Okay.

Good evening and welcome to the Monday, June 22nd, 2026 meeting of the City of Sacramento Ethics Commission.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the role to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Kelly.

Here.

Vice Chair Velasquez.

Here.

Commissioner Tao.

Here.

Commissioner Emory is absent.

And Chair La Faso.

Here.

Thank you.

We have quorum.

Thank you.

I would like to remind the members of the public and chambers that if you'd like to speak on an agenda item, please turn into speaker slip before the item begins.

The speaker slips are in the back of the chamber on that window sill over there.

After the item is called, we will no longer expect speaker slips, and you will have two minutes to speak once you are called upon.

We will now proceed with today's agenda, which is starts, which starts with the content consent calendar.

Chair, did we want to do the uh land acknowledgement and judge?

Look at that.

Thank you for that.

I uh Vice Chair Velasquez, thank you very much.

Please write if you're able for the opening acknowledgement in honor of Sacramento's indigenous people and tribal lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nissan, I'm sorry, Nissan, Nissanon.

I had it earlier, I promise.

Nissan on uh people, the Southern May do Valley and Plains, Miwok, Patwin, Winton, Peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the Native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous people's history, contributions, and lives.

Thank you.

And now we'll uh say the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Indivisible with liberty and justice role.

Thank you, both Mr.

Bredbird and Vice Chair Velasquez.

Now we will proceed with the meeting in the form of the consent calendar.

Do any commissioners have any questions on the three items on the consent calendar?

Minutes, log, follow-up log.

And if not, if any commissioner would like to make a motion to adopt, uh that would be great.

I move we adopt the consent calendar.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second by vice motion by Commissioner Kelly, second by Vice Chair Velasquez.

All in favor, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any nays?

Any abstentions?

Uh the motion passes.

And I forgot to say aye, but I meant to say aye, so it's four to zero.

Thank you, Chair.

And for the record, we have no speaker slips for the consent calendar.

Oh, thank you very much.

All right.

Uh we're now going to proceed to the uh discussion calendar item four.

We have a presentation by ethics commission independent evaluator.

Um welcome back, Mr.

Miller.

Do I need to do uh Mr.

Pardon me one moment?

Do I need to do speaker slips before Mr.

Miller presents or afterward?

Uh typically uh public comment is made after the presentation and before Commissioner uh discussion.

Okay.

Thank you for the opportunity to make that clarification.

Welcome back, sir.

Good evening, Chair of Faso, Vice Chair Velasquez and Commissioners, three of whom I've not had the pleasure of meeting.

It's very nice to see you all.

Um I'm Stephen Miller.

I am the commission's independent evaluator, and I'm joined by my colleague Trevor Tanagucci, whom you'll hear from in a little bit.

And also your city attorney, Mr.

Lindsay is going to discuss.

And in between those two, you'll hear a presentation of a report we've submitted on an active complaint.

May I interrupt you once?

I'm very sorry.

Mr.

Mr.

Lindsay, do you have something to you are cued up on the speaker?

Do you have something to say that?

Yes, but I mean, I was just gonna say not necessary with respect to this matter, but before Mr.

Miller's second matter having to do with the complaint, I think it would be more logical for me to go with my two before his because they would play into ultimately um background information for the commission, broad big picture before addressing the complaint at hand in Mr.

Miller's second matter.

Excellent suggestion.

So I think what he's suggesting is that after I give this little informational item, Mr.

Lindsay will give his and then we'll present the report to you on the active complaint.

I appreciate that.

May I make one uh do one thing?

Um, Madam Clerk, I got the impression that the agenda was designed to frontlight all of the items involving Mr.

Miller, Mr.

Tonaguchi, so that they could leave and not be here during Is there a reason that I should entertain keeping the agenda as it is so that they can leave.

Might there be a fiscal reason I should be thinking about?

I'll just interrupt you.

We would very much like to assist the commission and be part of Mr.

Lindsay's presentation, which makes sense.

And if it's a fiscal reason that you wanted to leave us, we will not charge you for our time here, of course.

We want to just give you the most complete training and informational sessions possible.

So you could take the fiscal part out of the table, but if you would like to excuse us, of course, that's your prerogative.

I I'm only trying to make my city council happy with me.

So I thank you very much.

I much appreciate that.

Would you help me, Mr.

Which which item do you want to move forward?

But well, the um it would be seven and then actually six, but if I may, Chair La Faso, um, in interest of time, both for Mr.

Miller and also Clerk Cuppy for later for their matters.

I don't intend to take a great deal of time.

I want to leave the bulk of the time without any for extension for both of them.

So just so that you're aware.

So I before it's my presentations.

Appreciate it.

Two quick follow-ups.

Number one, let's please do this before the meeting next time.

And secondly, would you just clarify by item number which are the ones you want to move forward?

Seven then six.

Okay.

Yes.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for your patience, Mr.

Miller.

Thank you for your patience, Commissioners.

Please proceed.

So I understand the commission has asked for this.

Um, I'm gonna call it training for lack of a better word, but you are not trainees, you are commissioners that we all work for.

But um, and I I uh we've received a number of questions from the commission that I'll try to answer over the course of what I have to say, but uh by all means interrupt me anytime um and or save questions for the end, whichever you would like.

Um I'm gonna give you sort of a higher altitude discussion of the place of the commission within the city and the role of the evaluator in the structure of the commission.

And I think uh Mr.

Lindsay's gonna just get into a little more nuts and bolts of your jurisdiction and the process, uh your process for managing complaints.

So hopefully the two will dovetail quite nicely.

Um the first thing I wanted to mention is the overall philosophy and policy governing this commission, which was set by the city council, and I think it's modeled largely after the city of San Jose, and is distinguished significantly from the other major cities in California that have ethics commissions, namely Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and San Diego.

Um and some of those differences, which reflect sort of the essence, essential philosophy of the commission, I would say the first is uh you have you do not have a staff of prosecutors, and we are not prosecutors that go out and search for wrongdoing and uncover wrongdoing and then go after wrongdoers.

We are, and you are essentially a neutral evaluator of facts, and that's what we are, and you then go one step further and apply those facts to the laws within your jurisdiction and decide whether and how to enforce those.

But there's no, we are not prosecutors, we are uh independent, neutral evaluators.

I think a second key philosophic difference between this commission and others is that we are gathered here today in public session.

You do not uh meet in closed session to hear testimony and to deliberate and decide what to do with our reports in many other or some of the other ethics commissions I just mentioned.

They do most of their business in closed session behind closed doors and come out and announce a decision.

And I think you have a uh philosophical preference for transparency, and we all operate in a fishbowl, even though that sometimes has its inconvenient uh times.

That's just part of what the philosophy of this commission has.

Um, similarly, you have no uh similar to city of uh to take that back, not similar to almost every other commission in the state.

You do not have subpoena power.

I think that's in keeping with your general role as uh independent, neutral, transparent uh body.

You're not uh you can't compel testimony.

It has not come up in the time that I've been with you, which is basically since you were created, where you have recalcitrant witnesses or uncooperative or conflicting testimony where you want to compel folks to come in here and testify before you under oath, you do not have that power.

You'd have to ask the city council, which does have that power to do that on your behalf.

Um, all the other ethics commissions that I'm familiar with do have that power.

And I, you know, I I can't speak authoritatively about all of them, but maybe you know it's very rare that that's necessary.

But but it is a different, different issue.

Um, and then this commission, um, like every other commission, has a very specific enumerated scope of laws that are within your jurisdictional purview, and a very specific set of individuals that you have the scope to investigate and enforce those laws.

And I think Mr.

Lindsay's gonna discuss those jurisdictional issues more.

Um, and if if those of you who've read the report that we submitted, that jurisdictional issue is going to be front and center in what we tell you about the active complaint that we're discussing.

Um next thing I'll tell you about this commission and our work, the role I'm gonna sort of talk about the role of the evaluator.

Um I almost never have the pleasure of speaking to Mr.

Lindsay.

I think one of the the purposes of our role is to insulate city staff and in particular the city attorney from being put in a position where they are opining or investigating or evaluating uh members of the city that are in essence their bosses, right?

So city council members, and so we are there to insulate the city attorney from having to, for instance, investigate the mayor, as we have done for this evening's presentation, and to preserve the city attorney's independence, we do not talk to the city attorney during our investigation.

We do not preview our findings and say, What do you think?

Should we do, you know, we we just don't talk about it.

The only thing we talk about with the city attorney is if there is a matter of city law and interpreting the city municipal code that we think is ambiguous, the city attorney is really the expert on uh providing advice on what the municipal code means.

And just as they would provide that advice to anyone, we sometimes ask the city attorney, what is this section of the municipal code mean?

We do that divorced from a factual scenario, and we don't, you know, it's not part of the uh investigation itself.

Umilarly, we don't talk to the city clerk's office for exactly the same reasons.

We do have to uh have some interactions with the city clerk of a procedural bent because the complaints go through the city clerk's office and then come to us, and sometimes we have to ask the city clerk, like, what's the phone number for person X that you know better than we do how to contact that person, we submit our report to the city clerk, we deal with scheduling of hearings and sort of procedural matters, but we don't otherwise talk to the city clerk for exactly the same reasons.

There has been historically a complaint against the city clerk, and so it would be difficult for us to operate ethically and independently if we had any kind of uh substantive involvement with the city clerk during the course of our investigation.

So that sort of sets the high altitude of where you are situated in our our role briefly when uh the the process for our involvement, which is set 100% by the rules of the commission that you have adopted.

So these are your rules, and we're happy to talk about them, but you you can change them if you wanted to.

When a complaint comes in to the city clerk, the city clerk does a preliminary check, and there are some uh reasons in the in the your procedures that allow the city clerk to decide this is not a complaint, uh we're not gonna bother the evaluator.

But uh when appropriate, the city clerk sends us a uh uh complaint, and our very first job is to notify the respondent.

The respondent is the person against whom the complaint is made as opposed to the complainant, and we notify the complainant, we provide the complainant a copy of the complaint, we provide the complainant a copy of the commission's procedures, and we do that before we even really read the complaint.

We don't know what's gonna happen yet, but we want to make sure that the complaint the respondent has notice and uh opportunity to get ready for responding to a complaint.

Um our next job is to perform what your rules call a preliminary evaluation to decide determine whether or not we should even investigate a complaint.

Um and the fundamental uh lens through which we conduct this preliminary evaluation is looking only at the four corners of the complaint itself.

If the complaint alleges facts, that if true, remember we don't know if the facts are true, they're just anybody can say anything in a complaint.

But if those facts are true, if that amounts to a violation, we'll investigate to find out if the complaint, if those facts are in fact true.

But if even if those facts are true, there's not a violation.

We don't conduct an investigation, there's essentially nothing for us to complaint, to investigate, and we instead we produce and send to you what we call a no cause report, which explains why we don't think there's need for an investigation, and we'll come before you in a public meeting such as this and explain why, and it's ultimately your decision whether you want to accept our no cause report and dismiss the matter, or whether you want to say, nah, I think you should evaluate or you should go ahead and investigate this despite your finding of no cause.

Um the reasons for this, and the reasons why I think it's crucially important to have this preliminary evaluation stage, is I think the commission wants to set a balance between an open door to the community and asking the community to feel comfortable raising issues and complaints and almost inviting the community to participate in the process by holding public officials accountable and submitting complaints.

But on the other hand, um sometimes complaints are filed for reasons who knows why.

But if they are if there are frivolous complaints or complaints that, you know, you don't want to open the door too widely because then maybe you'll get taken advantage of.

So that's this preliminary evaluation is designed to strike the balance between an open door to the public but a high bar that you have to get through to get through that open door for lack of a better metaphor.

Um, and we have 30 days to conduct that preliminary evaluation, a little bit extra time if we're gonna to file a no-cause report, but you learn from us pretty quickly.

Um if we get through that preliminary evaluation stage, and for the two members of the commission that were here when we were last here, you had sort of a master class in the preliminary evaluation, because I think there were six or seven complaints, all of which we submitted no cause reports for, and so we went through at some length how that process worked.

But assuming we get past that, which will be new, I think, to some of you, we conduct uh as we you will hear and as we did with this complaint this evening, we conduct a full report, and we have a little longer time to do that.

I think we have 60 days from the time we get the complaint to investigate and prepare a report.

If we need more time, we have to have a good reason for it, and we have to get permission from the commission chair to take more time.

Reasons that I'd like to think are good reasons are witnesses are not cooperating and we need to talk to person X, and they're saying they'll only talk to us in three weeks, and so we just have to wait for person X.

Complaint comes in on you know, December 23rd, maybe we didn't get started until January 2nd, and so there's a week that maybe we get a free pass for the holidays, but generally speaking, um I can't remember whether we've ever had to ask for more time.

We take very seriously these time constraints, especially when complaints are centered around elections, and there's a coming election, we try very hard to get our report before you in time that you can have you know a meaningful uh impact in doing the important job that you do.

Um so what do we do?

Our job is to find the facts.

Again, we are we don't have a dog in this fight, we do not go after people, we want to learn the facts.

We will then apply those facts to the laws and share with you what we think.

That analysis comes out at, but for the most part, we are in investigating facts.

And so one of the questions we ask, we were asked is like, well, how do you decide what to do?

Um we uh prepare an investigation plan that identifies what are the facts that we think we need to know in order to evaluate this complaint, and then for each of those facts, we ask what do we need to in order to learn those facts?

Is it a document we need?

Is it a witness we need to talk to?

Is the both?

Is there credibility an issue?

So we need not only the documents and a witness, but we need another witness to attest to the veracity of those documents or the veracity of that witness.

But in all cases, we are uh looking for the facts.

There's two things that have come up in our work together before.

One is we always interview the respondent.

Um that's fundamentally because of due process issues.

We want to make sure the respondent has a notice of what our thinking is and an opportunity to explain him or herself.

Again, in the principle that we don't have a dog in this fight, we want to be fair to the respondent and hear the respondents' point of view and communicate that to you in case that's important.

Um we don't always interview the complainant, and I would say we rarely interview the complainant.

We treat the complainant like any other witness under the rubric that I just described to you.

If the if there are facts that we need to learn by an interview with the complainant, we will do so.

But we don't offer the complainant an opportunity to uh sometimes complainants have agendas or soap boxes, or we want to just photo you know, just the facts is all we're interested in.

Most of the time the complainants have said that in their complaint.

They said, I'm alleging facts one, two, three, four, and five, and that's a violation.

So we don't need to know what the facts are.

Sometimes we do, sometimes, you know, it's it's it's worth doing.

But I would say we treat the complainant just like any other witness.

Um, once we complete our investigation, we write you a report where we try to set out the facts, tell you apply those facts to the laws.

If it's conf what the law is confusing, we try and explain to you what the law means, and then we try and as best we can tee up a decision for you all, trying very hard not to be uh members of the commission pushing you one way or another.

Sometimes we'll say, we think this doesn't amount to a violation, but you might find this to be the important fact in which case you could do X and or Y.

We we do our very best not to um, you know, lawyers are very good advocates and we are lawyers, but we try, we're not advocates here.

We're not trying to persuade you that we are right.

We're trying to tee this up for you in a neutral, dispassionate way so you can do your job, which is um deciding whether the facts in fact are proven to your satisfaction and whether those facts amount to a violation of the law, as we have explained it to you.

Um, and our feelings are not hurt if you disagree with us.

Um, and um I think essentially that's you know that's why you are there and we are here.

It's because this is your decision, not our decision.

So I it's really sort of an overview of what I wanted to present to you.

Happy to take any questions or turn it over to your city attorney to fill out some of the details on the jurisdictional issues that he wanted to share with you.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Miller.

I don't think we have any speaker slips, Mr.

Bradbird, but I'm gonna cover that base.

That is correct, Chair.

We have no speaker slips for this item.

All right, we're still on item four.

So before we go to Mr.

Lindsay, do any commissioners have any comments or questions on this particular item?

And uh, thank you very much, uh, Vice Chair Velasquez.

So I just want to uh thank Mr.

Breadberg for introducing or reintroducing commissioners to the fancier system we have here in the new chamber, and I assure you that I will follow the technology and I will turn your microphone on by managing the speaker queue.

Um, and with that, you are recognized, Vice Chair Velaskis.

That is fancy.

Wow, look at you.

Um I just wanted to say thank you very much for that.

You said all the things I was hoping that you would go over to clarify all the things that have been misunderstood before.

So I really appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

Lovely.

Thank you.

That's not a tough, that's what we call a softball question.

Um, hey, I played softball.

Okay, don't it's tougher than you think.

Okay, you're absolutely right.

Any other commissioners have comments or questions?

I have a few questions.

They're soft, but you'll have something to catch.

Bring them on.

Okay.

Um I will start with a fun one.

So I appreciate what you said about subpoena power, and I ask a question in part because this commission has gone to the city council twice, a little bit in my early time here, but mostly before I arrived, asking the Supreme, excuse me, the city council for subpoena power.

And it's somewhat of interest to me because it seems to be the thing that this commission has asked the city council for that gets the most interest from the public and the media.

And I understand that it would be possible for this commission to subpoena something, it's just that we would need the city council to issue the actual subpoena.

I as I watched that discussion two or so years ago when I arrived, I tried to imagine how that process would play out, and I think I have an answer, but I thought I'd give it to you.

It has been represented in staff reports that this commission theoretically can subpoena, but needs the council to do it.

I don't know if you've given thought of that, but my question is can you lay out how that would function procedurally?

I don't mean to trap you.

I'll tell you what I don't know.

I mean, you know, that's an interesting uh I'm not aware of the distinction you're making that you have the authority to issue a subpoena, but the city council has to do the actual issuing.

I mean, that sounds like the city council is doing the issuing, but the answer to your question is I I think uh uh, and this is through the filter of just my experience in other places.

We would come to you and say, we think you need to hear from person X, and we can't get them here.

We need you to issue a subpoena, and that you would then probably need to consult with the city attorney about how to uh request the counsel to issue that subpoena that would command the attendance or the production of documents or both from person X before this body.

So that sounds like you know a couple of extra steps and maybe a little cumbersome.

But at the end of the day, if we're saying you we don't think you can do your job unless you hear from person X, and person X is refusing to appear before you, those steps may, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years, that's happened to me once, so it's not a frequent occurrence, although it was a very dramatic Perry Mason kind of story that I'll be happy to share with you sometime with the appropriate lubricant, but uh um it doesn't happen very often.

In fairness, uh, in the appropriate context, I'll look for that story.

What you said is what I thought.

I think in my effort to be colloquial, I was a little imprecise in the way I articulated it.

The the extra step that I was interested in is I imagine that uh that I know that of the four options we have in a hearing, one of them is to continue it and seek more information.

I assume from our procedural standpoint, we would have to opt for that, continue seek more information, endeavor to do what you just described regarding the subpoena, that would be the new information I imagine in this hypothetical matter I'm talking about, and then theoretically I assume that if this if the subpoena were issued by the city council, that it would you or the evaluator would get that testimony, you would revise and you would come back to us.

Or I suppose if the city council declined to subpoena the individual, you'd come back to us after we requested more information, and I don't know, maybe do your best to get whatever else you could get and then come back to us and say, Well, you wanted to hear from this individual, the city council declined to subpoena them, you were unable to interview them, and here's the matter back to us with whatever you had to bring back to us.

Is that generally how you think it would work out?

I think that sounds exactly how it might work out.

Appreciate it.

One more sort of dual question.

I really appreciate what you said about the prosecutor role.

I've seen this in a couple places in an earlier training iteration, we were given a half an hour video to watch the Oakland uh ethics hearing process, and it spends a little time very seriously outlining the role of the prosecutor in the context of the hearing alone.

And I don't I don't recall what I read or figured out at the time as to whether that was, you know, a role that had worked its way to the hearing, and then that individual continued that role in the hearing.

I will also say I've heard through the grapevine from responsible advocates that there have been episodes where complainants have objected to our process and wanted themselves to be able to adopt a more prosecutorial role in the hearing.

I don't think that's appropriate.

But given that there is some criticism of this commission in that we don't seem to actually have convicted anybody in eight and a half years, which I don't think is a flaw.

I think a thorough hearing of a complaint against an elected official with some kind of an exoneration as an honorable result.

But I if you have any thoughts about other commissions that have some kind of prosecutorial role or your experience with public uh input on or public reaction to a prosecutor role that you could comment on.

Um, so my comment is I view this as fundamentally a policy issue, and so I don't have a recommendation.

The the ethics commissions that I mentioned that adopt a have a staff of prosecutors, they do their jobs too.

Um, so I think it's really fundamentally uh a policy role.

Um I think in our role, we try very hard to make sure that anybody who has a valid and appropriate dog in the fight has an opportunity to have their position heard in our report, and they're welcome.

This is a public hearing, anybody can come and talk to you.

So I'm unaware of the situations you mentioned where someone in the public feels that they were somehow denied some rights.

I would say that is a uh it to the extent that's true, that would be a failure of our work if the result was that people didn't feel that they had that kind of opportunity to be heard by you.

And I think that's very much the philosophy of this commission is to have an open door, as I mentioned, and so everybody should feel able and invited to both participate in our uh investigations and appear before you.

I I guess I'm remembering, you know, I can think of times when the complainant has not been happy that we chose not to interview that person, and their complainant is has come before you in the public meeting and explained that.

But I think part of our job is to decide how to conduct the interview and who we need to talk to, and I think it's in our very much in our discretion to decide whether that includes the complainant or not.

And for the reasons I explained, we often don't.

I appreciate that comment.

I do want to be clear I'm not pressing for any kind of changes or reforms, but I am very interested in it because one thing that we as commissioners do is we um some of us have gone around to local groups and talked about how our commission works, partially in light of the fact that our commission is largely complaint driven, so it helps for citizens of our city to understand what who we are and what we do.

And what you explain that I hear is a what I think a very sort of fulsome practical uh explanation of things that members of the general public want to know.

Sort of if I'm a complainant, what's my experience gonna be like?

And I think that your commentary here is very helpful to us just in filling in the the picture for us a little bit more as we speak to members of the general public and talk about sort of what it's really like here, especially since some of us actually don't have that much experience, but I've only been here for two and a half years.

Um anyway, I appreciate your comments in that thing.

Great.

Are there any other comments or questions from commissioners before we move to the next item in Mr.

Lindsay?

Seeing none, thank you very much.

We're we're here all night, so uh ask away if anything else comes up.

Mr.

Lindsay, you are on.

That means we are moving to item six, which I oh we're doing okay.

Yes, oh I should have pulled a paper agenda.

Okay, so we are on the power point.

Okay, thank you.

If we're gonna do item six after item seven, Mr.

If I could.

I'm not gonna I'm I should say that I intend to not take a whole ton of time, and I definitely want and understand that potentially the complaint issue itself might be, you know, one of great concern and a lot of questions and so on.

So I don't want to cut into too much time with that.

So understood.

We are in item seven training on scope of the ethics commission.

Mr.

Lindsay, thank you.

So, Gary Lindsay, uh, counsel for the ethics commission.

Um, this is what I tend to address is sort of an overview of the um uh subject matters, persons that are within the uh jurisdiction of the commission itself from that lens in it to basically expand upon this from a kind of a even higher up level what uh Mr.

Miller had addressed.

Um I want to preface this by saying that uh there are about a half dozen different city code sections that are some of them quite long and detailed that the um commission theoretically has jurisdiction over, which can have many issues within it.

This is intended as a generalized overview.

Um, as it comes to any particular code sections and so on.

I strongly encourage any of you if you have any questions to give me a call, and I'd like to set up a time to speak with you about it.

Um if you have any questions about this doesn't make sense to me in this particular point three oh code section or I don't understand this definition, that sort of thing, where we can do a uh deep dive is particular matters.

I've for instance I've spoken with uh Chair La Fazo before, Chair Yang, other members throughout the years, that sort of thing, when issues will come up when they have questions.

So for anyone who's new or anyone who's been here a while, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about specific code sections, that sort of thing, and um what's their interpretation or how does it relate to um issues that you might have in your head as far as I think this is a particular issue for the ethics commission, um, either something that we passed came by, and I just still don't understand it because this code section or how it's written.

If those sorts of things come to mind, feel free to give me a call so we can set up a time to talk in in that level of detail.

I wanted to specify that.

So with that, I'll move forward.

Okay.

Hopefully, so uh the uh jurisdiction of the commission is that's kind of small.

The jurisdiction of the uh ethics commission is within chapter 2.112 of the Sacramento City Code, the city code itself uh is generally available at that particular URL.

You can also find it if you just put into Google or whatever search engine, Sacramento City Code, it'll come up.

Just make sure you're looking for the city code.

They didn't get the county code to pop up erroneously.

And also you'll find with the city code also the um city charter in addition to the city code.

And one of the things I wanted to touch about on was the ethics commission itself.

The um code of essence generally, we've had some uh complaints that have come by over the years related to that.

Um, touch on lobbyist registration, uh, which is an issue, was also addressed as far as um the uh chapter itself amended at the suggestion of the ethics commission two years ago, and then also transparent government and public engagement.

In particular, I wanted to address the big picture as far as the ethics commission's in relation to that.

I think that's an issue that you had previously mentioned you wanted to have discussed uh Chair La Faso.

So um we with the commission, there is the purpose of the reviews complaints, and uh with respect to the city officials and their conduct, I wanted to mention when it says city officials, as uh Mr.

Miller uh mentioned in passing.

Um the city officials would be candidates uh for office, elected office, elected office holders within the um within the city charter, there are the what are considered charter offices, which are the city attorney, city treasurer, and the uh city clerk, for instance, and the city manager, who are the designated their employees or designated employees of the city who are specific specifically laid out in the charter.

In addition to that, the charter section that provides for them allows for the city council over time to come up with weren't weren't at the time designated charter offices, which are for this purpose is now OPSA for the Office of Public Safety and Accountability, and also the city auditor.

And within that, the charter offices, those specific four that were already named and also OPSA and the city auditor also fall within the um within the ethics commission's jurisdiction.

That's in addition to, for instance, um lobbyists and also members of um boards and commissions like yourself.

We've had some issues, you had some issues before come up with different boards where they were the subject, particular member was say a subject of a complaint, and then um we have independent spot um expenditure committees also.

Okay, and this is just straight from the city code having to do with the authority to review, investigate, and uh consider allegations.

I would say that I want to point out, for instance, with as far as investigation, that's within the jurisdiction purview of the ethics commission and with what you just had with uh Mr.

Miller's the independent evaluator is how the investigations are handled, and that's that's his uh part of things.

So you can see here as far as I'll touch on a few things.

For instance, lobbyists who were in more heavily regulated since 2024, which I'll go into later, conflict of uh interests, including dealings, say like uh post-employment, say for city, um city employees at the charter level, charter officer level.

I wanted to uh address the transparent government and public engagement to get into that uh particularly for Chair La Faso having to do with uh in 2017 when there was the ordinance that uh the central ordinance that created the uh transparent government public engagement, which is under uh 2.5-1, the charter uh city of the city code, chapter 2.5-1.

You have various um city practices to be more open to the public.

Many of them uh the responsibilities being on the city clerk who would be one of the charter officers whose uh behavior is subject to the ethics commission, for instance, as far as the posting of agendas, um when they're posted, that sort of thing.

In addition to that, even though most of the things have to do with I would say have to do with the city clerk, including um dealing with information and making it available to the public as far as public um information as far as public records act requests.

There's issues of um retention and making them available, retention and um documents, that sort of thing, and make them available to the public.

You all do have provisions, for instance, having to do with um uh donations that are behest to uh say the mayor or the city council, that sort of thing, and whether or not they meet the reporting requirements about a behest if it's going to be related to an issue that's going to become before the council, right?

In addition to that, um, there's still requirement with the the uh transparent government and public engagement code, uh responsibility for all the electives and the employees of the city council to still abide by the um uh political form act for California, uh be it say for campaign finance with electeds, conflict of interest, be it electeds or not, that sort of thing, which would all be if it's the employees at the level, at least those charter officers, would still be within the purview of the um of the ethics commission, that sort of thing.

If it's for instance, say um below that, say, for instance, state city attorney, right?

So I'm a um I have delegated authority through the city attorney, but it's only at the charter office at the city attorney's level that's within the uh purview of the ethics commission, right?

Whereas people underneath the city attorney, city treasurer, opsa director, that sort of thing, would be a personnel matter internal to the city.

Did anybody have any questions about that?

Any questions?

And then I'll move on.

Feel free to interject if you have any questions, I should say.

Feel free to uh cue up on the speaker queue when the chair will recognize you if you have any questions.

Thank you.

So with that, uh, including this is with the enforcement of admin penalties, for instance, that's the one of the particular consequences that the commission can ultimately have after going making ultimately findings as say, for instance, there was a violation is the opportunity to have uh administrative penalties up to five thousand dollars in the case of um situations having to do with uh related to say campaign finance and reporting, then treble, whatever the alleged amount that should have been reported that wasn't, whatever that amount may be.

So three times that would be the cap.

Whereas in all other matters, the total amount of uh administrative penalties, the value amount, would be $5,000 as a consequence.

So if you found, for instance, there was an ethics code violation by council member X, right?

Then $5,000, assuming it's not a campaign-related one, $5,000 would be the limit.

And then you have uh, and then within this, the jurisdiction, there's a quasi, there's a quasi-judicial aspect of fact-finding by the commission.

There's an advisory aspect of the commission to the city council, which I think in Chair Lafazo's mentioned over the course of this meeting at different times, and then also to the city attorney's office, for instance, and uh with that, you have your annual reporting to the city council.

Um, you have the review, and this has come up in previous meetings about the currently defunct FPC contract, which has been an issue with the commission, how that's going to be addressed.

Input on it to the law firms or city attorney's office to conduct sexual harassment investigations, which is going to be next meeting.

I didn't want to add that on to the agenda and risk uh cutting into the time of Mr.

Miller on that.

And then also provide an selection on evaluators, making recommendations, so on and so forth.

Um does anybody have any questions at this time?

Questions?

Members?

Thank you, sir.

Okay.

So as far as the commission and adoption of regulations and procedures, we're gonna get into more detail in the next item having to do with the uh procedures.

So I will just mention that and then here that that's going to be addressed in the next item in the in greater detail.

Uh and as far as um public trust, that's one of the uh code sections that we've or chapters we've had issue before, whether or not, for instance, and I'll just give you um one in the past, whether or not, for instance, a council member is using um office materials, access to computers, that sort of thing for one's office, versus um, say if the council member has a nonprofit or other organizations which which the council member is involved or the head of or board member and so on.

Okay, so we have prohibitions against nepotism that and also um I would say with the whistleblower um protection policy.

There's required compliance with it.

We also have um with that we have um, for instance, the city auditor, they'll look into whistleblower complaints, that sort of thing.

So I want to mention that now because that's going to come up in the training where you can have, for instance, uh in the training having to do with the procedures, you can have instances of where somebody's alleging something through the whistleblower complaint, and it might be a hybrid where what they're alleging is partially an ethics matter, partially not, and that's gonna be an issue when you get to complaints when I address them later in the or the process later in the next matter, the next next item.

Is you where you have your ethics and sexual harassment training, which I believe you've already gone through, and there's mentioned the political reform act.

I would like to um address the 2024 changes to lobbyist registration reporting.

Uh those were at the actual um yes of the ethics commission itself, Chair La Fazo was here at the time.

Uh and I don't know if Chair Emory was here at the time, I believe, so maybe it had been discussed by the commission before Ms.

Emory and I arrived.

It was adopted by the city council after we arrived.

Oh, okay.

Thank you, thank you.

So, uh, to condense this, basically, with the it was tightened up uh regulation as far as lobbyists, as far as having definitions that would apply not just to a particular person, but also try to capture various forms of groups of people who collectively in one way or the other in their group actions were acting as lobbyists to try to bring that within the purview of the um the uh commission the ethics commission.

And then one thing I think is probably maybe the it hasn't come up as an actual issue as a complaint yet, but the new prohibition within 2.15 as far as behested, as far as um violations for gifts, whereas within a month a um gift in excess of ten dollars, for instance, right?

Is prohibited currently under this the city code from a lobbyist to a city council member, right?

Now, with that particularly any gift violating that, it's not only a prohibition against that being done by a lobbyist, but now for a council member to knowingly accept such a gift, which wasn't the situation previously.

So, with that, that's an o that's now new potential avenue for future complaints, should some issue of that or at least alleged issue of that happen with respect to a city council member, whereas before a potential complaint would only be against the lobbyist involved.

Okay.

Do you have any questions?

Any questions?

Yes.

Commissioner.

I didn't quite catch that.

So before, with the as far as regulation of the lobbyists with the ethics commission, there was already existing prohibitions about um uh gifts to members of the council, right?

Um so on that end of say if you want to call it a transaction, right?

With respect to the lobbyist, where there could be a potential complaint against the lobbyist, because that would be a violation on behalf of the lobbyist to give the gift in excess of the ten dollar amount within the month, right?

But on the other end of the transaction, if you want to call it that, with the city council member, there previously was no prohibition in that conduct, as far as if the city council member knowingly, knowingly accepted a gift that would violate the gift limit from a lobbyist.

So now you have a new avenue by which potentially there could be complaints or regulated action of city against the city of a city council member with respect to lobbyists, as far as if a city council members allegedly accepted a uh gift from a lobbyist that was in access to the ten dollars.

Thank you.

Quick follow-up on my part.

So um I I guess you said two things I gleaned.

One, you underscored that the substantive rule on gift uh limits from lobbyists to city council members had not changed, it was the jurisdictional issue, which creates an interesting contrast I'll note to campaign finance, because on that, as we'll talk about later, the only individuals we have jurisdiction over the recipients, not the donor.

But in the lobbyist context, you're saying we have jurisdiction over both the donor and the recipient.

Yes, General Fox.

And since you mentioned behested payments, and I'm hoping everybody knows what a behested payment, that's when an elected official asks someone to donate to a third party, like say a nonprofit.

This is probably a big deal when all of the city council members 12 years ago were in canoes on the front page of the B asking for donations to save the city pools.

Um, that notwithstanding.

Um, did you mean to say that there were old rules on behested payments as it related to city council members asking lobbyists to donate to third parties and the rules haven't changed, and it's just a jurisdictional issue?

Or were you saying that the rules on behested payments had also changed?

As far as reporting, as far as uh reporting, as well, you're saying it's so that it behested a payment occurred, and then reporting if it relates to a matter that's going to be coming before the city council.

So you can you just clarify?

So city council members are allowed to request a lobbyist to make a to make a donation at the behest of the elected official, hence the name to a third party.

The only difference is now they have to report it.

Right.

If it's going to become a issue that potentially they could be on the dais in an issue related to that subject matter, and where they also did a behested request of third that third party much who might be a lobbyist on that issue.

Thank you.

Which, for instance, as you mentioned, also issues having to do with um over the years, say related to homelessness have come up with like behested payments to um nonprofits and so on, and also payments by leave hospitals in the past on certain issues and that sort of thing.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay, I think um actually I'll just go over again.

But I think the main thing, what point that I want to address, I think I already pretty much addressed it, though, is that you have for the most part um practices for the most part by the city attorney's office or city clerk's office as far as the agendas, um information as far as uh public records, maintaining public records, the posting of agendas, when they're posted, that sort of thing, um, the maintaining of data by others within the city, uh in addition uh in behind for instance, behested payments, that sort of thing uh would be the subject matters as long as they touch upon say a city, a city official in the form of somebody on the council um one of the the uh charter office holders or opsa director or um the city auditor in addition to potential for lobbyists or board members for instance of the uh commissions including this one boards and commissions including this one okay and I mentioned uh some of those the ad hoc committees would be ad hoc committees by the city council so not ad hoc we've had ad hoc committees here there's specifically ones done by the city council for instance that are um regulated by the Sun signed ordinance uh as I mentioned public records access we have a for instance a public records portal that's maintained by the city clerk's office so that people can learn more about what city records for instance have been released or available or public records that can be attained or read or reviewed by members of the public including ones that have been requested through the by others through the public records act um the city the state law having to do with the public records and making them available in general by both state and uh local governments anyone else in that actually there's the portal right there that's interested and there are there any questions questions thank you sir please proceed okay oh I think actually a commission oh I'm sorry Ms.

Emory Commissioner oh did I turn you off I'm sorry not not used to these anymore um so I guess there's just you know as it's sort of rattling my head going I've always noticed this thing within the commission is like it says the conduct of members and that seems to be in some ways a squishy term um because some people go I got elected because I'm a plain speaker I don't care who knows and and if you're offended so what now the people are going but should you so how you know because sometimes city council members I think maybe say things that I'm wondering is that really the proper thing to say does that are going to ethics or not but how do how is that ever determined I realize this is probably a much more philosophical type question but that term is always because there has been this thing of how do you how would you when would you call the conduct of a member an uh an ethical issue I guess is what it comes down to I actually that that's well it's a philosophical issue and also also a practical issue and I'm actually uh very glad that you asked that question uh so I would say you know from a practical matter for instance if it violates well it could be state law also but uh the city code but I think what you're talking about is more of um things that maybe be an insulting outlandish would that be more so within that also is that the um ethics commission also addresses partially the um decorum aspects of uh the city council rules of procedure for instance the conduct at meetings that sort of thing but not say for instance outside of meetings okay so as a practical matter just within the meeting context when you have council members for instance on the dais there is as far there are there is the issue of regulation of that as far as the ethics commission um with respect to the decorum aspects of the meetings is through the city council's uh rules of procedure right but out say outside of the meetings then no that's but that would also have to do with like a public speaker if they say something and the city council member who they're supposed to just listen said anything to them would that also be part of the conduct during the meeting.

Well, yes, and they would have we'd have to go through the the um rules of procedure and see whether or not the particular one is a decorum violation or not but then they're also I would say without getting into any particular instance both for the even with the corn was both the speakers the members of the diet the council members of the diet and also in the audience there are a lot of um case law related issues about the First Amendment and that you don't necessarily have to have the coolest of heads when you're speaking or have to be necessarily courteous and still be within your first amendment rights to do so it is kind of a fine line when you get into the weeds as far as particular conduct of say for instance from the dais and decorum.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to clarify that's not something we would go and seek out that somebody has to file a complaint it would go through the city clerk and then it would uh go through the um independent evaluator that's not something if we thought on TV we would um I just want to clarify that has to go through the complaint process.

Yes yes thank you please proceed Mr.

Okay would you like to make move to the next item yes please okay oh wait I'm sorry are you you mean move to the next item as a move to item six?

Yes yes I have to ask the clerk if there's any speaker slips.

Oh thank you thank you chair I have no speaker slips for item seven.

Okay.

I have one.

Related to the campaign finance ordinance I guess all a long time ago I developed the idea that there's administration of the campaign finance ordinance that's under the aegis of the clerk and I don't know how it changed when the ethics are there any sanctions for breach of the campaign finance ordinance that are outside of the jurisdiction of the ethics commission but could otherwise be imposed by the city on violators of the city's ordinance?

I would say there possibly are I have to say I'm not the within the city attorney's office the expert on campaign finance for instance so if a matter came up for the commission having to do with campaign finance I would confer with my colleagues who are assigned specifically to be the experts on campaign finance but I I would suspect so that's all I could say with respect to that but I do not know within the weeds currently with the campaign finance.

But if an issue were to come up say for instance when you had the um issue with the timing where state law changed in the elections timing changed with the city then that would be a situation where it would confer internally within the city attorney's office to uh get up to speed on the particular applicable laws.

Appreciate that answer so we are now moving to item six I thank you Mr.

Lindsay.

Well and if I um if I could uh mr clerk do you have the flow chart as a I think it was the um included it as an attachment to the staff report.

Uh we do not have that prepared to show here but um if you'd like to um proceed with your presentation perhaps we can get it up in a moment.

Oh yes please please if I can see if you can do that I was gonna go based off the flow chart if we can get that up give us one moment.

Yes.

The famous blue chart.

I have a tablet in front of you you could put it on the dot camera screen there and we'll get that going.

Okay that works too there we go is that in the right spot is we're just focusing it now.

So with that, the reason I have the flow chart up is because, well, one, there are the procedures, and you're all learned people, and I know you've also seen the flow chart before.

So I didn't want to take an exorbitant amount of time, given that there's a flow chart, even though what I wanted to do is more have give you a lens of thought when you're looking at the flow chart and the issues that are being addressed, say internally, having to do with the clerk's office or the city attorney's office or with the independent evaluator as you go through the flow chart, that sort of thing.

Um, with that, I would so I wanted to address some of the issues as we go down the flow chart, what those issues are, and one of the reasons um I want to do that with you is that as uh Mr.

Miller and miss mentioned before, the procedures uh what they end up being, the text that is in there, is ultimately the outcome of the decisions, collective decisions of the ethics commission itself, uh which are subject to change.

And when I address this issue of the procedures, um, the what I want to convey is that these are not set in stone in that they could theoretically change.

If there is a will, the will, um, enough of the will within the commission to make a given amendment having to do with particular part of the procedures, um, if they see that that would make the procedures better in any way.

So I don't want you to think of these as authoritative in that this is because this is how things currently are, does it that doesn't mean that this will have to be going forward with how things would be done in the future, right?

These procedures are to be within the umbrella of the jurisdiction and not conflict with it, but then the actual handling of complaints, um, there may be as you go through in your time on the commission, ways that you think could be done better.

And I want you to have an eye for hey, maybe I see an issue here, maybe this tweak should happen, and if you feel that it's an issue, there might be one that should be brought to the commission as an approvement, that you don't think that there's something invalid or unworthy about having that idea when you might have a better answer to make the commission better.

This, for instance, there's been at least two revisions to these procedures since um I've been uh counsel for the commission.

So I want you, especially the newer commissioners, to know that you know you do have input and you shouldn't feel stuck with these procedures as far as if you think there's something wrong with them or invalid, or it could be better that you can't have your input heard at least and maybe persuading your other commissioners to make that change.

That's right.

So uh with that, when you have the top of about the top third of the flow chart, you have these the boxes for the city clerk's office.

And I would suggest one way of looking, this is also the way I happen to look at it with these issues, is you have the issue of is something a complaint at all, of anything.

If so, is it a complaint that's an ethics complaint?

And if so, if it's a complaint, if so, what regardless of these other issues, what do I ultimately do with it?

Say with your with the city clerk's office, for instance.

And the reason I mention that is for instance that we have the website for receiving complaints and um, you know, there's issues of whether or not technology I think Chair LaFazo's brought this up before, um, issues of technological access, that sort of thing.

Are we getting the universe of folks who would like to make a complaint, making complaints, that sort of thing, uh within that, there's the issue whether or not something is a complaint.

And I'll start before I go to the public making up complaint.

I wanted to um just make internally the commission aware of something as far as I've mentioned, for instance, we have the whistle um whistleblower, hotline, that sort of thing, and other issues, and I wanted to let you know that, and because I've dealt with this before over the years, that there is an effort even outside the city clerk's office, if there's something that might originally be for say the auditor, the issue brought up to the auditor, issue brought up to, say, potentially OPSA, an issue brought up originally with through the whistleblower um complaint line that if somebody has an idea that it might be an ethics issue, sharing that with the clerk's office to actually get that from internally within the city, even though it wasn't made as one to the ethics commission to at least try to get a situation where there can be eyes on it with the city attorney's office and the clerk's office to try to figure out if this should also be addressed by the ethics commission.

We've had whistle we've had ones that have come through that are actually initially whistleblower complaints over the years, for instance.

And there is, I just want to make it clear to the commission that there is an internal effort by those not even necessarily associated in the city, not necessarily associated with the ethics commission to try to funnel what might be ethics commission related issues ultimately to the ethics ethics commission, right?

Within that, for instance, though, you have issues of whether or not something is a complaint, and that um you may have text that seems indecipherable, you know, everybody has their level of um eloquence as far as explaining something in writing or knowing how to um you know code sections, that sort of thing, right?

At the city clerk's level, there's an attempt to try to find out figure out if jurisdictionally is it about somebody who is one of the ones I mentioned in the previous training, as far as subject matter for the ethics, or a person with who's under the jurisdiction of the uh ethics commission, and then also potentially if the subject matter.

Often, you know, you might have a situation where the one of the city code sections that I mentioned before isn't cited or the person isn't aware of the code section, that sort of thing.

So there is some level of trying to decipher that.

Did this person mean this?

Did this person mean that?

So on and so forth.

Um if it's appears to be outside of well, essentially not nothing's complaint, um, either it's about someone who um is not the subject of the ethics commission that's been you complain about, or that it's hard to determine if it falls within one of the categories at all, then there'd be a um dismissal of the complaint, but I want to also make you aware of that those three boxes having to do with um uh the clerk's office, including referral to the FPC, aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

And whether a complaint comes in and is ultimately um dismissed as seeming to be not within the you know non-jurisdictional on those grounds that I mentioned before with respect to the ethics commission, that there are efforts made to try to figure out, including involving the city attorney's office, if a complaint can be sent somebody where else, not just the FBPC, but anywhere else that seems to be appropriate, which might be, for instance, in some cases the city auditor, um, for example, or OPSA, that sort of thing.

Um, are there any questions about that level?

I well, since you bring it up, yeah.

Um you're not gonna like what I'm about to say, would you all share an updated copy of our rules of procedure with uh the independent evaluator's office?

I've started to notice that they're attaching an outdated version to the complaints, and the reason I noticed that is because there is a change we made a year and a half ago that I had a lot of thoughts about, where we used to have four criteria to dismiss a complaint for lack of jurisdiction.

The fourth one used to be that if an ethics commissioner was a respondent, it would automatically be dismissed.

We eliminated that about a year and a half ago.

I noticed that when I was talking about a recent case to somebody, and I pulled out the jurisdiction, and I was just looking at it from the one we have on our agenda.

But since I I noticed that I wanted to underscore that the criteria for dismissing a complaint, forgetting the one that I just mentioned, which isn't in the rules anymore, um, is it's not timely, it fails to allege an allegation against one of the individuals we have jurisdiction over, which but for the uh vicarious liability theory we've seen here twice is easy.

And the hard one is, and I have to read the entire section because it's stated in the negative, uh it says the clerk shall complete an initial review, blah blah blah.

The third option of the clerk is to dismiss the complaint for lack of violation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

If a timeliness, C, the person won, or B, it alleges facts that are not subject to any provision of the ethics law.

Now I've I've I'm just making a comment.

In part of your presentation, you've referenced lots of kind of general words that lots of people use.

And I've also noticed that sometimes complainants add lots and lots and lots and lots of um commentary that's not really helpful, and they have a few smatterings of useful things that might actually speak to an ethics violation, but it's hard to see them in the mass of other stuff.

And it's very hard to tell complainants, hey, you know, get to the good stuff and leave the the crummy stuff out.

But when you comment in early in your presentation that there are some terms that people use that are kind of general, like breach of public trust, or we see a lot of conflict of interest claims.

I had a conversation with you about a year ago, and I'm not complaining, I'm just memorializing.

If it alleges facts that are not subject to any provision in the ethics law, if you read that in reverse, that suggests that it is jurisdictional if it alleges any facts that are subject to any provision of the ethics law.

But I've noticed we've had complaints where somebody's allegation about conflict of interest or breach of public trust is so amorphous and doesn't align with lots of very prescribed case law meanings that those terms invoke, that it has seemed at times those things have not been deemed jurisdictional.

So I'm making a comment, but I'm asking a question.

When we read language that says, and then I've I've taken that negative sentence and I've rephrased it as a positive, that it's jurisdictional if the if it alleges facts that are subject to any provision of the ethics law.

Any comment on amorphous amorphous allegations that allege ethics violations but lack case law support?

Just that they're challenging.

I would say that, and this one of the reasons I addressed this is I would actually was hoping that you would speak on it as far as at this entry point as far as complaints, and that's why, for instance, mentioned that um that uh no commissioner should necessarily see these procedures set in stone, because for instance, as you mentioned, that might be an issue not just for yourself, but uh say three or more uh two or more other commissioners, as far as how complaints are addressed coming in the door, that sort of thing, and which is a policy matter for the commission, in which way do you want to lean as far as um the trying to be over-under-inclusive, more forgiving, that kind of thing.

And I I would, you know, that would be one of the matters I'd say if there is a will within the commission or if somebody wants to push for that change, that that would be an example of um that to which I'm referring as far as the potential for changes within the procedures.

I appreciate that comment, Mr.

Lindsay.

I have learned that um I'm not proposing anything at a previous meeting or this evening because for the for the commission to understand how it would want to change the rule, the commission needs to understand the current rule.

And if it's difficult to understand how staff applies it, it's kind of difficult to understand whether the commission likes the rules it is or what it would change.

And I will certainly comment, and I'll get to this later in the meeting that given that our city council seems to be hyper or conscious of independent council, excuse me, of of uh outside council expenses.

It seems to me that we want to be very careful about making any kind of rule change that's gonna result in complaints being forwarded to the independent evaluator that we may later learn maybe probably shouldn't have because they involved a lot of work and weren't terribly good complaints.

So it's a very difficult area for us to inquire in, which is why I've kept my comments very framed on just trying to understand how staff processes them and not even get into the question of what it should be.

Oh, I would say, as far as the city clerk's office and with respect to say, for instance, myself, as you mentioned, some complaints if the purported complaints, you want to call them, depending on issue, that they can be all over the place, and I would say that there's at least a good faith attempt, and even you know, the clerk's office contacted me to try to figure out if there seems to be some provision that one can hang one's hat on with respect to the given um purported complaint, that sort of thing.

I I appreciate this.

This went much longer than I intended to.

Thank you for your comments.

If I may um uh chair, I think it's an important issue, and it is it is amorphous, and that is also something with internally with that staff has to deal with too.

I very much respect that, and I hope this is a fruitful discussion, and my colleagues are tracking, and that again my goal is just to help my colleagues and myself included, just understand exactly where the touchstones are in the jurisdictional analysis that we can understand better.

That that's that's my goal.

I well, I will go out on the limbs and say that um there may or may not be a need for more touchstones in one direction or the other.

So, fair enough.

Any other questions?

Okay, with that, um, I I won't get too much into the independent evaluator, it's already addressed by uh Mr.

Miller very well.

I will say that um with respect to the independent evaluator, and this was partially this part was partially tested by Mr.

Miller, and I it relates to what I had mentioned before about the review aspect of the jurisdiction of the commission earlier that um with respect to the complaints that appear to as we had seen coming in be non-jurisdictional altogether, as far as we could tell amorphous amorphous um language aside, that um the commission itself is the final say.

The you know, these are recommendations by um the independent evaluator as to, for instance, a no cause finding out of the gate, or also um which is the situation that we're gonna have coming up tonight, or a situation where um out of the gate the independent evaluator thinks there is cause and goes further directly into an investigation.

Um regardless of that, ultimately, is the uh collective will and the termination of the commission itself that is the final say and should be viewed as the final say, and um, even as one commissioner or another um should uh value one's own judgment and not think that for instance the an independent valuator's judgment is the default better one.

I would I would say that.

And then um in addition to that, you have uh how what to do with a complaint, even if, say, for instance, one is found to be no cause and is adopted by the uh commission's finding as far as no cause, even with those situations similar to what's available to the city clerk, there might be a determination in addition to that no cause finding that there might be issues there that are the within the purview of some other body, and the ability with the uh uh resolution ultimately that would come out of the sorry, come out of the hearing here on that matter, that it should go to some other body.

So you do have those opportunities to do that as well, that sort of thing.

I appreciate any questions.

Any questions from commissioners?

And I will because I don't want to um you already had it from Mr.

Miller and he's gonna give you a real one as far as a no cause issue or matter before you.

I will just say that uh with the commission um you have several opportunities.

You make findings whether or not you agree with the no cause or not, you have findings whether or not you find that there are violations or not, that um that's ultimately your determination.

Um determinations of uh what findings you're gonna accept or not gonna accept, whether you're gonna ultimately dismiss a matter or not, in addition to that, ultimately whether you're at a um situation of a no-cause report and you're hearing that, or having to do with an invest full-bone investigation hearing that making the uh such determinations as to whether or not the investigation itself was uh sufficient or you believe is sufficient, or that enough due diligence was essentially was associated with it, and that if this is the collective will of the uh commission, that as Mr.

Miller mentioned, you can have him, you can instruct him to go back and do further investigations.

So you want to keep in mind that with the my um the earlier matter that I addressed, it included investigate.

Mr.

Miller is investigating on your behalf, but ultimately in that sort of way, since you're the final say on investigations, it's your investigations as far as at least the sufficiency.

And you might have situations where you know you want to go to the city council for subpoena, or you could I think this has come up passing, for instance, asked Mr.

Miller about exactly whom was whom was questioned during the course of investigation, and whether or not you might think there are others that should have been questioned, and wanting to find out, for instance, Mr.

Miller's independent evaluator, why some was um was not a given person was not questioned and he could give an explanation, you may or may not find that satisfactory, and you might as a group, for instance, a majority of a group, want to have some further investigation done, right?

Ultimately, if you do make findings as far as a violation, um, as I mentioned before, you have the opportunity for administrative penalties against the uh given person who falls within the jurisdiction after hearing's been done in which they could appear on their own behalf to address the issue, and for instance, address the their part of uh the matter as far as why there was not a violation of a um given provision that's the subject of the uh ethics commission.

Okay, are there any questions or questions?

Are you uh are you at the end of this item or you just yes, yes, okay.

I just I just want to make sure that no, I appreciate that.

I have to ask Mr.

Bredberg if we have a uh a speaker slip on this matter.

Thank you, Chair.

We have no speaker slips, okay.

Um, before we move to the next item.

Are there any final commissioner comments or questions before we get ready to go to the next item?

Uh Commissioner Emory.

I just I just need to say I do like the fact you use the word amorphous, because I think that is a lot of things that come in.

It's so uh I appreciate uh using that word, that's what I feel like many times reading these.

So just a thank you.

You're welcome.

Well, I'll go out on another limb, that sort of thing.

I while you know I read the procedures, I have my own take on them.

I am hesitant to put forth all kinds of recommendations about changing changes because I do not want it ultimately be my will being expressed instead of the commission's.

So that's why you know I don't necessarily jump out to recommend changes, even if it isn's a morphous situation, that sort of thing, because ultimately I want the procedures to reflect the will of the commission, whether or not I agree with them.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Lindsay.

I will just, in my own uh comment.

I very much appreciate both the comments you and Mr.

Miller have made relative to underscoring the commission's independence, both as it relates to the rules of procedure as well as our decision making on the matters themselves.

So I I very much appreciate that.

I just want to lay down that marker.

With that, I think we're ready to move to item five, the matter relating to our no cause matter.

And I do want to underscore to my colleagues that in 31 minutes, uh Mr.

Bredberg's gonna call for us to either adjourn or extend our meeting.

Just want everybody to know where we are in the timing of the meeting.

Please come up.

And that is not intended to rush everybody.

Anybody, I should say.

Welcome, sir.

Good evening, commissioners.

My name is Trevor Tanigucci.

And just to clarify, this is uh a summary of our investigation.

So of a complaint from Carlit Black, and our report was included with the agenda packet, which I'm sure you've read.

So this is kind of a full circle of the evening.

You've had a primer on the process.

Our role is the independent evaluator.

Now we're gonna dive into an actual summary of an investigation that we conducted pursuant to Ms.

Black's complaint.

So in analyzing the complaint, I've heard the word amorphous, the complaint contained a lot of different allegations.

And so giving the complainant the benefit of the doubt, when we synthesized everything that was contained in the complaint, what we were able to distill down were two potential violations of the ethics laws that are within this commission's jurisdiction.

So the first allegation is that Mayor McCarty violated the Political Reform Act by accepting campaign contributions exceeding $500 from a cannabis opportunity reinvestment in equity, which is known as a core permittee for a non-storefront dispensary, then participated in a March 25th, 2025 decision to extend those permittees opportunity to become operational.

The second allegation is regarding Mayor McCarty's 2024 mayoral campaign, in that that campaign violated the city's campaign contribution aggregation requirements by failing to aggregate contributions from NASA Zimi Teronomic Software and Ohana Gardens.

So regarding the first complaint, as first allegation, that's um as described in our report, the political reform act prohibits Mayor McCarty from accepting more than $500 in campaign contributions from a core permittee within 12 months of a governmental decision that specifically involves them.

So in this particular case, the decision that was raised in the complaint is a March 25th, 2025 City Council decision to extend the operational deadline for core permitties.

We examined all of Mayor McCarty's 2024 mayoral campaign contribution filings filed with the city clerk that are available on the city's website.

We also looked at the mayor's 2028 campaign contribution filings, and based on our review of all of those records, we did not find any evidence that supports the allegation that Mayor McCarty's 2024 or 2028 mayor campaign campaigns accepted a contribution from a core permittee within the 12 months of that March 25th, 2025 decision.

So based on that, we did not find that there was a violation of the political reform act by Mayor McCarty or his 2024 or 2028 mayoral campaigns.

Moving on to the second allegation, um the second allegation is that Mayor McCarty's 2024 campaign, mayoral campaign, failed to aggregate contributions from Terranomic Software and Ohana Gardens with contributions from NASA or Zimi.

And if those contributions were required to be aggregated under the city's municipal code, they would have exceeded the contribution limits set forth also within the municipal code.

As noted in our report, the city has a very unique aggregation requirement in that the intent of the city's aggregation requirement is to hold individual contributors liable, not candidates.

So it actually said states that um candidates are only liable for violations of the city's aggregation requirements if there is sufficient proof that the candidate had knowledge that the contributions should have been aggregated.

So again, this is a unique requirement to the city, in that the primary intent of the city's aggregation requirements is to hold contributors liable, not candidates themselves, unless they had actual knowledge of contributions being required to be aggregated.

So as part of our investigation, we interviewed the mayor, the mayor's campaign manager for his 2024 mayoral campaign, as well as his campaign treasurer.

Through those interviews, we established that the mayor had no knowledge of whether any of the entities that made contributions to his 2024 campaign should have been aggregated together.

We go into detail in our report about the actual statements made by the mayor, his campaign treasurer, the uh his campaign uh consultant or manager, and so based on that, we did not find the sufficient proof that the mayor had actual knowledge that the contributions in question that were raised in the complaint should have been aggregated together.

And just as a you know, an additional factor is based on the publicly available information we examine, we didn't see a reason to further investigate the actual individual contributors.

Again, they are not within the purview of this commission.

And the intent of the actual municipal code is to hold the individual contributors liable.

Um so it's quite a unique situation for this particular circumstance.

So based on all of that contained in our investigation and with further details within our report, we did not find that there was a violation of the municipal code or the political reform act, and therefore our recommendation to the commission tonight uh is to dismiss the complaint and close the file for this matter, and with that I'm happy to answer any questions the commission may have.

Thank you very much.

Mr.

Tonaguchi, uh Commissioner Kelly.

I have three questions, and and forgive me because I'm fairly new to this process, and and some of this is I think it's contained in here, but I just want to have some clarification.

The complaint alleged that the that as to the pay-to-play issue that they were involved parties, but none of them were among the ten permittees of the particular legislation, right?

Correct.

They were they were simply people in the cannabis.

They were appeared to be wholesalers or the there were um specific entities that were subject of the decision that was raised, the core the March 25th, 2025.

The specific decision was extending the operational deadline for storefront cannabis dispensaries.

Uh we cross-reference all of those permittees with contributions or contributors who made contributions to the McCarty for mayor 2024 campaign, and none of them made contributions.

Second question, uh even though it's moot now, the pay-to-play thing is uh not viable.

I just had a question after reading all this material that it sounded like there needed to be some element of scienter um in a pay to play, like you have to know that the person gave you your campaign a check.

I I've never run into that before, and I can't imagine that the governor of the state knows all the people who've given him $500 or more.

Um I thought the general idea, I mean, because this is not a criminal matter.

Nobody's uh gonna charge anyone with anything, but I thought the idea of the pay to play was if it turns out that it was a contribution subject to these provisions, isn't the remedy you just disgorge or give the contribution back?

That's part of it.

The disgorgement requirement is within a certain day period, and I'm drawing a blank on the actual it's it's a rather short period of time.

So 30 or 90 days.

If you would have, you know, the Levine Act specifically sets forth a time frame in which you could give the money back and then be able to participate in the governmental decision.

But anyhow, I like you say I I wasn't aware that there was like a uh knowledge, and I guess maybe that's my final question on the aggregation issue.

So we don't have jurisdiction over the contributors, their aggregation issues would be maybe if they have to file a major donor report or something else.

Um, but again, as to the candidate, there's no requirement that that if contributions are aggregated because they're all really fundamentally from the same person or entity, that they have to disgorge the excess amount and return that.

So there is a requirement that contributions be aggregated, but a violation to hold some a candidate uh liable for violating the city's specific aggregation requirements requires that they are is sufficient proof that they had knowledge that the um contributions should have been aggregated.

But isn't it still uh in excess of the amount permitted?

Correct.

So so that and I get it.

They don't know because that they have different names on the checks, that they're all the same person.

But once you find out, isn't it in fact a violation of the maximum amount that a person or entity could give to the campaign?

And and and then shouldn't that excess be returned?

I can't say I get what I'm sorry, I get what you're saying that that there's no liability on the part of the candidate, but it just seems like the money somehow should be returned if it's in excess of the amount that candidate is permitted to accept.

I can't speak to the return part, but the the your point as to if contributions are required to be aggregation, uh sorry, aggregated.

Yes, there would be a potential contribution limit violation if they failed to be aggregated as required.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Kelly.

Commissioner Emory.

Um, yeah, this one I found very interesting because one of the contributions was for a previous office, and then that move money was moved into the current one, which is pretty common among candidates.

I guess reading this, and I know we had how many last year about the cannabis industry, six, seven, I seem like a lot.

And I guess it's um, yeah.

I've been a candidate profit for and and you on and this was a much lower level.

You honestly don't, unless it's your neighbor going, oh, I really like you and I want to give you some money, you really don't know who is making the contributions.

So when they talking to the mayor, yes, I can uh I can see this happening because that really is you're a candidate.

You're not going through and counting all of this.

But I it's really unfortunate.

I think there's a lot of skepticism in this country about campaign contributions and what they mean, and this is coming out this way that if somebody, you know, said they must have known and they knew they're going to get something, and it's a shame that this uh skepticism is there.

But this one was I found especially interesting because it did involve a much earlier contribution that when moved when no longer in that office and moved to this one, the money went with them, and um, and I noticed the treasurer did not, and I and this treasurer uh is very well respected is that they did not because I was reading all through then going, yeah, that's really a hard one to figure out.

So I think it's just this whole thing of skepticism about money in politics and our people being bought off, and that's really and it's really a shame because it should be about doing what's right for the public and not doing that.

But unfortunately, we do need that money.

Um, and that's uh interesting question, Mr.

Kelly.

I really have no idea either.

So thank you.

Just a few little comments on this.

Thank you, Commissioner Emory.

Any other comments or questions from commissioners?

I have three, although Commissioner Kelly gave me a fourth.

Uh when Commissioner Kelly asked about disgorgement, this commission doesn't have any authority to disgorge.

I'm I I don't know if you're the expert on the entirety of the city's campaign finance ordinance.

If you're not, that's okay.

But a propos of my asking Mr.

Lindsay if there were other sanctions in our local ordinance that are outside the jurisdiction of this commission, conceivably this might be one of them.

Disgorgement, that is, I I'm not entirely familiar, so I would defer to Mr.

Miller.

Yeah, I will just only add that the issue of disgorgement in around the state, not just here.

You can't unring the bell if you've accepted improper contributions, you've accepted improper contributions.

But commissions such as yours often consider the disgorgement as a significant factor to consider in deciding whether to enforce a violation and if so, what kind of penalty to require?

Um it's a relevant fact, but it's not, it doesn't unring the existence of the violation.

And that's the case with the FPPC as well at the state level.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Um now to my more mundane questions.

I just wanted to clarify, Mr.

Tanagucci, that the the the attachments, the exhibits, not the rules of procedure, but the partial staff report from the March 2025 uh core permittee extension vote and the various excerpts from the those are all the result of your investigation, or those were not provided by the complainant.

Am I correct?

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

There's a funny blue highlighting in the printout we get of the file that anyway I won't belabor it.

Um my second question is my bigger one, and it's a procedural one.

So as Mr.

Miller alluded, perhaps you did, Commissioner Emery did.

We had quite a bit of no cause reports last late last year, and they were all in the context of the complainants of the complaint failing to meet the sufficiency standard.

In this context, the complaint met the sufficiency standard, and I was kind of under the impression that if a complaint met the sufficiency standard, that that took it necessarily to a full public hearing.

And I'm not sure I've seen this procedural outcome when the sufficiency standard is met.

I don't object to this result.

I alluded to a resource efficiency issue we have, but can you elaborate on is it is it an innovation?

Is it normal?

Is it just my my ignorance and naive tay about complaints meeting the sufficiency standard ending in a no cause report?

So this isn't a no-cause report, this is uh an investigation, and I think the titling might be a little off.

We took the four-quarters of the complaint, assumed the facts contained in the complaint to be true, and based on our analysis of that, found two particular allegations that if deemed true would be warrant uh an investigation.

Thank you.

Uh I meant to double check the last couple sentences you've ever memo before the meeting, and I forgot, and you're right, the words no cause.

But the essence of my question was it's it's not that I want a full public hearing with all that that entails and drag the mayor down here and all that kind of stuff, but if if our rules allow for some flexibility in dismissing a complaint like this, absent a full public hearing.

Again, this seems irregular to me.

I'm not objecting to it.

Um propos to the discussion we just had, if our rules should be clarified to make sure that this outcome is is anticipated, or you're gonna comment, Mr.

Miller.

Yeah, so um I noticed just now for the first time the agenda does say describe to accept our no cause report.

We did not submit a no cause report.

We conducted a full investigation and submitted our report.

My understanding is that this is a hearing, and we are having the public hearing.

I guess I would defer to the city attorney as to whether this meets the commission's rules regarding the sufficiency of having a hearing, notwithstanding the fact that the agenda says no cause report, even though the materials associated with it and our report does uh we we conducted a full report and uh I would suggest that this is a hearing that we're talking at right now a second.

I appreciate that response.

Mr.

Lindsay.

Sorry, I think this is sorry, can you hear me?

The thank you for the uh the uh clarification, Mr.

Miller.

The short the short answer is this should be reagended as such at the next meeting.

So I'm correct when I read that our rules of procedure section 5.4 when section 5.2 says if the independent evaluator finds cause that we will invoke 5.3 and 5.4 and 5.3 says that the independent evaluator will produce a document called the independent evaluator report, and the 5.4 says the clerk shall uh schedule a public hearing that that's the course we have to go down, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Um, okay, so we're gonna have to cast a vote, but we're still doing our agenda item.

Um, so I'm gonna pause because I'm gonna ask Mr.

Tanaguchi one more question, but I'm gonna ask you to think, Mr.

Lindsay, about what the title of the motion is that I'm gonna ask my colleagues to make to reagendize, but I'm gonna give you a moment to think about that because I'm gonna ask one more question of Mr.

Tanaguchi.

Sir, I'm intrigued by aggregation because we had another non-jurisditial complaint that caused me to start reading about some uh short-lived FPPC regulation about aggregation.

You commented this was unique.

And because it was non-jurisdictional, I didn't go very far in my research, but I had the sinking feeling that after the FPPC promulgated it, there was some litigation around it, and they repealed it in response to that litigation.

Um if you have any thoughts to enlighten us on the legal perils of aggregation rules, the only purpose of my comment would be for our city council or our city attorney's office to hear about that.

I don't have to belabor this issue, but I was awfully intrigued by this issue because I had to figure out how to interpret another complaint a couple months ago.

I'm not entirely familiar with the entire history regarding the FPC's rulemaking process.

I will note, as we noted in our report, that the FPBC has promulgated and adopted a regulation specific to limited liability.

Sorry, LLCs, limited liability companies, um, but that does not extend to corporations.

So there is a specific uh reporting requirement as an LLC to designate who the contribution is on made on behalf of, um, but that same requirement doesn't apply to corporations.

And uh also noted our report, we did take a quick look at some of the other jurisdictions we're aware of that have ethics commissions.

Um we were able to find none that actually have a commission that have this specific intent to punish contributors, not the candidates.

Uh but you know, as we noted in our report, the city of Monterey has a very similar requirement to that of the city of Sacramento, but the the city of Monterey does not have an ethics commission.

Appreciate that.

That's very helpful.

Mr.

Lindsay, if you have any thoughts you want to share with your colleagues, that's it's completely at your discretion.

Uh with that, um, we're we're headed to a reagendizing, but uh since we're still on the matter at hand, uh, before I recognize Mr.

Lindsay, are there any final commissioner questions or comments?

Seeing none, Mr.

Lindsay.

Oh, sorry.

I would say that the motion should be a um motion to continue this for public hearing in compliance with uh any applicable notice requirements for the FIS Commission procedures, including to the uh respondent, which is probably an issue, and um so that also the potential um agendized options for resolution are in accordance with those that would be following an investigation and public hearing.

Appreciate that, sir.

Um without ask asking the commissioner to repeat that.

Uh, does anyone want to make a motion to continue the matter for a public hearing with?

Oh, do we have to take public speakers?

Uh, we do, and we have no public public comment speakers.

Thank you for that.

Good luck.

Um, Vice Chair Velasquez.

I make a motion to whatever the uh Mr.

Lindsay said.

Is there a second?

I second.

All right.

Motion by Vice Chair Velasquez, second by Commissioner Emory.

Any final comments or questions on the motion?

Seeing none, uh all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any any dissents?

Any abstentions?

Matter passes five to zero.

Thank you, everybody.

Um we've moved around, and I believe in the nine minutes we have.

Assuming we don't do matters not on the agenda, we can talk about item eight, which is a report out from uh the ad hoc committee on auditing that we created.

Thank you very much, Mr.

Tanagucci, and Mr.

Miller, thank you for staying.

Sounds like we'll be seeing you again.

Um the number one thing in putting this report out to you was to show that we were responsive to you and that we would let you know what we were doing.

Uh we don't want to belabor this.

Uh the two things we want to talk about are some inquiries we made, one by me, one by Commissioner Kelly, and then get a little guidance.

So uh one of the issues was whether the city auditor ought to we got to think about the city auditor, perhaps auditing campaigns uh in an email exchange, the city auditor.

Well, there's a there's a semantic issue as to whether it's explicitly prohibited or simply not authorized, it's not authorized.

But more importantly, the auditor was very concerned about um the conflict, I guess is the word we're using about the auditor auditing the campaigns of their superiors.

Obviously, it's an issue that they're not auditing camp, they're not auditing council members, they're auditing candidates, but the auditor also shared with us that even when a city council member requests an audit of their own office, the auditor outsources that audit to a private firm to keep the conflict issues at bay.

So that's probably the principal issue, and there are some independent auditing uh comments um attached to your report.

Um probably the more interesting issue is the FPPC one that prompted this thing, and I will defer to Mr.

Kelly.

So let me just say at the outset, one of the points of this again is to be transparent to bring this back to the group, uh, the commission, and and ask for your input.

Um, I also want to point out we're not trying to do a post-mortem of what happened some years ago.

We're really this is a matter of discernment of what the city council and the ordinance really require.

And they contemplated some kind of a contract, and it seems apparent at some point we're gonna have to go back to the city council, and either we do the FPBC contract or we contract out, or we do some find some other way of nesting this in the city auditor's office with some sort of firewall.

Um, but I I think Alan and I are probably the chair and I are probably happy to entertain any questions you might have if you've had a chance to read the document, what your thoughts are, what direct?

I mean, we're really looking for direction.

What is the direction?

I don't see this commission as having a staff because that's the alternative is the staff thing.

I think the idea of the FPPC contract, which again could be an outsourced contract, was that you're getting those staff services, but you're not paying for full-time employees.

Um we don't just don't have the justification for that.

With that, I'll defer if anyone has any questions.

I don't want to, we've got five minutes left.

I want to give people an opportunity to say something.

Any comments or questions from colleagues not on the ad hoc committee?

Commissioner Tao.

Yes, first and foremost, thank you for the work of this ad hoc commission.

Um I think for me, as I reviewed all of the options, I'm I'm really glad that we are having this um dialogue today because I I do feel um out of the options that it seems like it might the FPPC contract seems the most proven and credible option.

I think they've already done this work.

They have the expertise, but my main question um continues to be whether we would want auditing only or an auditing plus enforcement.

So maybe a little bit of clarification of what that option uh is entailing would be helpful.

Commissioner Kelly.

Yeah, just to kind of respond to that.

So they offer this sort of package of services to these small jurisdictions, and that's the whole point.

Um, uh it's kind of during an election year.

They'll provide advice.

People can call up and say, how much can I give to a city council member?

Uh those kind of that and they'll they'll even provide written advice under certain circumstances.

Then in the off election years, they're doing the audits, and kind of one of the things I've learned from them is because I know nothing about audits, is that they can go really fast if with people are cooperative.

If they are not cooperative, getting back to the subpoena power that we talked about before, they will subpoena uh records because what they are doing is trying to get all the bank records and and look at this.

The other comment that's probably not in this that I feel the the need to kind of mention.

In the last cycle, a bunch of city council members got letters, basically warning letters, sort of the slap on the wrist thing.

They don't do that anymore, they have a I would call it a diversion program.

They're told me they're not allowed to call it a diversion program.

It's like traffic school.

So you have a minor violation.

You have to do the like online training and learn that there are time limits and you have to report at certain times and so forth.

Appreciate that, Commissioner Kelly.

I will say that one thing we're looking for guidance from is given the fact that, and I really appreciate that you noted that there's different ways to go in a forward-looking approach, apropos, is we thought it might be useful to ask the FPPC to come to the commission and share with you all what it looks like under the current state of the law, and then we could grapple with the implications and apropos to also what Commissioner Kelly said.

The ad hoc is kind of the staff in this context.

Is that something colleagues are interested in hearing from the FPPC?

Okay, I hear, I see at least.

Okay, Commissioner Velasquez.

Uh I believe this is uh on our last meeting um when uh the city the city clerk offered um or presented the contract amount that we are um obliged to and the amount we actually spent um on I believe there was a uh there was a underusage of I'm it's a very huge range because that was a month ago at least, but I'm thinking it was 30,000 or 100,000 or there was just a a large amount that was unused that we still were obligated to pay for.

Um so unless there's other companies.

I just I realize that the government city level that's not a lot of money, but to me that is.

So I'm not interested in um just paying money that we're not getting services for uh Commissioner Kelly wants to respond.

Yeah, I think I can answer that question.

Go ahead and put the FPPC.

And of course the people are running the FPC today aren't the people who were running it five years ago.

They simply pulled their records and they got paid uh a hundred and ten thousand dollars, fifty-five thousand dollars in two years.

Their records indicate that they spent 169 dollars and I don't know 169,000 uh on that contract.

So and this feels like he said she said from their standpoint, they provided about $50,000 more in services than they got paid for.

Um, Commissioner Kelly, I'm sorry I'm gonna interrupt you.

We're at 90 seconds before mandated adjournment.

So bear with me, please.

Members, we're either going to shut this discussion down or somebody's gonna make a motion to extend the meeting.

I move that we extend the Do I have a second?

Can I ask what do we have?

Do I have a second non-debatable?

All right, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Uh nays.

Abstentions?

Okay.

I hear a see a vote of four to zero.

I understand that extends the meeting.

That is correct.

Alright.

I apologize for that, uh, Rough Justice.

Please proceed, Mr.

Kelly.

So again, it's the idea from their standpoint, it's a package of services that for $169,000.

It would cost us over a million dollars to have staff to replicate what they do.

The alternative again is going to an outside contractor, which may or may not have the capability and the knowledge of campaign finance.

And again, I guess my final thought is I think we ought to at least listen to them and hear their pitch.

We can listen to pitches from potentially private contractors as well.

Thank you.

Commissioner Kelly.

I saw four commissioners interested in hearing from the FPPC.

I think it's good again, as Commissioner Kelly noted with a forward-looking approach.

Is our only power is to vet this issue with facts and information and develop something that's digestible for the city council that will engender their interests because only the city council can authorize this kind of thing.

And my personal opinion is they're only going to authorize it if it's well thought out and done.

And you cued up for a moment, Vice Chair Velasquez.

Did you did you uncue?

Yeah, I just want to we if we do have them come.

I want to I want to I want them to explain what what they were telling you about if the time unbilled if we if we ended up paying for the contract in full, but we on the books we don't show that we actually use that amount, but they're saying they there was more than that that was under billed.

I want to I want them to explain.

And we are more than happy, Vice Chair Velasquez, to let them know that question is coming and facilitate an answer as best we can.

Did you have something else you wanted to say, Commissioner Kelly?

I was just gonna say, is it appropriate?

Your microphone on.

Sorry?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Please, I'm sorry.

Is it appropriate to make a motion that we invite?

Oh for it.

I move that we invite the uh staff from the Fair Political Practices Commission to address the commission here at a future meeting.

Um this item was agendized as a receive and file, receive and file item.

I was not agendized to take a vote or have the public weigh in on that decision by the commission, and as such, we can make that motion.

You may request that for a future meeting.

Okay, uh thank you, Mr.

Bradberg.

I let you be the enforcer on that.

Um, and I still saw four and a half.

I had nods for it, which I think is good enough.

Um, so are there any other commissioner comments or questions on item eight?

Did I do public speakers?

I don't recall, but for the record, we have none.

Okay, okay.

I think we are on uh commissioner comments ideas and questions.

Are there any comments or questions?

My only one is uh I'm not sure if all colleagues are aware that there was a proposal at the city council at the in late May to suspend the ethics commission for a year to achieve some savings to solve the city's budget process.

Um, I'm more raising it in the context of two specific issues that I'm hoping Madam Clerk will help me on.

The first one, and I'll just say it as you're walking up.

I was unclear exactly what the city council did relative to boards and commissions, and at the end of the budget process, I s while I'm pretty confident that they did not suspend the ethics commission.

I was under the impression that they were still taking a look at uh trying to curtail commission meetings, and I thought there was some kind of process where you, Madam Clerk, were consulting with the city manager about sort of how to achieve savings and advise maybe the city manager.

Is there any information that you can share with us that might have bearing on our own meeting schedule?

Thank you.

Um Mindy Cuppy, uh Sacramento City Clerk.

The council did deliberate on the budget recently.

Um they did not um a commissioner did or a council member did make a recommendation to censor the ethics commission as a budget savings.

Council did adopt the budget with a reduction in commission meetings across the board, and so you will see commission meetings being cut back, so not we will not meet as frequently.

And I assume that limit is for the fiscal year 26-27, so it's some kind of a limit that applies beginning next month in July and continues to June of 2027.

That's correct.

Appreciate that.

My second question is I did contact some city council members regarding this issue because I felt strongly for it.

And I got some feedback from a council member who was concerned about our expenses for outside council.

And the council members cited to me a figure for some of the matters that were along the lines of the one we heard today last year, and cited a figure that was 12 times the amount of money that our annual report from 2025 indicated we spent for independent evaluator expenses for those particular hearings.

I'm wondering if you can help me understand where that information might have come from and maybe what the inquiry process is where council members are getting their information because I think it's I think there's no reason for a council member to conclude that we spent 200,000 on independent council expenditures for the five matters related to those cannabis votes we heard in last August.

Um I I can't speak to where a council member got their data, but your annual reports are accurate, and I do report the cost that we've spent on an independent evaluator in those annual reports.

I appreciate that.

I will actually say it was I have a sense that I used to work in the legislature and I understood that there were lots of fiscal staff.

We used to put together lots of numbers, and sometimes they were into such a great crunch to grab information here and grab information there, that with all due respect to fiscal staff, sometimes they didn't have the ability to spend maybe the time with program staff to vet the numbers they thought were accurate.

Given the fact that this issue may or may not percolate again.

So I'm just bird dogging the issue and hoping that the staff who do scoring for budget solutions are able to have the best information available to them.

Yeah, given that we have um two independent evaluators, pulling those numbers is fairly simplistic.

So, appreciate that very much.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Any other uh comments from commissioners under comments, ideas, and questions?

Uh seeing none.

Oh, I'm sorry, I keep looking at the chamber and not at the screen.

Um, Clerk Mindy uh uh city clerk uh circling back to the the cutting of back of commissions, um, was that uh just kind of sporadically cut, you know, make it or quarterly or make it, or is it just cutting all together?

Where how is this information going to come back around and does what is what effect does that have that on seats?

Is it suspend the seats or does the clock continue to run?

Um again, Mindy Cuppy, Sacramento City Clerk.

So, in regards to suspending seats, the makeup of your commission is still the same.

In this example, you have five seats.

Um, the commission meetings.

So we will need to take those down to 50% of what we currently do.

Right now we're about 10 meetings.

Um, as this commission's core scope is to hear complaints.

Um, if there are complaints every month, you will have a meeting every month.

Um, however, if there are not complaints, you may have quarterly meetings.

Um, and so we won't be bringing back meetings when there's not a complaint per se.

Um, in regards to meetings.

Um, it depends.

Uh, for instance, major U Commission um focuses on budget.

So they will meet more frequently in the fall.

Um, and then once the budget's adopted, they will probably have a sunset.

So it depends on the scope of the commission.

We'll really be looking at the scope of the commission and when they need to meet.

Okay, and uh what I meant is uh um the so then if what I was referring to is our terms so their terms will continue to go on because we will meet just only as needed.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Very helpful question, very helpful answer.

Thank you.

Any other commissioner comments or questions under this item?

Okay, our last item is uh public comment on matters not on the agenda.

Do we have any speaker slips, Mr.

Bradbury?

Thank you, Chair.

We do not.

All right, thank you.

Unless there's anything else, I think we are going to adjourn, members.

Thank you very much.

We are adjourned.

Yes.

Oh, I don't believe in gavels.