Suzanne, do you know if I need to do anything to K Top that we're we're we're already K-top?

I don't know where you are.

Sorry?

We're good?

Okay.

Welcome everyone to the September regular meeting of the Oakland Public Ethics Commission.

This meeting has started at 6 30.

I'm the Chair Francis Upton, and I'll be presiding at tonight's meeting.

As a reminder to those in attendance, the Public Ethics Commission is an independent agency of the City of Oakland that works to ensure compliance with the city's government ethics, campaign finance, transparency, and lobbyist registration laws, as well as to administer the city's public financing programs.

Present.

Present.

Commissioner Steele.

Present.

Present.

And I am present.

So we have what five of us?

So we have a quorum.

Ackerman and uh ethics analyst uh Van Buskirk and Ethics Analyst Killings.

Oh, I don't see Alex.

And Ethics Analyst Killings uh here.

Hi, Jean.

So uh staff and commission announcements.

I have a few of those.

So the first is uh Suzanne Duran has been selected as our uh executive director is uh starting September 13th, so we can congratulate her on that.

Um there's also some calendar changes.

Uh we are canceling the November regular meeting, and we are scheduling a special meeting on November 19th.

Uh and in addition, we are scheduling another special meeting on December 10th to interview and appoint two uh commissioners.

So this way uh the purpose of changing these meetings is to make sure we have quorums and also to make sure that we uh can be successful in our commissioner recruitment.

Um so that we get the the new commissioners in before the uh beginning of the year.

Um and then I have some other uh uh announcements uh for myself.

Uh the first is uh congratulating Commissioner Gage on uh the birth of her baby Noah, which occurred on September 2nd, and that's why she is not here.

Um then I have a couple of other topics that I feel compelled to speak about since they've given me a microphone.

Uh one is our national government.

So uh I spoke about this back in March, I think, and I'm gonna continue to speak about it until it gets better.

Um we're in a state right now that's comparable to 1930s Germany and the rise of the Nazi Party.

The parallels are documented and clear, and it's getting worse.

Many citizens of that era just tried to lie low and hope that they wouldn't be targeted.

That enabled the dictatorship.

We need to learn from history here.

I continue to speak about this publicly and resist every chance I get.

Due to my many privileges, there is currently little personal risk for me, unlike many other people in the city.

I'm concerned that all of our residents are equally protected and treated under the law, and this is not happening.

Too many people are at unacceptable risk of having their lives ruined for no fault of their own due to the policies of the national government, and it looks to be getting worse.

The corruption lawlessness and use of government organs for personal or political retribution by the president and other officers of the government is unprecedented.

I hardly need to enumerate the actions to demonstrate this.

In spite of this, we as an ethics commission and as a city need to stand firm in our commitment to fairness, openness, and integrity in our city government.

We will survive this by doing the right things for our residents and speaking openly about injustice at all levels.

And the second item I have is uh directed to the uh or related to the city council, and I plan to go give comment to them at some point in the future.

So I got a call from a reporter who asked me about public records requests related to the city council, and he cited he said that there were a number of requests that weren't responded to and overdue, and this has been happening for a while.

And uh I confirmed this by uh the thanks to Executive Director Duran providing me information from our next request system.

And um, so as a commissioner, I'm not empowered to do anything about this information.

Um, and uh, and I'm not saying anything about particular city council members or anything like that, but I do want to, and you know, and there are processes for taking care of violations here.

There's a mediation process, there's a complaint process with the public ethics commission, and and I urge people to use those as appropriate.

But I do want to implore the city council to set an example of government transparency so that the rest of the city can be encouraged to follow that.

And uh having it be hard to get people's calendars and get people's public records is is not a good look.

So I hope the city council uh tries to really uh take a lead in in transparency in responding to public records requests, and again, I'll be saying this to them uh directly.

Um, there any other uh staff and commission announcements that that wasn't enough, or I guess okay.

Uh great.

So now we will uh have public comment um and uh open forum and uh open forum is a time for a member of the public to comment on any matter within the jurisdiction of the public ethics commission that is not otherwise included in tonight's agenda.

The commission urges members of the public not to make complaints or ask the commission to investigate alleged violations at public meetings, since the public disclosure of such complaints or requests may undermine any subsequent investigation undertaken.

Contact the staff at Ethics Commission at Oaklandca.gov for assistance in filing a complaint.

Under the Sunshine Ordinance, the Commission cannot discuss the substance of any public comment made that does not pertain to an item listed on the agenda.

Please state your name each time you make a public comment if you wish it to be included in the public in the meeting minutes.

Public commenters have three minutes uh each.

Is there any public comment?

You're always welcome, Mr.

Hazard.

You're gonna do timing.

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you.

The most recent dismissal of my complaint is unconscionable.

For the record, my name is Gene Hazard.

I filed several complaints where the investigator summarily dismissed my competition.

I was prepared to apologize to her, but I'm not going to do it.

A number of months ago allowed former mayor Libby Shaff to appeal the decision of this body.

And you altered it.

So the investigator said, I don't have an opportunity to appeal.

And I clearly stated, and you see the highlight.

And this is regarding the ballot measure A that was on the special election on April 15th, 2025, when the city attorney has already made a statement.

Look on the back of the first sheet I gave you.

The top.

He stated on page eight.

That's highlighted for your edification that the city attorney, in accord with the city attorney's powers and duties, is hereby authorized to insert the final ballot question into the ordinance after the adoption by the council so that the ballot question constitutes a true and impartial synopsis of the final proposed measure and to make any changes to the text of the measure as subscribed herein to conform to any legal requirements.

Now I'll go back to the front.

212 of the charter clearly establishes the mandate requirement of the city attorney as it relates to the ballot measure.

And I read verbatim, section 212, adoption and amendment of the ordinance.

When I'm trying to give you material factual information for this body could turn around and override the dismissal by the investigator when we're talking about a ballot measure, which was unlawfully and due to latterly inserted into the special election measure A, the transaction use tax.

I'm sorry, your time is over.

And in addition, it says it says no ordinance shall be adopted after the city council has approved that measure.

I'll take 30 more seconds, uh, Mr.

Chair.

Okay.

Sure.

If any ordinance is altered after the introduction, it shall not be adopted.

Today on this, the second page of the document, and you will see on the back, I filed uh in the courts, the motion, which makes reference to this whole thing of the insertion, which was unilaterally done by the city attorney.

So I respectfully ask this body to overturn the dismissal by the investigator because it's a bunch of crap, and she did not address the charter amendment 212 of the the city charter.

Thank you.

And I'll and I'll be back.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

You just come up and I'll call it uh procedurally.

I don't see a time, and I was never a time wasn't identified for you say your time's up, but you're supposed to identify the time.

The time is three minutes that you have.

Where is the clock?

We we don't have a clock.

I'm sorry.

Okay, so that's gonna be very problematic in terms of me trying to understand my flow of start, and I don't want anybody just hollering up your time is up.

Would you like to have a warning?

Yeah, that'll help.

I might finish before three.

Okay.

Yeah, a warning would be very important.

One minute warning.

That would help a lot.

Okay.

My name is Asada Olibala.

I have uh this is a body that I'm supposed to come to with the thorough understanding that what I bring to you will be thoroughly investigated, or that I'm dealing with people who are ethically and have integrity to deal with matters of the city and the citizens of this of this city.

So you just made a statement.

I want to start with that.

Citizens are a part of the population of Oakland, but they get no recognition.

And I hope at some point we will distinguish the difference between residents and citizens so that citizens can be respected.

Um also am concerned about the fact that you made an a statement about open forum.

I've always believed that open forum is to speak to non-agendized items, and that that scope of what you speak to, you don't have the authority to tell me what I can say.

But you just identified open forum some level or scope of conversation that is not allowed.

If that's the case, I'd like to see that in writing.

How you have the authority to direct me when it comes to open forum.

You are free to say anything you like.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I'm here because I am concerned about, and I don't know if this is the scope of where you come into the picture of how items are being presented on the ballot by the city of Oakland.

Items are being presented, and I'm gonna uh what is the item with the measure A Measure A, the transit and use tax.

I was thoroughly confused as a voter, and if it wasn't for Mr.

Hazard, I would not have come to a conclusion about what was supposed to be on the ballot.

When they say transaction and use tax, I thought it was a form of a sales tax.

It's a form of a tax where if you don't make a purchase in California outside, then you pay this transaction and use tax.

One minute warning.

I'm sorry, one minute one.

Appreciate you, thank you.

Um now uh a notice is being played placed at businesses that says sales and transaction and use tax.

So now the language sales is on there, and they are increasing sales tax by a certain percentage.

And that wasn't explained at all.

And I don't know how this got to happen, but some kind of way, and we had another measure, measure N, that was thoroughly confusing.

But uh thank you for the time and I appreciate you uh giving me that little heads up because I would be very mad if you cut me off.

But thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Okay.

Okay, so now we will go to the approval of the uh May 21st regular meeting minutes, which should be in the agenda packet.

Um I'll entertain a motion.

Okay, I second.

We need someone to move.

I'll uh I'll move to uh approve the meeting minutes.

Okay, I second now.

Okay, we have a motion and a second, and let us vote.

Uh Vice Chair Baieva.

Aye.

Um Commissioner Gage is absent.

Commissioner Mitchik.

Aye.

Commissioner Steele.

I Commissioner Talok.

Aye.

And I will abstain since I was not present at that meeting.

Um so the minutes are approved.

Um and there any public comment.

Sorry about that.

Can you keep can you make sure the microphone is on there?

Good.

Oh, it is.

I just gotta thank you.

And I will leave this with you.

This is the notice that many businesses were given.

There's nothing on this notice that speaks to the transaction and use tax.

And everything with regards to this notice is related to 9704 when the city council approved on June 3rd.

The agreement with the tax the uh with the state.

There's exhibit A and exhibit B.

There's nothing, and I'll leave this with your staff that doesn't make reference to the transaction and use tax.

And they claim from the council and other individuals that are trying to address the fiscal calamity deficit of this city through the transaction and use tax that President Kevin Jenkins and several other council members came up in November 17th, 2024.

And that language made reference only to the transaction use tax and the ordinance 1338.

That was the ordinance adopted by the council on January 9th to advance the ordinance to the ballot to the special election on April 15, 2025.

And so they've now put this on businesses with rev uh with regards to that same tax and it's referenced a sales tax.

This is a bogus piece.

So if you allow one minute warning.

Okay.

Uh 10 seconds.

If you allow staff to proceed with this missing my claim, what's the use of this uh public ethics submission?

Thank you.

Okay.

Please.

I was she's starting her clock.

I was waiting for her.

Okay.

Uh this I feel great here because I usually get one minute at city council meetings, three minutes.

I feel happy queen of the road.

Happy to have anyway.

I'm referencing your May 21st uh meeting, and you had an item draft ballot measure to fund the PEC.

And I just like you before you take a position on funding a ballot measure for a partial tax in uh in 2026 that you do a fiscal impact study.

And what I mean by that is uh a partial tax falls on landowners, property owners.

They represent 40 percent of uh our population, and they are in a position right now, a majority of them.

Their property tax is more than their mortgage.

They are dealing with increased homeowners, some of them can't get fire insurance.

They are dealing with uh foreclosure.

It's it's a very serious issue if they have to take on more partial taxes, and you have to take before you just rubber stamp, or we're gonna give up our approval to have another partial tax, you have to weigh in on the impact it's having.

Many people already, because of these taxes, are leaving the city because they can't contend to wait to the burden of paying these taxes.

So uh I would request that before you make a final decision on supporting a partial tax, please consider the fiscal impact to the uh property owners.

Thank you.

And just for your information, that will uh likely come up in a future meeting.

So the the work that was done has been very preliminary at this point, and should the PEC recommend uh that it will be discussed here, and you can also comment then any other public comment.

Okay, so uh we're now going to approve the um or consider approving the June 25th uh regular meeting minutes and uh I'll entertain a motion um I'll move to approve the minutes.

Okay, and I'll second that.

Um any public comment.

Okay, so we'll vote.

Uh Vice Chair Baeva.

Aye.

Um Commissioner Gage is absent.

Commissioner Mitchik?

Aye, Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Talk.

Aye.

And I vote aye as well.

Okay, the next item of the agenda is the postponement of the democracy dollars program for the 2026 election cycle.

This is a staff recommendation.

Do you want to speak about this?

Um Director Duran.

Sure.

Good evening, Commissioners and everyone here tonight.

If you refer to your agenda materials, you'll see there's a staff memo.

And basically what it explains is that under the Oakland Fair Election Act, um, the PEC is required to take a vote.

And I also want to know that we require a five-member majority for that vote to pass to delay implementing the democracy dollars program.

So on June 11th, the city council declared that the city was facing an extreme fiscal necessity and adopted our 2527 budget.

Um the charter and the Oakland Fair Elections Act permit the city to reduce our minimum funding and staffing requirements for the PEC and the Democracy Dollars program if the city declares that the city is facing an extreme fiscal necessity.

So the adopted budget does not include funding for the democracy dollars vouchers or administration of the program, and it freezes most of the charter mandated staff positions for the program.

So the adopted budget does not provide funding for democracy dollars vouchers or sufficient staffing and resources to administer either the full program or a reduced pilot program.

Staff is recommending that the commission vote to postpone distribution and use of democracy dollars for the 2026 election cycle while continuing to build out the technology policy and staffing infrastructure necessary for a successful implementation in a subsequent election.

Thank you.

Any questions or discussion uh around that any public comment?

Uh can I can I ask a question?

Of course.

Um through the chair, um director Duran.

Um can you just provide a little bit of elaboration on um building out the technology policy and staffing infrastructure over the coming months and years, timeline and what funds we're using and what our plans are sure.

So there was um there were funds um included in the budget to support exactly that the the startup funding.

And so um as you'll we can talk about later within the under the executive director's report.

I I mentioned that um we were able to execute our our contract with the vendor MAPLAT who'll be building that software platform.

That's a total necessity for administering a program of this size and complexity.

So we'll be starting that um likely in the summer next year, so that it will be timed to be ready for our 2028 launch.

That's a major part.

We also have some other technical things to address that we'll be looking at, and as commissioners know, we've been talking about our um planning for the outreach for that.

So we'll be continuing to flesh that out in the coming year.

So we're ready.

Um additionally, we we were very happy that the final budget did include um that we would be able to add um an additional staff member that would be starting around January 2027.

That would be really important to us rolling out this program.

Thank you.

Um are we gonna see uh sort of as part of the agendas um uh timelines or checklists or anything anytime soon, or is that gonna be something we're just gonna put off until it's it's more imminent that uh uh implementation is gonna take place so I guess that topic also is I I was gonna raise under the ED report, but um so I I thought it would be nice at that point to have a conversation.

We used to have a table that was included with the ED report, but it was kind of it was very dense, and I'd received some feedback that it wasn't um always help helpful.

So I was hoping to have a discussion about what would be useful for the commission under the ED report.

Okay.

Um other question.

You said the map light contract will start next summer and and in order to align the timing.

Can you speak a little bit more about that?

Sure.

So um so we received authorization for a five-year contract um and up to a maximum of the startup funding at what's necessary.

Um the actual development that we were predicting is supposed to take maybe nine to twelve months comfortably.

Umce that that platform goes live, we're gonna have to start paying for the maintenance of it.

So we can comfortably do that development process starting, that's why we wouldn't start immediately on that, um, because we want to time it so that all the testing is complete and and you know, fully vetted, but we're not we don't want to be um be premature and have uh something sitting idle that is uh gonna be a high cost for the program.

Got it, that's super helpful.

So the idea would be start working on it next summer, a 12-month development.

So hopefully go live by summer of 2026.

You know, late fall of 2027, making sure that and that timeline includes the time to do um you know vigorous way.

We both want to do user testing in terms of you know how it how it feels for the users, in addition to just does it work.

So that includes the ability to do all that.

Got it.

Yeah, that makes sense just to make sure, because I'm sure there are tons of bugs that have come up in the last minute.

So thank you.

Uh public comment, Mr.

Hazard.

Uh yes, Mr.

Chair.

I think staff should uh give an explanation to the viewing audience what the purpose of democracy dollars are, because most of them don't even have a clue.

Staff make a whatever she said, but they don't know what democracy dollars are.

So uh I will yield my time for that explanation to the viewing audience, because I objected then in June to this whole concept of democracy dollars.

But again, uh Mr.

Chair, that I think is important that the viewing artists understand what the whole purpose of democracy dollars are because that was absent from a presentation.

Thank you.

And I yield my time.

Would you like to make a brief comment to uh for our audience?

Certainly I'm happy to.

So the democracy dollars program is a public campaign financing program.

Um it was enacted by Oakland voters.

Um they voted under ballot measure W back in 2022 to enact this program by um over 70 percent.

Um and the style of public campaign financing we think is um is a useful policy as an anti-corruption measure and a measure to expand participation in Oakland elections generally.

The idea is that rather than uh people simply applying for public financing as we do under the limited public financing program, that we would actually distribute the public funds in the form of vouchers to um Oakland voters, and that they would be the ones then who make the choice of who the public funds would go to.

Um, in addition, the program is structured in a way that um candidates for the first time should be able to run viable campaigns with all public funds and not being required to raise any private funds at all, hopefully.

So it's the purpose of the program is to really level the playing field so that regardless of income or access to uh resources of wealthy individuals, um anybody with something to say could run for Oakland uhfices.

So that's that's basically it in a nutshell.

Thank you.

Um everything that good gets uh dealt with that has a fiscal component usually ends up as a result of prioritization because we can't fund everything.

So when you were allowed to get some part of the budget, the 25-27 budget, there was no budgeting for homelessness.

And I'm talking about there was budgeting for homeless prevention, but for the people who are actually homeless, there was no budgeting for that.

The the thought process was there's some money that the county of Alameda has that that money would be used for our homeless community.

So I don't think what you're doing is of a higher priority than finding living shelter for our homeless community, but that's how it turns out.

I also I'm not supportive of this because in its original form, this was intended for either citizens or voters, and you you changed it before you submitted it to the uh on to be on the ballot for everybody.

So the process that a resident can have access to the money, the the process of how you determine who is a resident, how they can identify.

Now, if you are a citizen, and if you are a voter, and I heard you say something about it's for voters.

I don't think it's for voters anymore.

Y'all ended up giving it to everybody who's a resident.

And you had some groups come in here, like the uh Asian American uh what do they call themselves?

Asians Americans affirmative action group.

Never heard of this.

You had all these groups coming in here telling you to change it, and you changed it.

And you could you are saying we're gonna start a process.

Do y'all understand the fiscal deficit that the city is dealing with, the impact of it, and how long it's gonna take to get sustainability of finances?

Do you have any guarantee of 2028?

You one minute order.

Thank you, ma'am.

Uh in 2028, is that money guaranteed to you?

No, it can't be.

We just had a big mut uh discussion on Tuesday about go fund go bonds, and they all taking a risk by going after bonds with increased rating, and and so they're not solidifying, stabilizing our fiscal situation.

So you can't go forward saying we're gonna start something when you don't know in 2028 if you're gonna actually have the money.

Thank you.

Any other public comment?

Any further discussion before we entertain a motion on this matter?

Okay, I'll I will entertain a motion.

Uh I'll make a motion to approve the staff recommendation.

I will second it.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Um Vice Chair Baeva.

I um Commissioner Gage is absent.

Commissioner Mitchik.

Aye.

Commissioner Steele.

Aye.

Commissioner Talok.

Aye.

And I vote yes.

So the motion is approved.

Um next item on the agenda is um about uh Mike Hutchison for school board.

I assume that Ms.

Ackerman will present.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Um, you'll have seen the probable cause report in the agenda that was sent out.

It's a pretty thorough outlining of um the violations themselves and what has been done in this case.

But I can give you a quick overview of it to facilitate our conversation.

Um, so as you know, state and local law requires candidates to file campaign finance statements, disclosing contributions and expenditures.

These are called the Form 460.

And in this case, uh Mr.

Hutchinson has failed to file any of the mandatory reports for his 2016 bid for school board.

Um he filed his 410s in order to register as a committee, but never filed anything thereafter and has not closed down the committee.

And for that reason, we have we now have 19 outstanding Forum 460s that he should have filed.

Um we have worked pretty consistently on this case.

It's an old case, but we've been working on it for quite a while.

Um, to resolve this without a hearing, there's been years of outreach, escalating remedies, court orders, pay sanctions.

Um, and so we have uh we have also you know tried to provide a number of on ramps to compliance.

Um most recently, as of May 2024, we had reached Mr.

Hutchinson.

We thought that he was gonna comply, and then we lost contact with him again.

Um I have tried to reach out to him multiple times.

We also had uh someone from the city attorney's office try to reach out to him.

We have been unable to reach him in this case in order to settle.

And for that reason, we're putting it in front of you to reach to to recommend probable cause.

Uh the I can go through the procedural history very quickly.

In 2017, we sent a non-filer notice and got no response.

Between 2017 and 2022, we emailed and uh sent many letters, we called, sent subpoenas that were ignored or only briefly acknowledged.

In 2022, there was a court order um compelling him to comply with a subpoena, and he still uh failed to provide meaningful records.

Court sanctions were then ordered in 2023 and 2024, um, over 8,500 in sanctions ordered, and it's my understanding that those are still unpaid.

Uh in May 2024, we received an email from uh Mr.

Hutchinson stating that he raised roughly 10,000 during the 2016 campaign, which is well over the $2,000 mark that he that triggers him having to file Form 460s.

We also have evidence from um two different organizations uh that he had paid for uh you know related campaign expenses, printing signage um in the amount of five thousand five hundred thirty-eight dollars and eleven cents, which again exceeds the two thousand dollar threshold for uh full reporting.

Um so for these reasons, uh we argue that he Mr.

Hutchinson has violated Oakland Municipal Code 3.12.340A by failing to file two pre-election statements and 17 semi-annual statements.

Um each violation for this is subject to a f $5,000 fine per count or three times the amount not reported, whichever is greater.

And at this point, that means the fines could total up to $95,000.

The base penalty under the commission guidelines is a thousand dollars per violation plus one percent of unreported activity.

Um aggravating factors in this case are a pattern of noncompliance over eight years, over eight years, and refusal to comply despite repeated outreach and court orders.

So we recommend that the commission find probable cause that Mr.

Hutchinson and his committee violated Okra as outlined in counts one through 19.

We also ask that you order an administrative hearing uh before an outside hearing officer, and if an outside hearing officer is not available, you appoint an individual commissioner to hear the uh the case.

Can we decide that we want to appoint can we decide without checking about an outside hearing officer to just appoint one of us to do it?

I mean, because that's expensive, right?

To that, I don't know.

An outside hearing officer could also be uh we've done this in the past, like a former commissioner, for example, could volunteer to do that, and we could avoid those costs, and I think that's what's anticipated.

Oh, okay, great.

I believe that's that's what um former director Hyadorn tried to do for the prior hearing, and when he couldn't find a former commissioner who would volunteer I stepped up.

Yeah.

Okay, so do we have another we have an idea of who we want one?

Suggested an outside hearing officer, so I assume it's the same position.

Um questions.

Um so I have a few questions.

So am I correct that Mr.

Hutchinson is currently a school board member?

That's right.

So presumably has gone through subsequent election cycles.

Yes, and has filed in those.

And has been compliant in those.

He has.

Um, okay.

Um that obviously doesn't necessarily go to probable cause, but I think is important for context.

Um question I had is is there any sort of statute of limitations, especially since this is almost nine years old at this point?

I know there are continuing violations that are more recent, but the only thing is, our statutes are triggered by notification to the respondent, and so because he was notified within the, I believe it's a four-year period, um, it's been triggered, and we have no problem with that.

Okay.

Um, and then as for the reporting obligations, uh, I read that you know, for the committee it's triggered when they raise more than $2,000 in a calendar year.

Do the filing obligations then continue regardless of when whether they raise $2,000 in a subsequent reporting period?

Yes, they do.

And because he hasn't closed down the committee, his obligations remain.

Okay, so um, for purposes of violation, you don't need to establish that he raised above the threshold amount in each reporting period.

No.

Okay.

Thanks.

And um so we go after him, not necessarily the committee, right?

Uh we yeah, we're naming him, and he would be the person at the administrative hearing.

That's right.

It was uh him and his treasurer was his mother, who, as we understand, we she was originally investigated and we couldn't find evidence of any wrongdoing on her part.

So we have uh dropped her from the case, and so it's just Mr.

Hutchinson who would be a respondent.

Okay.

Did you say there was one time you did get in contact with him though?

Multiple times, yeah.

Yeah.

He has been in touch on and off at times and has promised to come into compliance, and then we lose contact again.

He doesn't follow up.

Yeah.

Was he notified that uh this uh uh item would be discussed tonight?

I notified him in uh in anticipation of the July meeting, um, and then did not notify him again for tonight.

But he was aware that it was presented that it was published in the July meeting and um that it was published again today.

Um I have a question, not um particularly about Hutchinson case, but rather like your methodology going forward for pursuing cases like his.

It sounds like a commission had spent a lot of time trying to, you know, get in touch with him and um just wondering um how do you envision pursuing cases like that in the future, you know, knowing that we have limited resources and you know, it sounds like re reading your report, it sounded like he it was very hard to get hold of, and we just pursued it for a very long time.

So what's the kind of yeah thinking going forward?

And I thought I thought pretty hard about this case.

I think um because he is a relatively sophisticated player because he is currently in office, um, and because we have had contact with him and then lost contact again, there are aggravating factors in this case that make it um that make it justifiable to me that resources were spent on trying to pursue it.

Um you'll see another case that I'll be presenting right after this, in which someone didn't file, and we are issuing we would recommend issuing a warning letter in that case um because the circumstances were very different and there wasn't uh an ongoing uh uh proof of noncompliance.

Thank you.

And sort of as the sort of associated question, um, would it would would have it been uh more beneficial to sort of have this discussion earlier on when it was clear that he is non-responsive, like in other words, decision either to pursue or not to pursue shouldn't have it been made earlier.

I agree.

I uh so this case spanned over three different enforcement chiefs.

Um I believe if from my understanding, speaking to other people in our office who have more institutional history, um, there were thoughts about bringing this forward for an admin hearing, and then we would hear from the respondent, and he would say, I'm gonna come into compliance, and then we would lose contact with him again.

So it was I think somewhat staff turnover, but I also think it was that there was there was on and off promises of compliance.

So thank you.

Uh one more question through the chair.

Um I know you're new in this role relatively, but are you aware of any precedent where a sitting officeholder in Oakland has been unresponsive to fairly simple complaint like this or or any sort of complaint like this?

Um yes, it happens.

Um it it happens quite often that we aren't that we have trouble reaching people who are in office, they're busy and um have many important things to do, but uh in this case it it went beyond that.

It went into court orders and sanctions and um it the kinds of things that should catch the attention of uh an elected official.

Thank you.

I assume Mr.

Hutchinson didn't have counsel in these proceedings.

That's my understanding.

Um and at any point was uh it conveyed to Mr.

Hutchinson that because I guess one question I have is this is a 2016 committee.

He's presumably created different committees that are in compliance for his subsequent funds.

Has it been explained to him that he could follow the procedures to close the committee and end his reporting obligations?

Yes, okay.

Yes, and uh as recently as May 2024, he said that he would, and uh uh Mr.

Van Busbert Buskirk reached out to him to to explain how to do it and was not able to get in touch with him after that.

Other questions?

So you don't want to be rude to the PEC.

That's that's from that's what I'm hearing here.

Uh okay, any public comment.

Okay.

He he knows a parent sent out about this to all the school board members.

So he knows about this meeting tonight.

Uh I don't see I don't understand, I'm sorry, how this has gone on for so long.

And it looks like you addressed reaching out to him every other year.

Uh 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2022.

And is there some sound explanation for every other year you reached out to him?

It also seems like his mother being the treasurer.

And having some contact about can't find the the documents needed.

Uh some sense of responsibility is not being put on her.

And I I don't understand that.

I don't understand why you have court orders for payments in 2023 and 2024 to the city and to the courts.

Have those been paid?

Uh is that something you take up, or is that a non-issue?

Uh and is that includ uh of the total of what he owes the courts and the city all total.

Do you deal with the fact that has that been paid or not?

You don't deal with that, okay.

But it has not.

All right.

Uh then lastly, uh, I'm just disappointed in how much all of this long period of time has cost the ethics commission because right now the fiscal impact of all of this is high on the list of the problem.

And that are you in a position right now to explain to the public how much money have we invested in taking from 2016 to 2017?

And uh one other thing.

When he was uh the district uh board member in 2016, they did a remapping of the district, and now his district is four.

Uh so I don't know if that means anything, but uh he's not in the same district represent representing the uh the same uh community.

Uh but uh this is highly highly dis uh unacceptable to have things going on.

And do we have any precedence for this kind of case taking this long period of time to be uh a standard, or is this something highly unusual?

I can I'd actually like to respond to that a little bit.

Um we've had uh a lot of resource problems in our enforcement department over the years.

We've had, and this has been discussed uh many times and and uh reported on many times, and as uh someone stated, we've had three enforcement chiefs.

Uh the most recent one quit because of resource problems.

So uh there's there's a very large case log of enforcement work, which I'm sure was a factor in why this has taken so long.

And and we've we've been uh uh advocating very hard to get more resources, and we we got some additional resources in the most recent budget, and so we're really trying to get to go through these cases and figure out which ones are worth enforcing and which ones aren't.

Clearly, this one the staff's opinion is that this one is.

So I I hope that that gives you some partial explanation as to why that is, and and we certainly would like to be staffed at a level that this kind of thing doesn't happen again, but we're still not even fully you know properly staffed at that level, given the number of complaints that come in and given the the backlog that we have now.

Mr.

Hazard.

Yes.

I'm confused procedurally.

So the public could make a complaint, and staff could summarily dismiss the complaint on bogus foundation.

But on the other hand, procedurally, staff could investigate a violation similar to a complaint made with an alleged violation of the charter campaign finances or whatsoever.

And then the public is told they don't have a right to appeal.

That's confusing.

When staff could unilaterally make without foundation, a dismissal to this body.

Something's wrong with that picture when the material facts are clearly stated of the violation of the charter or the election code, as in the case when the respondent, the city attorney, falsely, unlawfully, in search and to a ballot measure to mislead and misrepresented the nature of measure aid, the transaction use tax.

And then staff tells me in this matter, I have no recourse but to go to litigation because I can't appeal before this body.

And you sit up there when there's a clear violation of the city charter.

One minute warning.

The public needs an explanation about the complexity.

And one is staff could investigate as they did, Mr.

Hutcherson, and use the election law in campaign financing.

And then on the other hand, the public could file a complaint, and staff could bring to you, which is not noted here.

I guess it's going to come in next month.

But they dismiss for the third time.

When the material facts are very clear.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Any other public comment.

Okay.

I any further discussion.

I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve the stop recommendation.

I'll second that.

Okay.

Motion's been moved and uh seconded to approve the staff recommendation.

We'll take a vote.

Vice Chair Bayba.

I'm sure Gage is not here.

Commissioner Michik.

Aye.

Commissioner Steele.

Aye.

Commissioner Taloc.

Aye.

And I will vote aye.

So the motion has been approved.

All right.

Case closure plan.

Yes.

Okay.

So as the year moves forward, we plan to have many more of these to present to you, but um tonight we have two.

Uh I'm happy to answer any questions you have about either of them.

Both have been evaluated based on the seven-factor rubric that I presented to you in May.

Um you may have seen in the July agenda that uh two memos were attached that went through the seven uh seven-point rubric.

Um we have made the decision not to include those in every agenda moving forward, but I do think that helps you understand what our internal process is and what we will be doing for each case that we review.

Um, whether we decide to keep it or or propose that we close it, um, we will be writing memos of that type um to in order to thoroughly review them.

Um so I have two cases to put before you one is in the matter of Joel Velasquez for Oakland School Board 2022, Joel Velasquez and Kristen Rasmussen, who was the treasurer.

Um, and then also uh the matter of Hugh Barr Hugo Barron and Wing Lu.

And I'm happy to answer questions about either of them.

Um I have a question about the Velasquez matter, um, particularly in parallel with the matter we just discussed.

Um, do you know why the FPPC administrative administratively terminated the committee and what does that mean?

That I I know what it means, but I don't know why they chose to do it in this case.

Um they can do that for low-level committees um as just sort of a a way to shut them down and um prevent them from uh having filing obligations after the fact.

Um it's my understanding that that's most often done in campaigns that have small amounts of money involved, uh, although I'm I'm not sure about that.

Okay.

And um I that's to my second question.

You know that there was a low financial balance of the committee, you know, which is one of the factors translating to minimal public harm.

Um, do you have an estimate of what the Yeah, it was a thousand seven hundred and five dollars.

Okay.

Got it.

Um so uh do you have so this is our our first set uh under this uh uh this plan.

Do you have an early assessment of whether it's going as you had hoped?

Um I think you know, was having two cases sort of in line with expectations for this stage and uh also the amount of staff time that it's taking to review these and come up with these summaries and recommendations.

Uh was that in line with expectations?

I think um given our current staffing, we are having trouble finalizing these memos as quickly as I would like and as quickly as we would need to to meet the goal that I set of end of December for closing all of these out.

Um we are in the process of hiring a law clerk and another investigator, and my hope is that with the additional help we can start turning these out or start uh analyzing cases thoroughly more readily and more quickly.

Um and so we'll be able to present more to you at the upcoming meetings.

Um but as of right now with this pace, um, we are not on pace to find it finish this by December of 2025.

Okay.

Um looking at these summaries, um, it I have no problem with with the stack rep with the staff recommendation on these.

Um were these difficult calls for you?

Um are these sort of the low-hanging fruit of the cases, the ones that were sort of easiest to bump into this.

What what's your perspective on it?

Yeah, I think they're pretty low-hanging fruit.

Um I think once uh we looked into them, we realized that you know, one of them had been pretty thoroughly investigated already, and the recommendation had been to close, um, and the other involved a very low-level violation.

Um we are I have uh asked my staff to start with the cases that were originally put on hold, um, which I think will mean that the cases that are that we start with are the cases that are more that are that were less urgent um to the former enforcement chief.

Um and so I think uh starting out, it will be more low-hanging fruit, and as we go on, we'll be looking at harder and harder and more gray area cases.

Um along the same lines, have you thought of any ways to optimize the memo draft in portion?

Because it seems like conclusions are like you st you need you're trying to substantiate obviously present the picture for us, but it looks like the draft in itself takes a long time.

Is that have you thought of ways to optimize it?

Yeah, it does, and it takes a thorough review of a case file, which sometimes is a big case file.

Um we are um, you know, my my investigators are reviewing reports of information rather than the inform the raw information itself.

So we're trying to uh sort of work off of the work that's already been done.

Um and I think as we go through this, as we perfect our our process, it'll get faster and faster.

Um and as we bring on more people, of course, then it will get faster and faster.

So um, yes, I'm not I I would I would have liked to have brought more cases uh in front of you today, and I hope that in the near future we'll be bringing many more cases in front of you.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Yeah, I actually had um going more to the procedure.

I had a question about the Hugo Baron and Wing Lu case, and obviously this was before your time, but there's a discussion of then Chief Russell's attempts to investigate the matter and and finding that there wasn't substantiation.

And there's also a sentence that says the facts as alleged did not constitute a violation of any ethics law.

I noticed that today.

That's not it's the facts as they were investigated.

Okay, good facts as alleged would have been a conflict of interest, um, but the facts as Simon found them to be true, um, did not constitute a violation.

Got it.

So I guess that my question is are there sort of even lower hanging fruit that are going to be brought to us for closure or where the facts is alleged wouldn't constitute a violation of the law, or are the is the universe of cases that you're now bringing towards closure, have they kind of passed that initial threshold and there's some amount of investigation that's been done?

Most have passed that initial threshold, um, although some are still in the preliminary review stage.

So it's quite possible that some will just be out of our jurisdiction and easy to close down.

Um I'm thinking of one from today that maybe we can close out.

Other questions.

Um I think we can entertain a motion for uh Vasquez, the first one.

I think also procedurally, we were we were considering that you might adopt them as a whole if you would like to.

And that's okay with me.

Public comment will be after we um uh have a motion and before we vote.

Yeah, but we'll get there.

Uh any objection to considering them together.

Let us do that then.

So anyone want to make a motion for both uh 7A and 7B.

I'll move to adopt the uh staff recommendation as to um both matters, the Velasco's matter and the Hugo Barron and Wing Lu matter.

All right, I'll second that public comment.

Again, Mr.

Chair, a procedural issue.

It seems and particularly in the dismissal, which has yet to come before this body, I'm gonna assume it's gonna come at the next meeting.

It seems like the commission summarily approves staff's recommendation, despite or in spite of the material facts.

And the instance in which I brought this complaint, is clear that the material facts are uncontroverted.

So how can when we're talking about the city charter 212, the election code 1319, 133, election code 9280 and case law, it's repeat from the California Supreme Court and the appeals court that any action taken by the city attorney outside of their mandated authority, which is only impartial analysis of a ballot measure.

He cannot get engaged in advocacy.

So this body has an inherent obligation to override staff recommendations.

I've given you what's in the courts right now.

We got a CMC, a case management conference on the 23rd, a motion to dismiss case management.

This is not a civil suit action.

It's an emergency action.

And for you to rubber stamp staff recommendation when the material facts are clear, then you've shirked your own responsibility.

And the ethics commission is a sham.

When the material facts are real clear, undisputed.

So I implore you to override staff recommendation when it comes before this body.

And I prepare to go at whatever length that's necessary, because this is an affront to the citizens and residents of the city of Oakland.

If you allow this type of misconduct out of the city attorney to insert into a ballot tax summary to mislead the intent of the transaction and use tax.

Thank you.

Okay, we have a motion seconded and approved, and we shall now vote.

Aye.

Commissioner Gage is absent.

Commissioner Metchik.

Aye.

Commissioner Steele.

Aye.

Commissioner Taloc.

Aye.

And I vote yes.

Okay, we've done with our action items.

The next item is Commissioner Recruit.

So Director Duran, do you want to comment on this?

Do you want to actually I was going to invite our analyst uh Jelani Killings to present on this one?

That would be awesome.

Good evening, Commissioners, Jelani Killings ethics analyst.

And so in your packet, uh you have uh both the vacancy announcement as well as the flyer for our current commissioner recruitment.

Uh just for information for the public, we have an open recruitment to fill two commission appointed seats uh that will uh begin in January of 2026.

And so staff is uh right now implementing our recruitment outreach plan, uh, which includes different uh mediums that we are sharing about the vacancies, and so we have put it out uh on our website as well as sent out an email to our email subscriber list, uh, which also includes past applicants over the past two years.

Uh we have flyers uh in city buildings, including City Hall, as well as the 250 building where our new office is located.

Um, and so we also put out a digital ad in the Oakland side as well as sharing about it during our outreach opportunities, uh, both with our joint outreach with the city auditor uh as well as outreach opportunities that we have with the commission.

Uh as of recent, uh we went out uh myself and uh Chair Upton uh at a uh community outreach for council members Brown and Unger.

Uh and so we look to continue to be able to share at different outreach events as opportunities arise.

So if you are able to share a video or you like to even just share a comment or a quote that we can use for social media purposes, just to put a face to the commission and the work that we do as we're looking to recruit commissioners.

So with that, just a brief update.

To date, we have received two applications.

And so we will continue to use all of our outreach efforts through the deadline period, which is November 2nd.

And just to share a little bit of background about the two applications that we received and how they heard about the opportunity.

So one applicant said they received the information through the email subscriber list, and the other through the digital ad that we put out in Oakland side.

So we'll continue to utilize those outreach vehicles as well as the others that I've shared.

But just want to provide an update about our outreach for recruitment and be happy to answer any questions.

Would count for that requirement?

Because I'm a little confused about the Zoom thing.

I I can speak to that.

So people can attend the meeting.

We we are actually broadcasting on Zoom right now.

And so anybody who wants to apply, I think both of these applicants indicated they would be attending this meeting.

But they can watch one of our upcoming meetings up until the time that the commission makes an their selection.

So you know, there's there's not a hard rule that you know someone couldn't have watched the June or May, a June or May meeting.

Um so that's been our process so far.

Um I think we have multiple opportunities also to for future meetings, and we can clarify that if it becomes an issue.

I I think clarify clarifying it might be in order because I think um uh the thing that I think about like if you attend a meeting, then you can actually participate and make comments and interact with us.

But if you are just watching it on Zoom, you can't really.

Um we don't have a mechanism.

I mean, now that we're all here, I mean, back back in the pandemic days you could on Zoom, but now now that's not possible anymore, right?

Someone on Zoom can't participate in the meeting.

So it's basically the same as watching a tape of a past meeting.

Um I do think some clarification about that would be in order because I think we put a lot of effort into timing things so that there are meetings, space to attend meetings and all that.

But if the if the requirement can be satisfied by watching a meeting four months ago, then we should we should be clear on that, and and that might make it easier to I guess one question would be maybe for the commissioners yourselves, like you know, would that be something that you wouldn't be comfortable with, or is that you know basically people have in the uh since the pandemic after I mean when we've gone back to public meetings, we've allowed people to do the Zoom option, and yes, that you're correct, they can't actually participate if they're not physically here since then, but we have allowed people to do that for the last couple of years.

So I think that would be um if the commissioners are not you know happy with that that division, or if they want to make it easy, you know, more easy for people to be applicants by you know, um maybe you want to share with us about that.

I have a couple thoughts on that as well.

So one is there any is there any possibility that we can have interactivity through Zoom?

So you know, like we did in the pandemic.

We can do the meeting here, but someone on Zoom could make a public comment, and in that way, you know, they are actually participating in the meeting.

Is that is that in the in the cards at all or as a matter of you know, technology or whatever is required to do that?

It's possible.

For example, our our um council is participating virtually because he couldn't be here, he didn't want to infect anybody with germs.

So but um it might also depend on staff capacity.

I I and which room we're in, like for example, in this room, it's not hard for us to to use Zoom so that someone could speak.

Um but we wouldn't have that if we were in a necessarily in a different hearing room, and we would have to have staff available to manage that process of recognizing speakers.

So in the past we really haven't had people to do that effectively.

So you know, I think if that's a desire, it's something we can explore and think about if we can have that added um staffing or attending the meeting, but we'd really need someone dedicated to managing that process.

As you see when you watch city council meetings, it is a big responsibility for the person to be managing that.

Perhaps um uh we could ask the public maybe on our email list or something like that, if there are people who would want to, you know, if if hardly anyone really wants this, then there's no point in it.

But if a lot of people say, yeah, God, I would love to be able to interact with with the commission in this way, and it'd be much easier for me not to have to come down to City Hall to do it.

And and we are in the process of of filling a number of uh vacancies now.

So when we're fully staffed, I think we could definitely look into trying that out.

Great.

So I guess I have it seems like we're talking about two slightly different things.

So I think one is the ability of people to participate in comment, and I think if with the caveat that I do not want to overburden and already overburdened staff, that seems like a laudable goal.

I think there's a separate question about what we want for prospective commissioners, and I think and what is the purpose of having them attend a meeting before the interviewer as part of the process.

Also, what what is the law act?

I mean, this isn't some law, right, that says that this has to be.

So we just law actually says.

It doesn't it doesn't specify it to that degree.

I don't think I I invite our council to chime in if he would like to, but um, it just says you have to attend a meeting before, you know, but it doesn't like I think that the commission could probably interpret what that means to you.

Yeah, I mean I guess in in my view to to attend a meeting means to actually be uh either viewing a live meeting or being here in person.

Like it doesn't mean going back and watching a meeting from months ago.

With that being said, I think the the purpose of having someone do that is to so they can see how the commission operates and not necessarily for them to comment as part of being there.

Right.

So I think I would be comfortable with them being able to watch a meeting by Zoom as long as it is one of the like live meetings that is happening when they're watching it, I guess, rather than going back in time and watching an old meeting.

If if in fact what the statute says or the procedure says is attend a meeting.

So I agree with that.

And the way I interpreted it, this requirement is to attend live meeting, not to watch past meetings.

So to the extent we want to expand the pool of applicants if we think that's you know, makes band, you know, our like the number of candidates.

We should I I would just say that we should be explicit about it and make sure it's consistent with the law.

Uh I'd like to hear Mr.

Luby weigh in.

One, because I do want to hear some perspective on what the law requires, and two, because I want to see how this works with the Zoom, because it's apropos of what we're discussing.

Uh through the chair, this is Oliver Luby with the city attorney's office.

Uh the law that you're referring to regarding the commissioner uh attendance requirement for eligibility to uh serve in the commission is in the charter, and it does say attendance, so it would have to be a live meeting.

Okay.

Thank you.

So that seemed to work.

So my recollection on this was that when we returned to in-person meetings after the pandemic, um, I was told that we would be able to take comments over Zoom within a certain time frame.

I think they said it was like 10 months or something.

Um then that just kind of got pushed off indefinitely due to um I thought it was due to staffing uh requirements primarily, but also technological requirements.

But apparently, technologically we see it seems like we're okay.

I don't know if there's a difference between a staff member and a member of the public participating via Zoom.

Um I think it would be fantastic to be able to take comments, take public comment over Zoom, not just for the uh prospective commissioners, but for the public at large, because it's much more accessible.

Uh so if that's possible technologically, and the only hurdle is staff, um I don't want to commit staff time, but I might encourage exploration of perhaps having someone who could volunteer to do it or some way to do it at lower cost.

Um I have another question on the application on on the announcement of the vacancy.

So I think that the current vacancies uh pursuant to the latest sort of changes to the commissioner sort of uh qualifications, um the vacancies would be uh would need um are open to candidates that um fulfill certain characteristics.

Um I don't see those specified in the vacancy announcement.

So in other words, those I think the change last year that was passed by approved by the commission was that uh now everybody appointed to the commission, but it you know, so there are three vacancies could be directly appointed by the city officials and then four open to the commission's election.

But those four people also need to fulfill those characteristics as if the mayor or city order auditor and or the third official would um I think that's only if if one of those three officials doesn't appoint someone within the whatever the deadline is, if we are appointing that person, we that person still has to when we're appointing the mayor's seat, for instance, they have to meet the mayor's qualification.

But my understanding is for the four commission appointed seats.

Those qualifications don't exist.

Okay, okay, thanks for clarifying.

Oh, and um Commissioner Bayev also that we did update the the form that they're filling out so that they can indicate their qualifications for those positions.

So we know that and and we're you know fully intend to follow the practice we have before, which is that if when we have um candidates who are recommended to um by the commission, but we can we only can choose two.

Um we always forward those other ones on so that they can be appointed by one of one of our because I think one of the vacancies, the mayoral vacancy, so that person would need to fulfill those characteristics.

Thank you.

And I hereby withdraw my comments I made earlier about watching past meetings since it seems that's just not good.

Yeah, did we clarify whether attend means attend here or um is is watching on Zoom while a meeting is live.

Does that constitute attending a meeting?

Mr.

Luby.

I'll really be with the city attorney's office.

I um through the chair.

Uh that's a good question.

I believe the staff practice has been to allow um attendance via Zoom to qualify.

Um I wasn't prepared to answer that question more fully than that, but I could get back to the commission at later time if you'd like.

Yes, please.

So that we can stop talking about this.

Uh any other discussion on this, yes.

Um It has been our practice to allow um attendance over Zoom.

So if that's not legal, that would be interesting.

Um question for Mr.

Killings.

Uh I'm sorry if you addressed this during your presentation.

I was looking at the materials during part of it and I might have missed it.

But um, is there a plan for recruitment via public events and um what what uh are the opportunities for that on the calendar coming up?

Yes, so we are looking for events that we could potentially table at.

Uh we have been going out and sharing when we've done our joint outreaches uh with the city auditor and inspector general, as well as uh we had a outreach opportunity with some council members uh this month as well.

Uh we're looking at potentially um two more that we're looking at, one in October, uh the Black Cowboys eventually that will be taking place in Oakland.

We're looking at a joint opportunity with the auditor for outreach, uh, and then as well as another presentation outreach before the deadline.

Uh one other thing that we've done in our one-on-ones with uh elected officials, primarily city council members, is that we've also let them know, you know, if you're having any town halls, any outreach opportunities, we love to come out.

Um, and then we've also provided them uh not only the flyer, but a template that they can share, and there's newsletters to their constituents about the opportunity.

But if there are outreach events that commissioners know of, uh please let us know, and we'd be happy to try to schedule whether commissioners can attend or staff is available to attend as well.

Great.

And please let us know when we have opportunities to attend and recruit.

Um I think I might also suggest um with the uh with the risk of we don't need more lawyers, but bar associations are another um listserv or source for to get the word out um for bodies like this.

So I would suggest um that's another way of doing outreach.

And thank you for sharing that, Commissioner.

So I did uh fail to share that that is one of our outreach lists that we send out to minority bar associations and other lists for uh bar associations here uh in the Bay Area.

Um that's how actually I was found by the city auditor, so um, we know it worked in one case.

And I could add we also uh posted to the alumni networks for the two policy uh graduate programs in in the East Bay.

So um those kind of tips are always welcome and and feel free, um commissioners to you know forward anything like that to staff that you would like us to uh follow up on.

We can add it to our routine list that we just do.

And there's a really good link for posting on social media that just has everything.

So any other discussion?

I have one more question.

Sorry.

And I should know the answer to this.

Um, are these two positions that we're recruiting for commissioner appointed positions?

Yes.

And do we know um when the mayor's deadline is to appoint someone to her seat on the commission before it reverts to us?

So um the mayor's staff is reached out to us and um and I let them know that we would forward any any people that we vetted to them.

So um, but also uh people can apply for that appointment independently, and I encourage people to do so.

And if they need um information on that, please uh email us at Ethics Commission at Oaklandca.gov Right.

I mean, I guess my where what I'm getting at is is through the measure that passed the mayor has a has a certain time period within which to act, and and I just want to make sure are we tracking that?

I mean, not that we need to jump on it if if the mayor's office is moving, but um, I think it does it does get to our need to have a fully staffed body.

Sorry, I think I'm still a little bit confused.

I thought that the two vacancies that we have are one, the mayoral vacancy, and another commission appointed vacancy.

So that's not correct.

It will be um, so we have one current vacancy, that's the mayor, mayoral appointee, and then we have two seats that are expiring.

Um so there's two commission appointed positions and one mayor appointed position.

So those are all vacancies at the end of the year.

And the time period hasn't run because the mayor was just appointed, so she gets more time to okay, understood.

Okay, thank you.

Wait, remind me how much more time the mayor has.

Sorry.

Well, if you remember last time, you know, um we it's not like this hard deadline.

And so I think the idea here is that we're gonna have uh we have both those uh people who have applied and we're gonna have some vetted people to share, and then the mayor can make the appointment.

Okay.

So I don't think we unless you know you you can let me know otherwise.

I don't know that we wanted to cut that process off since I think it's in the course of happening.

Yeah, my my recollection was that we actually have the freedom to go ahead and do that, but we were kind of deferring to the mayor because she's new.

So if I'll defer to your judgment on whether that's that would be forthcoming if we actually because the previous issue was we were forwarding people to the previous mayor and just nobody was getting appointed.

And so if your judgment is that that will be different this time, I would be inclined to defer to your judgment on that.

And if that situation changes, I will let you know, and we that we can take action.

Yeah, because we will have a forum, right, to select two commissioners and I mean appointing the third one, right?

Would be also an option.

The subcommittee can treat them all the same, and right.

But if if we are at that point by now, you know, whenever we have that interview, if we decide that you know we need to take an action on the third vacancy versus the mayor.

So and also the mayor, uh, I think what I heard is that the mayor would be would love it if we referred someone to her who had the right qualifications and then she could just appoint them.

Okay.

Other questions or discussion?

How about the public?

This discussion started at 7:30 on recruitment.

I'm gonna stretch.

I know I may even apply.

But let me say this.

Most of you you don't personally have an outreach into the community.

You deal with the social media.

Mr.

Killings, mentioned Oakland side.

Well, what about the Oakland Post?

Five hundred churches.

They go out every week.

You could take a quarter page ad in the Oakland Post.

Also, what about Lenise Jones?

Who's the community engagement person in the mayor's office?

All are you playing lip service?

Because there's some vacancy.

Wake up.

Stop doing this pandering.

That's the problem with the city.

Too many of you are sitting in these position as though the final say is with you.

But you're not given a true presentation of the gravity of the situation.

Miss Asada goes all over this city.

And for your edification, Mr.

Killings.

At the end of September, the McClims at the firmer park.

The last week in September.

But none of you know about that.

But you go to the social media.

As though that is the way you do recruitment.

You got to touch and feel people.

One minute warning.

So I implore you to change your contact Lenise Jones community engagement.

Contact the post newspaper.

And you're right.

The Black Cowboys is on October 3rd.

And contact the McClyman's organization.

Oh, you could ask Mrs.

Sada, she could put you probably in contact.

Supported happening at McClyman's.

Thank you.

Is it a requirement that a background check be done with the applicants based on issue?

No background trail.

Okay.

So an individual could be sitting on the board who has had some fiscal inappropriateness in the courts.

And that would be okay.

Sure.

Okay.

Then are you required to be a citizen of Oakland?

I believe I believe you're required to be an Oakland resident, right?

Oakland Redis.

Oh.

And the register.

Okay.

And a registered voter in Oakland.

You have to be a registered voter.

Okay.

That's it's that's good.

Thank you.

And and lastly, um, does the qual does the conversation ever come up with creating diversity on the board?

Because I know with the police commission, the uh panel that appoints police commissioners takes under consideration diversity.

I'm talking about race diversity.

So that never becomes the issue with this body, right?

That is discussed in the uh subcommittee when we're looking at applicants.

Thank you.

Other public comment.

Hi, Eliza LaJoy, I'm a resident down the street.

Have never been here, very interesting and helpful to be with you on auditing as part of the League of Women Voters, but had a question if it's appropriate to ask a question.

Um I hear you all saying one must attend one of these sessions on Zoom or in person to apply for the rule.

What I'm seeing online is that there isn't another meeting until after the deadline to apply.

Am I reading that correctly?

That there's the next session is late in November, and the deadline is early November.

I I think it's a requirement to be appointed.

I don't think it's a requirement that needs to be completed before the application.

I think that is that's yeah.

Okay, cool.

Um, just a suggestion.

Also, um, I've been auditing a few different commissions.

It's often really hard to find out when the meetings are happening or to find a zoom link.

And I did have quite a bit of trouble finding the zoom link for this meeting.

I found it in the agenda eventually.

Um, but that might be a way to help folks track you all down and perhaps also emphasizing that it's okay to have a non-legal background instead of emphasizing that you all have very impressive backgrounds.

I was just looking you all up, but that might be one way to bring in a few more folks, very interesting, important work.

Thanks.

Just putting your search engine on the boarding commission meeting.

Thank you.

Or we can make the Zoom link more prominent, I think.

Sure.

I'd also just note for anybody who wants to follow the commission that you know on our you can subscribe for as an agenda subscriber and and you'll receive those notices of meetings in the full agenda packet and any other news that we put out.

So I'd suggest doing that.

You can do that from our homepage on Oaklandca.gov.

And it's true hasn't really come up yet, but since the last meeting, the Oakland City of Oakland website has had a facelift.

We have different um templates now for the for the meeting pages, and and the Zoom link is a little bit less prominent.

So we'll we will follow up on that.

Yeah, I was going to bring that up actually because I saw that the website was different, and I actually was looking to give the link to someone today, and it wasn't where I expected it to be.

So if we can have that, I don't know if we can do it or if we have to, or if it's possible, but to get the link the zoom link onto the actual page with the meeting, um, that would be very helpful.

And also just to piggyback, just make location more prominent because I think the comment was that it's hard to find.

Um if any uh so Mr.

Hazard, thank you very much for your additional suggestions as to and and I'm sure that uh uh Mr.

Killings is doing that.

And if anyone else has suggestions they want to email, they can just email the others commission and we'll be on it.

Um so on to the next item uh which is the enforcement program report yeah.

Good evening again, commissioners.

Um did you you had something you wanted to say?

I just wanted to uh make a note that um you might notice there was a little bit of a change in toward in terms of the look of the enforcement report and the format.

Um so we're very interested in your feedback on that.

What staff has been trying to do is to make it more concise and highlight the information on program activities and outcomes in a more data-driven graphic format.

Um, also you'll see that um we move some of the um information about the enforcement process um from the report to online so it's more readily available on demand for the public and more accessible, and we've added some additional charts, and um we wanted to use um metrics that are really measuring towards our commission goals.

So you'll see um one of the new ones is the number of complaints that have been processed through preliminary review for each year, as well as opening and closed complaints by the year initiated, and our our thoughts there are to give the public and yourselves an indication of you know how we're doing with increasing our capacity to evaluate complaints as well as our progress towards resolving the case backlog.

So um before Toba goes into the rest of the report, I just wanted to throw just note those changes and that we see this as an iterative process.

So we very much invite commissioner and public feedback on what do you find useful um when you're looking at informational reports.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um and I'll just second that that if there's anything that you wish you had seen on this report, um, I'd be I'd I'd welcome your feedback on that.

And we can we can talk about in including that at the next one.

Um so only a few cases are presented on this report, not for action items, um, but just for your information.

Two of those cases are uh formal complaints submitted by Mr.

Hazard uh 2520 and 2523.

In total, Mr.

Hazard has provided us with four uh formal complaints, and we have looked at each one of them and have determined that each one is out of our jurisdiction.

Um each time a complaint is sent in, we look at it a fresh and we look at the most recent one.

There was a number of court cases that we looked into.

Umfortunately for Mr.

Hazard, none of the arguments that he's making is changing our mind that the case is out of our jurisdiction.

Um we reviewed the language of ordinance 1383, which is um what became ballot measure A.

And um what we found was that the city attorney um was officially given the duty of drafting the ballot language in that ordinance.

Um in addition, the sales phrasing is a ministerial clarification.

It's used commonly throughout California to clarify uh uh this kind of tax.

And we found no evidence of a campaign or personal purpose that city attorney Richardson would have had in including this uh word in the ballot language measure.

Um I'm happy to answer any other questions that you have.

Uh but it is our understanding from reviewing our procedures that there is no appealing of a dismissal that we make as of something that is outside of our jurisdiction.

And so we have uh included Mr.

Hazard's appeal as a new formal complaint and given it uh complaint number 2523, and we have also summarily dismissed that complaint.

Okay.

Other questions.

Um I just had a quick question on on what you just the explanation you gave for these, that I guess the city attorney was officially designated in this role, and that um you you like and you found that there can you say what you had said about there was no personal reason for why Yeah, we could um there was no evidence presented to us that this was a campaign or personal purpose.

Um and so and that's one of the requirements for this to be an abusive position.

So just just to clarify so campaign would be violating some campaign finance law and personal purpose would be like government ethics act.

No, so if he had a campaign purpose, like he was trying to sway the campaign, um that would also constitute uh a uh something that's under our jurisdiction, similarly to a personal purpose.

Okay.

And so that would be the campaign, which which which body of law is that in our would that would be that would be the government ethics act.

Okay.

So is it is it that the complaints did not allege a campaign or personal purpose, or that you weren't able to find one?

I would say both in our investigation of the word sales, it is uh very, very commonly inserted in throughout the state of California in this kind of tax.

And so it didn't seem to us that there was any evidence that this was um an attempt to uh influence the decision of the voting public in any way.

And because I'm what I'm getting at is because there's a distinction between saying it's it's outside the PEC's jurisdiction and saying that it's not a substantiated violation.

And it depends on whether you're saying you investigated and and didn't find any personal or campaign purpose or we asked for clarification on that from Mr.

Hazard, and he did not present any information to support his allegation.

Um and there was no allegation of a personal purpose in the complaints themselves.

Okay, thank you.

Other questions about the enforcement report?

So if Mr.

Hazard had provided you with that substantiation, would that then bring the matter into I think it might have opened us up for wanting to explore it further?

Um I think we we still come up against the fact that the ordinance itself gave him permission, gave attorney Richardson permission to insert language into the title.

Um so I think what we would have found, even if we had found um something within our jurisdiction, it it likely would have been that this is a ministerial change and that there is no substance to a violation.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Um I'm gonna ask about the uh data that's presented here related to the enforcement caseload um and the new way that it's presented.

Um maybe I'm just so used to seeing the old way that anything new would confuse me.

So uh pardon uh my questions on this.

So the previous report, it was reported that we had 153 active complaints.

And the current report says we have 35 open complaints and 83 active cases.

Is that is that the same number or is it is that a different number?

Those is it those numbers combined or is it something else?

I can clarify that.

So the 35 open complaints, those are complaints that have come in that haven't moved past the preliminary here, uh preliminary memo stage.

Um 83 active cases are cases that have moved into investigation, but these numbers only count um cases that have been given a case number.

So either elevated already from informal to formal status or came in as formal cases.

Okay, and what so what's the apples to apples comparison to the 153 active complaints that were reported in May uh it would be based on the comp or the cases that I presented to you today.

So we would be five or six less, fewer.

Okay, but we're not reporting that number anymore.

We made the decision not to report informal cases.

They're dealt with differently, and they don't have to go in front of the commission in order to be closed down.

And so we decided not to include those in our numbers, even though it is something that I will be working on going through all of our informals and making sure that we decide one way or another what we're doing with them.

Okay.

So when we're trying to interpret like the progress that we're making in terms of working through our backlog and closing more cases than we're opening, um and trying to judge that against how we were doing, say, a year ago, what's the best metric for us to be looking at?

I think closing more cases than we're opening is still fairly easy to show because those cases that we're opening are cases that we would give an assigned number to.

That that would be the line of us opening a case.

Um I think for if if you're asking how we'll know whether that total number that I presented in May is coming down, that's something that we can talk about further about how we can present that information to you.

Um we just made the decision that um the case numbers that we report uh at these bi-monthly meetings will only include formal uh formal cases, cases that have been given case numbers.

Okay, so this is sort of a reset of how we're how we're gonna look at this and perceive it.

So the informal cases that aren't given a case number, that's still going to take up some amount of time uh and staff time.

Is that gonna be is that gonna be reflected somewhere in the data that we're that we're being given?

That's a good question.

I we can we can talk about some way to reflect that in the data.

Um it doesn't take as much time for sure, um, because you don't have a case file, you you all you have is the complaint.

Um and often it's just a question of whether we have jurisdiction or no that would uh inform our decision to give it a case number.

Um but that's something that executive director Duran and I can discuss and and try to figure out a way to present that information to you in future meetings.

I'd say another consideration we had too is that you know, um something like any it could be a very small thing that that we almost certainly know would not become a case.

And if we are counting that, we could also be overly inflating you know the numbers.

And so we're trying to just present a more accurate picture, but um, but we will keep discussing that because it it's a balance of how do we represent the work um that we're doing, the work that goes into just evaluating things, but also not inflating our numbers that so that they are giving them this impression.

Okay.

Yeah, I I'd like to see that too because it's because it's I mean they're potential case, they're all potential cases, right?

And and so it's just we're kind of missing a piece of the data of like how big this is, but I completely agree that they shouldn't be given the same weight as things that do have a case number.

Yeah, I don't see it as inflating the numbers either.

I think is something that maybe you can have to this eye, but I would like to see that too.

Yeah, I think that's important to see.

I I agree with that, then maybe just to avoid confusion, maybe to kind of invent a new name for that, like a you know, informal report or something like that, so that it doesn't, you know, then get added to the category of complaints.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh go ahead.

All right, yeah.

So one of the things that I've been kind of talking about with anyone who will listen uh in uh lately, uh Director Duran's been listening, I think, is um essentially having all of this the entirety of this be on our website available at all times, updated all times, so that so that the idea of these reports actually will just go away.

And and that we, you know, we in the meetings we just look at a web page that is whatever the current status is, and we discuss that.

And I'm really pleased to see it's that you're moving in this direction.

And uh so thank you.

Yeah, um Mr.

Van Buskirk did a lot of work to upload all of the case outcomes into a searchable database so that's up to date.

Um so that is readily available for the public to look at.

So that was really, really helpful as far as our transparency goes.

Excellent.

Uh so yeah, so just to follow up on the numbers that we're seeing.

What I guess um what do you think are the most important numbers for us to be tracking to uh look at as metrics in terms of how is it going with the enforcement, how are we doing on the backlog, um, how are we doing in terms of you know uh uh being effective in or not effective because we're understaffed uh with the uh with our caseload.

Yeah.

I I agree with Commissioner Steele that that those cases take our time.

Um and I I understand why you would want them to be counted.

I think um executive director Duran is right that those cases are um they take a different amount of time, usually.

They they sometimes don't.

Sometimes it takes some work to figure out if it's uh worth opening a case number.

But I think the most important numbers that I would want you to look at would be the open versus closed complaints by year initiated.

Um you'll see that we have cases going all the way back to 2016.

Um and in some years, 2022, 2023, 2024, there are still uh very high numbers of cases that are that are still open.

I think that would be the chart that I would um keep my eye on the most closely um as being pretty telling of how we're doing on closing down um a number of the open cases that have just been pending for for years and years.

Okay, so we'd want to see progress on those dark blue bars.

Progress, yes, uh the dark blue moving up, yes.

Okay.

Yes.

And uh in terms of like we've got 35 open complaints and 83 active cases.

Can you just contextualize that a little bit for us and and how we should interpret those numbers?

Sure.

The the 35 open complaints, um, there are a number that are still in the intake and I mean those are all in the intake and preliminary review stage.

And so they haven't numbers once they passed intake, they get a number.

Once an informal passes intake, it gets a number.

Got it.

Okay.

But if a formal comes in, it automatically gets a number.

Got it.

Okay.

Um and so a formal could still be in intake uh in our chart that has numbers on it.

Um so the 35 open complaints, it's possible we could move through those fairly quickly.

Some of them might be outside of our jurisdiction, some of them might be um easy to determine.

Um the 83 active, uh that's that's not gonna be true for all of them.

A number of them will be meritorious, of course.

Um and then the 83 active cases, those are cases that it's already been determined that there is something to investigate, something worth investigating.

Um and so those are the cases that um that will take a little bit more work to close down a little bit more of a deeper review of the case file.

Right.

And the open complaints could move into could move into active cases.

Right.

Um so when we look at this report next time, um, and those numbers fluctuate, um what I guess like um will we know how many of those open cases have been dismissed, how many have moved into active cases, and then say if that number is higher, I guess that would mean that we had more cases that moved into move from informal review or some move from coming in the door moving into open case, open complaints, right?

So we could we could figure out a way to track that for you.

The the other um factor would be cases incoming as well, which are constantly coming in.

So um, so the numbers might wouldn't exactly show what had what had happened with our office from one month from one meeting to the next.

Right.

Okay.

I have a another question.

So um would it be useful to score cases at some point in terms of the magnitude of work that they require?

Because I imagine some of them are just enormous.

And and some of them are relatively small.

And maybe you know, having some something that identifies you know, magnitude of work as opposed to every case is kind of the same because these reports, you know, you can't tell that.

So I'm just offering that as something to maybe think about.

I think it's interesting to think about.

I've spoken to former executive director Whitney Barzotto about this a little.

Um she in her time had played around with that idea.

I think what she found was that the factors that were important, it's it's more than just how much work will go into the case, it's the severity of the case.

It's you know, it's sort of a number of factors.

But I I think it would be worth revisiting that and seeing if there's some way that we can prioritize cases uh more readily.

Or even to um even have a separate report or something about like how many of these big ticket cases there are, right?

Because we just have no idea, right?

You've got 85.

We don't know if it's if it's half of them or if it's 10 or or whatever.

And that might be a useful way to see what you're up to.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Oh, and then another question.

Um for a long time, the administrative hearing number was two, and then we had the hearing, we have one hearing, so but now it's three, and now it's gonna be four.

Yeah.

So um, are we waiting on finding people to do this?

Or what I mean?

Because I imagine also there's a lot of other work you have to do to do that.

Yeah.

Um, so that happened when I was going back through old cases, um, reviewing where they were, and I found three additional cases that had been um approved for administrative hearing that that had never gone to a hearing.

Um we are still, I'm still reviewing the case files to determine whether we can um still bring them to hearing or whether we should attempt to settle again, um, since most of those cases are older and um fairly straightforward, though.

So we're still trying to decide what the most just way to move forward with those cases is.

Okay.

Um those aren't candidates for being closed.

I don't think so.

When I um when I presented this plan to you, what I said was that it would be we would be looking at cases that hadn't that required a lot more investigation.

Um, which is why I'm still reviewing these case files to see how much more investigation is needed uh before we can uh you know bring them to an administrative hearing.

But because um because a former executive or uh enforcement chief believed that they had the the amount of evidence that was necessary.

I I'm I'm hesitant to include those in the case closure cases um because they've progressed so far.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Other questions?

And sorry, just one more question.

So I'm I'm looking at the table.

Um open enforcement matters by complaint status September 2025.

Right.

And so if I'm interpreting this correctly, um open enforcement matters would include open complaints and active cases, right?

Yes, so open complaints would be the numbers you see in intake and preliminary review, and then active cases would be everything under that investigation and below.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

It should it should be made clear that distinction to tie.

I mean, any number that you present in a report should be easily table to these things.

Sure.

I understand that.

I should also say that the on-hold cases, they're a little bit fuzzy as well because there's no indication of where that case was when they were put on hold.

Yeah.

Um so that's something that we're recreating and trying and trying to um have the data for you all to see that more clearly.

And are those uh generally speaking are uh are a lot of the on hold cases cases that you would consider closing under the new rubric.

I mean, are the bulk of the ones you'd consider closing in the on-hold status?

From what I've seen, yet likely, yes.

I haven't looked at all of them.

Um, but it seems as if former enforcement chief Russell closed uh put cases on hold that he believed um didn't require immediate attention.

And so those are more likely to be cases that we we would find less serious or or more easily closable.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll just jump on the bandwagon into uh for in suggestions uh in terms of the data presentation.

So it sounds like there is interest in seeing incremental changes, right, in terms of how the black uh backlog is cleared.

So would it make sense perhaps to consider for let's say 2025 break the data and reflect the data as the cases progress, I mean getting closed closed versus open per month.

So because then we can see it a bit easier how they like how many cases, you know, in November, let's say, versus October, like like where this sort of line between dark and light blue moving, so that we don't have to refer back to the prior chart from the prior meeting.

Uh so a chart that that shows m meeting to meeting what the chances are.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because that may be because it like it it's a little like it's this this statistics is great, like from 2016 to 2025, but like it's a little bit hard to see like implementing new policy, new you know, process, so like it would be curious to see how things progress with our okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other questions, discussion Mrs.

Steele, I hope you do a lot better and your city manager's position at Davis than you do uh how you uh been represented on this body.

Let me read to you on page three of what I filed today.

California law requires ballot questions to be accurate, impartial, and not misleading.

Election Code 1319, Rossi versus Brown.

The California Supreme Court has long held that voters must be fairly informed of the character and real purpose of the measure.

Amador Valley versus the state voter equalization.

Responders alteration of Measure A, a ballot language violated these standards and deprive Oakland voters of the opportunity to cast an inform ballot.

Let's go to the charter 212, Section 12.

Adoption and amendment of ordinances.

Except for emergency, ordinances, no ordinance shall be adopted by the council on the day of its introduction, nor within five days thereafter, nor except as a regular or adjourned regular or special meeting.

If an ordinance is altered, its introduction, except for correction of type or clerical error, it shall not be adopted.

Any section or subsection of an ordinance may be amended solely by reenactment of such section or subsection at length.

The respondent said, two minutes.

That the city attorney, in accord with the city attorney's powers and duties, is hereby authorized to insert the final ballot question into this ordinance after the adoption by the council so that the ballot question constitutes a true and impartial synopsis of the final proposed measure.

That's a lie.

Because the council approved the ordinance on January 9th, 1338.

And on January 16th, the city attorney, so for staff to come before you and said they found no reason but to dismiss it's a bold face lie, and you will shirk your responsibility if you go along with this recommendation, because it's going to come back and bite you where the sun don't shine.

Be careful, be careful, because I'm not going away at all, whether it's CMC, whether it's summary judgment, or whether it's appeal.

Because the material facts in this matter regarding measure A, the transaction and use tax, which the council themselves on June 3rd, 97040.

That was agreement on both ends from the city and the city administrative, the state and the city.

It said transaction use tax had nothing to do with a sales tax.

They are not going to raise no 29 million.

And I implore you, be careful how you address this issue.

And the public that's listening, they could go to CleanOakland.com and you will find the notice of motion.

It's already posted.

Be careful.

I'm forewarning you.130, a provision in the ballot measure itself that prevents the public from being and joining any staff at the state, the city, or their employees.

They can't have that in a ballot measure.

I haven't even addressed that yet.

Be careful.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Any other public comment?

Okay, I think we want to take a small break.

Oh, I think we have one more public comment.

Oh, excellent.

Welcome.

If you want, uh you can say your name uh for so we can record that.

Uh my name is Layla uh Williams.

And so I just wanted to ask a question because his complaint was dismissed because it was not in their jurisdiction.

So I wanted to know who under whose jurisdiction should his complaint be filed under, or if it's not under yours.

That's the only thing I'd like to ask.

If you know Ms.

Ackerman, uh that's a fair question.

Uh I would think that you go through the mic.

Um I'm not sure who it should go to.

It's a ministerial um sort of clerk change, clerkship change.

Um so I would think that uh the city administrator's office possibly.

Um and then also Mr.

Hazard has filed court cases, so uh the the courts can take a look at it as well.

What was the question?

Who has jurisdiction?

The commission has jurisdiction over the complaint.

Because this is the ballot measure.

Well, Mr.

Hazard, I'm sorry, you you've been through this before.

No, no, I don't know.

I'm I'm responding.

I asked the question, and so the public needs an answer.

And that's what I'm coming before, given an answer to the public's request.

Okay, so if I may that is the commission has jurisdiction over ballot measures.

And if I'm wrong, then tell the public I'm wrong.

But this is a ballot measure question.

That's this within your jurisdiction.

When a ballot measure has been on, then what's the purpose of the commission before we sir anything to clarify that?

I would just say that our jurisdiction is um actually fairly construct conscribed.

It's uh it's we we have cover over the okra, we cover GIA, we cover the LRA.

We we have to stick within the requirements that are given to us.

We have to stick within our world.

And what we determined from looking at these four complaints is that it just does not fall within our world.

So I would like to ask for legal counsel's opinion on the rules regarding our ability to respond to questions at public comment.

Um, and uh the ability for commenters to come up multiple times.

I would also like a reminder about the rules about the three-minute limitation and whether there's any requirement that public comment be relevant to the topics at hand.

So I would ask Mr.

Luby.

Mr.

Mr.

Hazard, I've asked a question of counsel, and I would appreciate counsel weighing in on these questions.

Oliver Luby with the city attorney's office.

Uh in terms of uh the con uh content uh being germane to the item.

It is possible for the chair to um require the content public comment outside of open form that's on specific actions on the agenda to be germane to that item.

But the problem with putting the chair in that position is that then they have to eternally police that on every time there's a there's a uh public comment on an item.

So it's generally better to treat public comment, even though it's you're having it is ostensibly for the purpose of commenting on a particular item on the agenda.

It's usually better to just allow the members of the public to speak on that particular item.

Um then the the time limit is the chair noted the three-minute limit is provided for every single speaker.

If you lengthen that time limit at the discretion of the chair, you have to don't maintain requirement is that that lengthening is made available to other members of the public as well.

Um in terms of questions, there's no requirement for the body to answer questions.

Uh obviously the body can choose to do so.

Uh and to and uh the time is supposed to be for the public to speak and so and for the body to listen, uh some amount of response to provide information or uh clarify something quickly is allowed, but generally the time is not supposed to be for back and forth between a member of the public and a member of the body.

Uh some amount of response to provide information or uh clarify something quickly is allowed, but generally the time is not supposed to be for back and forth between a member of the public and a member of the body.

Thank you for that.

Obviously, if the speaker can be prehended, but isn't allowed to continue speaking over the allotted time.

Thank you.

I guess what the request I would make of the chair is if we are going to repeatedly give Mr.

Hazard more than three minutes, we're gonna have to do that for all of the other speakers.

And I, of course, defer to the chair, but we have repeatedly given Mr.

Hazard more than his far more than his allotted three minutes for various items.

I'm the subject of the item.

And I'm entitled to answer the public's question.

So as the chair.

I mean, personally, I feel threatened right now.

Don't tell me, please.

Yes, I do.

Don't tell me.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Can I get a opinion from Mr.

White stuff on it?

Can I get an app opinion from Mr.

Luby about what would constitute uh disruption by a member of the public?

Well, interrupting the meeting, preventing the body from being able to do that.

Excuse me, can we hear three?

And my question is what would constitute a disruption by a member of the public to a meeting that would um give us the option to remove them.

Generally speaking, if the body is incapable of continuing to proceed with the agenda due to the interruption.

And have the police take us out of here.

Don't you ever start that crap again about you feel threatened?

Sorry, Mr.

Libby, could you could you I couldn't hear you because of the interruption?

What is the interruptions when we start this kind of white behavior?

What is the white privilege behave?

I will keep asking.

I would ask the chair to exercise control over public commenters so that I because you start it.

So that I may ask my question of legal counsel, which I could not hear.

That white privilege she just presented will not be ignored.

I don't know how many times in my eighty years I heard white women when black men are trying to present themselves, you feel threatened.

Mr.

Luby, can you please provide your answer so that we can hear it?

I apologize, could not.

That's some of your privilege that you had to ignore black people.

I'm sorry.

We need to have our meeting.

You need to stop that.

Okay.

How about she feels threatened?

Would you think Mr.

Tass is what I'm sure?

I think we should take a break.

You need to take a break and talk to her.

Actually, I think that's a good idea.

We are uh adjourned for ten minutes.

We'll be back at uh nine fifty-one.

I will not continue.

Yeah.

No, I can look at our jards.

So we're back.

Um, is recording.

So uh I've agreed that we will enumerate the laws under the jurisdiction of the Public Ethics Commission.

Matters that are outside of those laws are not anything that we can take any action on.

No, you're not stated it right.

That the staff and the commission only enforced certain laws within the open uh city charter and ballot measures are not one of those.

I can't specifically say that.

I can say that we only let her speak.

Mr.

Hazard has come up.

We are giving you, we are giving you incredible accommodation here.

We are giving it accommodated.

I want the language to say exactly what I'm suggesting.

That's fine.

I'm fine with that.

Can we listen to the response?

We have jurisdiction over the government ethics act, the Oakland Campaign Reform Act, the Lobbyist Registration Act, the Sunshine Ordinance, and I believe the Limited Public Financing Act.

Um I may be forgetting one in there, but basically what I'm saying is that we actually only have jurisdiction over a specific set of of laws and rules in Oakland.

Ballot measures is a vague term.

If a ballot measure issue fell under one of those laws, then we would have jurisdiction over it.

But we looked at this particular ballot measure issue, and it does not fall under the government ethics act, which is what would most likely be the law that it would fall under.

Give me an example of a ballot measure that would fall under the sure.

If there was uh evidence that somebody had if there was evidence that somebody had changed ballots based on a personal preference based on personal gain, then that could fall under the government ethics act, but we did not find that in this case.

That's what I'm saying.

That's exactly what I'm saying, Mr.

Chair.

You just affirmed it.

All right, we need to stop this and move on.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Uh we are finished with the enforcement report, and we are moving on to the executive director report.

I don't have anything to add to the written reports, but I'm happy to answer any questions.

Um I have a question about the mediations.

Um it seemed like there was um uh kind of a theme with these where um that and and this is anecdotal, but I I just don't remember them all kind of so many kind of following this pattern before, where um it seemed like initially uh agencies said they didn't have records or didn't respond, and then when the PEC contacted them, they they produced the records.

Um it seems to me like previously it seemed like there was there was some reason there was some legit there usually they they went through more of a back and forth or there was some reason that they couldn't produce the records.

Is that is that consistent with your perception of of how it went with this batch?

Yes, through the chair, Jelani Killings ethics analyst.

So what you're seeing here is more of a condensed version than the general mediation summaries that you would see that maybe three, four pages long and try to consolidate in terms of just the main points uh of the mediation.

And so when you see uh staff reporting that records were produced after mediation was initiated, it isn't necessarily that it was right away, it's just uh noting that records were produced after the mediation process began.

If the if that's okay.

Okay, so it's not it, it's not actually very different than how these previous mediations have gone.

Correct.

And you can see just in terms of some the timeline with these, uh, we are happy to close out all of the old public uh records requests or mediations from 2023 and 24.

Um, but we did uh note some of the same issues that you've heard in some of the uh prior report outs with mediation requests, whether that was for ITD requests that were uh being waited on, uh confirmation from the city attorney's office, or just a lack of responsiveness.

So those were uh some of the same issues that were in some of these public records requests, uh, but in moving them forward and trying to close them out and also reaching out to the requesters because these were fairly old, two years old, uh we wanted to make sure that we at least gave a reflective record if any had been produced since mediation began, and then most of these records were produced.

Um in most instances we try to reach back out to the requesters to see if it satisfied what they were looking for in some instances.

It's noted that they did not respond.

Uh, in others uh we did receive a response and were able to note that as well.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

One thing that we're um Mr.

Killings and I have been talking about um and planning to do in the in the coming year was sort of a a program evaluation of how our mediation program is working and kind of show uh a more you know big picture view of like what are the factors that are are instigating you know mediations, you know, how many times is it resulting in um something uh being produced?

And one thing we're really interested in looking at is like how much of these things are are like is this what's a mediation and what's simply customer service sort of issue, because our staff time is very valuable and we have a lot of things we want to do, and um so um you know we haven't determined it yet.

We're tracking this in our data, like sort of the points that are factors.

Um so we're trying to refine that and hoping to actually like really come to you with a an evaluation of the effectiveness of this program and we can have a discussion about what would a successful mediation program look like, what can we do with our program to make it look more like that?

Um, or or maybe we're gonna find this as a you know, everything's everything's great, we should just keep doing exactly what we're doing.

But um, I think it's time to kind of evaluate, take stock and see if there's anything that we want to streamline or change.

No, that's great.

And remember uh Chris Nardi did that analysis last year also, time to revisit that as well.

And I think for um next year uh we'll want to start work on transparency again and uh you know, look at public record systems, probably bring in ITD, and um, and I think that works with this mediation stuff as well.

I'd I just give you a little prompt too again if anybody had thoughts on that prior table about the priorities um and projects.

Um if anybody has like has had a wish list or things they've been wanting to say about that for a while, like it would be great to hear it now before I I start uh right now I'm sort of more looking at where things are where have things been left off, what what should be on here, what shouldn't be on here anymore.

But um, if people have sugg you know commissioners have suggestions about you know what what's valuable from that or how could it be a little bit different, you know, that that you'd like to see, it'd be great to get that input now.

Okay.

Sorry, where could we find that list of priorities?

Any previous meeting agenda, pretty much.

I didn't see it in the last couple, but we had a table, and it's color-coded, and it sort of listed off the the program areas, and then we had like the what is the point of this program, right?

Sort of the goals, and then we had another column that listed out well, these are the typical routine program activities that we conduct in this area.

And then the third, you know, the last column was like these are sort of high, you know, ongoing, you know, bigger special projects, and something and we would sort of check them off as they went through.

Um, and on the one hand, you know, the initially we did it because we just sort of wanted to provide more of a a feeling for the commissioners about well, what's all the everyday program activity we're always doing, right?

And then what are special things we're working on?

But in some ways I think it became a laundry list, and it's really hard to see what your priorities are if you have 20 priorities, you know, because you can't have 20 priorities.

Yes, or maybe it wasn't clear or exactly the timing.

So just you know, any any um feedback about like more or less different, you know, it's appreciated ongoing conversation.

Uh any other comments about the ED report in public comment.

Okay.

Uh next item is uh reports on subcommittees.

Um revenue options ad hoc committee.

Uh is there new?

I mean, we that committee hasn't met in ages, and I think I don't think there's anything to report on that right now.

Um are we gonna have any meetings of that committee anytime soon?

Um probably not because it's gonna need to die.

These things last what nine months?

Twelve months.

It's 12 months.

12 months, okay.

So we may um uh let me talk with Director Dorian and see what we want to do there because we because we made some pretty specific proposals in it last time, and I think we need I think we're waiting on some data from finance and stuff.

So it's possible we'll have unlikely we'll have another meeting before the end of the year on it.

Um there's no there's no progress on that in the re Can you remind sorry uh can you remind me what our time frame is on that in terms of like getting that to the ballot you have yeah, I mean because this was basically looking at uh potentially a parcel tax and for funding and and uh and do you have some data on that?

So I think there's there's a lot of things in development right now.

For example, we have the um mayor's task force on charter reform, which could impact what we want to do.

We have other um tax measures that we know are have been spoken about that are planning to come be coming on the ballot.

So I think there's some evaluation in terms of what is the right timing when we understand better what the landscape is.

So um I wouldn't um I think it might be useful for the subcommittee to meet again before it expires um to discuss some of those things.

Um and we will we didn't actually finalize what that legislation was gonna be.

So there are immediate plans to do it, but um you know I think there's still some things to be done to to close the loop and come out with what our plan is for the next year.

Okay.

Um then the democracy dollars engagement ad hoc subcommittee.

Is any activity um we have not met for several months as well.

I think in between the executive director search and staff issues and figuring out what was happening with democracy dollars in the budget.

Yeah, um, I think probably makes sense for us to meet um at least once before the end of the year just to figure out now.

Budgets in place, what what are the outreach steps um and and the need to be and I know it was mentioned in the director report.

We're working with local policy lab.

Um, and so they've been conducting interviews with our subcommittee members and a lot of other stakeholders.

So I don't know if any uh I think Commissioner Baieva, they they interviewed you and they interviewed Commissioner Gage, so she may want to share a little bit.

Yeah, but I'm slighted to speak with them on Friday.

So can we comment on the thing?

Um when the public comment time is done.

So uh after once we do all the reports on this, then you can comment after that.

Yeah.

Um so I'm not sure if the question was to me, but yes, I did have a discussion with um local policy lab.

Um I know they also have uh spoken with Commissioner Gage.

Uh it was a very interesting discussion.

They asked a lot of questions.

I'm actually curious to know where it's all going because I think they are um they will look into, I understand, create a proposal in terms of how to operationalize the democracy dollars initiative, and then we're collecting the input from stakeholders, but they do not necessarily implement that proposal that they created.

So I've just also curious to know where it is.

So um so they will be um coming back to and I plan to share this with the subcommittee, and we may be having interested persons meetings on it too.

But the idea is that they are um synthesizing a lot of the work we've been doing on what the outreach future outreach plan is gonna be, and they're gonna be synthesizing that and coming to us with some recommendations that the commission will be able to discuss, and then you know that will inform the eventual uh outreach plan that we bring to the commission.

So we'll look for that in the coming months.

Great, thank you.

So then I guess as a next step for the subcommittee, it's once local policy lab has interviewed.

I guess I'm the last one.

Um will you work to schedule a subcommittee meeting?

Thanks.

Okay, and then the ED uh recruitment subcommittee is we got one, so we're we're done.

And uh uh so there's nothing more to say about that one.

Public comment.

Oh, yeah.

You can do we'll we'll need a recruitment subcommittee set up at this meeting.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's right, it's supposed to do that.

Uh yeah, who wants to be on the recruitment subcommittee for commissioners?

I'll I'll be on it because I'm always on it.

Anyone else?

Do we know what the committee commitment is for that or uh it's gonna be uh one meeting to probably two meetings, one to look at the applicants and then another one to do the interviews.

Okay, I'll be on that.

Yeah.

Anyone else?

I can join.

Yay.

Okay.

You got three people.

Great.

Um I'll also say you should probably say that you're closing out the executive director.

Executive director.

Uh and I and I think uh there are yeah, I guess there are minutes in there, and I think um there were closing statements and everything drafted on that, and I don't see them here.

I think uh I think that I think I did those.

I did see them.

They are in the packet.

Okay, yeah.

All right, yeah.

All right, so yes, so that's all done.

Yeah, okay.

Please.

Um, I think it's very important to recruit individuals who can sit on this body level of cultural competence, you have to be able to understand the differences of people when they deal with certain issues, okay?

And I suggest anybody who is gonna be on this board, read the book, why black people tend to shout.

A level of frustration over not being heard over years and years of presenting yourself and nobody listens.

So uh Walter Wiley is the name of the author, but that's a cultural thing that's been developed over frustration, traumatization, okay.

I'm a victim of it.

Uh so I tend to try to uh deal with it by finding a way to uh let people know I'm shouting, but we have things in common too.

My son graduated from the University of Michigan, go blue, and my daughter-in-law, okay.

So we have something in common, and we have to find common ground, but we have to understand each other.

Uh most black people have high blood pressure.

I have to call in every day to a case manager about my pressure, because that that level of frustration about nobody's listening to me.

So uh I just want to recommend that we try to understand each other a little better.

Thank you.

I approach it differently.

I don't give a damn how you respond to my elevated tone of voice.

I'm not gonna say, please, white folks, take your foot out of my butt.

That ain't me.

You're gonna feel my anger.

I'm gonna be elevated because I'm tired of folks taking black folks for granted.

And that's what you do.

You think you could tell us any old thing, and we're going to swallow it.

Well, I'm not one of those individuals.

I don't start out elevated.

I give you an opportunity to show your lack of transparency, your lack of accountability.

And you could tell us anything, even when the law is very clear.

Yes.

Even when the law is very clear, and you're gonna contravene the law.

And what you have and what staff brought before you're a bunch of hogwash.

Advocacy is what's determined when the city attorney alters the ballot measure, because that was not the intent of the original council approval of the resolution on November 17, 2024, and approving the ordinance on January 9th, 2025.

So even before I did the additional research, my sense was said that it had to be altered after the approval.

Because the council could not change the language that they approved November 24th.

So, and and I know what the time is, and you don't don't you don't you say nothing?

Don't you say nothing, okay?

I could I'll yield to you to, but I'm not going to yield to her.

Because I resent that statement she made as though I'm going to fly over like Superman and bite her.

And I'm not going to take it.

So you need to check yourself and what this body is about.

Thank you, Mr.

Hazard.

Okay, that's all for the subcommittees.

Any uh future meeting business?

And do I need to do public comment on that?

I do.

Any public comment?

Hearing none, we are adjourned.