Okay.

This meeting will come into order.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Monday, April 17th, 2023 meeting of the Rules Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

I'm Supervisor Matt Dorsey, chair of this committee, and I'm joined today by my colleagues, Vice Chair Shaman Walton and Committee Member Asha Safai.

On behalf of my colleagues, I'd like to express our gratitude to our committee clerk, Mr.

Victor Young, and thanks also to the very capable team at SFGov TV and our producer there today is Seuss Enos.

Mr.

Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes.

The Board of Supervisors and its committees are now convening hybrid meetings to allow in-person attendance and public comment while still providing remote access and public comment via telephone.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

Those attending in person will be allowed to speak first, and then we will take those who are waiting on the telephone line.

The public comment call-in number is streaming across the screen.

When connected, you will hear the meeting discussion, but you will be muted and in listening mode only.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, those joining us in person should line up to speak, and those on the telephone line should dial star three to be added to the speaker line.

If you're on the telephone, please remember to turn down your TV and all listening devices that you may be using.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

Email them to myself, the rules committee clerk at VICTOR dot YOUNG at SFgov.org.

You may also send your written comment via U.S.

mail to our office at City Hall.

One Dr.

Carlton B.

Goodlit Place, room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors' agenda on April 25th, 2023, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

To accommodate some schedules today, we're going to be calling item number three first.

And I also will be calling item number one last because we're going to be uh moving to continue that item uh once again.

Um the item the order for today will be items numbers three, two, four, and one.

And with that, Mr.

Clerk, please call item number three.

Yes, item number three is an ordinance of many of the administrative code to repeal chapter 12x and thereby repealing the prohibition on city funded travel to a state and the city's entering into a contract with a contractor that has its United States headquarters in a state where any or all of the contract will be performed in a state that allows to discrimination against LGBT individuals that restrict abortion law or has voter suppression laws.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

We are joined today by our by our colleague, Supervisor Raphael Mandelman, the sponsor of this item.

Welcome, Supervisor Mandelman.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair Dorsey and uh committee members for uh making some time for this this morning and for um accommodating my desire, my need to go a little early.

Um so today we're we're uh considering an item that you or a matter that you have thought some about in this committee before, Chapter 12 X.

Um, which uh prohibits uh city funded travel to and contracting with companies headquartered in states that have restricted LGBTQ, anti-LGBTQ, anti-reproductive rights, and anti-voting rights uh legislation.

Um it's a difficult issue, and I want to thank uh Supervisor Safai for um taking on a piece of this um a few months back.

Um I uh for benefit of those who may not have been paying attention to to this effort.

I I do want to go over the background.

Um and this legislation goes back to the aftermath, well, not my legislation.

12x goes back to the aftermath of the United States Supreme Court's decision recognizing same-sex marriage.

Um, in the wake of that decision, um, a number of states enacted law, anti-queer, anti-LGBTQ plus um legislation.

Uh the Board of Supervisors responded in October 2016 by adopting Chapter 12X of the admin code to officially boycott states with anti-queer laws.

Um it was, you know, a few states at the time.

Uh it has since expanded to include states with uh anti-choice laws and um restrictive voting rights laws.

And all of these um uh prohibitions were put in place with, I think the same underlying theory of change.

Progressive jurisdictions would come together, pool our political and economic power, and stand up against bigotry.

And then behavior of these states that were adopting these laws would change.

And that coalition never materialized, and that behavior has not changed.

No other cities or jurisdictions have come up, have come along for the ride to enact boycotts anywhere near as sweeping as San Francisco's.

And meanwhile, no states with restrictive anti-LGBTQ rights, voting rights, or reproductive choice laws have cited the city's travel and contract bans as motivation for reforming them.

For more than two years, I and my office have been looking at this and specifically looking at the efficacy and costs associated with 12x.

Last October, the budget and legislative analyst released a report I had requested that found systematically poor compliance across city departments with dozens of waivers allowing for contracting of tens of millions of dollars being spent in banned states, even with the ban.

So we were incurring costs by having the ban.

We were also still doing a ton of business with banned states.

Between 2017 and 2020, just six city departments were granted 47 waivers, and those had a value of over 75 million dollars in contracts with banned states.