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We're trying to fix it.

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Testing, testing, testing, testing, one, two.

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Testing, testing, one, two, one, two.

OK, there we go.

Okay.

Oh, this seems to work.

So you can start recording KTOP.

Welcome to the January edition of the Public Ethics Commission, our regular meeting.

I'm Commission Chair Francis Upton.

I will be presiding at today'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.

We'll begin with item one taking the role.

Commissioners please indicate if you're present as I call your name.

Commissioner Bayeva or Vice Chair Bayeva.

Present.

Commissioner Gage.

Here.

Commissioner Michik.

Here.

Commissioner Steele.

Here.

Commissioner Talak.

Here.

And I'm here.

So we have a quorum.

we have everyone here which is very cool we also have a bunch of staff here we

have director Doran and enforcement chief Ackerman ethics analyst killings

and ethics analyst Forsen and law clerk Shadari is that okay sorry and and then

we have mr. Louie from the city attorney's office is our parliamentarian

So the next item on the agenda is staff and commissioner announcements.

So I have a couple of them.

We note that Lawrence Brandon has been selected by the mayor to fill the mayor-appointed commission seat.

And we welcome him.

And his term begins tomorrow.

So we will look forward to seeing him in March.

and also this is the last meeting for commissioners gage and steel and we

definitely thank them for all their work in the you know subcommittees and and

just everything we've done in the last three years to move things forward so we

will miss you both any other staff or commissioner announcements

Okay, I have to do what I have to do every time.

So I'm making this announcement not as the chair, but I'm making it as a commissioner,

and I just feel an obligation, given the situation in our federal government, and being in front

of a microphone to just say something.

So clearly what's happening with ICE in Minnesota is not what's allowed in the Constitution

in the way of illegal search and seizure.

This is well documented.

And it's well documented that our federal government is lying to us about these issues,

in particular the murder of Renee Goode.

So in the spirit of that, the residents of Minnesota are just really pulling together

and Minneapolis are really pulling together and, you know, doing a great job to take care

of each other and do transparency and not have business as usual.

And it strikes me that this very well could happen here in Oakland, the same thing.

So it's frightening and scary, and I'm confident that as a community we will pull together

as well.

So that's all I have to say for the moment on that.

Thank you for listening.

Next item is open forum.

So before we start, I want to go over the public comment process so that we all know

what to expect.

A member of the public may speak on any item appearing on the agenda.

If you wish to speak during an open forum or on an item that is on our agenda tonight,

please stay seated until that item is called when I open the floor for public comment on

the item and then come to the podium.

Speakers are generally allocated one three-minute turn to speak per item, subject to change

by the chair based on the number of speakers.

So everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard.

leave the podium promptly when your allotted time is up.

I also want to clarify how we handle public comment, both during open forum and during

public comment periods later on in the agenda so that everyone is confident they'll have

a chance to be heard and knows what to expect.

Open forum is a time for members of the public to comment on any matter within the jurisdiction

of the PEC that is not on tonight's agenda.

Commissioners cannot discuss the substance of any comments made during open forum, not

Not because we're not interested, but because the item is not on tonight's agenda.

However, we can listen to what you have to say.

The purpose of public comment is for us to hear from you.

It is not a time for commissioners to talk, answer questions, or have dialogue.

It is a time for us to listen.

Again, public comment is not a time for commissioners to talk or answer questions.

After the close of each public comment period, we may address questions or concerns that

you have raised.

For example, I may ask you to give the staff your contact information so they can follow

up with you to give you information you've requested or I may ask the city

attorney for information about an issue raised in public comment a

commissioner may address questions in a general manner clarifying the

Commission's policies or I might ask staff to explain procedures however once

each public comment period is closed it remains closed until the public comment

is reopened on the next agenda item when you will again have a chance to speak

during public comment lastly while you are free to express yourself the

the commission urges members of the public not to make complaints or ask the commission

to investigate alleged legal violations at public meetings since the public disclosure

of such complaints or requests may undermine any subsequent investigation.

Please contact the staff at ethics commission at oaklandca.gov for assistance in filing

complaints.

If there's anyone who would like to be heard during open forum tonight, I invite you to

line up at the mic.

Please state your name each time you make comment and if you wish to be included in

meeting minutes again you will have three minutes and the timer is there so you'll

know when it's time to wrap up anyone for open forum comments

happy new year mr hazard

Thank you.

Happy New Year, Gene Hazard.

What the secretary just passed out to you is a notice of motion and motion to confirm a writ procedural procedure, correct administrative case classification,

and for issuance in order to show cause and or alternative and or preemptory writ of mandate.

What you have before you is what your enforcement chief dismissed, complaint 2530, 2533.

And that relates to the special election that was held April 15, 2025.

I filed an initial writ of mandate on May 19.

and unfortunately the clerk or the court together shot this to case management.

They rerouted it.

It should never have been rerouted.

It was a writ of mandate, and it's within this body's jurisdiction because it's a ballot measure.

It's within this body's jurisdiction because it's a charter

and a rules-in procedure.

And so the enforcement chief said,

when I made my complaint with respect to that ballot measure,

that after preliminary review,

and she did it also on 2533, same language,

but I continue to prevail.

I finally served the parties, which was City Attorney Ryan Richardson, on October 29th.

And unfortunately, they did not respond to the, which was case management.

And the court denied the default.

They accepted it, but they denied it.

And so that forced me to do what you have right here, the writ of a mandate.

Look through it all because your enforcement chief is wrong, totally wrong.

And it's within your jurisdiction to not accept her recommendation and you have other course of actions to take.

And I would urge you to put this on hold because it's going to come back and hit you right in your face.

My stuff is well documented.

Similarly to on 2537, she dismissed that.

That's when the mayor within her jurisdiction decide not to vote to break the tie on November 4th, which I was unceremoniously ejected from the council.

All my material is well documented.

So I would advise you in both instances on the appeal of what she did on 2530 and 2533 and with also the rejection of 2537.

which the city council, the president, suspended Rule 29, which was just 10 seconds,

which when the mayor did what she did, declined to break the tie, that was final.

There can't be no continuance.

On December 16th, they voted to suspend the rule and, in effect, disrespected the mayor's position.

Good evening, Ralph Kanz.

Just point out that the comments for the December 10th meeting were finally sent out today.

they weren't set out prior to the december 10th meeting

and one of those is a comment i made regarding the ongoing violations of the brown act regarding

your ad hoc subcommittees i gave you something written i haven't seen any response

uh all your ad hoc subcommittees violate the brown act because the committees do not

that are not solely members of the committee.

Government code section 54952, part of the Brown Act,

makes that very clear.

So when you have a staff member with a committee,

it's subject to the Brown Act.

Or you have anybody from outside the committee involved

in the meeting, it's subject to the Brown Act.

It must be publicly noticed and allowed for the public to

participate. And if you have a contrary legal opinion, have somebody write it up. I gave

you the opinion I was able to put together. If it's wrong, tell me. Now the other thing

going on right now is there's a mayor who's formed a charter reform working group. It's

This meeting is secret with staff that is paid from outside the city by private entities.

The city has no chance to participate in this process and they are going to try to come

up with some report and say this is what the city should do.

It looks like it is being run by a political operative working for the mayor.

i made a public records request to the mayor's office in december for the records showing

where's the money coming from what's going on in those meetings

i haven't gotten any records i don't know how much money is being spent

i don't know who's involved and they're doing the public's work

i could file a complaint but who knows how many years before you would get me my public

records because that's the history of this organization

i have a complaint regarding the redistricting commission that's what two years old

it's a really simple simple complaint simple issues the redistricting commission

did not legally make a decision about redistricting this city

and it should be thrown out.

And your staff is sitting on that complaint.

You had members of that commission never fill out a form 700

until after they left it.

And they had conflicts of interest that were disclosed in that form 700.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, any other public comment?

Director Durant, were we going to get back to Mr. Kanz's issue that was raised last time?

Did we plan to have a response to that?

Yes, we included some additional explanation in the subcommittee report section and we

can discuss it more there.

Perfect.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

All right.

All right, we're going to move on to item four, which is approval of the meeting, previous

draft meeting agenda, meeting minutes.

So we'll take them one at a time.

The first one is the November 19th meeting.

Does anyone have any comment on the, or corrections for the draft agenda?

Anyone care to make a motion?

You're looking like you might want to.

At least a second.

I think I'd have to abstain from that.

Oh, you weren't there?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

I'll move to approve the November 19th minutes.

Second?

I'll second.

Awesome.

Any, this is the point where we do public comment?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any public comment?

If I'm not mistaken, I made reference to the enforcement chief dismissing erroneously 25-30.

because her statement similar to 25-33 was the same type of statement on the dismissal.

After preliminary review, what does that mean?

That she concluded that it was not in the commission's jurisdiction

when we're talking about a ballot measure.

when we're talking about the Brown Act,

when we're talking about the city charter,

and you sat there and affirmed what her recommendation was.

Is this a kangaroo court?

Aren't you supposed to protect the interests of the public?

And particularly when there's reference made

to the city's documentation

and the state documentation,

the charter, the Brown Act,

the Sunshine Ordinance.

You accepted what she said.

You dismissed my retort.

And that's why I did an appeal.

on those two items.

So what is this body about?

And you don't make any comments

other than we affirm

or accept

when it's real clear.

That's why you got that notice of motion

before you.

And it's real, very well documented.

The onus is on you.

The reputation of this body, that their decisions are not made in the best interest of the public.

This is not about me.

And then when the commissioner felt threatened by me because I challenged what was said by

by the enforcement chief.

How dare her make those kind of comments?

Trying to attack the messenger

and not addressing the message.

Any other public comment?

Okay, so we will vote on the minute approval.

Vice Chair Baeba?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Abstain.

Commissioner Talak?

Aye.

And I vote aye.

So that passes.

All right.

Sorry, I just wanted to confirm Commissioner Steele was absent in December.

I was absent in November.

So I actually think I'm supposed to abstain in November and you're supposed to abstain

in December.

And we just voted on November.

November.

Right.

So we can change your vote to abstain.

Yeah.

Would it be okay if we change your vote to yes?

Yes.

Awesome.

All the records are being kept.

Okay.

Now let us do December where one of the things we know is that Commissioner Steele will abstain.

Any comments on the minutes or corrections?

Anyone want to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve the December meeting minutes.

I'll second.

public comment.

My comments also

applied to December.

I think that was

2533

complaint.

The same

thing happened.

the same comments made by the enforcement chief.

She was totally out of pocket.

Look at what she wrote in November and December,

almost identical upon preliminary review.

They made a determination.

Preliminary means she was only at first base.

She didn't get around the third.

And it's within her jurisdiction and it's within your jurisdiction

because the nature of the complaint.

The nature of the complaint was the ballot measure.

The nature of the complaint related to suspending the rules, rule 29, in order to affect the

desired result because of what the mayor did on November 4th.

And on November 4th, she chose not to break the tie on the recommendation of the subject matter, which was amending the rules and procedure.

When the mayor decides at her discretion, because it's not mandatory, to not to break the tie.

That's final.

Read the rules.

and they can't go any further.

They can't continue to matter.

So they continued to matter on December 16th

and they voted to amend the rules and procedures

that were sponsored by President Kevin Jenkins and Ramachandra.

Why even have rules if you're not going to be compliant?

It doesn't make any sense.

And I was clear in my complaint.

So there was no ambiguity.

But you gave a nod to the enforcement chief.

So insulting, but more importantly, you insulted the mayor.

You disrespected the mayor's decision.

To come around back door to effect an outcome.

You can't do that.

Shame on you.

Shame on you.

Any other public comment?

All right.

We'll now vote on the December meetings.

Commissioner, Vice Chair Baeva?

I abstain.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Abstain.

Commissioner Tullock?

Aye.

And I will vote aye, so the motion passes.

Next item on the agenda is election of officers, the Chair and the Vice Chair of the Commission.

Commissioners will have an opportunity to nominate any Commissioner to serve as Chair

or Vice Chair for 2026.

If more than one Commissioner is nominated for an office, each nominee may speak regarding

their qualifications and interest in serving and may answer questions of the Commissioners

or the public, Public Ethics Commission Operating Policies, Article 4. The Commission may discuss

the nominations and when the vote is called each Commissioner may cast a single vote for

each office. You may nominate another Commissioner or you may nominate yourself. Does anyone

want to? Chair, when there's an abstention the

members need to state a reason for the abstention per your operation policies.

Oh, thank you. My apologies for not noting that more

quickly awesome can we on the last two votes can the commissioners state the

reason for abstaining chronologically in November I was absent and therefore I

can't accurately vote on the minute the minutes themselves similarly I was absent

for December so couldn't cannot what on December minutes I was absent during that

Also absent in December, so I cannot vote on those meetings.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Now we'll begin the selection of officers.

So is there anyone who wants to nominate someone or nominate themselves for chair?

I don't know if this is going to be welcome or not,

but I would nominate Commissioner Talak for chair.

I will politely but gratefully decline the nomination for chair.

I unfortunately feel like I don't have the bandwidth for that office.

I will nominate myself for chair.

I'm interested in continuing.

Any other nominations for chair?

All right, Vice Chair, any nominations for Vice Chair?

Go ahead.

I will nominate myself for Vice Chair.

While I feel like I don't have the bandwidth for Chair, I hope I can support Francis' great efforts in that space.

Any other nominations for vice chair?

Okay.

Any public comment?

All right.

Let us vote.

According to the thing, each person votes with the person who is chair and vice chair

for them.

So, Vice Chair Baeva, your vote would be whoever you want for chair and whoever you want for vice chair.

Sure.

Should we make a single motion to approve?

I'm just doing it according to the actual policy,

and I'm going to work to get this changed to align it with what we do for commissioner selection,

but for right now, the policy we have says the second sentence from the end of the commission

may discuss nominations and when a vote is called each commissioner may cast a single vote for each

office so the vote is for the the chair or vice chair for that office uh does that fairly represent

what was what our policy is you can do a motion by office it's the intent of that section in the

operation policy is that you don't vote for more than one person for the same office all right so

we'll just do we'll just do the old-fashioned way just do a motion and just for the commission's

information that votes once your meetings are hybrid all votes have to be

by roll call too but now you can do eyes or whatever we always do roll call

anyway I think so all right who wants to vote for me as chair we allow public

comment after each motion or like twitch point doing it's just it's just one item

so we would only have one public comment right for the whole item and I've

And I've already asked for public comment.

Yes.

That's correct.

So actually, yes.

I will move that I be chair.

Okay.

I second that.

Okay.

Vice Chair Baeva?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Tullock?

Aye.

Okay.

And I vote aye.

I will entertain a motion for the vice chair.

So move.

That Commissioner Tlach become vice chair.

And a second?

Second.

Okay, seconded by Commissioner Steele.

All right, Vice Chair Baeva?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Tlach?

Aye.

And I vote yes, too.

All right, so that passes.

So we have our officers.

Our terms begin tomorrow.

So you still have like half a meeting to go through.

Sure.

Okay. Now we have new commissioner selection. So the commission's ad hoc recruitment subcommittee

met in November and for the two PEC appointed vacancies with terms beginning tomorrow. And

we received eight applications, interviewed five applicants, and selected five finalists

to appear before the full commission for public interview and interview by us. One finalist

was subsequently appointed by Mayor Lee, as I mentioned earlier, to fill the mayor appointed

seat. The remaining four finalists will have four minutes each to introduce themselves

and answer the following questions. First, why do you want to serve on the PEC? Second,

what skills and experience do you bring? Third, what issues, projects, or goals would you

like to pursue as a commissioner? And lastly, what else would you like the commission to

know. Commissioners may ask additional questions of the applicants. After all candidates have

presented and answered questions, the Commission may deliberate and vote to select new members.

Attached are the application materials which we have. So, Mr. Apfel, would you like to begin?

And Mr. Killings, can they see the time or who's doing time? Yeah.

Four minutes.

Four minutes, yeah.

Just make sure they can see.

So please step up to the mic and...

Apologies if I have to crouch a little bit.

It's not my fault.

Yeah, no rush, no rush.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to start by thanking the Commission and the Commissioners for the opportunity

to speak with you tonight.

My name is Luke Apfeld.

I moved to the Bay Area in 2015 to attend Berkeley Law and I'm proud to call Oakland

home.

I would love to serve on the Public Ethics Commission for several reasons.

First, I strongly believe in democratic governance.

I think it's critical that we have a government of the people, for the people, creating robust

and active avenues for public participation in the government.

Second, and even further, I believe that those with resources, with time, with the privilege

to participate in the government have an obligation to do so for the betterment of society as

a whole.

I believe deeply in Oakland and Oakland's future.

Oakland has a passion, creativity that I think needs to be embodied in every specific aspect

of this city.

And I view it as the Public Ethics Commission's role in part to break down some of the barriers

to maintain access to government and to make sure that that passion and that creativity

and that culture exudes throughout local government.

I also believe that I have skills that can help the Public Ethics Commission fulfill

its duties and its obligations. Professionally, I'm an attorney, a trial attorney. I work

in San Francisco at a law firm. My practice consists primarily of complex commercial cases,

intellectual property disputes, criminal cases, and I have a robust pro bono practice. I've

handled cases in federal court, state court, arbitration, various other alternative dispute

forums. I've worked in the federal government. I've worked for the judiciary. I've worked

for state governments.

I've seen effective advocacy, I've seen effective leadership,

I've seen effective dispute resolution,

and I've seen ineffective advocacy dispute resolution,

and the like.

I believe these experiences, my background,

the skills I've learned, in particular,

regarding the prevention and the enforcement prongs

of the PEC's duties, I believe my skills will come in handy.

I also, my personal background is as an athlete, and I firmly believe that the interpersonal

dynamics and interpersonal skills in any team setting are what sets folks apart and what

allow ideas to become action and action to ultimately benefit others.

My learnings in communicating and empathy and teamwork I believe will be beneficial

to the PEC.

While the PEC deals with several issues, I think one of the most noteworthy for me and

I think most aligned with my professional skills at least, is finding creative ways

to address the case backlog.

I understand that there's funding limitations and funding constraints, and I appreciate

the hard work staff and the commission have been putting in.

If there are ways I can assist by thinking creatively about ways to address the backlog,

I think that fundamentally impacts and supports the PEC's core mission.

I also want to make sure that the PEC remains a resource.

Sometimes enforcement, when you get to enforcement, it's too late.

There's a lot of education that can be done, a lot of prevention that can be done.

And to the extent that there are policies and programs that increase the prevention

and increase the education, I'd like to pursue those in addition to programs like Democracy

Dollars that encourage civic engagement.

I know I'm short on time here, but I think the only other thing I want you guys to know

besides the materials I submitted is I'm really excited about this opportunity.

It's really easy to identify problems.

It's a little bit harder to identify solutions, but it's really difficult to implement effective solutions.

And that's what I'm all about.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have and I appreciate very much the time.

Anyone have any questions?

Okay. Thank you very much.

I was just hoping you could expound a little bit something that you put in the sort of

survey application piece. You noted having a background in campaign finance, auditing

of compliance with ethics laws, protection of whistleblowers or technology as it relates

to open government. This was required for a city auditor appointee, but it just wanted

to give you a chance to share a little bit more about how you feel like you have experience

in those areas.

That primarily, thank you for the question, that primarily relates to my work through

the law firm, my pro bono work. We work with a lot of grassroots pro-democracy organizations

that are dealing with a lot of anti-democratic issues in various states, and a lot of the

work I've done deals with attacks on the system, whether it be campaign finance, whether it be

disclosures, whether it be elections, whether it be voting. It's extremely confidential. I can't

get into too much of the details, but that's the source of that response. Nothing beyond kind of

the work that I've done for pro bono and clients. Other questions? Sure. Thank you so much for your

application and your presentation. I think one question, you know, you mentioned with

your background as an attorney having an interest in thinking about creative solutions on the

enforcement case backlog. I don't know if there are, you know, obviously this is all

new to you, but I don't know if you have any sort of ideas right now that you think might

be worth exploring in that space. Good question. I've been thinking a lot about that, and again,

I don't know the limitations and the inner workings necessarily, but when I was clerking

on the Ninth Circuit, we had an extreme backlog in cases as well.

And from a lawyer's perspective, if a practitioner or a client is waiting years to get some sort

of resolution, it erodes trust in the system.

And so what my judge and I and our chambers would talk about often is what can we do as

as clerks and as judges to facilitate beyond the work

that staff is already doing.

So my thought is what are the things

that I can do as a commissioner?

Is it can I take a broader or earlier look at certain cases?

Is there, are there things or memos

that I can review as a commissioner?

Are there ways that I can facilitate the review

and the adjudication of these cases

that align with my role as a commissioner

and don't infringe on the role of staff.

I don't have answers to those questions,

but to the extent that there is that opportunity,

I would love to explore it.

I understand that there is a difference

and a distinction in the roles,

but my hope is to help and use my background to do so.

Thank you for that question, that response.

My only other question, you know,

you're at a private law firm in San Francisco.

I, a long time ago, worked for a private law firm

and I know lawyers in big law bill long hours.

So I think my sort of frank question to you is,

do you feel like in your current daily job,

you'll be able to devote the time

to be a fully engaged member of the commission?

I appreciate that question.

And you know what you're talking about,

having worked in big law.

Yes, I do.

I pride myself on trying to stay as engaged

possible outside of my day job because I think it can become isolating and I

think sometimes that we can lose sight of what's actually going around in the

world going on in the world I just finished a three-year term as a

appellate lawyer representative for the Ninth Circuit we were working with the

judges to improve the functionality of the Ninth Circuit and that term ended

last week and it was anywhere from 10 to 15 in a light month to you know 25

530 in a heavy month hours of work for that committee, and that obligation is now gone.

So I'm looking for something in a similar vein to keep me plugged in, to allow me to

help, to allow me to assist, and I believe, based on what I know, that I'll have ample

opportunity and ample time to do so.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Yeah.

Thank you for the application and your presentation.

Quick question for you.

How would you ensure that the commission's work is accessible to the general public and understandable to the general public, just not insiders and attorneys?

Have you thought about that or any ideas around how you would step into that role?

That's a good question.

I think a lot of it deals with general access and general participation.

At the commission meeting I was at, we talked about Zoom access, and we talked about potentially being able to increase public participation by Zoom.

understanding that there might be some difficulties.

I think a lot of it is messaging.

I think a lot of it starts with listening and understanding,

and to the extent responses are warranted,

carefully crafting responses to understand your audience

and understand the issues.

I don't know how much communication back and forth there is

between the commissioners and the public,

or necessarily what the form of that communication looks like,

But to me, using legalese, using big words doesn't necessarily indicate anything.

People ought to be able to understand and ought to be able to really know what's going

on, especially when it deals with their complaints or issues that they're bringing before the

commission.

And so I always try to write how I speak and speak simply and say what I mean and mean

what I say.

Other questions?

I'll just say quickly thank you for going through this process with us.

I appreciate the application.

Nice to see you again after going through our preliminary interviews.

Wanted to ask just if you had any additional thoughts about how you view, now that you've

had a chance to view some more of our meetings, if you have any additional thoughts about

sort of how you view your role on the commission, if there's a particular niche that you'd want

to fill or a particular, if you see yourself as providing a particular expertise within

the mix of commissioners that you see?

I think that that's another good question.

You know, entering any new environment, I think there's a learning curve, and I never

enter a new space thinking I know everything or I'm special in any way, shape, or form.

I do think just with my background and the work that I've done, particularly in the legal space,

I don't know if it necessarily makes me unique, but the enforcement and prevention prongs,

I think I'm uniquely situated to understand the statutes, understand the laws,

understand what we're dealing with and what possible infractions might be,

and think creatively about ways to resolve those in an expeditious manner.

Beyond that, I try to be as involved in the community as I can.

I'm on two boards whose primary goal is serving the communities in the Bay Area, whether it's through advocacy, whether it's through support, whatever it may be.

And I'm an active participant there.

And so kind of having a pulse to the ground and understanding what's going on in these communities.

You know, Chair Upton talked about, you know, the potential threat of ICE coming into Oakland.

These are the discussions that we're having at these organizations.

So having kind of an ear to the ground and a finger on the pulse of what's actually going on in our community might, I think, will influence how we interact with folks that come before the commission and how we go about our duties.

Other questions?

Thank you very much.

Thank you all.

Okay, next up is Angela Fisher.

Good evening.

Just want to make sure the timer is ready.

Does it go up or does it go down?

Good evening.

My name is Angie Fisher, and I have called Oakland home for 25 years.

I have watched our city face real challenges from budget cycles to leadership transitions.

I believe that strong ethic oversight is what allows us to navigate those moments with integrity.

Oakland's strength isn't that we're perfect.

It's that we're resilient and we hold ourselves accountable.

But that only works when we have transparency and a strong commission.

Why do I want to serve?

I have spent 20 years helping companies navigate complex changes and operational inefficiencies.

Now I want to supply that expertise and service to my community through my nonprofit board work,

including serving as board chair at the Women's Cancer Resource Center in Alameda County,

a health equity organization prioritizing the needs to low-income women of color.

I've seen how ethical governance supports a mission.

When done right, communities thrive, and when not, trust erodes.

I want to use my expertise to maintain the public trust.

I bring three key skills to the commission.

First, board governance and oversight.

As a board chair, I lead strategic planning, understand fiduciary duties, and work with the executive director.

I recognize the effective governance depends on robust administration procedures that commissions is in charge of adopting.

Second, stakeholder management and consensus building.

My 20 years as a managing consultant is about navigating and competing interests and finding solutions that serve the broader mission exactly with what ethics works requires.

Third, a systems thinking approach to operations.

While staff handles day-to-day investigations, I look forward to acting as an operational thought partner to fellow commissioners.

I want to help evaluate complex workflows and evidence through a lens of fairness, efficiency

to ensure our actions are sound and impactful.

If appointed, I would focus on three main areas.

Operational efficiency, I have followed the Commission's report on the enforcement backlog

with Measure 00s providing new resources.

I want to use my experience in process mapping to help move from clearing the old complaints, some that are nine years old, and staying current with the most recent.

Technical stewardship.

With the democracy dollars launch, the commission faces major technical challenges with the rollout of a new system that will be implemented for vouchers.

While I don't have all the answers, I want to be a resource for the commission and our vendors like MapLight to help ensure the software architecture is secure and accessible to every resident.

And lastly, ethics in emerging technology.

This one's a little bit of an outlier, but as the city explores tools like AI, and it may not be in the purview of the commission today,

I'd like to help the Commission and use my skill set to set ethical guardrails.

My goal is to stay proactive, ensuring technology increases transparency, rather than creating

black boxes.

I'm eager to learn from the expertise already on the board and offer my technical and operational

lens where it is most useful.

I have been a resident for 25 years. I'm coming with a commitment to listen, learn, and collaborate.

Thank you for this, your time.

Thank you. Any questions for Ms. Fisher?

Thank you so much for your presentation.

I wanted to follow up on something that was in your application that sort of resonated with me.

in response to the question about what issues, projects you would like to pursue,

you noted that one critical issue is the PEC's structural dependence

on the very officials it regulates for funding.

And we've, as I'm sure you followed, democracy dollars has not really been funded.

And you mentioned the proposal for a parcel tax, but short of a parcel tax,

do you have thoughts drawing on your background for how we mobilize

and bring democracy dollars sort of back to the attention of the council to get the funding we need.

Yeah, and I think it's around more education.

So, you know, talking to more folks about what the democracy dollars will do

and how, with the vouchers, how it will support.

So my understanding is that there is already a system that you have either bought

or are looking at with the democracy dollars.

And so with that, I would say the parcel tax was one, but getting out there and speaking to additional constituents would be another way of doing it.

more education on what this would really do around the democracy dollars and how it would

really take the place, if I'm understanding correctly, the limited public funds that would

eventually go away and how democracy dollars would replace it. And that might help.

Other questions?

Thank you so much.

that you think your operational efficiency,

focus on operational efficiency would be useful?

I think the biggest one is actually your complaints backlog,

where I could be the most useful from a standpoint of the last time we had our initial meeting,

I thought about this from a standpoint of where you could start to look.

I know that there are complaints that are nine years old that you're closing right now,

But how could you triage some of those backlog complaints?

Let me just make a remark here.

As commissioners, the specific cases that are in the enforcement pipeline are completely invisible to us.

So we're not allowed to look.

And so I just want to make sure everyone understands that so maybe you can adjust your remarks accordingly.

Of course.

So it wouldn't be, you know, the looking at, but it would be advising from a standpoint of saying,

here is basically the things that you might want to, you know, set as a framework of high, medium, and low if you've got a matrix.

We don't have to, I don't have to see that as a commissioner.

But from a standpoint, it may help as from a standpoint of guiding the ED or whomever from a standpoint of what are the backlog items and how we can get them through quicker.

Thank you. And any other examples besides enforcement backlog?

The other example would be, you know, as I talked about the democracy dollars.

I mean, I don't come here knowing everything, but I know with the democracy dollars, there may be at some point in time, I know this is pushing down to 2028, where you might be coming in to look at a system.

And so from that perspective, you know, supporting from a standpoint of when the commission starts looking at, you know, the audit pieces for the system, that may be a place to actually look from a standpoint of is this system accessible?

Will this system, you know, will everyone be able to access the system?

will the system be secure

and some of those things as well

thank you

I'll extend my thanks

like my fellow commissioners for coming in

to all the candidates

tonight but just had a quick question

for you

one thing that I found when I joined the commission

is what a learning curve I had

and I have a 20 year

career in local government

and

And so there is a lot to learn and there's training that is provided by the staff that

is excellent.

But I thought maybe you could provide us a little bit of color or an example about a

time professionally or otherwise where you had to sort of get up to speed quickly on

a lot of new material and bonus points if it's sort of legal or statutory in nature.

Yeah, well, so my background is not a legal background, as you can see from my resume.

And I do come from a consulting background.

And so I will say that I work on nonprofit boards.

I am a board chair.

And so when I first came on board, there was a quick ramp up.

But the example that I can give you is there's a lot of policies and procedures within utilities,

and there's a lot of government oversight with the CPUC.

And when I first came on board on a particular project, I had to come up to speed very quickly

because it was right after the San Bruno fires.

And there were no policies and procedures in place on the gas side and on the electric side.

They were looking to quickly get all of their policies and procedures in place for them

to do the work that they needed to and to also satisfy what the CPUC, which is a government

agency, what they were looking for as well.

And so there was a lot of long nights.

There was a lot of asking questions.

There was a lot of going for guidance, reading, and there was an addition where there was

some training that I took to understand all of the utilities and what CPUC required to

the policies.

Other questions?

Thank you very much.

I'll ask one.

First of all, thank you for your application and thanks for going through this process

with it.

It's nice to see you again.

It's nice to see you.

I wanted to ask you, because I think one reason why we forwarded you as a finalist

as we were very impressed by your experience in operations

and your experience in being a management consultant.

But the role of commissioner is, you know, a broader thing than that.

Yeah.

Right?

So it's also about advocacy.

It's about government accountability, building public trust,

and some broader ideas related to civic engagement.

And I was hoping you'd talk a little bit more about those other parts

that you're looking forward to.

about being a commissioner if you were selected?

If I were selected, I am looking forward to, one, you know, at the end of the day,

doing more education around the Ethics Public Commission.

I will tell you, I've lived in Oakland for 25 years, and just in the last few years,

I've learned about what you all do, right?

So I think that, you know, at the end of the day, there is a lot that can be done from a standpoint of educating the public on the good work that you all do.

Because at the end of the day, I was unaware of all the things that you actually do.

So that's more around education.

That's more around digital presence.

that's more around really doing a job of marketing the work that you all do as much as you can do.

You know, I had to look and read about what you all do,

and it's really there, but you have to look for it.

So it's not something that's right there in your face.

The other thing is, you know, talking to, you know, just the public and getting out when you can to talk to the public at different, if you all do, at different meetings and areas and Oakland groups about the work that the Public Ethics Commission does do.

I think that on some level you all are the best kept secret here in Oakland on the things

that you do.

It may be by design, but I also think that the public would like to know more about all

of the things that you do do.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mr. Liu?

Welcome.

Thank you.

I'll make it rather short in comparison to the other candidates, but thank you for your

consideration to the Commission.

My name is David Liu, and I'd like to start by sharing a little bit about myself.

I'm a third generation Oakland, having grown up in District 7, and now residing in District

to for over 30 years.

I'm a recent retiree who spent the bulk of my career in the banking industry as a business

resiliency risk manager.

So what does that mean?

Essentially what that means is the work involves designing, testing, and maintaining strategies

that enable a company to continue operating in the event of a disruption.

So disruptions can vary from power outages to cyber attacks.

So I think that work, that background has really helped me, I think, become a viable

candidate.

My hobbies include traveling and gardening.

And my reasons for joining the commission include a concern with significant decrease

of constituent confidence in how our city is being run fairly, ethically and legally,

and that there's a need for accountability when that doesn't occur.

the law and established policies become paramount and that's why the ethics commission i believe

plays a vital role in that purpose it's about renewing our citizens confidence that our city's

government is operating with integrity and good faith and that it benefits all of oakland's

residents if i'm appointed to the commission i think there are two areas that i would be interested

in pursuing, one of them being accountability.

So once something is decided on, how is that enforced?

What does that enforcement look like?

And how can we make that stronger so that this becomes,

sets a precedence for others and for future ethics violations?

The second I would like to spearhead and learn more about

is I talk about city, the lack of confidence in how our city is run.

And I'd like to see how we can increase that visibility as it has been mentioned before.

And to be more accessible, kind of getting out from behind our desks

and doing outreach to the community, seeking out opportunities for events

and just making sure that we have a visibility outside the confines of these chambers.

The experience that I bring to the Commission include working with policy.

Specifically, I've had experience developing policy and enforcing it

as it relates to third-party service providers and their qualifications.

The situation is such that my employer had critical dependencies on these third party

service providers.

So it was up to me to determine and to draft policies that establish key criteria of a

third party service provider candidate and to make sure that these qualifications are

met with specific criteria in mind, including supporting documentation, interviewing, and

reviewing evidentiary materials for that.

I think that's it.

Thank you.

Questions?

Questions?

I do have a question.

Thank you so much for your presentation, Mr. Liu.

You mentioned that your special skill is building resiliency

and preventing sort of building up the, sort of the, I guess, resiliency in light of disruption.

Could you give a specific example how this could be relevant to the work that we are doing?

Sure. I think it demonstrates a skill set to understand what your environment is like,

what your operating environment is like, who are the key stakeholders in those operating situations,

and then being able to engage and to establish working relationships,

engage and then continue to maintain those working relationships going forward.

Engagement is very key to the success of resiliency,

and I would like to be able to engage all individuals, key stakeholders,

identify who they are and how can we come together to create a common goal

to achieve our objectives.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Lowe.

I appreciate it.

You mentioned that one of the reasons you decided to apply

was due to a decrease in constituent confidence,

and you said community outreach and accountability were missing.

Can you dig in a little bit on the community outreach piece?

What ideas do you have?

Sure.

So I think what we need to do is we need to get out in the public.

As commissioners, we need to seek out opportunities where we can actually meet the community face-to-face,

engage and let them know who we are and what we're all about.

I think that's really going to be important so that we can gain the confidence of these citizens to know that, you know, we have their backs.

We are doing everything that we can to make sure that our city is being run fairly and equitably and legally and within the policy guidelines.

Currently, I've looked at your website, and although it has a wealth of information, I think perhaps there are some opportunities to make it a little bit more accessible, what that looks like.

I'm not quite sure, but I'd be willing to discuss and work with key stakeholders and anybody who's interested in pursuing those objectives.

Yeah, getting out from under your desks, I think, is going to be really important.

And then gaining that trust through conversations, through personal interaction with your constituents, and then moving forward with that.

And if I could pick up on Commissioner Steele's question, the other thing that you mentioned was accountability.

and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what that looks like.

Part of our role is to educate where possible rather than impose harsh penalties.

When you talk about accountability, what do you mean?

Well, I think that it would be important for me to learn what enforcement is

and who is responsible for that

and work with them to identify what these policy violations are

or whatever, and then work to see what we can do to kind of partner and raise that enforcement

objective.

You know, I come here totally an amateur, so I also come here with a great interest

to learn and to grow and to engage.

I know this is very much a part-time job, but being a retiree, I have plenty of time,

and I also have the experience and the interest, personal interest in making things better.

So, yeah.

I have a question for you.

Have you given thought to the issue of sort of systematic transparency in the government?

I know you mentioned, you know, outreach and having people in the government do that,

but I'm looking for more things that, you know, that data is actually available to people who need it

and that as much as available as possible and accessible to the public.

So have you thought any about that?

Are you interested in that?

You know, that is an interest of mine.

I think we'd have to look at how the data is being presented and is it user-friendly.

And then also through discussions with your constituents, through citizens, what are they interested in seeing?

And then combining those two to come up with a vehicle for getting that information out in the most accessible possible way.

and in a manner and in a presentation that speaks to them, that's easy to understand,

is not filled with a lot of unnecessary data or terminology that is not readily understandable.

So we want to make sure that when we communicate those types of issues, that type of information,

that it's done in lay terms.

Other questions?

Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. McCoy.

Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Welcome.

My name is Andy McCoy, and it would be an honor to join you all on the public ethics commission.

You should select me because I have the skills to assist the commission in its mission, to make your lives easier, all of which are honed through a career dedicated to public service.

I want to be on the Public Ethics Commission because fundamentally, I love Oakland.

I love the weather.

I love the food.

I love the people.

I love the history.

I love the attitude.

I think we all share that love of Oakland.

I was raised from a young age to serve the things that you love.

Obviously, it's no secret that Oakland has had more than its fair share of bad leaders,

self-interested and not necessarily looking out for the best interest of the public.

And that's exactly why the work of the PEC is so important.

Oakland is going through an upward renaissance.

And the only way to continue that motion, that upward momentum,

is for people to feel confident that the government works for them

and takes their interests seriously,

not the special interests that have dominated politics in the past.

And so in that sense, there may not be a better way to serve the place that I love, Oakland, than to join the PEC.

I bring a raft of skills that would benefit the PEC and the achievement of its mission.

As an attorney, I have the privilege of working day in, day out to investigate and to prosecute wrongdoing by actors big and small on behalf of constituents that have nowhere else to turn.

It's made me a very effective investigator who knows how to quickly process case information,

identify what kind of questions need to be asked, by when, and to which key actors.

It's made me a creative problem solver because I have to work within a very narrow statutory

and regulatory framework to achieve, to address problems that would otherwise go unaddressed.

It's made me a very effective communicator.

Internally, I work towards developing consensus within the agency I work at,

and we're able to chart a path forward together on the same page.

And I'm able to turn around and communicate that externally,

empathetically, and effectively to people outside the organization

who depend on our work,

and even when those decisions are going to disappoint those interested stakeholders.

All of this would benefit the PEC.

The PEC needs people who are looking at ways for investigative,

who are looking people with a keen eye for investigation,

knowing when to ask hard questions and when cases aren't worth pursuing.

The PEC needs people who are able to solve problems creatively,

looking for ways to use the limited tools and resources that the PEC has

to address issues that would otherwise go unaddressed.

The PEC needs a communicator, someone who can help determine, drive consensus internally,

and also expound upon why we make those decisions and why the PEC is so important to the public.

All of this would be beneficial to the PEC, but it would also benefit you and the staff as a PC as well.

I'm a dedicated colleague and someone who works hard, does the work, and makes sure that I show up

prepared for discussions, and I work tirelessly to uplift the people around me. If

selected for the PC, I would prioritize three key missions. The first, as often discussed, is the clearing of the case backlog.

Oaklanders deserve to know that their complaints are dealt will be dealt with

promptly even if this Commission doesn't actually take up the complaint second

prioritizing the enforcement of a handful of high priority or high visibility

matters the PC can't be everywhere and we all know that but the way to engender

public trust in the PC and to continue the era of good vibes that Oakland is

going through is identifying cases of high profile importance and

and demonstrating that the law applies to all Oaklanders equally, not just people who are not politically well-connected.

And finally, I would prioritize finding creative new revenue streams,

because as we all know, an agency will be hamstrung if it does not have the resources to support its mission.

I see I'm about out of time here, so thank you for the opportunity,

and I look forward to answering any of your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions?

I have one.

Sure.

I, and this will really put you on the spot maybe, but I've always, we try to grovel for money because, you know, you need money.

And I would argue that doing our job actually saves money, which is in a way making money.

You know, if we avoid lawsuits, things like that, then so the investment in the PEC can be shown to be worth it by the amount of money is saved by having the government have more integrity and be less involved, less on the wrong end of matters.

Is this something, I mean, what do you think about that idea?

And how would you approach that if that's something that you would care about?

That's a good question, Chair Upton.

And I think that makes a lot of intuitive sense.

I think that demonstrating savings through good governance is always valuable.

But I think Commissioner Talak touched on a tough issue here,

which is that this body is charged with regulating the people that give it its money.

And so it has to go beyond making the case to the city council itself.

I believe applicant Fisher and several other applicants have noted the importance of getting involved in the community,

essentially knocking on doors and demonstrating, effectively communicating the value of the PEC.

There has to be a certain amount of incentive for the city council to make sure that there's

enough resources available. Beyond that, I think there are probably also interesting creative

opportunities for grant funding or fellowship attorney funding that might increase the capacity

of the PEC without requiring additional expenditures from the council itself.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Great.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

I just, you know, wanted to note that several of the other candidates talked about their

interest in seeing and participating in outreach as commissioners.

And I was wondering if you had any sort of specific thoughts on whether or not that would

be something you take up as a commissioner,

there are different opportunities to different things.

So you're not required to say yes.

But I'll say for myself, when I consider

who would be a good fit and we have multiple openings,

it's usually trying to figure out folks who have strengths

and interests in different areas of what we do.

Yes, absolutely.

I think that's a vital part of the job.

I think the only way that I'd be able to figure out

what people actually want out of the commission

is getting out there and hearing from people.

I also think that that's just the essence of public service.

You've got to be out there.

You've got to make sure people know what you do,

what you stand for, and what you're doing on their behalf.

And you've got to hear it from them, too,

if they don't think you're doing a good job.

And that's just all part of the job.

Other questions?

All right, no, thanks so much.

So, normally our process here is to, we deliberate, we've actually are going to try out our new

process for the first time here, which is going to be that everyone ranks each person

and we do that.

But, and then there, and then, you know, according to the agenda, there will be a public comment

part where we would follow our rules there.

However, I would like to consider if there are members of the public that would actually

like to ask questions of the candidates so that they can find out issues they want.

Now we can't have this be unbounded, but if there are members of the public who wish

to ask questions of specific candidates, I would like to welcome that.

This question is for all of the candidates.

We hear terms battered around integrity, transparency, accountability.

Those appear to be meaningless words when the public brings forth a complaint.

And then the commission, because the commission doesn't deal with the complaint initially, it's the staff.

So how do they view those terms transparency, integrity, and accountability for the public?

Would each of the applicants be willing to respond?

Yeah, go in order.

So Mr. Affeld?

Oh, and I forgot integrity.

Luke Apfeld.

It's transparency, integrity, and accountability.

Those are the three?

Accountability.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll go in order.

Transparency, to me, means articulating what it is that you're going to do and or required to do,

whether that's by bylaw, by statute, whatever it may be, what is your duty.

Clearly articulating, whether it's through discussions at meetings and meeting minutes,

how you're going to go about doing what you're doing,

and then some sort of end-worked product that displays that you did what it is that you said that you were going to do in line with your job.

That, to me, is transparency, a full beginning, middle, end sandwich of obligations and follow-through.

integrity I think at least me I'm a values driven person and I try my

hardest to hold my values as high as I possibly can and everything I do aligns

with those values right those are things like honesty those are things like

sincerity empathy things like that and in every decision I make every

interaction that I have I try to embody those those values and to me that means

that I'm you know full of integrity and that I'm being a genuine a genuine

person other people might have different definitions but to me that that that

that's what that means and that also means that that I'm consistent people

know what my values are so you know what you're gonna get that's what I that's

what I try to do and accountability I think accountability I think about

accountability from my athlete days right we all make mistakes not every day is

going to be our finest day. But if we try hard and when we do make a mistake or we do make a

misstep, we admit it. We admit it and we say, this is what happened. My intentions were clear.

My intentions were pure. And this is what I'm trying to do to resolve it. Right? When people

dodge, dodge those mistakes, they dodge the decisions that they've made, then you can't

trust them. But if somebody comes to me and said, listen, I messed up, but this is what I'm trying

to do, I can believe that that person is full of integrity, they're full of transparency,

and by terms, they're accountable.

Does that answer your question?

You did good.

All right.

Ms. Fisher?

Let's see if I can follow that.

So, you know, when you look at transparency, transparency is just being open about the

process.

So, really having an opening up the kimono and saying, here is the process, this is what

we're going to walk through and be transparent with it.

And also, transparency is being open about the process of the outcomes, whether the outcomes

were a good outcome or whether the outcome was a bad outcome.

talk about integrity and when I think about integrity I think about trust and

integrity together you have to have both right so how I what I wrote down is say

what you mean and mean what you say so you follow that up with if I'm gonna say

something I need to mean it and then I need to follow up with what I said I was

going to do, I'm going to do.

And that, when you do that, that's integrity.

And then you also have trust with that.

The last piece is accountability.

And I also look at accountability

from a standpoint of being accountable for the things

that we say we're going to do, period.

So if we say we're going to do something,

we're accountable for that.

And when we don't do those things that we say that we're going to do, then we come up with the next action of, hey, we didn't do these things, but here is what we plan to do to fix that.

Right?

Because I think that they're all interrelated.

It's a single organism, if you will, of the things that you brought up of transparency bleeds into integrity, bleeds into trust.

which then also bleeds into your accountability.

Does that answer your question?

Thank you.

Mr. Liu?

So accountability, transparency, and what was the third one?

Integrity.

Thank you.

Those three go hand in hand.

they're not treated in my opinion as something that is separate they're very

important and and they're achievable I think through communicating with our

constituents this is what we're working on this is the anticipated time for

resolution and then following up next month with well we thought we were going

to do this but these were the roadblocks and this is our revised you know

resolution date and if we keep that up that gives us accountability and

transparency right we're saying what we're gonna do we said we were gonna get

it done at this point however we didn't anticipate these certain roadblocks and

these are the roadblocks and this is what we're going to do to overcome them

and this is our revised due date communication is very key and the style

and communication that is necessary for that message to come across is through

lay terms making sure that we communicate to people in everyday language using

terms and you know words that everybody understands and not speaking in legal

ease if there's nothing you know worse than trying to read that and trying to

understand what that means so again we can do that and achieve that through

those those principles being accessible and speaking and plain and simple terms

Thank you. Thank you. And Mr. McCoy.

To me, transparency for an institution like this is having a protocol, a set of policies, and following those policies and protocols.

Those policies and protocols, they're publicly posted. Everyone has access to them.

we all understand what the rules of the road are supposed to be.

And when we make a decision, there's a clear record of that decision,

and there's a justification for why that decision was made in the first place.

In terms of accountability, excuse me, integrity,

to me integrity in this context is answering whatever the question is to the best of your ability.

Should we pursue a particular matter?

Is there some sort of legal deficiency with something that the commission is doing?

We have to take our best stab at it, or really, staff has to take their best stab at it,

and we have to make our best informed judgment on their analysis.

But at the end of the day, you have to make a decision,

and having integrity means reaching a decision and sticking by it

and being able to say it proudly with your chest that you did the work,

that you are confident in the decision that's made, and you're ready to move forward.

and accountability to me is frankly Mr. Hazard I think you're a great example of it because I think

a lot of accountability is hearing from people like you coming in every meeting maybe every

other item and letting the commission know that you do not approve of how staff is handling its

matters I think that's a great example of accountability having access to the decision

makers is an important part of that consideration. And accountability also means that when you're

wrong, and people are always wrong at some point, admitting it, apologizing, and letting you know.

And I think that comes down to communication, ultimately, and understanding that we're all

flawed people doing the best we can. We're making as good a decision as we can based on

limited information, and sometimes we get it wrong. And I think we can all relate to that.

And at the end of the day, it's not.

There's no shame in admitting you're wrong and trying to do better the next time.

So that's what those three terms mean to me.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Any other members of the public have questions for the applicants?

Let me just, before, Mr. Kanz, before you speak,

are there any other members beyond mr. cans just for planning purposes okay

great thank you okay it's unfortunate that you did not have a public meeting

when you selected candidates even though it's a requirement I just wanted to get

the candidates how they would interpret Charter Section 603 which allows

Commission appointments shall be appointed following a public recruitment

and application process from their perspective does that mean every meeting

involved in selecting commissioners should be a publicly noticed meeting and

allow the public to participate.

Mr. Apfel?

Luke Apfel, thank you for your question.

Without, this might be a lawyer answer, but without the full context of the statute or

guidelines that you're articulating, I can't really answer that question because there's

context in all of these questions, whether it's the history of how the commission is

operated, whether it's amendments, whether it's legislative remarks about any sort of

guidelines. To the extent there are questions about the subcommittee and the application

process generally to the extent I'm selected to serve on the Public Ethics Commission.

I'm happy to look into those.

But until that point, I can't offer any promises or make any sort of legislative interpretation.

I apologize.

I can't give you a more satisfactory answer.

Thank you.

Ms. Fisher?

I would actually have to say the same, is that I can't give you really an answer as far as, because I'd have to familiarize myself.

And so what I can say is that the process that we walked through was that it was open to the public and for anybody who wanted to online, digitally, who wanted to apply.

But as far as anything else in which you mentioned, I respectfully really wouldn't know how to

answer that question without reading more about it and then understanding the context

in which you're asking and the history around it.

Thank you.

Mr. Liu?

So, in regards to Section 603, I think the Commission currently has done a good job in

announcing the open up candidates for Commission, where I think maybe we could identify some

opportunities for improvement.

And I could be totally wrong because I'm not fully well-versed in the process, but perhaps allowing the public to at least witness the interview process to see what the candidates are like, how they respond to questions, and to perhaps get a better understanding of the backgrounds and experience of the candidates before moving to this phase of the selection process.

I'm not sure if that's possible, but I would certainly be open to understanding that process

and seeing what we could do to improve that visibility of the interview process going

forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. McCoy.

You know, it's an interesting question.

I thought about giving just sort of the lawyerly answer, which is it depends, right?

But without, I'll hazard a guess here.

I think based on, is the question, was this an adequate public process?

I'm not a Brown Act lawyer, but I can tell you, I think we all know, that there was public

process involved here.

The recruitment drive was kicked off at a meeting, to my knowledge.

It's widespread advertisement, advertising the openings for these.

There was at least one meeting in the fall where ethics analyst Shillings, I believe,

announced gave an update on another number of applicants which means that

there was a public comment opportunity and of course today we have essentially

an extended interview process an open forum where the public gets to

participate I don't know frankly if the subcommittees issue satisfies the Brown

Act and I certainly won't try to hazard a guess there but I do think the process

has been defensible so far thanks thank you any other public comment

All right.

Can I pose a question to two of the candidates?

Of course.

Is it too late to do so?

Yes, please go.

And this question is sort of picking up off of Mr. Kanz's question

and is directed to Mr. Abfeld and Mr. McCoy.

You both described your experience as attorneys

and bringing that to bear on the commission,

but as a commissioner you don't sit as an attorney.

You sit as a member of the public on the commission.

We have legal counsel here.

I can think whatever I like about the law, but ultimately we defer to legal counsel.

Would you be able to separate your training and your experience as an attorney from the capacity in which you would serve on this body as a member of the public?

Mr. Appel, please.

Luke Apfeld.

Yes.

I think a lot of us wear a lot of different hats, and I think it's our experiences that

inform our participation in bodies like this, but I'm not the expert in the room in a lot

of situations, and Mr. Luby is here to advise the commissioners, and obviously I would defer

to his guidance if I have questions based on my legal background. I would hope I'd be able to ask

those questions, but to the extent that there's advice or recommendations coming from Mr. Luby,

I would obviously honor that and defer to his expertise in his position.

Please.

From my perspective, Commissioner, the answer is yes, happily. I think I do enough statutory

interpretation during the day. I think being a lawyer is a lot of things but it

gives you transferable skills and things that are broadly applicable to many

different things, many different challenges you might find in life. It

gives you the ability to ask, figure out what kind of questions to ask, to analyze

problems, to figure out weak points or areas that need to see some improvement.

It makes you an effective communicator and it helps you figure out where

interests might align and where interests might diverge.

And so a lot of that, from my perspective, is largely divorced from what I think the

Brown Act says or what I think a particular Oakland-Sydney ordinance says.

Certainly, that's not to say I won't do my homework and I will ask hard questions if

I think there's an issue.

But like Mr. Apfel, I'm more than comfortable deferring to the experts, especially initially

when I'm getting up to speed on everything PEC.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

And now I'll read the relevant part of what we do next.

So whenever the Commission is considering more than two applicants for a single appointment

to the Commission prior to entertaining a motion to appoint the applicant, the Chair

shall ask each Commissioner to rank the applicants in order of preference.

If the applicant is a first choice of four or more Commissioners, the Chair shall entertain

motion to appoint the applicant to the commission if not the chair may continue deliberation and

entertain a motion to appoint any applicant or continue to pull commissioners on their preferences

so i will then ask each commissioner in order um uh starting with commissioner steel

before we do that um can i just say holy heck all of y'all are incredibly qualified um you know this

This is, I think, one of the most qualified candidate pools we've had, and that's a credit to all of you,

and it's also a credit to commission staff who did a tremendous job in the recruitment process.

So before we get into the very awkward public process of figuring out which of you guys we rank,

I just wanted to sort of make that prefatory comment and just sort of shout you guys all out.

Thank you. I completely agree.

I think we can all agree that that's a very strong list of people.

All right, now here we go.

Commissioner Steele.

Sorry?

Am I just going in order?

You go in order of preference.

So the one you want the most is first, and the one you want the least is last.

So this is how we got to do it.

All right.

First for me is Angela Fisher.

second is Luke Abfield third is Andy McCoy and fourth is David Lou okay Commissioner

Michik first of all thank you to everyone for coming in and going through this process really

appreciate the the effort that you all have put into these presentations and the enthusiasm that

you've shown and as a member of the selection subcommittee I'll take partial credit for your

excellent presentations and for forwarding you all for final

consideration. And this was very close. In fact, I thought I was going to go one

way based on the pre-interviews and based on these presentations, I'm going

slightly differently. And so, and again, there's very little distance between these, but I

would say my number one is Mr. Appfeld, number two is Ms. Fisher, number three is Mr. McCoy,

and number four is Mr. Liu. Thank you and my first choice is Ms. Fisher, second is

Appfeld, third is Mr. McCoy and fourth is Mr. Liu. My choices are as follows Mr.

Mr. Apfeld, Ms. Fisher, Mr. McCoy, and Mr. Lue.

Mine are the same as Commissioner Michik and Commissioner Bayeva.

So that's Apfeld, Fisher, McCoy, and Lue.

And mine are first Ms. Fisher, second Mr. Apfeld, third Mr. Lue, and fourth Mr. McCoy.

Okay, thank you. So we actually have, since we have two positions open and all of the top two choices were the same, this will be a relatively simple process for us. We'll entertain a motion to have Ms. Fisher in one position. Anyone want to make a motion?

Yes. I would like to make a motion and point to the commission Ms. Fisher and Mr. Apfeld.

We can do them both.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

I'll second that.

Okay.

And we've already done our public comment on this matter,

so we're just going to go directly for a vote.

So Vice Chair Baeva?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Tulaque?

Aye.

And I vote yes.

So the motion passes.

Congratulations.

We have our two commissioners.

And I also want to thank everyone for going through the process.

You were great.

This was very close for us.

This is, I've been through this several times and this is really the best batch that we've

had.

So I really look forward to working with you and thank you so much for Mr. Liu and Mr.

McCoy.

Also there's another part of the process, which is we have a list that we maintain for

this next year.

So should there be a vacancy, and this often happens, and we decide as commissioners to

put Mr. Liu and Mr. McCoy on the list, then you would be brought in for a very quick process

to be appointed to that vacancy rather than going through an entire recruitment process

and all that should you be available at that time.

So it's quite possible that the result of this, you know, may involve you being appointed

at some point.

We do need to have, I would actually like to make a motion that we add Mr. McCoy and

Mr. Liu to that list.

I'll second that motion.

Okay.

And so we can just vote.

Commissioner Biceo-Rabayeva?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Mitchick?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Tulloch?

Aye.

And I vote aye as well.

to have any of you as commissioners.

All righty.

I think this would be a great time for a five-minute break because we are going to have a wonderful

presentation after the break.

Actually, we'll do case closure plan and then we're going to have a presentation from the

local policy lab.

To the Chair.

Since we have presenters waiting and one's in a different time zone, perhaps we might

want to flip the agenda and have local policy lab first yes then do the case

closure yeah we still do we still want a break though after the break yeah that's

fine so let's take a five minute break let's be back at 25 after and

congratulations to the new commissioners yes

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have to…

Oh, can we…

It's also…

Yeah.

Can…

Is there a Zoom link that we can use to look if we have a computer?

Yeah, it will be the same one we're streaming on the meeting…

If you go to our meeting link, and then there's the Zoom link is there on the meeting page.

We're all good.

We troubleshot that.

Oh, thank you.

Commissioners, if you do do that, make sure that you mute and your speakers are off so we don't get that feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, KTOP, are we ready to go?

So we're going to change the agenda just a little bit or reorder the items.

So we're going to now move to item 8, which is the presentation by local policy lab, and

then we'll handle item 7A, the case closure plan, right after that.

So Ms. Woods, I think, I guess you're not here, but you're on remotely, so if you will.

I can tee it up a little bit.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Great.

So good evening, everybody.

PEC Director Suzanne Doran, and we have three speakers from local policy lab who've been

working with us over the last six months very diligently. We have Laura Wood, she's their

vice president for their democracy program, and we have Peter Zond, their vice president for

strategy, and also Anna Corning, who is a major writer and contributor and researcher for this

report. So I'm going to keep it very brief because I want to hand it off to LPL. But just to remind

everybody in your packet, there was a memo from the Democracy Dollars Engagement Subcommittee

that kind of explained the purpose of this tonight and this discussion. It's that the

Oakland Fair Elections Act requires that the PEC publish a comprehensive outreach plan in advance

of the Democracy Dollars Program rollout. And this report has been prepared by Local Policy Lab

in deep collaboration with our subcommittee members and commission staff.

And the subcommittee is welcoming both commissioner and public comment on this report and its recommendations,

which are intended to provide a draft framework to the commission that we can follow for an equitable outreach,

education, and participation in the initial Democracy of Dollars program rollout.

So with that, I invite Laura and crew to unmute yourselves, and everybody should be able to hear your presentation.

Oh, and if you want to let us know to advance the slides, we'll do that as you go along.

Thank you so much, Suzanne.

Great to join you all virtually this evening.

I'm Laura Wood from Local Policy Lab.

And I don't know, are the slides being, oh, there we go.

Okay, thank you.

The local, I'm just going to give a little background on us and then really dive into

the meat of the work that we did.

Pardon me, can I ask, can the slides be actually shared on, okay, perfect, thank you.

Excellent.

Before I dive in, I also just wanted to extend our deep gratitude to Suzanne and her team

at the Public Ethics Commission, including Jelani Killings,

and of course the members of the Democracy Dollars Subcommittee

who were very generous with their time

and really gave us a lot of great questions to consider

as we embarked on this project.

And delighted to be with you all.

The Local Policy Lab is a national nonprofit

that supports local governments in effectively engaging residents,

thank you, especially those who are underrepresented,

to strengthen democracy and address climate change.

And our vision is one in which we have a just, equitable society

where local governments partner with their residents

to make transformational change.

So when this opportunity to work with the PEC and the city of Oakland

on an outreach plan for the Democracy Dollars program arose, we really jumped at that opportunity.

And you can go to the next slide, please.

Our purpose, our goals in launching this work and our approach was to help prepare the city of Oakland

for an equitable, effective democracy dollars launch in 2028.

And, you know, we have spoken with several people about the funding situation.

We know that the original plan was for the program to be implemented sooner.

our focus and our work was really intended to focus on a rollout in 2028.

So assuming that it is funded, this is a report that highlights the main ways that we are

recommending that the PEC and the City of Oakland educate the public and engage in really deep and

meaningful resident education. We understand that there are questions about funding,

but I just wanted to be clear at the outset that that really wasn't our focus.

And so in going about this work, we of course found it essential to speak with as many

stakeholders as possible, both inside city government and external individuals. And we

were able to conduct about 33 interviews in which we assessed existing city infrastructure,

analyzed demographic data from the city, and learned and did research into how other communities

have led outreach efforts, including of course Seattle with their democracy vouchers program.

Okay, next slide, please.

We were guided throughout this work with some core outreach goals that are really integral to what Local Policy Lab's mission is.

And one of those was to ensure that a plan would help reach residents that have historically been excluded from campaigns and campaign finance.

going back to some of the comments that were made earlier this evening about the goals of

democracy dollars and really giving all eligible residents some tools to get involved in a new way.

To build trust and understanding, not just awareness of democracy dollars,

but an understanding of what it is and how one would actually go about using democracy dollars.

Um, leveraging existing community relationships. This is really, for those of you who have seen

our report already, you'll, you'll see that this is really central, um, is, is, you know,

working with trusted messengers and others to, to help ensure that, that the outreach really

permeates all aspects of the city. And of course, to ensure that outreach is accessible,

multilingual, and sustained. And I will just share that, you know, we are going to share

some highlights from the report tonight. We welcome any feedback and questions tonight.

But as you all know, of course, you know, this is not ending tonight. And we are certainly open

and eager to continue the conversation

and to support this work as you move forward.

Okay, next slide.

Priority audiences.

I touched on this a little bit in terms of residents

who have historically been excluded from campaign finance,

but when we really zoom in closer,

we focused in on certain priority audiences

that we think any outreach plan must really center.

One of those is low-income residents and renters.

Another is communities of color in Oakland.

A third is immigrant and limited English proficient communities.

And finally, young voters and first-time participants,

either in voting or the political process more broadly.

And with that, I am going to turn it over to our democracy fellow, Anna Corning, who will pick up on this presentation.

Hello.

So moving into some of the kind of key barriers to outreach that we kind of gathered through all of our research stakeholders repeatedly kind of raised some of these challenges around fragmented outreach infrastructure, getting a lot of overload of information during election cycles, limited staffing, funding capacities.

And so, these are some of the barriers that help shape the kind of pacing and design of

the overall outreach strategy and really making sure that these are some of the things that

we were addressing in the report and that are kind of touched on throughout.

Next slide.

So in the report, we highlight a number of key outreach partners, primarily based off of some of these barriers.

And the strategy really relies on trusted community partners who have already built a lot of the relationships and credibility with the community.

and really focusing on not duplicating that effort that already exists on the city's part,

but more about supporting and enabling the infrastructure that already exists,

how to coordinate well, and support those partners who can help get the message out more effectively.

So that moves us into the timeline.

We laid this out as kind of a phased approach over a few years, noting that the current plan is for democracy dollars to roll out for the 2028 election.

And so we wanted to focus on for the first year kind of foundation and capacity building.

So what can happen this year that isn't necessarily tied to exactly what the rollout looks like, but kind of building that capacity and some foundational elements.

elements and then as funding gets secured and the rollout is more defined moving more into the

partnerships and the pilot development and then with the full launch in 2028 and the goal was

really to kind of avoid a last minute kind of creating of materials and development of

partnerships and kind of built slowly building it over the next several years.

And so we highlighted a number of kind of some of the key milestones that will happen over that phased approach and when really what should happen when.

And this goes across staffing, funding, partner onboarding, development of materials and the implementation of feedback loops.

So these are kind of some of the milestones that the commission can really provide some good oversight and support and feedback throughout the process.

And throughout the report, we highlighted a few principles about how outreach should be done.

Again, it really should be community-led and compensated, multilingual, by design,

iterative, rather than like, okay, we've created this and it's done, let's learn from it and

create better materials and being transparent about the goals, what the limits are of what

outreach can do and transparency around the decision-making around how to make this happen.

So that's a very brief overview of the report. We really wanted to leave most of the time to kind of

hear your input on or any questions or comments that the commission or the public has.

And these were just some things that we felt like were some guiding questions if needed some ideas of

You know how to help provides an input?

I'll start by just making a comment or is it done or are we yes, okay? Yeah, I'll just start by making a comment

I read through the

Report I didn't read every word because it was enormous, but I is it was just

so comprehensive and the observations that, you know, we want to help low-income people

and, you know, figure out where they are and how we can help them and which kinds of organizations

and all that.

So I just could not imagine what I would add to that.

And I have no questions.

But I just think it's excellent work.

Please.

I have a question.

Thank you for the presentation.

One of the bullets at the end said community outreach to be community-led and compensated.

I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit more about the compensation piece.

Is there a model that you would use or is there any data that you're kind of pulling

from around that?

I can start and then Anna might want to chime in.

But yes, I mean, the short answer is we do have some models in mind.

And when we are envisioning compensation, you know, I think we are largely talking about grants that would go to community-based organizations to conduct outreach.

There are examples of, I mean, there are probably examples of it in Oakland.

There are certainly examples from other cities and jurisdictions throughout the U.S., but research and data indicate that supporting local grassroots nonprofit organizations to do the type of relational organizing that we think is going to be really essential to help really, you know, permeate the message about democracy dollars.

is something that we think is very effective. And, you know, again, because a lot of these

small organizations don't have existing capacity to take on significant outreach projects,

a model of a sort of modest grant, which might enable them to bring on a part-time organizer

or, you know, something of that nature to conduct the outreach work we are recommending.

And again, you know, I recognize that that would obviously require some expenditure.

There are certainly different scales that this could happen on.

And that's something that we hope you all can have a dialogue about in the weeks and

months to come.

Anna, do you want to chime in or Peter?

I think you covered most of it.

One of the things I wanted to just emphasize when we were creating a number of kind of the engagement strategies, we tried to create it in a way that there's some really high impact opportunities and also other opportunities for engagement that also could be effective, but maybe aren't as high impact.

And so trying to figure out how to prioritize to knowing that it's likely that the PEC isn't going to be able to do all of these tactics in the community education plan.

So I think we really felt like the grant opportunity to CBOs in the community would be really valuable because it's really leveraging the infrastructure that already exists.

One of the other elements that we recommended was having some sort of part-time ambassador type program where they would be like democracy dollar ambassadors.

So who could kind of maybe are some sort of leader or community member in a certain neighborhood or group and they could kind of be a peer educator.

And so that would also be something that would be compensated, wouldn't necessarily be a full time position, but maybe someone that commits to eight to 10 hours a month for a period of time when the rollout's really kind of going strong.

So that was one of the other elements of compensation that we highlighted.

And I would just add that in our research and interviews with the folks in Seattle, they found that to be a really helpful and successful tactic as well, getting the community-based organizations some grant funds.

Just a follow-up to that, did you find that the grants were federal, state, private, just a combination?

I believe in the case of Seattle, it's all city funded.

And one other example that I'm aware of off the top of my head is, and this is mentioned in the report,

is the 2020 census outreach effort in New York City

followed a similar model of giving grants

to community-based organizations

to help with census-related outreach,

and that was also city dollars.

Again, I realize that budgets are especially tight right now,

So you raise an interesting idea about state funding.

I somehow can't imagine there would be federal funding available for this, but we could certainly try to get creative.

But that's something that we can brainstorm more on.

And then I'm aware that there is some private interest, some philanthropic interest in democracy dollars.

So that's another possibility.

that might be worth exploring.

Thank you.

I do find that I have a question around this, inspired by yours, Commissioner Steele, which

is that how, you know, you put a bunch of costs in here for different types of outreach.

And I know we have budget for this, theoretically, right?

So do we know how far we're off in terms of the amount of money that we would have, city

money, compared to how much we would have to get from grants for some kind of, I mean,

is it way off or is it close or, you know what I'm saying?

I guess I can say too, I don't think we have an answer to that immediately because, I mean,

It's just so contingent on what the facts are

when we know what's available.

But I think one thing that we had asked of Local Policy Lab,

and I'm just so pleased with,

was we really asked them to give us a menu

and really lay out for us.

I think you'll see that in the report.

They're just really great indexes and tools for us

where they sort of rank in terms of impact and cost.

So as that information becomes available,

that will give us some great tools to know, well, where should we focus our efforts?

What should be the most high priority?

If we can only do a limited amount, you know, what should we be looking at?

So I said we haven't created, like, a model based on a full rollout, no.

Sure, and it seems too soon for that.

I mean, now we have kind of the options so we can spend, you know, the next months or

a year doing that.

Thank you.

Just to follow up on that through the chair, Executive Director Doran, can you just refresh us on what's statutorily provided to us specifically for outreach by Measure W?

Oh, sorry.

Here we go.

In terms of the minimum funding that's identified in the law, it's not earmarked that way.

It really is only in very broad categories.

There's the actual funds for the candidates is one bucket.

One is the minimum staffing levels, and another is it identifies $350,000 for operations.

And then there's the $700,000 for startup-associated costs.

So that's sort of the baseline that we would be thinking we'd be working with.

Great. Thank you.

But the nice thing is, you know, for something like this is that there is that discretion that we have in what we want to emphasize there.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Just one question.

First of all, thank you for this tremendous report.

I just want to echo the comments that this is sort of the comprehensive playbook that we can draw from.

And I actually really appreciate, in particular, there's a chart on page 41 that maybe what you were talking about that lays out the different tools and sort of priority levels and impacts.

I think my question is, you know, Seattle is sort of the other jurisdiction that has done this.

Seattle has some similarities with Oakland and some differences.

I guess when you were drawing on Seattle's experiences, were there things about Oakland that you identified that were different or unique that might affect how we consider how we evaluate Seattle as a model, if that makes sense?

That's a really interesting question, Commissioner Tillack.

I mean, we obviously understood that Oakland is a different place than Seattle in terms of the demographics, languages spoken.

I don't know that there was anything in particular that we took into account.

Anna, did you want to chime in?

Yeah, and maybe I can phrase my question differently.

Were there strategies that sort of played out successfully in Seattle that you think may not work as well here?

Because, you know, we that we should be thinking about.

Well, I don't this isn't something that that I think was specifically mentioned in the report.

But but I do know that Seattle is has in general very high voter participation levels.

and I think is one of the higher urban areas in the country as far as voter turnout.

I think in part because, well, California has basically universal vote by mail as well.

So I think that this, you know, residents overall in Seattle might have been a little bit more primed

for the democracy vouchers program.

There also was not as big of a gap between the passage of the program and the actual launch, which is not something we mentioned earlier, but I think might be a factor for Oakland in going about the outreach and education.

Because one thing that we noted just in some of our interviews, like some of the stakeholders that we interviewed were not particularly familiar with democracy dollars and weren't necessarily aware that this was something that was supposed to be coming to Oakland soon.

So I think there might be a little bit more of a kind of steep incline, if you will, in

terms of just initial outreach and education about it.

But as far as tactics, I think – I mean, the one that they really said, as Peter mentioned,

was by far the most effective was the partnership with community-based organizations, and everything

WE HEARD FROM PEOPLE IN OAKLAND WAS REALLY CONSISTENT WITH THAT ALSO BEING ONE OF OUR

TOP RECOMMENDATIONS HERE.

THANK YOU.

SOMETHING I WOULD ADD IS THAT SURPRISING TO ME AND I THINK THE REST OF THE TEAM IN

LEARNING ABOUT OAKLAND, YOU KNOW, WE KNEW IT WAS SOCIOECONOMICALLY DIVERSE INCOME-WISE.

Laura mentioned that the multilingual aspect, and it's just amazing, really, how many languages are prominent in the city of Oakland.

And I think that does affect engagement strategies and approaches, perhaps more than Seattle.

I don't recall the numbers in Seattle versus Oakland, but I think we identified like 40 languages that we felt were really prominent in Oakland that are spoken.

and some not spoken.

So really, tremendous diversity.

Thank you.

I've got a question.

First of all, thank you for this report.

I really liked a lot of it.

I really liked how in-depth you went.

I really liked some of the metrics

and planning and messaging.

and I don't know how this struck everyone else,

but for me, reading this really reminded me

of the promise that this program has

and it's easy to sort of, where we are,

where we've been trying to get this implemented

for a number of years since the passage of Measure W,

it's been sort of caught up in the funding struggles

and some of the things that have happened

on the local and national scales

that have kind of been a bit demoralizing.

So reading this really got me much more energetic

and was a reminder of the promise of this program

and that we're doing really an exciting experiment with this

in an attempt to increase engagement and equity and democracy.

so thank you for the sort of pep talk aspect of this as well.

So with that said, I'm going to dive a little bit into the weeds on a couple of points.

First of all, related to the internal city working group that you proposed in Part 5 of this report

that you recommend being set up pretty much immediately this year,

I was hoping that you could sort of elaborate a little bit on what you view as the PEC's role in this group.

I don't see it in the list of members that you suggest,

and I don't see it mentioned other than perhaps sending invitations to join.

So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how you see the PEC's role in the internal city working group.

Thank you for those very kind comments and the question.

That's an excellent question.

And if it was unclear in the report, I think our intention is certainly for the PEC to be

central to the internal working group.

And we can try to clarify that if necessary.

I think that it will be important for the PEC, you know, as the implementing agency to really play the lead role in hopefully setting up a working group and then ensuring that it's actually helping to advance the goals of the outreach plan.

Um, so, so yeah, I think it's certainly important. And, and I, I guess to be even more specific,

uh, we were envisioning that PEC staff would, would take the lead on that, um, with, with

commissioners of, of course, being involved as, as, you know, as they want and, and as is possible

with, with their schedules. Um, and, and, you know, I, I realized you didn't quite ask this

question, but one point I wanted to make about why we thought it was important to recommend this.

Again, a number of the interviews that we conducted were City of Oakland employees who,

you know, whose work touches on engagement and outreach in a number of different ways,

but are not part of the Public Ethics Commission. And, you know, first of all, there was,

varying levels of awareness about the program, which underscored that if the city is really

going to attempt to educate every eligible Oakland resident or perhaps even non-eligible

one so they can tell others about it, that really every lever of Oakland government should be used

to help advance that goal.

Because given the size of the PEC staff,

I just, you know,

unless there was a much, much more substantial budget

than I think anyone's envisioning,

it's going to be a very heavy lift to do

without that additional support.

And so happy to chat more about that,

but just wanted to make that point.

Okay, great.

Thank you for that clarification.

And I totally agree that these groups that you recommend will be helpful to implementation.

And as you sort of implied, you know, we're not just having to conduct outreach and education with the public.

We have to do that with our partners within the city as well.

and so I want to know if you have any thoughts on actually persuading

and getting folks internally and other city agencies to be engaged with this group.

I know that you looked at Seattle.

I don't know how much resistance they face there internally within the city,

But I suspect that in any group and particularly within our city, there may be varying levels of enthusiasm and varying levels of ability to commit the time for this type of body.

So do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, that and that's something we've we've spent a fair amount of time talking with Suzanne about and and might well continue discussing with her if she wants after after tonight.

Right. You know, I think I think that having the support of the highest levels of government for this effort would be extremely helpful.

And we did meet with a representative of the mayor's office who seemed, you know, while she was not very knowledgeable about democracy dollars, she seemed very interested in learning more and in being supportive.

We had conversations with different city council members.

You know, I do think there are ongoing questions about budget and priorities.

But I think that any of the council members that we met with would agree that if this program is moving forward, there must be robust outreach around it.

So I think, you know, starting, I would suggest, you know, starting with the folks that we think can be the most influential.

So if the mayor's office is willing to participate, if the city administrator's office is willing to participate, and then they can encourage other agencies to designate representatives.

And, you know, we are not envisioning that this would necessarily be a body that meets a lot.

We know everyone is really busy, but hopefully this can be a good way to kind of do some cross-agency learning and also just lean more into the city's overall outreach apparatus and really try to sort of have an all-hands-on-deck type of moment.

and I'll just add to that I think this is part of the reason knowing that you know everyone who's

working in the city already has a full-time job that they're focused on and have this is this is

why we really thought it was important especially this coming year of 2026 to really build the

capacity and kind of the foundation and start fleshing out you know what are the materials

going to look like what should the messaging be and to be able to kind of create that structure

to really tee things up in a clear and actual way for those that, you know, a lot of departments

across the city, city councilor offices, the mayor's office already have community engagement

individuals who are doing work respective of their departments and their areas. And so how to kind of

tee things up that they can, you know, share information around democracy dollars at in a

ways that they're already going out into the community and speaking with residents. And just

to really, as Laura said, be able to kind of coordinate and build on all the things that

are already happening and not necessarily add so much of a workload for these individuals,

but just kind of being able to partner with them and understand kind of how they're already

working to be able to leverage that.

Thank you for that.

I wanted to ask a little bit about the performance metrics that you developed and was hoping that you could talk about how you developed those and to what extent those are used in Seattle.

and you talk about door-to-door canvassing.

That's a big effort to try to get to every door

or even 60% to 70% of doors of eligible

democracy dollar voucher recipients.

So how do you envision that working

given the large task that would be?

I can start answering that.

I think one thing that Seattle's really seen

is not just one cycle of their democracy vouchers program,

but over the years of the democracy vouchers program

being in effect, the kind of ripple effects that happen

that they didn't even realize,

one of which was through the CBO partnership and grant. These CBOs keep coming back each

election cycle to kind of be the partner, get the grant, but they've really created

a system where they're developing more engaged residents, and they've had people become leaders

in this in terms of leading their community and being the educators for their democracy

vouchers program and increasing the number of people that are running for office, more

diversity in who's running for those offices.

And so I think we tried to understand those kind of metrics as well.

Like, I think there's initial metrics that, you know, how many vouchers are being used

in the first year, how many individuals were spoken to about, how many events were gone

to the education metrics and the uses metrics, but then there'll be other metrics down the line

as well that I think will be really valuable. So we tried to capture some of that as well.

Of course, I think a lot of what we tried to build into this report was that you're not going to be

able to do everything very likely. And so there is a menu of options in terms of, like I mentioned

before the ambassador program. Like if you have a number of individuals who are working part-time,

maybe their goal is door-knocking in, you know, high-priority districts. And this doesn't necessarily

mean that, you know, the metric has to be exactly what we wrote here. I think it really will depend

on what the program and education strategy overall ends up looking like and what the,

you know, commission ends up choosing in terms of the priority areas to leverage. And so,

These are some of the options and potential benchmarks. And we did base some of this on Seattle's program, also on some Seattle 2020 census, I'm sorry, the California 2020 census efforts and a number of efforts that went on in New York City and tried to kind of understand what those metrics are and how they could translate to this.

But I wouldn't say that this is necessarily something that you totally have to be tied to and really depends on the menu of options that the PEC ends up selecting for the program.

Thank you.

Other questions?

All right.

Well, thank you so much for your report and very thoughtful answers to the questions.

and we look forward to our next steps here.

Public comment.

Great. Yes, thanks so much, and thanks to Suzanne as well.

Last year in this room, the President of the City Council,

Kevin Jenkins, sat here and told you there will be no funding

for this program in 2028.

It's not going to happen.

So I'm trying to understand why you're going forward with a program you can't fund and spending all kinds of resources on it when there's many other things you need to be dealing with.

I also wonder, has anybody in this room bothered to read the reports out of Seattle on the Democracy Vouchers Program?

where you see that over 46 percent of the money through 2023 went to administrative overhead

in 2024 the administrative overhead for that one year was over 1.4 million dollars

766 000 actually went to candidates so it was almost twice as much in administrative overhead

as actually went to candidates.

And that doesn't account for all the administrative overhead

because the campaigns have their own administrative overhead,

which never gets counted because the city doesn't pay for it.

There's other ways to fund public financing of elections

and ones that don't take such massive amounts of administrative overhead.

And it needs to be looked at.

because how many millions have you spent now on this program?

You spent a lot of money on this program.

And it's not going to happen in 2028.

You don't have funding for it.

You're not getting a ballot measure this year.

Seattle started it with a ballot measure.

without that guaranteed funding i don't know how you're going to make this work

i understand the attraction of this program it looks really good but even in seattle

if you look at it honestly independent expenditures went through the roof after

this program went into effect it did not change who participated in elections as much as people

who promote this would like it to have changed it

people who already voted are using these very few

the percentage of people actually utilize their vouchers is down at like five percent

It's not an effective program.

You really need to take a second look at this.

Any other public comment?

Yes.

I have a couple questions and some comments.

First, to the presenters, what's your definition of democracy?

May I remind you, Mr. Hazard, we're not going to respond during the public comment per what

we said so you may ask the questions and we'll get back to you in a subsequent

meeting if appropriate I thought that was they don't comment on public forum

this is public comment on the agenda applies to all public comment pardon me

that applies to all public comment that's not what you said at first check

the record there's a difference between form and comment but I don't want to get

into that so will I get a response as the staff had questions and the

presenter answered the questions afterwards that's what I'm asking you

Mr. Chair. Yes, we can we can respond to your questions at a future time. Okay. So

you're using Seattle as a model. The question around democracy, what does

democracy suggests residents or voters is the model that is held up as a standard in Seattle

do they use residents or voters so why would you and if they're using residents

why would you give residents any money if they're not voters?

That taints the pool.

They may be political constituents, but they are not voters.

So the question is, in Seattle, do they make reference to residents or voters?

And what Mr. Katz is just commenting about, that's a critical issue.

Why would you have administrative costs being twice as much as the money given to candidates?

That doesn't make sense.

If anything, administrative costs should be somewhere maybe 15%, 20%, and that would be high.

15 is more practical.

So these democracy dollars, the whole concept is a sham.

And particularly if you're not following the precept of what democracy supposed to indicate.

Voters, not residents.

And I'd like to get a response, or the public likes to get a response on that.

Thank you.

Other public comment?

All right.

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move on to our last item, item 7A.

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

The integrity and you, we are entitled to hear at the next meeting.

That's not what they did when the commission made comments.

Please, we need to continue.

No, you're going to say please, and that's what I'm talking about.

Please.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Tova Ackerman, Enforcement Chief.

I have one case to present to you as part of the case closure plan today that's quite straightforward.

The respondent has passed away.

the case. The allegations occurred in 2016. The case was open in 2019, but in 2024, the respondent

passed away. So we are recommending closure, no action. One thing I do want to say about this,

I think this case underscores exactly why we're doing such a thorough retroactive analysis of

these cases. It would have been a very serious case at the time that it was opened. The allegations

were very serious, but because of the passage of time,

it's just not something we can pursue anymore.

And I think we've seen multiple cases like that.

So I think this just is another example

of why this case closure plan is so important.

Thank you.

Any questions?

We don't need to do anything with this, right?

We do?

We have to approve it.

Okay.

Anyone want to make a motion?

I'll move to adopt staff's recommendation to close PEC case number 1912.

I second.

Public comment?

Any public comment?

All right, we'll vote.

Vice Chair Baeva?

Aye.

Commissioner Gage?

Aye.

Commissioner Michik?

Aye.

Commissioner Steele?

Aye.

Commissioner Chalak?

Aye.

And I vote aye.

Thank you very much.

and now we're on to I guess you get to say it there because we're on to number nine the

enforcement program report yes um so I'll I won't restate what's in the report I just want to pull

out a few things um I'm happy to report that we've closed far more cases this year than we opened

which means we're heading in the right direction um and we close we managed to close cases all the

from 2016 through a number of cases in 2025. I do just want to highlight also that at the beginning

of my presentation of the case closure project, we had a 1 to 76 staff to complaint ratio,

and we've moved that down both from reducing our caseload, but also from being able to hire

more staff. It is now 1 to 33 staff to complaint ratio, which is much better. Just in context,

again, San Francisco and Los Angeles have a 1 to 9, and San Diego has a 1 to 14. So we have a lot

of improvement to do. But again, I think this shows that we are moving in the right direction,

and I'm proud of my staff for getting us there. Thank you. I have a question. So the

charts you put on page I guess agenda packet page 136 so those are year to

date 2025 then sort of the end of the year 2025 that's right okay any other

Other questions?

I had one question.

In the staff report, you noted that we are still waiting the fee on the Dabney case,

the penalty there.

Yes.

And I know the Commission had also requested updates on the payments associated with the

various shaft cases as well and I noticed that those weren't discussed in

the staff report so could you also provide us an update yeah I can update

on that we've done outreach to mr. Dabney and haven't been able to reach him

so unfortunately I think eventually those case those that fine will have to

go to collections and we'll continue to reach out to him and see if we can

resolve that as far as the shaft cases I'm happy to report that we got all of

the checks needed to pay for the accounts where people were specifically

named. As then enforcement chief Russell said, it's much harder to collect on the counts where

a commission was named or a committee was named. And so we are putting those to the side and

focusing on the counts where a specific or multiple specific people were named.

And so sorry, just to clarify, are you still seeking some payments then? You said all individuals

have paid and it sounds like some of the committees you're still engaging with or

you're considering it finished we're considering it finished having

collected fees from all the fines from all of the named parties and just just

roughly what is that I think it's somewhere around 48,000 to 50,000 thank

All together.

Other questions?

Yeah, I have a couple.

I think the first one I was going to pick up on that.

In the next report, could we have just a quick summary of this is how much we collected from

the individuals and this is how much we didn't collect from the organizations?

Because if I recollect, the majority of the penalties were assessed on the organizations

and at the time the commission flagged that we were unlikely to collect it,

and I think it's important for going to accountability

that the public know how much of the penalties were ultimately not collected.

Absolutely.

I think the first question I had was a couple of meetings ago,

a case came before us for probable cause determination.

I believe the last meeting you said there were negotiations about resolution,

so you weren't moving it towards a hearing.

I just wanted to see if there was any further update,

particularly because the allegations in that case were quite old as well.

Yeah.

The only update I have is that we were in touch with the respondent

and we lost touch with the respondent.

So we will be moving forward with an administrative hearing as soon as possible.

Okay. Thank you on that one.

And then I guess sort of a kind of a process question I had is, you know,

So in every enforcement report, you present sort of complaints that have been dismissed,

either as being sort of facially outside the statutes we don't enforce or being factually unsupported.

On average, how long does it take your staff to review one of these to make that determination?

It takes quite a while.

I mean, we take our time with these cases.

We make sure that our facts are straight and that our analysis is straight.

And so I think any one of these, we write pretty thorough memos, you know, recording our work.

And I think any one of these memos takes two to three days at the very least to complete.

So that's a significant amount of time.

It is.

Okay.

Kind of what I'm wondering is, you know, and I don't know the source of these complaints,

complaints, but in terms of streamlining the process, do other ethics commissions or other

similar bodies have kind of processes for like vexatious complainants or frivolous complainants

where a complainant files sort of multiple frivolous complaints or multiple factually

unsupported? Is there some kind of analog that this commission could draw on that would

help streamline your work so you're not spending two to three business days, two to three days on

a memo? Yeah. Yeah, just something to give some thought. Sure, sure. I'd have to poll the other

jurisdictions, which I can easily do. We send questions to each other frequently. I will say

that other jurisdictions keep their complaints secret, and so they don't always have to respond

to them, and so that they're in a very different position than we are, where we take in complaints

publicly and we close them very publicly. Yeah, and I, you know, I, that has immense value,

I think, but I also want to balance that with the amount of time. Absolutely. You know, especially

what you presented to us for the case closure where it was a serious case that wasn't moved

forward at the time. So anything we can do to alleviate sort of the low-hanging fruit and help

your staff focus on the more serious cases, I think, is something we, I would be open to presenting

to us. I think especially in this new year, I want to gather enforcement staff and think through

systems and how we can move more quickly through these cases.

Thank you for the report, and congratulations on the progress you've made in reducing the

backlog. That's great. I wanted to ask about by year end, we had one administrative hearing with

a penalty of $1,750. That looks like it comprises the total of our fines and settlements for the

year. How does that compare to previous years? I think it's hard to compare because in previous

years or in recent previous years the focus was on big cases bringing big cases to be closed

um our focus was not necessarily on that this year it was focusing on closing backlog which

just necessarily wasn't going to bring in as many fines um off the top of my head i would say it's

lower than it has been in previous years um but i do think that there's reasons for that that that

we all discussed yeah yeah you kind of answered my next question with that explanation i was going

going to ask if the focus on closing cases had come at the expense of doing work on big cases.

It has, and that's something that I want to revisit this year. I want to, now that we have

more staff, I want to split our staff. So some are working on the case closures as quickly as they can,

and some are moving forward with some of the more time-sensitive investigations that we need to be

getting moving on. Okay. So is that the kind of thing that you envision kind of shifting,

over some period of time, the next year, the next six months, what would you, you know,

I realize that this may be a difficult question to answer, but what can we expect in the coming

year when it comes to enforcement? Are we going to see through 2026 basically a continuing emphasis

on closing cases and clearing the backlog, or are we going to see any significant cases bubbling up

over that period of time? I'd like to see both. What I would really like if we can get all of our

engines running is to finish the case closure project before elections happen. Because I know

that around election time, we're going to be getting a whole bunch of new cases or case

complaints are going to skyrocket. And I don't want us working on old cases when we have so many

new cases coming in. And I do think that with splitting our staff, hopefully we will be able

to bring some bigger cases or some easier, smaller cases, but still some find some important

responses to violations in the next year in 2026.

Okay. I'm going to ask this question carefully because I know that you can't disclose what

comes in, but I guess I would say under the existing kind of process that you're adhering

to when a case comes in or if a case comes in that involves a serious allegation that

your staff determines to be worth investigating.

What happens to that case vis-a-vis your main emphasis on clearing the backlog?

Unfortunately, a lot of those cases have been pending.

We have done our best to keep track of the cases that are coming in,

to keep closing cases that are outside of our jurisdiction so that our 2025 caseload doesn't balloon.

But we have made the decision to step back on investigations in order to try to get cases closed,

which does mean that in 2026 we have to return to some 2025 investigations and move through them very quickly.

Okay. Thank you for that.

I also wanted to ask on a slightly different note,

Can you provide an update on our Form 700 enforcement?

We have still some cases from 2024 about the Form 700 submissions from 2023.

Those will be a little difficult to close because they're sort of the lingering ones where we can't get in touch with the people that we need to.

We haven't been able to negotiate any sort of agreement with them, so we're still working on those.

we are in process of working through the 2025 Form 700s for the year 2024.

And so we were working through those, but we haven't gotten to the point yet where there are open enforcement cases on those.

Okay. How are you handling, how are you managing, because that's a big, that's sort of a big tranche of stuff, right?

That's not necessarily always the highest priority. So how are you managing that?

Yeah, it is. I mean, the phase that we're in right now is mainly administrative, and so it doesn't take that much effort from enforcement-specific staff.

Eventually, it will move into enforcement, and we will have to handle those cases as they come up.

I think the hope and something that I would like to work on with Executive Director Duran is figuring out a way to do the Form 700 prosecutions that holds people to account but isn't ballooning our workload in a way that isn't sustainable long term.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you very much for that.

I appreciate the update.

I think you've done great work here.

I just wanted to be clear to any folks who may be paying attention to this that while we've made great progress, we still face a lack of resources, and we still are having to make these choices that we're making where some things have to be put onto the back burner because of this lack of resources and because of the caseload that we're facing.

So great work, but also, you know, I think that some of what you've disclosed here is, you know, not the ideal way that I think most people would want to see Oakland ethics enforcement going,

where cases that are potentially serious are being put on the back burner because of the overwhelming amount of cases that we have to deal with that are already in the queue.

So thank you for that.

I just wanted to sort of clarify that for everyone.

I appreciate that, and I absolutely agree.

I think we've had to make some really hard decisions,

and I don't think those hard decisions are over

until we can get out from the weight of this case log.

And yes, I would very much like to get to a place

where we can attend to cases as they come in.

We can close them quickly.

We can move forward without having to worry

about a whole bunch of other lingering things from the past.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Thank you.

Public comment?

Ballot measures are in the purview of this body.

April 15, 2025, special election, provision 4.26.130, an illegal provision contained in the transaction and use tax.

That provision enjoins the voter from filing any grievance against the state, the city, or employees who have a grievance on the collection of the tax.

You cannot have that provision in a ballot measure.

That is not the jurisdiction of this body.

The voters are entitled to due process by the judicial review, not in a ballot measure.

But yet, the enforcement chief dismissed my case because it had no relevance.

She cites no case law or statute.

But I did in my complaint.

And in my appeal, that's what I mean about integrity, transparency, and accountability.

They can't trust you when the evidence is clear.

It's what they call ultra-rears, beyond your jurisdiction.

that's the jurisdiction of the court

go look at it

you want me to cite case law

I could do that too

it's all contained in the complaint

2530, 2533

2537

all of which was dismissed

and how can you

make a statement

that a complainant

is a victitious

complainant

and you dismiss it.

A complainant

could file anything

when the case

arises, if they could support it

with the factual

background.

She stated that.

And you're going along with it?

That's why I make the allegation that all of you sitting around this body are worthless.

And it's documented.

Ask her to respond to the document.

I can't see.

Is it time?

Oh, it's time.

Oh, yeah.

Don't smile at me.

I don't need a smile.

Any other public comment?

Thank you very much.

Next item is the executive director report.

Good evening.

I'll keep it short.

Just want to note a few things from the report.

One is to congratulate Mr. Killing sitting here next to me for his promotion to our highest level of analyst,

Ethics Analyst III.

Very well deserved.

and

just to note

in the report I did include something

a little different I showed

sort of what we have coming up both

in terms of commission action

items by quarter and like

how that corresponds with the various mandatory

staff activities that we're involved in just to

give some context and

sort of a preview

of what you'll be seeing in the annual report

you know the matrix is I've kind of

tried to put a lot more numbers in there

and quantitative measures of our activities

through the course of the year,

but also showing all the special projects

that have been completed,

which is pretty much everything.

Lastly, I did, you know,

as the program reports are now attached

with the director's report,

I just wanted to flag some things for you.

Things of note that I thought were important

were that 90% now of scheduled campaign filings

with fixed deadlines are timely,

and the average lateness has dropped.

I think that's very significant that for late filings,

the average lateness has dropped from 69 days to 32.

I think that really reflects our staff activity

in terms of doing proactive work with non-filers.

And similarly, we have a similar improvement

with 93% of scheduled lobbyist filings coming in on time.

And I think also a lot of that is attributable

to policy changes that we made.

If you recall a couple of years ago, until very recently, there was no penalty for late filings for lobbyists.

And since we've implemented those, that has had a real consequence in terms of timely filing.

So kudos especially, again, to Mr. Killings and Mr. Van Buskerk, who are like the major movers of this.

and also another is the resolution of our backlog of public records request mediations from the prior year.

So those were just a few things I wanted to highlight and happy to take any questions.

Thank you. I have a comment and a question.

First, I really appreciated the chart on page 141.

So really like that.

So if we can continue that sort of type of reporting, that would be great.

And then a question is, so you mentioned this drastic reduction in lateness.

What do you think is responsible or what factors have contributed to improving the filing, the timing of the filings?

Well, as I mentioned, I think the one thing is the introduction of monetary penalties for lobbyist filings.

But it also really has to do with the, you know, having a proactive stance towards filers.

So that's really when our staff is seeing very early that something's occurring and reaching out directly to that filer.

In many cases, sometimes it's a technical difficulty or something they can help that person with and get it resolved quickly.

Also, just knowing that we're paying attention.

We are as helpful as we can be.

So we kind of do both.

You know, we have both the push that this needs to happen and the penalty, and we also have the side that our analysts are very focused on being helpful and listening and getting the thing from the perspective of the filer and seeing how that they can assist with making it happen.

Thank you.

And would you say that previously we were not sort of directly involved to the same extent with filers and maybe we didn't have access to that information?

No, I mean, I would say this has been our policy for a long time, but like the big change

is that that policy change that happened on the lobbyist side.

Yeah, with the campaign filers, that would be maybe, unfortunately, Mr. Van Buzkerkzahn

couldn't be here with us tonight to answer directly.

So maybe that's something I will pick his brain if he has any thoughts on what might

have been part of the factor with the campaign filers.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Yeah, I also just wanted to shout out this chart.

It's incredible.

I think in part because we know staff is busy all year,

but this gives us visibility into what exactly is going on

and also just helps me think about the cycle of all of our work.

So I think I would co-sign if there's a version of this chart

that could sort of keep being included.

I think that would be helpful.

And then my only other comment is, I know staff is incredibly busy, but now that we will have a full commission, it would be really great if we could do a retreat.

Yes, we've been talking about that and when we think that'll be.

But we'll definitely do a retreat sometime this year.

Yes, I think we've talked about it a little bit at past meetings that I'm imagining it'll be in one of our off months.

I think April might be very ambitious, but June, I would say that would be for sure.

That would be, we'd want to have this done, have our retreat by June.

Other questions?

Yeah, thank you for the chart.

That's very helpful.

And the retreat is on the schedule for June, so hopefully we can make it by then.

I've already cleared my time for it based on seeing that.

You booked your flights?

I booked my flights.

Yeah, we're doing it in a tropical locale, I assume.

I wanted to ask about the annual reports.

Are we required to do them for 2023 and 2024 in addition to 2025?

You know, sometimes there are things that you just do

and you don't, that's like one thing

that I haven't looked at where it specifically would say

that we're required to do an annual report,

but it's really, I feel like a practice that we need to do.

My intention is that those two reports for those years

could be very simple and straightforward,

but I think I would like to do at least enough

because I think that's a really nice thing

to look at a three-year period and where we're at so that when we're talking about what happened

in 2025, we see it in the context of like the three years. So, um, you know, if you, if you're

thinking they're not necessary, uh, you know, I mean, I kind of want to chime in, please, please do.

My assumption was kind of like that, uh, that the, uh, you know, that, that the,

you know, we kind of missed the bus on doing 2023 and 2024,

and the next one we would see would be a 2025

that maybe just combined all of those years and had data,

you know, maybe still call it an annual report

but have it covered three years.

But, you know, the reason why I ask is because

I just want to see an annual report.

And, you know, I would like it to be a manageable task.

and if it's, you know, like, you know, if the barrier to that is, oh, we're still working on the 2023 one, you know, maybe that's not the priority.

What are your thoughts?

So, yeah, so what I'm hearing from you, and I'd say I have a similar perspective, is to prioritize the 2025,

and then I would like to have the 2023 and 2024 with that.

But I think also our reports in the past have tended to be very text heavy, narrative heavy.

That's not necessarily the style or typical of many other ethics bodies.

So I think that's also something I'm looking at is just something more streamlined and high level that just really gets across the state of where we're at,

where we're in terms of our accountability, what we're doing and where we need improvement.

but I

you know I'm

also welcome to have other commissioners

chime in with your priorities there but

yeah I'd say I have a similar priority and

I won't

delay the 2025 report

in order to have the other

two ready we'll have that

discussion

yeah so I may offer a suggestion

here so it seems that maybe

those historic

reports their values for comparison purposes right so there is a way to

build like I understand narrative parts will vary but there is a way maybe to

incorporate the data for 2023 to 2024 in 2025 as opposed to creating three

separate reports just because we need to create unless there is a I don't know

through the chair maybe to the attorney question whether we have that

requirement but to create it more as the comparison for comparison purposes

context versus standalone just to save your time I have a maybe another view

just the the posterity view of you know someone going back and wanting to look

through all the annual reports and where's 23 and 24 and so if it's you know

if it's all the same they might want to be different reports but I definitely

agree with what I'm hearing, which is you should focus on 2025, and maybe the other ones would be

much more abbreviated. Maybe you can do one that is the three years, or maybe you can have them be

separate, whatever. I would lean towards separate just for posterity purposes, but I don't feel that

strongly. I appreciate the feedback and I think I'll be able to work with that and see what the

options are. But and also, you know, to the commissioners, you're always free to to to set up

a call and give me your input on things like this as well, you know, because I think I am interested

in hearing. But, you know, I know we want to get on with the business of the meeting for tonight.

But but just like what is it? You know, if you want to express anything that what is of value to

you in these reports so that if there are things that aren't necessary and you don't

feel are of value to you or to the public and what the emphasis should be, I'm very

open to hearing that from you all.

Also, I do really, really like the shifting away from so much narrative in general.

I mean, data and fewer words.

Yes.

Any other questions or comments?

Public comment?

While I may not have the academics or the professional experience in the law, but I

I know how to write and I know how to do the research.

And because of my experience, I do have templates.

But when I write and my research is thorough

in the four corners of the rule of law,

I take my draft to a paralegal

and they format it for me.

And that's what I impress on a lot of folks who cannot afford an attorney.

If you have the ability to research, think, and be concise, and not all over the board,

that's what's important.

And I've given you the law.

I've given you statutes.

and yet your enforcement chief is going to dismiss my complaints

and you're going to support that,

I'm right now preparing another riddle mandate

regarding the suspension of Rule 29

that was insulting to the mayor.

You're insulting to the mayor if you support the enforcement chief dismissal of the complaint.

2537.

Because it addresses, ask your parliamentarian.

ask them what that means when the mayor declines to break a tie. It's final. You can't even

ask for reconsideration because it's a tie. Reconsideration only exists on the prevailing

side that doesn't exist. It's final. They cannot continue to matter at all. So what

your enforcement chief should have been doing is look at that. What does it mean

when the mayor declines to break a tie? But she found it necessary to dismiss my

complaint shame on all of you you know public comment now we're going to move

on to subcommittees and commissioner assignments we're not going to do any

new subcommittees or commissioner assignments this time and I will cover

Should I cover that, Director Dorian, should I cover my thoughts that I discussed with

you in this item or next item on future subcommittee assignments?

I think that, no, I think it would be appropriate under this item to let other

commissioners know what your thoughts are on future subcommittees and get interest.

In the meantime, we do have the only materials here, we have the termination statements from

two subcommittees.

I don't think there's any comments necessarily needed since we've already talked about them

in the last meeting, unless anyone has any questions or anything like that.

Great.

So what I have been thinking about is for, in March, setting up two ad hoc subcommittees,

for transparency. And just some ideas on that one. We want to, one idea is looking at the,

we've done three transparency reports. There was the report by the Goldman School Public

Policy and then two by the Public Ethics Commission itself over the past years. So looking, looking

at where we are against those reports. Also, we have brought in three major departments

in the last two years to talk about their public records, the police, fire department,

and planning department.

And I think we'll want to bring in IT this year to speak about what can be done there.

Consider general technical approaches to public records.

Also consider perhaps forming a transparency panel event, which would have city people

outside organizations, the press, some commissioners, to try to really look at the whole of transparency

and see what we can do, thinking about that sometime in maybe the Q3 timeframe.

And consider if we want to propose any improvements to the Oakland Sunshine Act, which covers

transparency, and also consider the mediation process.

We've learned a lot.

The mediation process for public records is mandated to be handled by the PEC, and we've

learned a lot about how to do that and how not to do that, and we want to see if maybe

we can make that more effective.

So if you're interested in that kind of work, subcommittee is three people exactly, and

in March I'll be asking for volunteers for that group.

And then the second subcommittee will be on the Charter Task Force.

So we want to provide input to the charter process.

And I know the mayor has put together a group and so forth.

And one thing we want to look at is build on the work that was done previously, the

previous charter proposals, because some we may still want to keep pushing.

And another item is I think we should take a look at the salary setting, because there's

different proposals for how the auditor, how the attorney, and how the city council all

work, and there's also issues of, you know, commission staff trying to do jobs maybe that

HR should be doing in terms of figuring out all this stuff.

So I think looking at how the charter could be tuned perhaps to make that more efficient.

And again, we've learned a lot about how that works and doesn't work over the last few years.

So it will be good to have an ad hoc subcommittee work on that, and then we can provide input

into what's likely to be a charter proposal for the ballot.

So that's it for me for the two subcommittees.

For the charter subcommittee, what do you envision as the timing if the task force is

moving towards a ballot measure?

Do you have a sense of how front-loaded?

I don't know.

because I don't really know how fast the task force is moving and all that, but obviously

we want it to be as coordinated with that as we can because it wants to feed into that

process.

What's our avenue for influencing the task force?

I'm not sure.

Okay.

And that's part of what I'll, you have an answer to that?

So, you know, myself and Chair Upton and Commissioner Michick all gave input to the task force.

And what I believe I remember from those conversations was that they're going to be producing a report with recommendations.

And then, you know, our elected officials will be taking it probably from there.

That will be like a, you know, a further process.

And so far, I don't have any knowledge yet of whether something's planned for the June ballot or whether they're thinking of the November ballot.

But I think, you know, it would be good for us to be prepared for this and already have our ideas for, you know, to be able to give our input that are well thought through.

One thing we could do theoretically maybe is if it becomes, say they're going for June

and so we're going to be pressed for time is to maybe even get the subcommittee started

before then so we can find out who commission, which people might want to be on that and

actually form it.

Because just to let everyone know the subcommittee forming is at the discretion of the chair

and it can be done at any time.

So if there are interested, who's interested in the charter subcommittee?

I would be interested.

Okay.

Either one of you two?

All right.

So potentially, okay.

And then who else?

Okay.

Okay.

And then we also have the mayor appointee as well.

Sorry.

To consider.

So it looks like we've got people who are interested in it.

So why don't you check on, Director Durant, check on the timeliness as best you know,

and we can make a determination about forming this quickly.

And then you both can think about which one you want.

And transparency can wait until March.

That's a glacial process.

All right.

Anything else on subcommittee?

Sure.

Oh, you have-

Did you still want to have staff answer the commissioner's questions about some of the

the issues that were raised about what's an appropriate ad hoc committee and what are

the...

Yeah, I mean, obviously the person who answered those questions is not here, but we should

have those answers.

That'll be on video, and we said we would answer it at this meeting, so let's do so.

So actually, Mr. Luby and I have talked about this quite a bit, so I don't know if you would

rather go, Mr. Luby, or I could give a quick summary, and if people want to go deeper and

what's our preference?

Whatever you want.

So I guess I would just point

commissioners to that

for the PEC

the ability to have the standing

and ad hoc subcommittees

is defined under our operating

policy article 5 section 1

but the Brown Act

is what governs our public meetings

requirements for these committees

and ad hoc

subcommittee that conforms with our PEC policies and definitions of an ad hoc subcommittee would

would be exempt from Brown Act meeting noticing requirements and and the reason is that so according

to our policies the chair has a discretion to create the ad hoc subcommittee identify its

purpose and appoint commissioners as members so one of the things that make qualifies it for the

exemption is that these ad hoc subcommittees are advisory only. They investigate issues and

provide recommendations or input to commissioner staff, but it's the full commission that takes

action and determines outcomes. That's not the role of an advisory committee. They are temporary.

Under our policy, they must dissolve within one year or at the time their purpose is fulfilled.

they do not comprise a quorum they must be three persons or three commissioners or less

and only commissioners may be appointed as subcommittee members there is no provision

for a staff person to be a member of a subcommittee or a member of the public to be

a member of a subcommittee and it is not our practice to do so

members outside the commission sometimes participate in subcommittees to give information

or input as requested as guests.

That does not constitute being a member of that committee.

They're not part of the decision-making.

Similarly, when staff attend these meetings,

they're there in the normal staff role of support.

It's the commission that is the body,

the commission members that are the body.

So, and I guess I would just also point out

in terms of whether the purposes are appropriate

for an ad hoc committee,

the PEC did add clarifying language and practices to its policies so that we now always have as

public record a written statement of purpose for these ad hoc committees, minutes, and a termination

statement. They're all part of the public record. So commissioners and the public can both see

whether we're adhering to those requirements, the limited nature of the scope, the dissolving

when the purpose is complete, et cetera.

So that's my sort of quick and dirty explanation, and I would definitely defer to Mr. Luby to

fill in anything I may have missed or misstated.

MR.

I do want to channel Mr. Cairns for one minute here in the sense that I think he claims

that if some noncommittee member is present at a ad hoc subcommittee meeting, that that's

somehow a violation of the Brown Act.

So can you address that question?

I think, is that a fair characterization of this question?

Can you address that?

So to dovetail with the great summary from your director,

the Brown Act defines an ad hoc committee as one that's temporary,

one that has not a fixed meeting schedule,

that is advisory to the main body

and that is solely composed of less than a quorum of the main body

and only of members of the main body.

Now, that's the membership of the ad hoc committee.

that membership requirement doesn't prevent the ad hoc committee from meeting with staff or being supported by staff or inviting members of the public,

such as people who the committee is interviewing, which is commonly done throughout the state.

Thank you. I think that puts that to rest. Thank you.

And the idea is that because the Brown Act defines ad hoc committee in a way that is being upheld by PEC,

there is no conflict between the Brown Act requirement for the standing

committee that is not ad hoc temporary committee and yeah.

If I understand you correctly, there's no conflict between the PC operation

policy and the Brown Act. The PC policy goes a step further and defines

temporary that the ad hoc committee may not exceed more than a year and has some other

requirements that the director just went over, but

a standing committee is subject to the Brown Act.

So that's the distinction.

And the standing committee fails one of those four tests

that I mentioned under the Brown Act.

So by virtue of not meeting one of those sort of four criteria,

we are sort of ad hoc, and then that's outside of the purview.

Yes.

So, for example, if you gave a fixed meeting schedule

for an ad hoc committee, that would make it a standing committee.

If it had an ongoing subject matter jurisdiction,

then it would become a standing committee and be subject to the Brown Act.

If it had some kind of final authority, then that would also make it a standing committee.

Thank you.

And then in terms of the fixed schedule,

if, let's say, during the first meeting of this ad hoc committee,

we discuss when we meet, does it violate...

We establish the next two meetings after the first one.

I don't think two meetings is going to violate it but an ongoing fixed schedule like a posted

annual schedule yes that would be problematic okay got it thanks thank you I just I just kind

of want to say I think this is a really good discussion for us to have I mean especially

when you're considering the committee's next month or they're being announced now you sort

of have a baseline that you could ask these questions so if it sounds like the purpose

of an ad hoc subcommittee is sort of drifting beyond that definition you know these are

things that we should bring out in the open and then we can make the appropriate choice

here.

Right and I also want to since we are an ethics commission I want to be very aligned

with the spirit of the law and not try to wedge something that's really kind of a standing

thing and into an ad hoc committee just so we can do that so and I don't think we've

done that kind of thing but.

Chair Upton, my apologies.

I just wanted to clarify on the fixed schedule has to be by law or by action of the greater

legislative body.

So the internal ad hoc committee creating a schedule for its meetings is no problem

whatsoever.

It has to be fixed by law or fixed by the main legislative body.

Got it.

Thank you.

So I'll just, through the chair, I'll just bring up a couple of sort of arguments that

Mr. Kan set forward and just get your response to them.

One is that he says there's no written opinion that the city has produced that states that

this is appropriate under the Brown Act.

And two, I think he asserted that the commissioner selection subcommittee by forwarding finalists

was in fact making a decision.

so if you could address those points I appreciate it well if the Commission

that still ever change the ability to to overrule the ad hoc committee then it's

not a final decision of the ad hoc committee okay just that second point

the first point was about no formal opinion right I'm not sure if there is a

FAQ or formal opinion that's addressing the use of ad hoc committees perhaps not

but I mean it's straight from the Brown Act the requirements I just listed okay

and you mentioned that this was done routinely through this is an exclusive

to the PEC that this is handled this way this is done in other bodies and other

jurisdictions as well well many bodies you invite members of the public to for

example it's common for ad hoc committees throughout the state to have to do

interviews so for example when you have a commission that does an appointment

process or a hire it's common for the commission that utilize an ad hoc kitty

to manage the workload for that.

Right, and it's common in your experience

for these ad hoc committees to not necessarily

be open to the public.

Ad hoc committees are never open to the public,

usually unless they invite the public

to the ad hoc committee meeting.

They're by definition

not transparent.

They're not subject to the Brown Act.

There are ad hoc committees that do

major public outreach at times.

I think San Francisco has a point and count

ad hoc committee, for example.

There are other ones like that, but

normally there's no public attendance unless there's an invitation.

Thank you for that.

I think, in my opinion, in a perfect world,

we would have the staff support and the resources

to make some of these committees open to the public,

but it comes down to a balancing act with resources and staff time.

And also just the commissioners themselves.

I mean, so if it's a public meeting, that means we've got to come down to City Hall.

Exactly.

And commissioner resources and time as well.

So, you know, I think we're going beyond the requirement in terms of transparency when we publish these meeting minutes and purpose statements and closure statements.

that's something that we implemented a couple of years ago for the purpose of transparency and accountability.

So I'm certainly comfortable with how we do it,

and I appreciate the clarification that we're on strong legal ground in how we do it.

Just one follow-up.

I think just picking up on the questions about the Commissioner Recruitment Subcommittee,

Is there something explicit in our operating procedures that we, as the full commission, have either access to all of the applications and or have the ability to override the finalists that are forwarded to us?

because if not, I think it would be helpful to have that

so that it's clear that what the ad hoc subcommittee doing

is not sort of making a final determination

in terms of limiting the number of candidates we may consider.

So that's just one question.

And the second one is,

because one of the factors you mentioned

was a constant subject matter

and recruitment is the recurring ad hoc subcommittee every year,

even though the candidate pool obviously differs from year to year.

I just want to be comfortable.

Is that sufficient to say it's not a standing committee and it's, in fact, ad hoc?

Because the pool of candidates is different.

To your last question, it terminates year to year.

That's sufficient.

It's not a standing committee.

Since it's for a different particular appointment, it's not an ongoing appointments committee.

and I believe your first question was whether or not the operations policy made, discussed what the ad hoc committee does.

I don't believe the Article 12 of your policy mentions the use of the ad hoc committee.

That's a process that's just been created by the commission, as far as I'm aware.

if that's the case i i think it would be worthwhile to make it explicit

either now through like our discussion or memorialize somewhere that

in in forwarding can't like finalist candidates

something to the effect that it's it's not sort of making a final decision in terms of limiting

the finalists we may consider i'm going to correct myself slightly there's not anything

about the finalists from the ad hoc committee but there is a clause in the article 12 that says

It's clause E that says the chair may establish a standing or ad hoc committee to review applications

and advance to the full commission for potential appointment, the most qualified applicant or applicants.

That advancement isn't necessarily final, though, since ad hoc committees are advisory to the main body.

So there's nothing that prevents the commission from saying we want to review other candidates

or we want to reject what the ad hoc committee's done.

It's not like the ad hoc committee's forwarding controls what the commission is allowed to do.

and i know the applications are they're public records that anybody could ask to see any

commissioner could ask to see um any any member of the public if you know in advance of this meeting

if they wanted to see who the other applicants are who are not finalists that's public record

that that is readily available um but i think these are things too that when we go through this

process in the fall that we might think through and is like is there a little something that are

I don't want to minimize it, but is there something we could do that would balance, add more transparency?

Maybe we do when the subcommittee decides to refer the finalists.

Maybe they do share all the applications and just say these were the people that we decided to interview,

just so that there's, both for the commissioners, more information and the public.

I mean, those are all things that we can do.

Right, and I think we could.

I would support something fairly general about ad hoc committees that says the Commission

can always do whatever it wants, including reject or modify or anything the ad hoc committee

work.

And I think that would then cover this case and any other case there.

Any other questions or comments about our subcommittee structure?

Thank you so much, both of you, for the work on that.

And I hope this helps us and it will help the public.

Did we take public comment on subcommittees?

I think not on subcommittees.

Okay.

Public comment on item 11, subcommittees.

Next item is future meeting business.

Any ideas for that?

Any public comment?

We are done.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.