Date: January 16, 2018
To: Members of the Ethics Commission
From: LeeAnn Pelham, Executive Director
Subject: AGENDA ITEM 10 – Executive Director’s Report for the January 19, 2018 Commission Meeting
Summary
This report provides various programmatic and operational highlights to date since the last monthly Executive Director’s Report.
Action Requested
No action is required by the Commission, as this item is for informational purposes only.
New Online Compliance Tools Implemented for January 1 Operative Date of New Legislation
Commission Staff completed the design and launch of digital reports for the new reporting requirements that become operational January 1. To ease compliance and support timely filings, digital forms were implemented to enable members of Boards and Commission to fulfill their new behested payment reporting requirement using SFEC Form 3600. In additional, new online registration tools for lobbyists were made available to enable compliance with Measure T by enhancing filing processes in Netfile. Lobbyists may also now submit online their declaration of required lobbyist training using a new digital form created using DocuSign. The Engagement and Compliance and Policy teams have been busy assisting filers with the laws’ new requirements, and are also providing user feedback to our technology staff to resolve any user experience issues that may arise during this period of implementation.
Election 2018
With a Mayoral election now scheduled for June 2018, Staff held the first of what will be a series of Candidate and Treasurer information sessions for the June and November 2018 elections. Our first session was held January 4, and it focused on the June 2018 election to enable candidates and treasurers the opportunity to attend before the January 9 candidate filing deadline. We also updated on our home page in late December to provide information about questions we began receiving once the June Mayoral election was called. In addition, compliance guides for Mayoral and Supervisorial candidates have both now been updated and made available online.
As reported last week in the press, papers were filed in Superior Court by the Angela Alioto for Mayor 2018 committee on January 11 seeking an order enjoining certification of the Mark Leno for Mayor 2018 committee as qualified to receive public funding based on contributions his Mayoral campaign has raised to date. Named respondents are myself and the City Controller in our official capacities, and Mark Leno for Mayor 2018. The City Attorney’s Office is representing our office the Controller. In a hearing on Friday in Department 302, the Judge declined to issue an injunction and asked the parties to submit further briefs this Wednesday. He has continued the hearing to 11am on Friday, January 19.
FY19-20 Budget Preparation
Fiscal year 2019 and 2020 budget submissions are required to be submitted to the Office of the Mayor on Wednesday, February 21, 2018. Due to unanticipated program demands that arose over the past month with the calling of a June 2018 Mayoral election, we were not able to prepare preliminary budget information for the Commission’s January meeting. Staff continue to closely assess our budget needs, and possible impacts that would result if the 2.5 percent cuts outlined in the budget instructions for all City departments for each of the next two years were implemented. We will bring our budget package to the Commission at its next monthly meeting on February 16th.
Staffing Updates
I am pleased to announce that Tyler Field joined our staff this week as an Information Systems Business Analyst. Tyler will be working with IS Business Analyst Jarrod Flores and Director of Technology Services Steven Massey to further advance integrated technology solutions for compliance, agency operations, and access to electronic disclosure records and data, including open data, data visualizations, and data analysis. Tyler’s background includes work as an Informatics Engineer with a conservation sciences firm, where he had responsibility for the design, development, deployment and maintenance of web apps that enabled scientists to query and analyze data. He also has volunteered for several years with the Code for San Francisco Brigade, where he created interactive visualizations on a variety of projects, and has experience developing a process to gather election results from web sources to design an analytics dashboard. Tyler holds a BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
We continue to work with the support of the Department of Human Resources Client Services team on our remaining job openings, which are summarized in Table 1 below.
Table 1 -Status of Ethics Commission Positions in Recruitment
| Position Working Title | Division | Status | Type | Job Class Title/No |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auditor | Audits | Oral interview phase. | Vacancy/non-exempt | Administrative Analyst (1822) |
| Senior Auditor | Audits | Oral interview phase. | Vacancy/non-exempt | Senior Admin Analyst (1823) |
| Senior Investigator/Legal Analyst | Enforcement | Oral interview phase. | Vacancy/non-exempt | Senior Admin Analyst (1823) |
| Sr. IS Business Analyst | El. Discl & Data Analysis | Job posting in development. | Vacancy/non-exempt | Senior IS Business Analyst (1053) |
| Principal Admin. Analyst | Engt/Compliance | Job posting in development. | Vacancy/non-exempt | Princ. Admin Analyst (1824) |
| Sr. Admin. Analyst | Engt/Compliance | Job posting in development. | New/non-exempt | Senior Admin Analyst (1823) |
Revenues Report
Table 2 shows the revenues received by the Commission during the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2017, as of January 15, 2018.
| Source | Budgeted Amount | FY 17-18 Receipts as of December 15, 2018 |
|---|---|---|
| Lobbyist Registration Fees | $85,000 | $22,100 |
| Lobbyist Fines | $500 | $1,500 |
| Campaign Consultants Fees | $7,000 | $4,005 |
| Contact Lobbyist and Other e.g., copies made by public | $2,450 | $0 |
| Statement of Economic Interests Filings-Late Fees | $1,250 | $152 |
| Campaign Consultant Fines | $1,000 | $750 |
| Campaign Finance Fines | $23,000 | $35,145 |
| Ethics, Other/ Administrative Fines Levied by that Commission | $7,500 | $200 |
| Major Developer Fee | $0 | $2,000 |
| Total | $127,700 | $65,852 |
I look forward to answering any questions about this report at your meeting on January 19th.