but a little pop-up comes up that says request to speak.

If I click on that, it's going to give me a choice of either sections or items to um to speak on.

Right now we just have public speakers enabled.

If I want to speak on public speakers, I'll click on that check mark.

And then click on next.

From here, I can either say I'm for, against, or no position.

Click on next again, and then this is going to ask me to enter my first name, my last name, my address, phone number, and hop in.

And then down here would be my topic.

I just use my traffic lights as my example.

Here it comes up populate that.

Once I have my topic in here, I'll click on submit.

I'll get a message that my speaker request was submitted.

I'll click on okay.

And then I can go on with my day.

If I want to submit a comment, I'll come back over to the same spot.

Just click on the little comment bubble.

And you can see it kind of says comments a little hard to see under my hand.

Very similar.

So I'm allowed to comment on this public speakers section of the agenda.

Over on the right hand side, it might be hard to see, but there's a plus sign to add comment.

Again, choose no position for or against.

This is where.

So put my comment in there.

You see quite a lot of space to type in.

When I'm done, click on submit.

If it allows me if I need to add a second comment somewhere else in the agenda, I could do that.

In this case, I just need the one comment.

Again, click on next.

And then the same thing.

My name, address, phone number, and topic.

Click on submit.

And then I'll get the message that the comment was submitted.

So from the public percept perspective for your constituents, that's all they would need to do would just be log in here, choose either to speak or to comment, fill out the required information, and submit it.

Marty, would you like me to go into the clerk side?

Would you go ahead and just show how that would appear for council members during the meeting?

Yep.

Give me one second here.

Let me pull up my council member login.

So I have multiple screens going on here.

Okay.

So I am logged in right now as a council member.

Left hand side of my screen are all of my sections.

Below my sections, I'll see all of my items.

But right here, we're looking at this public speakers section.

If I click on public speakers, actually, it's already enabled on the right hand side.

I'm going to see a speakers tab.

And if I click on that speakers tab, um, depending on me, refresh this real quick.

I think I might need to do that and bear with me.

There we go.

So on my speakers tab, this is where I can see if a member signed up to speak at the top.

And then down here is where I would see my public speakers, those who have signed up to speak.

If you want to, or if you decide to do that, you can click on the speaker themselves.

And if the clerk starts a timer, you'd be able to see the timer.

So let me let me do that from the clerk side.

Give me one moment here.

Let's call in Mary.

Oh, there we go.

Being difficult for me right now.

There we go.

So the clerk has the option to start the start the timer.

You also can see the information about that speaker.

And then from the clerk side, or from the I'm sorry, the member side, this is what you would be able to view right here.

And that time untoggle that you know down to one minute or two minutes if we need to.

Yes.

The clerk has the option to toggle that or make changes to that on an individual basis as needed.

And then once and we move this over to this side, perhaps.

So you can see once they start the timer.

Timer will appear here.

So you can follow along with that.

Stop it.

You can see the clerk is able to edit the information.

As the timer starts to go down, it will turn an orange color to kind of let you know that time is ending up until it's over.

And Susan, we do have the ability to create a list.

So the clerk would be able to run a report that would show us who all has signed up to speak to any given meeting.

Yes.

So back at the administration or the clerk level right here.

Um we have reporting.

And we have something called a public comment report and a public speaker report.

Um if I click on the public comment report, the system will prompt me to choose what meeting I want to run this report for.

And it just pops it up here.

So I can see that under public speakers.

I have these comments here.

And we can export them to PDF if we need to.

And then the same with the public speakers.

We can run this public speaker report ahead of time or whenever you need to.

And then this will show.

And this too can be exported into Excel.

So the reporting function isn't available to the council members, but we, as clerks, city secretary's office and the admin, uh the agenda office would have the ability to run this report and make it available periodically so that council and the mayor's assistance office, for instance, would be able to get an actual printed list or a not printed, we're not printing.

Excel list of everybody who signed up to speak.

Okay.

And then Susan, we we have the ability to turn the comment and the public speaking on and off for each category, correct?

Not for each item, but for a particular category.

Um you can for each section.

You can do it for each section, and actually items.

I'm sorry, not category section, yes.

Yes.

So right now we just have that turned on for public comments, but we could turn it on or off for other sections or even um individual items if we needed to.

But that is on a and that's on an agenda by agenda basis, meeting by meeting basis.

Um we could also turn off speakers or comments on a meeting by meeting basis too.

As well as time.

So I know there's a toggle for us so that the clerks so that we can turn off the ability to click on either of those icons at a particular time, correct?

So we can say you can only sign up until say three o'clock on Monday or something like that.

Yes, we have we we have cutoff dates, so yes, up to a certain point.

Once that cutoff date appears, when the public goes in here, they'll no longer see that um speaker or that comment section.

And the two are separate, you don't have to turn on both.

You can turn on just public speaker or just comment, or you can do both.

Yes, you can do both, you can do one or the other.

So it's it's flexible in that respect.

Okay.

And that's all I recall from your fabulous training, Susan.

So if you have something else you wanted to talk about with regard to sign up, please let us know.

That's all the functionality I remember.

That's that's pretty much it, I think.

Susan, I've talked about it several times, so glad to hear my memory is not faulty.

Thank you, Susan.

Thank you, Martha.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Um there might there are some questions, so we can all stay online.

Um before that, I just want to also welcome uh staff from District E and at large four that have joined us online.

Um and I think it's you know, I know that as we see this and this kind of shift uh into a more tech savvy council.

Uh some of the some of the challenges that come up is uh, you know, um how do we get this information out to the community, making sure that they know how to participate in this um new sign up option.

Um, you know, and some of the other things that that I think uh would maybe calm some of the kind of nervousness with with uh just colleagues around the horseshoe is you can still have the print option, so we'll continue to run public session the same way.

It's more of the the kind of back office behind the scenes on how that's gonna be uh how we're re while we're gonna be implementing that with the community, and so um if are there any um any notices that we're gonna be sharing soon?

Um what is it, what do they look like, and how can we help make sure that um community know that this this change is coming?

It's a little difficult because there are a couple issues with our code of ordinance, our chapter two-two council rules.

One of the main things is that currently it only allows for speakers to sign up via mail, email, fax, or phone.

So we would need a change to allow us to sign up using any, you know, any enabled software system.

So we would need that changed before we could fully implement this.

There are a couple other issues with the council rules.

For instance, it says that we're supposed to group people by topic.

Um, unless we're signing up under a particular agenda item, we do not have the ability in one meeting to move speakers around.

So it's a first come first serves um uh process, and there's no ability to reorder the list of speakers.

We might be able to do that um once we export into Excel, but within one meeting, there's no way to move folks around.

So that is one of the issues.

So we're trying to work that out and see if there's ability to have city secretary maybe enter into one meeting um for right now until we get some uh hopefully council will will agree to do some changes to those council rules to allow us to fully implement.

Yeah, and so it'll be uh uh an amendment to that that council rule because I would assume that there are folks that are not gonna be able to get online and so they can still call in and someone from the city secretary's office would be able to ultimately type in all this information for them as well.

Correct.

That would be the plan is that for someone who isn't able to log in and sign themselves up, they would simply call.

The options would still be there mail, email, fax, or or phone call, and then city secretary would use that information to add them into the one meeting system on their behalf.

Okay.

We have someone online as well from Councilmember Tarsha Jackson's office.

I just want to recognize her.

And we have uh staff from Councilmember Alcorn's office.

Through the City Secretary's office.

That's correct.

Um so if someone calls our office and is having trouble signing up to speak, are we able to, or we should direct them to the Any Anyone can click on that.

Yes, you would be able to do that for them.

Okay.

And then I assume like this sign up link and everything is going to be posted on the city secretary's office.

We don't like I said, because we don't have the the rules don't allow us to sign up that way currently, we're not going to be able to put that out there at this time.

Okay.

So we're working with City Secretary.

Um that office is learning first how to run a live meeting with council members voting and queuing, and then the next step would be to see if we can implement putting names into one meeting, having them put names into one meeting and see if we can manage that without the with the fewest number of council rule changes, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I know especially district council offices are checking that shared document of speakers leading up to public session.

Will there be something similar for council?

We would run that report and then make that Excel spreadsheet available.

And we would probably post it.

We probably post it in that same SharePoint folder where we have it now.

We would just update the reports and put a new report out there.

And then I guess you said you can't move people around, but will they be are people able to sign up for non-agenda items?

And that'll be a good question.

Currently the rules require that.

So we would so my initial thought was that if we wanted to, we could turn on the public speaker option for all of the agenda items.

And then for that top section that says, you know, sign up by two o'clock to and let us know if you need a translator.

I can make that section available for sign up.

So in theory, we could direct folks to sign up for the various agenda items if they're going to speak on agenda items, and then anybody who's not speaking on an agenda item would sign up for that that top section.

That's how I was initially looking at it.

Okay.

Perfect.

Uh staff from Councilmember Castillo's office.

Um when people sign up online, do they get a confirmation that their sign up has been received or that they are in some list?

Oh, that I don't know.

Susan, do you know if there's a confirmation email that goes out?

No, not that I'm aware of.

It's just that message when they click on submit and it just says it was submitted.

Is is that a function that could be turned on?

Because I I know we've been trained, you know, when we do something online, we usually get a confirmation of some kind.

So I would expect like if I did that action that I would get a confirmation of some sort.

I can look into that for you and find out if that's something that we can do.

And then on the section where it it was like click to sign up as a speaker or comment.

Is there any because I would have missed that just looking at it myself, that that tiny little box.

Is there any way to make those more prominent so that someone who maybe is learning this for the first time or hard of seeing or really anyone could see that more prominently?

Susan, could we check with um our configuration folks and see what changes we can make to that page?

Yeah.

Yes, I'm jotting that down for for them.

Thank you.

We'll see what changes we can make in terms of font sizes or formatting of that page to see if we can make it more prominent.

Yep.

We have no more further questions.

Um, but I I guess just one last one for me.

Um as we're looking at moving things on the technology side and now having conversations about council rule to be able to add folks on uh online.

Um is there any conversations about when's the last day time to be able to sign up because of how you know now how quickly you can do this, or are we looking at keeping the same same uh rules for that?

We um the mayor, as you know, often comments about how people should be able to sign up the same day.

Right.

This, if implemented would certainly make that easier.

Um the one thing I point out to him whenever he says that, and I'll point out to you all is that the later they sign up, the less information we'll have.

So folks who sign up on a Tuesday, for instance, most likely will not have a memo that you all can reference.

That's the only downside to it.

But we can certainly change that time at at any time.

We could go ahead and change that now if we wanted to.

Yeah.

And I know right at the uh at now currently if someone has not had time to sign up, uh, my colleagues and I uh we've usually have been able to add them to it, but um I think however we can shift community to make sure that they are uh doing their part as well would be helpful.

So we would still have that option like during the public session.

If a council member made a motion to add a particular person to the list, City Secretary and I both would have the ability to add that person in as a public speaker.

Again, it would be at the bottom of the list, whatever list we're looking at.

Um, but we would be able to add them via council motion at uh during the meeting.

Okay.

So that option would still be there.

And and as we're looking at these council rules, do you anticipate a timeline for when we could bring that up around the horseshoe?

I I would I would like to look at that after we fully implemented.

So I'm happy to put all that together for you know end of October, perhaps.

Uh we're looking at doing our first live one meeting meeting on October 14th and 15th.

So it would be after that.

Okay.

Just need to make sure that that system works for the council agenda.

And then we'll work on the changes necessary for a public session.

Perfect.

Perfect.

Okay, but I did want to show you all what the capabilities were.

Yeah.

So no no further questions.

I want to um Mart, I think you're gonna stay here for the next presentation.

Happy to, yes, sir.

Thank you.

And they're not on yet.

Okay, so we have them coming on at three.

Got it.

Uh I do have a few more things that I could comment on if you like.

Yes.

Um, so I was reviewing the council rules, um, and and one of the things that would be a little difficult for us to implement with the new system is the one, two or three minute non-agenda and agenda.

Um my thought is that perhaps it would be easier for us to pick a single time and then for agenda speakers, have them sign up for the particular items.

So rather than sign up and say you're speaking on an agenda item, you would simply go to item number five, click on the microphone, and then sign up under item number five.

And then we would simply go through the agenda looking at the public speakers, calling on them in order.

So you would do item number one followed by item number two and item number three.

Makes sense.

So that would be a possibility.

Then we could still have the sign up for non-agenda speakers under that section.

Um again, it's a little difficult to manage the times.

So if if, for instance, we decided that everybody gets two minutes, no matter what, then that would be easier to implement with the one meeting system.

Um what else was I going to tell you?

There was one other comment that I had.

We did the online.

Oh, and then the proceedings.

So the that section we have at the bottom for um calling on folks who have spoken in the last four meetings, that is in the council rules.

That would be a little difficult to manage.

We would have to manually move them to a different section.

So it would be creating an agenda section that was one minute previous speakers and then moving them into that pot of speakers manually, which we could do.

But there, you know, there are some things that would make it easier to implement the one meeting.

Um as we're doing this, whether it's the council meeting or this public speaker portion, um, we will still be able to work with what we currently are working with, right?

Uh whether it's the manual side, um, but then also on the council agenda side, just making sure that it's not a quint a quick, you know, uh switch over or correct.

We would not plan to do anything immediate.

There would be no one-week trigger, for instance.

We would have a time period where we would do both.

So you could still call in, you could still email.

We would, if you called in, we would say we can walk you through signing up on the new system, or we'll do it for you, that kind of thing.

And I don't think we have any intention to for that to stop.

Okay.

We're just offering another way for folks to sign up.

And and what I would just recommend to you know staff and and those that are online and council members that are online is um continue to familiarize yourself with with the new format because just like anything it's gonna be uh a little bit um you know nerve wracking uh probably and we're probably gonna be our meetings might be a bit longer and we might definitely uh have some miss mishaps just uh because it's a new system but um the more that that uh you can kind of make sure you're sitting with your your council member to ensure that they know what's going on the new system it's it'll be helpful it'll be helpful and and we do have the option too to uh display the time so the time that you saw on there that said three minutes and then it counted down we do have a way to display that for the public for those of you who are in the training that section that you saw for the voting we would be able to display the time there and that way on this screen at the podium or on the screens here the public and the speaker would both be able to see the countdown of their own time and not be surprised when the bell rings so we do have that option as well I think that would be helpful.

And then uh you know it's also noted that you know we had a consolidated session and then we have council break so there's several council members that are out um is there another opportunity for uh council members to be able to sit and see this uh demonstration as well absolutely yes we can certainly make that possi make that available there is another training for council members on the new system early next week I believe and we will absolutely walk through the um public speaker session section of this to show them what that looks like um we can also do a recording Susan has has very generously given us a few recordings that we can use in um training or making available um that can be watched that will show people how to sign up and what that looks like and what it'll look like for the public and what it'll look like for council so we can work with Susan on on putting something like that together we're currently putting all of those videos into the TMS system so our internal training management system so we can make that available in TMS for for all of the council members and the employees and we can probably use that as well on the website for a public facing version of that video.

That's definitely gonna be appreciated for sure um and I had asked this uh but what type of communication are you are looking for community um and how soon can we start sharing that um I I would recommend in late October when we're looking at the code changes to make sure that we can implement this without violating those rules and and once we get past implementing the uh agenda portion of it that would be helpful so looking happy to work with council and with you all in in middle to late October to start ramping this up and Susan I did recommend you or I did volunteer you to help us with that public facing video so hopefully that's okay.

Sure.

Oh good okay good thank you Susan and Susan I know you have a hard stop at three o'clock um so wanted to take a second just to thank you very much for your help she's been amazingly helpful with all of the customization and the training so thank you Susan and granite for all the all your support thank you very much thank you for your time thank you Susan and so now we'll uh turn it over to Scott Glover to introduce the RFD demonstration I believe he's on online and thank you Mart for staying with us as well um this is something that uh several our uh my colleagues have been speaking to uh we're talking about lobbying campaign finance report personal finance financial statement statements that's what we did we discussed at the last um uh ethics and governance committee and so we're happy to have you on Scott and if uh if you're ready we can go ahead and get started thank you we appreciate the opportunity to present to you all um I would like to be able to share Eric Dietz or Leah screen we have a quick couple intro slides and then we'll get straight to the demo perfect and uh Scott Glover is the chief operating officer for RFD um and while we're recognizing him I did also want to recognize Anna Burnham who's our director of government solutions and we've been working with Anna very closely uh on this whole process and so I wanted to thank her as well as we get into this.

Uh we're based out of Austin, Texas.

And we wrote the uh ethics Texas Ethics Commission campaign finance lobby personal financial statement app uh over a decade ago.

We we currently operate and enhance it, and we're in the process of negotiating another six-year extension with the ethics commission here in Austin to continue to do what we're doing for them.

And then with their blessing proliferated amongst uh as many filing authorities across the state of Texas as possible.

So with that said, uh Eric, can we go to the next screen?

So this is we've we've kind of branded the ethics commission's application.

We call it the Texas Ethics E file.

And uh we've discussed with uh the city of Houston about implementing an instance of TEC's FXE file for the city of Houston.

Um it's gonna streamline the campaign finance and all things ethics related filing processes uh while consolidating all the reportable data in a standalone Houston specific central repository.

Uh what we've presented is basically five modules.

Uh the first and foremost is the campaign finance module, uh, which facilitates all the filing of candidates, PACs, officeholder receipts, and expenditures.

The second module would be the personal financial statement module, and that facilitates the filing of candidates and city of Houston decision makers uh and their personal financial statements uh required by statute.

And then also, I mean, it's it's a module, but it's it's more of the administrative module, uh, which allows City of Houston uh administer administration to handle all the filers to set election cycles, filing timelines, and it can all be done through the administrative module.

And then two modules that are going to be Houston specific are the lobby module.

And so we'll create a um a lobby module specific for Houston statute.

And we're gonna do the same for the financial disclosure statement.

We're gonna create a specific module uh for the city of Houston to handle all things FDS.

I kind of tried to sum it up there as quick as possible for y'all.

Um we're gonna dive right into a demo of the campaign finance, PFS and administrative modules.

Um don't hesitate to interrupt us at all if there's any questions.

And uh, I think we'll just get right to it.

So Marta, if you can, you may want to uh hand the mic over to, and I believe it's Eric Deetz computer.

Deanna, if you're listening, is that something we need to do to hand over the presentation to Eric Deets.

The presentation's already been handed to him.

Thanks, Mike.

Okay.

You can hear me.

Yes, sir.

Sorry, thanks.

Uh so there's a lot to demo here, so I'm gonna go kind of quick.

Um, but please feel free to uh stop and ask questions um as uh as I go through.

All right, so uh what you're see here um is sorry, one second, just to introduce you, Eric Dietz.

Um I saw your title, but I didn't write it down, so I apologize.

Can you go ahead and give us your your title with uh RFD?

Yeah, no problem.

So uh I'm director of systems development.

I was the project manager uh when this application was implemented with the ethics commission.

Wonderful, thank you.

Yeah.

So uh just landing page, uh obviously we can rebrand this one uh so it reflects that uh the application would be for the the city of Houston.

Um just gonna click uh Texas Ethics Commission filers here.

Um so here's the login page.

The way the system is configured right now um is that uh users uh submit a form to TEC in order to get a user ID.

Uh and then uh they go ahead and create a user gets an email with a one-time link so they can set themselves up.

Uh there is discussion about TC allowing people to self-register down the road, um, but that's that's not what they do right now.

So I'm just gonna log in.

And so you can see there's a large list of different filer types supported by the TEC.

Um and filers can share the same what they call file ID, basically user ID for multiple filer types.

Uh so if you have someone that's a COH, and then they also have to file uh PFS uh reports, they can um go ahead and use the same same username for that.

Um, I'll go ahead and log in as a COH.

So it's really uh important for the ethics commission to have current information for filers.

Uh and so this was a screen they asked us to implement so that uh if something is wrong, uh the uh user can update it right here if it's wrong or changed.

If it's missing, they actually cannot get past this screen until uh they go ahead and supply the information.

If they have a change, they can just click update, it'll open in edit mode.

Any in-progress reports that the filer has, it'll update that report with any changes.

So they only have to make that change in in one spot.

I'm just gonna go ahead and hit accept.

Um, so just basic landing page.

Uh, they felt like it was important for the filers to feel like they did something uh when the system was new right away.

So just click manage my reports.

So kind of a lot going on here on this page.

Uh so we've got a couple different lists here.

We've got reports that are in progress.

We've got reports that are shown as missing or late.

Um, and then we have reports that are filed.

And so uh if you have a file report, TC has the concept of a correction.

You would go ahead and hit this correct update button.

It would create effectively a copy of this report.

The filer can go ahead and make any changes to that report that they need uh and then file the new report.

Once they file the correction, uh then that report becomes the reporter record.

You can no longer correct the original.

Uh, you then have to correct the correction, and that just kind of goes on on down the chain as many corrections as uh they want to do.

Uh you can uh print uh your PDFs if you just want to look at them, if you want to look at ones you filed them before.

The export uh allows you to actually export any transactions.

So if you have contributions expenditures on a report, uh you want to export them for some reason.

Um, you can go ahead and do that.

Uh, you can upload um contributions uh for example uh through a CSV uh format.

Uh and so um obviously with the the state, they have some pretty large filers, and that's how they get uh their tens of thousands of transactions into their reports as they upload them.

I'm gonna go ahead uh and hit start new report.

There's a lot of logic in here around if there's elections that have been entered into the system.

Uh they have the concept of filer events, uh, which is how the system also determines if a report is late or not.

Uh, so they add them uh to when they know someone owes a report.

And so uh the idea here is that the system kind of suggests the next report uh that this filer owes for them.

They don't have to file that report if they feel like there's a different one or they don't owe that report, they can choose other report and go ahead and do that.

Um but I'm gonna go ahead and hit start January 15th semi-annual.

So this is the one that would be due uh January of 2026.

And you can see it's it's picked the report for me.

Uh it's the period covered, it's kind of figured out what that is.

Uh again, there's a lot of uh logic in there to figure that out if you have elections in there.

Um then uh in certain cases, the system or semi-annual won't cover that entire um six months because the election reports, pre-election reports cover it.

Um you can combine certain things.

So if I want to terminate my treasurer appointment, file my final report at the same time, I click that radio button uh and it'll give me those options.

Uh January 15th, uh the semi-annual report cannot be combined with daily reports.

So you can see those are great out here.

The old system, these were check boxes, and people would basically file one report for a year and check all the checkboxes.

So they wanted to make sure that that didn't happen uh in the new system.

You'll see as I go through uh there's page helps up here in the upper right-hand corner.

Uh, and those just basically open up HTML page helps uh to kind of help the the filer guide, you know, figure things out.

I'm gonna go ahead and start my report.

So uh just some basic cover uh cover sheet information.

If this filer uh was set up in the admin app that they held in office, or if they uh were set up on an election, uh this stuff would be pre-populated for them.

Um so they can fill it out, change it regardless of whether it's pre-populated.

Go hit next.

Um, so you see right away now.

I've got uh menu on the left navigation.

Uh this is all dynamically generated based on filer type and um report type.

So it knows what schedules a particular filer has to file for a particular report and gives them on the left.

And then you'll see also kind of a yesno here in the middle.

And so the idea was to give power users the option to just kind of hop around with the menu and enter things that they wanted to enter.

And for non-power users to give them more of a wizard approach.

So I'll touch more on that here in a minute.

I'm just going to say no to this.

So you see it's now allowing me to say, oh, I want to enter my report information manually, or I want to upload a file.

And you can do both.

You don't have to, it's not one or the other.

You can enter some manually, upload some.

It doesn't really care.

I'm just gonna hit enter my report manually.

Um so again, just wanting to provide some guidance to filers.

If they know they have monetary contributions, they can pick that yes.

If they don't have loans, they click no.

They're not required to fill this out.

Um PFS is a little bit different, but campaign finance, they can just say um, I don't want to do that.

But you can see here uh worksheet summary.

So this is just kind of like a summary of what's been added to the report.

You can see the one that I said that yes, I did have that.

Um, it's marked that as green, just kind of as a reminder to the filer.

Um, you can see I said no, I don't have loans, but it's not gonna stop me from entering loans.

I can go ahead and start, enter alone.

Um, I could also hop over here to the left navigation and um just start entering uh data on a schedule.

Uh so a couple other things.

Uh they've got walk me through my schedules.

This kind of gives you that wizard, you know, everybody likes to call turbo taxi approach.

Um, and it will ask the uh filer some questions.

So I'm gonna go hit that.

First, it's gonna ask me incoming funds.

So you can see it relates uh to the left-hand side uh navigation.

Uh do I have any incoming funds?

I can say yes, no, working later.

I'll say yes.

Then it's gonna ask me about schedule A1.

It wants to know if I have schedule A1.

I'm gonna say yeah, but I wanna work on that later.

Um ask me about loans, I'll just say no.

Uh say no here, and now it's dropped out to outcoming funds.

Now, if I feel like I don't really want to, you know, deal with that.

I don't this is kind of boring for me.

I can just kind of hop out here, right?

Say, all right, I'm gonna enter some outgoing funds.

Um hop back on the worksheet summary.

You can see that it's put a checkbox here on the right in the work on later to the one that I said I wanted to work on later for.

Um, so I'm gonna just hit start.

Um you'll notice very little um portion of data is required.

This is uh the ethics commission made a decision that they would rather have um some data than none.

Uh so basically we require enough information to be able to save the record effectively.

Uh and they'll they'll take that.

It will tell the filer that they are required to enter the other information later on in the report process, but um it won't force them except in a very few um circumstances.

So uh you can see uh in this one, it has that itemized checkbox.

Once I cross that itemized threshold, it forces it that contribution to be um finalized or itemized, sorry.

Um so the last name searches.

If you've entered, uh if you have the same contributor over and over again, and you enter in the last name, it'll actually uh go ahead and look at your last two years reports and uh give you a drop down and let you uh it'll just fill in that information for you.

Excuse me.

Uh I'm gonna leave uh the rest of this stuff blank so I can demonstrate uh the error check uh functionality later on.

So you've got save and add another uh down here, which would clear everything on the screen, but save the record so you can go ahead and enter it.

Your next one, you can hit save and duplicate.

That would basically leave everything on the screen and just let you change something.

So, like if you have multiple contributions from a single um contributor, you don't have to retype everything every single time.

Uh, you could just do save and duplicate.

I'm gonna hit save.

So you can see here it's it's giving me a list of these uh monetary political contributions.

I can edit the one I entered, I can delete the one I entered.

If I have a whole series, I can filter um if I'm trying to find a specific one based on date or name with these little guys here.

So I can say I'm done with contributions, it's gonna drop me back to this worksheet summary.

So you also notice uh we had the walk me through all schedules.

Uh that kind of walk me through each one.

If um I'm if I'm just like if there's a new schedule or I'm just not sure about one, uh, I can do walk through here, and it's only gonna ask me about that particular schedule.

So do I have any of these gonna tell me something about it?

Um, do I have any of these?

I'll say yes.

Uh, then it's gonna ask about um itemization again, uh aggregation.

If I say no, uh it's gonna ask me some more questions.

So again, it's just trying to help the the user go through it.

I can say work on this now, I can say work on this later, work on this later.

It gives me that checkbox.

You can see it cleared the work on later for the one that I did actually enter data for.

All right, so as I'm going through my report, imagine I can bounce around.

I can go ahead if I want to see what my PDF is gonna look like, I can just click that pretty much at any time browser set up to download them.

So then you can see uh this.

So it's only gonna print um those are the two cover sheets.

It's and then a sort of summary schedule.

It's only gonna print uh the schedules that I have entered data for.

So on this report, I only have an A1, it's not gonna print the other one.

So if I have the other ones, it's gonna go ahead and um print those for me so I can look at them.

Right.

So again, anytime I can check my report for errors, I can just say I'm done.

I want to file.

If I try and file, it's gonna force me through.

If you notice a couple things here, I haven't clicked on the the um totals pages yet.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and click file.

Uh start the error check immediately.

So you can see um it's giving me some errors.

So you on the contribution I entered before, it's telling me exactly what's missing.

I can actually click here and it's gonna bring me back to that page again, tell me what's wrong, and uh let me uh make a correction.

All right, I'm gonna just leave those for now.

You can see I have one high.

So the any high errors are it will not allow me to file without fixing those.

Um and so really here the system differentiates between no entry and zero.

So I can put zero in these fields.

Um, but I have to actually do that if if that's what I'm gonna do.

All right.

Check my report for errors.

So you can see now it's cleared that.

And this accept potential errors here.

Uh the idea is that um there's a record of the filer acknowledging that they are not supplying statutorily required information.

Uh so that actually will get saved, and uh the ethics commission can refer to it if there's a dispute.

All right.

Again, they want you to do it twice.

Make sure you're really serious about it.

Um, and then go ahead and let you file.

So um they do not do electronic signature.

They made the decision that checking the checkbox um and entering your password served as um a good enough electronic signature.

So I don't use like DocuSign or Adobe sign or anything like that.

Um and so that's kind of a campaign finance report.

If there's any questions or anything like that, um I can answer them, or I can jump over to PFSO.

Give us just one second, Eric.

Truth.

Okay.

Uh thank you, Eric.

Uh appreciate that.

And um, for those that are not around the horseshoe, those council members are not here, make sure that they start tuning in.

We should be able to expect this to be used for the December to January report.

I'm expecting that.

I'm gonna have to ask um Scott that question.

Uh we're looking at the statement of work right now, and there was a phase one and a phase two, and I cannot remember if this is in phase one or phase two.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um go ahead.

Go ahead.

I can I can try and answer that.

If we if we we are asking for 60-day implementation online.

So if there's a commitment made by you know November one, we think we can have this up and running by January one.

For campaign finance, PFS and admin.

Uh that would be phase one.

Phase two would be the lobby.

And the uh FTS.

Okay.

And that would be we in our statement of work, we committed to we'll have that up and running in 180 days.

Okay, good to know.

Um, and then just want to definitely want to make sure we give a shout out to the to the mayor's team as well.

Uh Josh has been speaking to this a lot, Steve and David as well.

So I just want to make sure that they know that we appreciate the work that they're doing.

Uh we have council and Ramitas.

Uh thank you, uh Chair.

So Eric, um RFD.

Did is it say is RFD set up the ethics commission um website uh to this extent this reporting function?

What you've seen today is what we've developed.

Yeah, so we set it up.

Their actual, you know, their agency website.

Um they that's on their own.

Uh the aspect where the public actually searches the data.

Uh they already had something in place, and so they want to leverage that.

Uh, and so they developed that part.

But everything I've shown you today is we've set up and developed for them.

Yeah, I um previously ran for a state office, uh district court position, and had to do all the filing on the ethics commission website.

And um and just looking at your presentation, and I'm not able to see everything clearly, unfortunately, uh given the the screens that we're looking at and my bad eyesight, but um there are some similarities but some differences as well.

And so that's why I was asking whether you guys developed um that the the entry uh system for candidates for other races as well, or was this new?

So anything since uh I'm not sure when you ran for office, but this went live 2015.

Uh so anything uh that you did after uh I want to say it was September, I can't remember exactly, but like uh that 2015 on would have been done in this system.

So it it has for sure changed since then.

Yeah.

So uh when us uh office holders or any other candidate uh signs in, will they have to get a filer ID uh initially?

Yes.

And so the because this uh what I'm demonstrating to you right now is actually TC's or ROM is TC's user acceptance test system.

But for the city of Houston, you would have your own instance of the application, so the data won't be shared, um, the servers won't be shared, any of that stuff.

So uh you would need to get a new filer ID.

And the way that works right now is that the administrative users create those.

All right.

Just curious whether this system has the capability to upload documents if necessary.

Yeah, so uh if you have contributions, um, for example, that you can upload those in a CSV format, and there's a couple couple ways to do that.

I don't have a uh file handy, um, but you can see on the World GD Summer and click update file upload file, and it's gonna give me the op option.

So I can import expenditures or I can import contributions and pledges, uh, and then the file layout is defined by the ethics commission, and there's a link here for um people to be able to find that.

Um the export function I kind of mentioned uh the very beginning, um, where you can actually export um contributions from your report using this button.

It will also create those in that same format.

Um so if for some reason um you wanted to export them to make changes um you and then re-upload them, you could do that.

And then again, from this screen, I could also go to that upload file.

Um those are that that's the only uploads um in campaign finance.

I think aside from there's certain contributions uh we have to put like a pack, uh, some pack documentation.

Um and then PFS, uh, there are other documents required to file that report that uh you upload as well.

All right, thank you.

And the the intention is for um most likely someone in the city secretary's office um or multiple people in the city secretary's office to be the administrators, and so they would have oversight of that um assigning of of um the ID numbers to the users in the system.

Any other questions?

No.

No further questions on this one.

Okay.

Eric, if you wanted to go on to the next slide, yep, I'll uh cover PFS here.

All right, so again, uh like I mentioned, I'm gonna use that same filer ID.

Or PFS.

I didn't mention here on this login screen.

If you forgot your password, you can just click this uh link here and it will uh send you an email with a one-time link for you to reset your password.

I'm gonna go ahead and log in as a PFS filer.

Again, you can see the same uh screen to verify uh your initial information.

If you make a change here, it'll update um any reports that you have in progress.

You'll notice it didn't even ask for that information on the report.

They just wanted one spot where you could do it.

Um so again, most of this is uh very, very similar, right?

I've got in progress reports, I've got filed reports for um this filer.

Uh I can delete, print, export, I can upload um PFS data as well in CSV format.

Go ahead and hit uh start a new report.

Uh you can see here it's gonna give me the option to copy data from a prior report.

So if uh, you know, for example uh, you know, someone owns certain number of stocks, that hasn't really changed or has, but they just want to kind of tweak the value or something like that, they can actually pick uh the prior report and it'll copy everything uh from that report.

I'm gonna say do not.

Um it's gonna ask me uh reporting period.

Uh so PFS is our um like taxes, right?

So you file for the year prior.

So since it's 2025, it's gonna ask it's gonna let me do for 2424.

Pick um my reason uh for filing.

Right.

That uh and then you see down here it's gonna ask about address information.

Uh and it's gonna ask if that's your home address.

I'm gonna say yes.

The reason it does this um is uh particularly for judicial files, filers for the state, um, but it will do it for everyone.

Uh so there's the system creates two reports.

It creates what we call a permanent report, which the admin users have, which is completely unredacted.

Uh has all the information, and then it creates what we call scrubbed report, and those are the ones that get published to the um to public reporting website, so the public uh can see those.

And on those, uh, if it's the home address of a judge, uh it's gonna go ahead and um scrub that.

In this case, it will do it for anybody if you say it's your home address.

I'm gonna hit start my report.

Uh so you saw um in campaign finance, these little radio buttons here were optional.

They are not optional for PFS.

The reason being that the statute requires the filer to affirm that they do not have any of these, what they call parts.

Um, so this part of data.

So I'm just gonna click no on these again.

It's not gonna lock me in if I decide I want to enter um something later on, it'll let me do that.

You can see there's a lot of parts here.

If anybody's ever filled, I'm sure people have fill these out.

So now that I've answered them all, uh it's then it's gonna give me the next and previous.

I'm gonna hit next.

Uh so you can see similar concept, worksheet summary.

Uh the dollar amounts aren't really involved as much.

Uh TC did not feel like um that turbo tax wizard approach was needed for PFS.

So that's not an option here.

But you can see I can start any of these uh from the left or from the list on the right.

Uh couple of couple things that are different um with this.

So family members.

Um, you uh people can add their family family members, you know, dependent child or spouse.

Again, save and add another same concept.

Um, you can see it's all very similar.

So now got a dependent there.

Um that walkthrough is the screen we just saw with all their radio buttons.

So I'm gonna go to worksheet summary.

I'm gonna go ahead uh and say you can see it said I said yes, so it made this green.

I'm gonna hit start.

And you can see up top now it's asking me, does this belong?

Is this sorry, occupational income uh for me, the filer itself, or it's for the dependent uh and they can pick one or the other.

If it's joint, it's really something that they just have to enter it um for each each one.

So again, it's gonna ask me about home address.

The filer can say yes, it's gonna pull in that address uh that they had on the first screen.

They can say no and they can uh enter something else.

Regardless of whether they say yes or no, when the system generates that scrubbed report, it is going to match for that first address if they said it was a home address.

Likewise, if they say no on the on the cover sheet, that first one I showed you, and they say it's somewhere in the report, it's gonna go check that one and every other part, um, what they call parts, so every schedule for that address, and it's gonna redact it if it matches.

It's pretty much a one-for-one uh redaction.

So if they um you know put 401 camp craft and they put crafts on one, um, it's not gonna redact that.

It's it's sort of an exact match.

Um save and add another, save and duplicate, all that kind of stuff we talked about.

Kind of a nice little thing about here is if I hit uh done with occupational income, it'll actually save the record.

That was something that they requested, and it'll move me to the next thing.

So if I had said yes to multiples, it would have just hopped to the next uh back here.

Sorry, on this walkthrough.

If I had said yes to multiple of these as I entered them, it would just skip to the next one.

Um, but since I didn't, it won't.

Um, so again, uh a lot of um just dollar amounts, information about who it belongs to, uh, that kind of stuff.

Um so I'm not gonna really spend a time entering all this information.

Um, but I think um it's kind of you get the idea, right?

It's it's dollar amounts, names, who it belongs to, all that kind of stuff.

So all these things over here again, I can preview my PDF at any time if I want to see what um it looks like before I file it.

I can check my errors at any time, and I'm gonna hit file and uh at any time.

Ran the error check.

I don't have any errors on this report and hit continue.

Um so here is what I talked about before.

So um I only said um I had one A.

That's all I entered data for.

And this is where the statute requires them to affirm they do not have these things before they file it.

So it's gonna list all the things that I said no to or did not enter data for.

Um so even if I said yes and didn't enter data, it's gonna show up here.

Um and then I can say, wait, no, I'm wrong, or I confirm these PFS parts are not applicable.

So go ahead, do that.

Uh I can save for later, gonna comprove you my report.

It was really big for them to you know have a lot of different ways to do things.

And again, here we're on the filing screen.

So I just have to check this checkbox, enter my password.

Uh that would serve as um proof that I I can file this report, basically electronic signature.

Um and uh that's that's the filing screen.

So a lot of similarities to campaign finance in terms of how it functions, but also totally different types of data.

So I'll pause there, see if anybody has any questions about PFS.

No questions, Eric.

Um do want to say thank you for for this presentation.

And um, you know, it's it's in alignment with with the administration, the mayor who want to make sure that we're um making it easier, more efficient, but also just continue to be transparent with the community.

So I just appreciate your your presentation.

I think we have one more.

Um, and I'm not sure who's gonna be leading that one.

Leah Leverage is also with uh RFD and we'll be presenting the lobbyist and our personal.

Well, that's personal finance, our um the finance disclosure that I have to do every year.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Leah.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, ma'am, thank you.

Okay.

Um, let's see, let me share my screen.

And while she's getting set up, uh council member, I know you mentioned Josh Sanders and and he's out of the office today.

Um, or we would be able to hear from him specifically, but he was the one who brought some of the packages to us.

Um we had him review in the demos before we move forward with the statement of work to ensure that he uh had input in to how and when and why we were going to move over into these software packages.

So he's been intimately involved in the whole process.

Thank you.

Well, Leah's getting her screen just so everybody knows we're uh on site in the same room, so she's using my microphone.

So if it says I'm talking, it's really her.

Understood.

And Leah, uh, if you can when you're ready, if you can introduce yourself and your title for the record.

Yes, my name is Leah Hurt Leverage, and I've been with RFD since 2013.

Um I was the um business analyst for TEC.

I'm uh senior project manager now, and um I manage the Austin project and other projects.

We have ethics projects that we have too.

Um so uh what I'm showing you is uh the Austin City of Austin.

Um it's TEC's code base, so you'll notice the same look and feel as the TEC screens.

And this is the app the admin application where um I went and searched for Austin's financial disclosure filer.

Um their financial disclosure is called SFI, stands for statement of financial information, so it's basically the same.

So I'm gonna find my file over here and I'm gonna go log in.

And you'll notice Austin has their own landing page, their own brand landing page.

It's similar to TEC.

And the login looks the same as TEC.

File errors are created the same way.

Um when the admin app through the admin app.

And so everyone has a unique filer ID.

Um the same forgot password functionality is available.

And Leah, sorry to interrupt, but just uh one more comment for the council.

Um the council members and staff.

Uh for this particular piece of it, we actually got um Rashad Gambrel from the legal department, who many of you have talked to when we have to do our personal finance disclosures.

Uh and he we had him look over this and speak extensively with RFD to look at this piece of the software as well.

Thank you.

So I am showing the forgot password functionality.

Um as I thought that I had the password ready for this filer, and someone has apparently changed it.

So I'll add a few things while Leah's figuring out the password.

This is Scott Glover again.

Um so we're demoing the City of Austin's lobby and um SFI, and so we'll we'll develop uh similar modules uh for the city of Houston.

Um I also wanted to communicate a couple things around the functionality.

This is this is a responsive design, so you can file on your iPhone or your iPad.

Um it should uh the the screen size should adjust so that if you're if you're on the fly or you're you have you you're you know you have to file and sign in and you know virtually um docusign it, uh you can do it all uh remotely.

Okay.

That was a little bit of filler.

Lee, are we ready?

Yes, and actually um I had uh just give me a second, please.

I can also go ahead and say that we're we are doing this as a software as a service, so it is cloud-based.

So as we do with many of our um software packages, cloud-based, as uh Mr.

Clever said you can use it on any device.

Uh and then we have it set up as software as a service, so there'll be a monthly, there'll be initial uh configuration and rollout, and then there will be a uh yearly um subscription rate that we'll pay for this service.

Right, and then to the the gentleman that was asking about uh having previously filed uh with the ethics commission.

Um, and Eric had addressed a little bit of it.

The the website for the Texas Ethics Commission and the public query for the Texas Ethics Commission, they've done that.

We did not do that, but as a part of our implementation fee with the state of Houston, we are going to provide 10 uh public facing queries.

Um that'll give you know the public access to all the data that the filers file.

We were looking at a way that we could um facilitate inquiries into the filing um reports, both for the public and the media, for instance, and um they did talk to us extensively about the queries that we would be able to use for that purpose.

Yeah, and the way it works now is with these larger um, you know, these larger races where there's um a significant amount of uh contributions and expenditures um uh organizations can download uh flat files of contributions and expenditures through our system.

So this is uh test system and it looks like there's some issue with the email sending on that reset password.

So Leah's just gonna um hop over to lobby quick um and we'll see if we can get that sort of out um while she's doing that portion of the demo.

Okay, so you can see I'm logged in.

You can see that the um we collect the address, just like TEC.

So I can save that and accept the changes.

We have the same manage my report screen, and it works very similar to TEC where we have in progress.

And if I had a file one that would be in the file list.

Um, I'm gonna delete this one so I can start over.

So this is I'm going to start my registration report.

Austin, unlike TEC has the requirement to file activity reports quarterly, which I believe is the same with City of Houston.

So we'll gather any municipal question.

This is very similar to TEC in that we collect subject matter.

Same functionality with the buttons.

I can save or go back.

Next is the client identity screen.

So for lobby clients, if you didn't represent anyone, you could say I represent a no client starting applicable reporting period.

Or you can add the clients name and business.

Address and business.

Then if you have a employees and associates, those can be added here.

If they are related to the mayor or council, then you would need to add those.

Let me add one so it is not required, so then here's where you could disclose whether you're related to a mayor counselor if your employee associates were cancel out of that.

Say done with this.

So it's very much the same kind of turbo taxi flow as TEC.

Or you file or after.

All of the report data is there.

And then we also have a check for errors, just like TEC to make sure that the report, if it has any errors that are high, it can't be filed.

And then we file the registration.

And again, they don't, there's no e-sign, the password and basically signature is all that's required.

And then Austin uses a third-party payment vendor.

And you can either choose to pay later or pay now, but an activity report can't be filed until the registration is paid.

And then Austin has a concept of for the activity report.

The admin, the admins know who needs to file those based on when the registration was filed.

And so they enter what's called an event, a global event for all those filers who need to file activity reports.

And like I said, unless the registration is paid, then you won't even be able to start the activity report.

I can show that.

Yeah thank you Leah and I guess this is more for internal so uh quick reminder for those that are lobbyists you should be registering with the city um at what point do we anticipate shifting over to this format or this application this is part of phase two so that's the hundred and and 120 days I think it was okay so that's 180 days for basically six six months to get both these modules uh Houston specific modules up and running and in production for y'all so sometime early next year um and same thing I think just uh for the public those that are that are in going to be lobbying or lobbying uh make sure that we're communicating with them as well that that we are shifting over um to this to this um application um and as far as uh because some of the conversations we've had around the horses we don't know who who's lobbying um pulling up reports how would we be able to identify who who's the lobbyist and and who's talking to us uh we ultimately depend on them to you know share that information be upfront about it but just um uh how how is it that we we can have access to to this information or how do we download it so we know who who we're speaking to as well so as a as a part of these um the specific Houston modules there'll be some public query associated with those modules we haven't detailed those out yet it's gonna be it's gonna be what the city of Houston wants the public to query regarding lobbying and SFI but there will be functionality available for the public to query on lobby activity.

So as we're looking at this second phase uh I think it would be uh ideal for us for you all to come back and make sure that we uh remind the public uh as well but also of course my colleagues um there are no further questions at the moment um we do want to uh let folks know that we opened it up to public comment uh to sign up here in the chambers but also online and at the moment I don't think we have any public comments uh so this would conclude our presentation and the public comment so for any members that are watching I just want to uh let you know that you can send in your questions and comments by emailing my office district I at HoustonTX dot G O V and see no additional comments or questions from council members or staff will move to adjourn.

I want to thank everyone for participating in the meetings adjourn.

And thank you to Scott Eric and Leah for their time being here and for the presentation as well Susan Spencer from Granicus yes thank you too Marta.

Thank you very much