All right, it looks like we have our commissioners here.

So Ktop, let's start recording.

The time is 6.35.

And welcome all to the special meeting of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission.

The Commission works to promote fairness, openness, and integrity in city government.

And we have a quite substantive and full agenda this evening.

And so we look forward to getting into it.

We are going to start by taking the role.

Here.

Commissioner Gage.

Here.

Commissioner Steele.

Here.

Commissioner Talak.

Here.

And I am the Chair, Ryan Mitchick, and I am also here.

We have a quorum.

I'd also like to acknowledge our staff here tonight.

We have our executive director, uh Nicholas Hydorn.

We have our enforcement chief Simon Russell.

And I believe, do we have uh Alex here tonight?

Okay.

Well, thank you to all that are here.

I'd also like to acknowledge that we have our legal counsel uh for Hussein.

Um and I need you mic is all I think it's on, but I'll I'll scoot a little closer so you can hear my beautiful voice.

Thank you.

Um so thank you all for attending.

Um I would uh just like to note um before we get into uh open forum and public comments, uh I would like to encourage those are here those who are here to publicly comment to remember to wait for the agenda item that you are commenting on, and I will call for public comment on that item at that time.

Um so we'll go on to item number two, which is staff and commission announcements.

Are there any staff announcements?

Are there any commission announcements?

Okay, we'll move on to open forum item number three.

So open forum is a time for members of the public to comment on any matter within the jurisdiction of the PEC that is not on tonight's agenda under the Sunshine Ordinance.

The Commission cannot discuss the substance of any public comment made that does not pertain to an item listed in the agenda.

Uh the commission also urges members of the public not to make complaints or ask the commission to investigate matters uh at public meetings, since the public disclosure of such complaints or requests may undermine any subsequent investigation undertaken.

Uh, if you have a ethics complaint uh or request for an investigation to make, we urge you to email at ethicscommission at Oaklandca.gov for assistance in filing that complaint, or you can see staff uh after the meeting tonight.

So uh with that said, and again reiterating that this is only for items that are not on the agenda tonight.

Um are there any public speakers public comment for open forum?

All right, you may approach.

I think we have a place right here for you to come up.

Uh please state your name if you would like that to be recorded in the meeting minutes, and uh you have three minutes for your public comment.

Okay.

I live in uh District Four.

And I'm here for a comment that regards to uh our uh Alameda County Grand Jury Association.

I'm the treasurer of the association.

And one of the uh things that we do besides supporting the grand jury as retired grand jurors, we're not the grand jury, we're retired grand jurors, um, is uh support the grand jury and recruiting, and we also follow up on grand jury reports.

And one of the grand jury reports had to do with ballot titles.

Ballot titles are the 75-word summary at the beginning of each of the ballot initiatives that people have.

There are 34 in Alameda County this election.

And so what the report found was that many times those titles were uh at best marginal as far as uh um explaining it well, and at worst uh misleading.

And so what our uh Alameda County Grand Jury Association has done is form a group to evaluate titles.

And we evaluate titles given a uh roster of um attributes that we'd like to see in the ballot title.

Um I brought I don't know hand out I have my handouts right here.

You guys are already having yes, thank you.

Oh, okay, okay.

Um so the point of this is actually more informational.

This is not a you know complaint or asking for action, uh, but we will be sending out our evaluations to hopefully all the entities that have a ballot title and a ballot on this year's uh November ballot.

Um the overall idea is with this rating system that we've come up with from zero to five, we are hoping that the public will be stimulated to actually read ballot initiatives, right?

Uh and one of the aspects that we found is there are literally hundreds of millions of dollars in these ballots that many people have no idea what the money is being used for, or you know, the various uh ramifications of what are in there, so we uh focused on the ballot from the uh ethics commission, which is measure zero zero, and I included uh the title, our score, and an explanation of why the score is what it is.

Um, and again, the idea is to focus attention on this issue.