Ethics Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Monday, 04/27/2026 meeting of the City of Sacramento Ethics Commission. The meeting is now called to order. Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, chair. Commissioner Kelly? Here. Commission vice chair Velasquez? Present. Commissioner Tao is absence. Commissioner Emery? Here. And Chair LaFaso? Here. Thank you. We have quorum.

Excellent. Thank you. I would like to remind members of the public in chambers that if you'd like to speak on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip before the item begins and the speaker slips are outside of just outside the door on the table. After an item is called, we will no longer accept speaker slips, and you will have two minutes to speak once you are called upon. And we will now proceed with today's agenda with the pledge of allegiance. Commissioner Emery.

And land acknowledgement.

Yes. Thank you. So

thank you for standing and we we do the pledge first, the land acknowledgement first? Land acknowledgement. Okay. To the original people of this land, the Nisenan people, the Southern Midu Valley, and the Plains Miwok, Patron, Wintoun peoples, and the people of the Wilson Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk besides today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgment and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous people's history, contribution, and lives.

Thank you. And now the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation

under god, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

Thank you very much Commissioner Emery. And just for the colleagues who weren't here last time, after I started doing this at the last meeting, I indicated I was gonna pass the torch around at different meetings. One of you, if you want to, can be next. This takes us to our first agenda item, which is the consent calendar. Are there are there any speaker slips on this item, mister Breedberg?

Thank you, chair. I have no speaker slips.

Thank you. Are there any commissioner comments or questions on the consent calendar? Questions or comments? Sorry, was looking down by mistake. Okay. Is there a is there a motion from a commissioner to approve the consent calendar?

I move we approve the consent calendar.

I second. Second.

Alright. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any nays? Any abstentions? Item passes. That takes us to our first action item or rather the discussion calendar, which is item four, City of Sacramento Community Outreach Program Update.

Good afternoon commissioners. My name is Mindy Kuppi, your city clerk. The commission asks to have a standing item on their agenda to share if you had done any community outreach. Outreach. So So this this is, is, you you have have the the floor. Floor.

Thank you. Are there any speaker slips on this item?

I have no public comment on this item chair.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Any question or comments? Looks like you're ready to go commissioner.

Well, thank you for bringing more of the postcards. It's very helpful. And no, I've been a little behind myself on this one lately. So, I'm gonna start. Now that the weather's getting nice again, I'll start getting all that energy to go in. And I especially would like to reach out to district two after all the news this week of their former council council person and that I'd really love I've been trying to reach out to district two to say I would really love to make presentations on this. There are quite a few neighborhood associations. You. Any

other commissioner comments or questions? Okay. Hearing none. My only final comment is I have sensed this process ebbs and flows and sometimes it flows when we do a little of our own outreach about our outreach. And I've been a little remiss too. So spring is coming and some other things are getting out of my way. So unless there are any final commissioner comments or questions, I believe we will move to item five, history of the Fair Political Commission contract for administration implementation and enforcement of the Sacramento City Code. Etcetera, etcetera.

Good evening. I'm Mindy Kuppy, Sacramento City Clerk. The item before you is an informational item on the history of the city's contract with the Fair Political Practices Commission, the FPPC, as requested by the commission. The staff report has a lot of history in it, but I'll provide a high level summary. So the city entered into a contract with the FPPC in April 18.

During the term of the contract, the FPPC created a website linking to the city's campaign finance rules, appeared before the Ethics Commission once, and in April 2020 completed audits of seven candidate committees from the June 2018 election. During the term of the contract, the FPPC reported hours worked totaling approximately $40,000 and the city paid the FPPC a $110,000. In August 2019, this commission received a staff report to review the agreement with the FPPC. So the powers and duties of the Ethics Commission includes the following: every two years review any contract the city has with the Fair Political Practices Commission for the purpose of reporting to the council on the contract's efficacy. The commission may also make recommendations regarding renewal of the contract.

In August 2020, the commission received a staff report regarding the results of that June 2018 election audit, which was for seven candidates. The FPPCs report stated that the filers in our opinion have substantially complied with the disclosure and record keeping provisions of the political reform act related to rules and regulations of the FPPC commission and the City Of Sacramento campaign finance ordinance. So based on these details, their approximate cost per audit was $15,000. City attorney staff attempted to negotiate a contract with the FPPC but was unsuccessful. That floor remained $55,000 a year.

City attorney and city clerk staff analyzed the contract and determined that the efficacy did not support the taxpayer expense and that contract expired in December 2019. That concludes my report. I'm available for questions.

Thank you. Before we take any commissioner comments or questions, mister Breedberg, do we have any speaker slips?

Thank you, chair. No public comment on this item.

Excellent. Thank you. Mister Kelly.

I have a few things to say. Let me just say, first of all, I don't have any particular agenda, and I don't have any particular solution. But I would like to start the conversation because I think we should come up with some kind of a solution, whatever that may be. This is, again, sort of fundamental fairness and ensuring transparency that everybody plays by the rules. So the city council members running for reelection, people running against them, everybody plays by the same rules.

In an audit and again, I'm not an auditor. I have no background in auditing. But I do know that small jurisdictions, for example, do a very simple thing where they simply take the lobbyist employer reports, the lobbyist reports, and major donor reports, and they match them up with the recipient candidate committees and the public officials and candidates disclosure statement of economic interest. Because one side is giving gifts and making contributions, and the other side is receiving gifts and contributions, and they should match. The curious thing is they don't always match, and that's when a letter goes out, something is done.

So kind of in my experience, I know that not everybody follows the rules. We're assuming everybody does, but I do think that as a commission, we need to ensure that people know that we're enforcing the law is being enforced in some fashion. I'm not sure what would happen if an audit turns up a violation because we have this notion that the commission does not prosecute matters. But I assume in some fashion whether either the city attorney would bring a a matter forward or in the name of the clerk or the city council. Some some fashion, if an audit turned some wrongdoing, a complaint would be generated and come before this commission.

The original enabling legislation that I think was doctor Pan passed with the state legislature to authorize the city and the FPPC to engage in a contract, contemplated this contract. And I I don't know for a fact I have heard through just hearsay that the FPPC had a handle in hand in creating this notion that there would be a contract. I think it did in some fashion, they saw this as a benefit. But written in as the city clerk mentioned is this notion that we review the contract every two years. And I think even if there's an absence of a contract, we really have a duty to, again, either review it and maybe that we need to amend an ordinance and and do something different.

But I do think we need to do something. And in that regard, I wanna go back a little bit of history about the political reform act. And I say that because I'm in my seventies. The political reform act was passed in 1974, and it was the first election that I was eligible to vote in. I was 19 years old.

So it's a long time ago. It's a long time before people in most people in this room. And Bob Stern, who wrote that, he drew did the drafting for it was a Jerry Brown initiative, has admitted over the years that there were a number of errors that they made in drafting the state's political reform act. One of which is the auditing function. And in that regard, they thought it would be great to nest auditing with the Franchise Tax Board because the Franchise Tax Board had a whole lot of auditors.

They could do a great job, what have you. It turned out to be kind of a debacle because it doesn't raise tax revenues. So every time there's a budget cut, it's the first thing that gets shed. Secondly, if you're an auditor on FPPC matters, it's not a career ladder to something higher. So it's kind of an afterthought.

It hasn't worked well. The FPPC is not happy with that. They have, for many years, run bills to try and get the audit function moved to within the FPPC. Their only statutory function that's was permitted up until this year is that they audit members of the State Board of Equalization and the state controller, and that's because the franchise tax board consists of a member of the State Board of Equalization, the state controller, and the Department of Finance. So they have very limited auditing.

So when you contracted with the FPPC, I assume they were sending this out to the FTB, and it was probably yet a lower priority than the audits that they were doing for the state. Things have changed. There was a bill last year that took effect, I assume this year, a b three fifty nine, which got rid of the old statutory authorization for the specifically contract with Sacramento, San Bernardino, and there may be some others, and replaced it with a generic authorization. It also granted to the FPPC the ability to engage in audits of local jurisdictions. They still don't have the the ability to audit statewide candidates, but they have a new ability to audit for locals.

And that's part of me as wondering whether things have changed, and I don't know. It's something to maybe look at and consider. And so kind of my final thoughts, and again, I really would love feedback, and I I hope people think about this and think of other possibilities. But to me, it seems like either we consider contracting with the FPPC and see if they can give us a better deal because it sounds like a pretty raw deal, what we had before. My other thought is what about the city auditor?

A $100,000 is a lot and could fund probably what? A half a position even allowing for benefits and things. Would the city auditor be interested? It may or may not take an ordinance change to provide that authorization. But I just again, thinking outside the box, we need to do something and that's just one of my thoughts.

My other thought is to invite someone from the FPPC since they are local to maybe come and talk to the commission. I know they have a lot of free services available on their website. Obviously, auditing is not one of them, but I just think that we need to ponder this and do something proactive rather than sitting here passively and saying that our contract is expired and throw up our hands and we don't do anything. Anyhow, those are my thoughts. Love to hear feedback and what other commissioners think.

Thank you very much, commissioner Kelly. I have one quick follow-up question of you before I ask if another commissioner wants to question or comment. You made reference to some enabling legislation authored by then, I assume, Assembly Member Richard Pan. Are you able to tell me if that legislation was Sacramento specific or it was applicable to local jurisdictions in general? So

the original legislation in in 2017 was SB twenty sixty seven. So I guess it was senator Pan then. And that has been repealed by the more recent a b three fifty nine in 2025.

Interesting. Okay. I appreciate that. Are there any other Commissioner Emmer? Oh, yes. Of course.

The original legislation was Sacramento specific, and that was extended to all jurisdictions.

Yeah. Yeah. Let let right. Let me see. So there everybody ran their own bill. San Bernardino had their own bill. And as I understand from somewhere I got this, I think, may be off the f p p c's website. Only Sacramento and San Bernardino ever actually in entered a contract with the f p p c. I think there were others who either sought permission to do it or may have actually gotten bills passed, they never actually contributed with FPPC.

Appreciate that. Thank you for your response, both of you. Commissioner Emery.

So thank you, commissioner Kelly. That was interesting. And and I started thinking in during the I believe it's the twenty twenty four election. It's before it got on here. So that's why you you you will be our historian on this. There were some complaints with some of the candidates running for mayor and city council that that were basically about finance and stuff. And they came to the ethics committee. How are those handles? And if and if somebody is running and they run afoul of the FPPC and get like a fine, are we then informed? But so I guess it's it's what's been going on since 2019?

So, I can answer the question about the twenty twenty four election. There were complaints regards to campaign finance, but it was the city's campaign finance rules, not the fair political rules. And the code was unclear. So basically, and I can be happy to share the staff report in regards to this. When the primary election moved from March to June, typically, change our code, and so the code wasn't clear.

There was a period in the middle, that was unclear which which campaign it would go to. So, we've since changed our code to state that it's this many days prior to the election, it doesn't make reference to a March or a June election. So we have clarified that code. There were two complaints. They did come before this body because because this body is who arbitrates that, not the FPPC since it's Citi campaign finance, and they did determine, they dismissed both those cases.

If a candidate does run afoul of like, since 2019, have any candidates run afoul of some of those FPPC rules and gets finer thing is the ethics committee informed, is the city informed? Well, I guess it's what's the process so we'll know what to build upon?

Yeah. Yes. The FPPC has no requirement to notify the city. However, I do watch those agendas and watch for our names.

Mhmm.

And I would inform you of that.

Yeah. And how big a difference is there between this you said the city, it was a city code for finance and the FPPC. How how big a difference is there on some of those?

Because It was a reporting timeline that you had to make reports

to

the

city or if there's a city, the campaign finance limit. Okay. You have different filing periods. So pre election, during election, and when you're an so there's different filing periods.

And that was the big difference between

limits. Yeah. Okay. Based on what period you're in.

Okay. So the FP because I keep thinking are these like overlapping each other at all? Could it be possible to use that CityOne FPPC? I'll let other people ask.

Different bodies of law.

Please. Gary Lens. I just commissioner Emery, I would just throw in because what you just mentioned about any overlapping. There is the potential though for, say, instance, someone to file a complaint alleging both say well, just campaign finance in general, but FPPC violations and also city violations might come into a complaint with which might end up coming before this body in regards to the alleged city violations and also being referred to FPPC but obviously, that's a would be a hit or miss situation. That would be a situation where it'd be occasional one offs. It wouldn't be a consistent vetting every situation. As I which I think is the ultimate issue

here

right now.

I appreciate that, Mr. Lindsey. Vice Chair Velasquez?

I'm going to be the spokesperson for not understanding all this fancy verbiage. So if there's somebody out there in the universe that's listening. Starting with what is a floor?

The floor payment in the contract that we had with the FPPC, we pay $55,000 if they work one hour or they work up to that many hours. So they provided us a

That's a baseline. The baseline. That's they're getting that regardless. Okay, so my next question is the previous contract, the one where we said that $40,000 one year or actually it was 2018 and 2019. During that period for that contract, it was about 40,000. The four was 110? Correct.

That was a two year period.

Okay. So this period for 55,000 is just for what? A year?

That's one year period.

Okay.

So it would be the same as the last time. It would be only the ratio is the same as it would have been for the two year. Right.

It's entirely possible. So we pay them the $55,000 at the beginning of the year. Yeah. And they provide us a statement that says we worked an hour on this project.

Yeah.

Two hours on this project. Okay.

So all we're trying to do is we're going to try to go from a 110 which we didn't use a lot. And then last time was 40,000 and they want 55 as a base.

That two year period is when we spent $40,000.

Okay.

The website that was made, was this on their website or our website?

It was on their website and they linked to our website. Do we know

how much traffic we got for that website? I have more questions, but I yield for now.

Thank you, Vice Chair Velasquez. Commissioner Kelly?

I'll follow-up on and sort of express my ignorance here as well. In terms of contracting, it was clearly it's not this commission. My recollection is the City Council in the ordinance that would contract with the FPPC. Is there a budget for that? I mean, it's I'm mindful that the city is in dire financial straits. What happens if we think that a contract should be let? I assume you would communicate that with the city manager or something, And there would have to be a budget for that, is that

That's correct. So right now, we have budget for the ethics commission. It's about $300,000 that covers all of our software for compliance if we do any training, your stipends, those types of things, our independent evaluator, a cost that typically an investigation is about $8,000 so depending on the number of complaints that we receive that would be expended and then the FPPC contract. So either with the FPPC or if you wanted to explore a different auditing process, we could do that. But yes, annually in my budget, the city clerk's office budget is a line item for ethics.

If I may, I I I really like the idea and I don't know because again I know nothing about the internal workings of city government, but I love the idea of the city auditor sort of taking this on. If it's not burdensome and it works for them, and I'm not sure if that's something that you could ask the city auditor or if need a motion or

So that would go to the you would make a recommendation. This body would make a recommendation. I might encourage you to I have an ad hoc come up with some ideas. I'd like your creative ideas. Are there other vendors out there other than the FPPC? I have spoken to our independent evaluator and that's something they could do for us. Right now, the auditor, the city auditor cannot, do audits on the council. So we would either have to change their enacting, I don't know if it's charter or if it's, just an ordinance change to the municipal code but currently they do not audit the city council and it probably would be a conflict as the city auditor reports directly to the mayor and council.

Is that slow down a second. So are are you done, Commissioner Kelly?

I'm done. I'm done.

For the moment. Okay. Mr. Lindsey wanted to say something.

I would I would just I was just I would concur with, what, what you mentioned about the status of the situation as far as with the auditor.

Understood. All right. Thank you, Mr. Lindsay. After Vice Chair Velasquez, everybody has spoken twice, so I'm going to take my slot and then we can continue. But I've been holding off on taking my slot. Vice Chair Velasquez?

So Dave, in the couple of years that we had a contract with three years, right? 2018, 2019 and then was that 2020?

The contract expired in December 2019.

So how many what years did we actually have the contract with them?

2018 and 2019.

So two years, they did seven.

Well, they did an audit for seven

campaign and that was we got the results a year later.

About twenty months later.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Velasquez. My turn. And then others can have turns too. A couple quick housekeeping items. One, thank you, vice chair Velasquez.

I myself wanted clarification on what the floor was. Number two, madam clerk, thank you very much for including the entirety of the I think it's March 2137 City Council agenda item that created the Ethics Commission and all of the accompanying ordinances that I have frequently referred to as the good government program, good governance program. That I thought was very helpful. It's there's some interesting things there. And my quick aside, Commissioner Kelly, one of the reasons I asked about the Penn legislation and I forgot he was a senator in '17 and an assembly member, but I was was curious whether it was enacted specifically with Sacramento in mind because the lens through which I've been refracting all of this has been my own legislative history that I've spent a fair amount of time on and one that I will characterize as expectations.

The legislative history I'm most concerned about is what the council wanted to do when it created the ethics commission. And I do think the council very intentionally wanted to limit our scope. Honestly, I think we've evolved even more limited than in my estimation the council even intended to. I note that $350,000 figure is in the March 2137 staff report. But it also had a it had a position in it, something that I know has waned around 2020.

I know Mr. Green left and then there was somebody else And none of the commissioners present there even ever met her because the commission wasn't meeting in person. All I ever got from former commissioners I spoke to was, yeah, I think she moved to Oregon. It was the most I got. So I think you I I when I appeared before the audit committee a year ago, one and by the way, there are only two members of the city council who were on the city council when the ethics commission was created nine years ago.

They are mister Garrett and mister Jennings. And when I appeared before the audit committee a year ago, one council member said, you know, we really went through what we wanted to do, and that's what we wanted to do, and we knew we wanted to do. And I've never followed up with that council member to say, are you sure it turned out exactly how you anticipated? And are you sure you don't want to do what's in essence an after action report and say what happened ten years later and it completely fulfills your expectations? Because I read all those documents in a way that the council thought that the role of the FPPC and the FPPC contract was going to play a great weight in the ethics commission's overall program.

So the absence of it, for whatever reasons, legitimate or not, and I will say sometime when I first got here, I delved into the 2019 meeting it was where I think this was last discussed. I even discussed it with former commissioner Underwood about a year and a half ago. And it is what it is. And you made a comment about maybe we can get a better deal. I think that was very much the focus of the commissioners back in 2019.

Maybe it's changed. I don't know. But I do know I do know that's been tried. I so my my my path forward thoughts are a, I believe it's valuable to firmly settle ourselves in what maybe the council that created us wants to do, understanding that there's time to learn from experience. I think taking the approach that absolutely miscuppy load a little bit about the process.

All we can do is recommend. The power of our recommendations are in the quality of them, how well researched they are, how thoughtful they are, how implementable they are, and potentially apropos to a lot of your comments, Commissioner Kelly, how many good options we give them to think about it. I will cut to the chase and I do think this issue needs to marinate a little bit and I do think that the ad hoc suggestion that commissioner, excuse me, Ms. Cuppie, the clerk, suggested, and I will do another aside. So I watched the process two or so years ago when the city council reauthorized the ability of, commissions to have ad hocs, and I recall there was going to be some kind of explanation to commissions on what exactly the technical rules are, and we're going to have to get that because an ad hoc is subject to the Brown Act.

There's a number of implications to that that I don't know, including noticing. Another implication, of course, is that the ad hoc has to be less than a quorum. Rest, that necessarily means two people. That the two members of those ad hocs can only communicate amongst themselves and probably only during meetings. And I think there has to be some kind of process of reporting out periodically to the big body.

I've seen, I've seen this happen and it's difficult. I will say as an aside, I served as a member of the Sacramento Heritage Board for three years. We had an ad hoc committee that wasn't called back because we didn't have those just to plan a fortieth anniversary of the city's preservation ordinance. And if you're in a little nonprofit board, you know, people meet informally and they talk past each other, The number of times we had discussions with the city attorney on how to properly manage the Brown Act in the context of that thing was quite an experience. I'm not saying it's not doable.

I'm saying I'm putting it right out front to everybody that it's a management task and we need to be really conscientious about it. Getting back to substance. And I think the technical way we create an ad hoc is that we all decided we want to do it and then the chair creates it and the chair gets to name it. I'm going to do what you all want, but I think that Mr. Kelly needs to be, Commissioner Kelly needs to be one of the members. Who are the other

May I clarify So that

city boards and commissions may create ad hoc committees. I can give you it's a one page guidelines, it's administrative rules and basically you determine the chair appoints and then they have one year, so a year duration to do their project, then bring it back to this commission. A commission of five as you are, you can have two people on that ad hoc. You can meet outside the public forum and that's the intent is the ad hoc is created, you go do the work. I think my best example is the youth commission oftentimes does that.

They have four or five people that want to do a project, They meet, they create something, and then they bring it back to the full commission to vet that. And then the conversation comes to this level. You don't have any staff support, so that would be on your own, basically. You aren't calling the city attorney because you can meet as as you need. Another opportunity too is not to create an ad hoc. Two people can still meet outside the public forum, have coffee, talk about a project, bring that to fruition, and then bring it back to this body.

Appreciate that very much. I'm gonna ask you to send that one pager to all five commissioners. And again, appreciate it. Again, one of my points is if there are two members who serve at an ad hoc, they're obviously the principal actors. But the other three commissioners are ultimately going be consumers of their work and they need to understand what the process is and how the information is going to flow to them.

I'll stop talking about the ad hoc. I will say, I I favor that direction and I think commissioner Keller should be one of the members. But getting back to substance, I want to I want to understand a little bit better about what we're all talking about here substantively, campaign finance ordinances, FPPC. One question that's been chewing on me for a while, Madam Clerk, is you mentioned what specifically the FPPC did, and I guess it was '18 and '19. And have there been any auditing?

And maybe maybe others know the answer to this question. Has there been any auditing of campaign finance filings from candidates who were under the jurisdiction of your office and the campaign finance ordinances?

So the city has done no auditing of campaign finance underneath our city codes.

Okay.

I can't speak to what the FPPC has done.

Well, that's that's my second question. Can you you may want to chime in, Mr. Lizzie. Can you refresh our recollection? Because I know that, again, I have been a candidate. It was a long time ago. The laws have changed. The first thing you do is you file a force a four sixty at the Secretary of State's office. Many of your filings with the Secretary of State's office. Some of them migrate to the FPPC.

Even my recollection as as the political officer of two Democratic Party organizations monitoring campaigns, I can't remember exactly where it all goes. Understanding that there is a backside that anybody who's, say for example, running for city council understands that many of their documents are going to the FPPC and some of the documents that initiate their candidacy go to places other than or or they think in my time running for a city office, I think they I I filed them with the clerk. If I were running for school board, I would have them with the secretary of state. But I know they all go back to the secretary of state because if you go on that Cal access system and you want to see everybody who's filed their intention to run for city council, you can look that up on the city on the secretary of state's website as well as the city's website. So there's some my point is there's interplay between the systems behind the scenes.

To the best of my of your ability, can you can you draw us a picture as to how these elements interact?

Absolutely. So I'm going to speak to you as a candidate for local office. If you are going to raise funds, so you file a form to stay, I wanna run for office. So basically, we get get that gets filed. Then if you wanna have raise money, if you wanna raise $2,000 or spend $2,000, you then have to create a campaign committee.

You create that committee with the Secretary of State and a copy comes to my office, the office of the city clerk at the city of Sacramento. Then you file all of your campaign finance forms with our office, so you file with the city. Your statement of economic interest, your form 700 is filed with the FPPC, but that's where you any financial interests you have or gifts you've received. But campaign finance are all filed with the city.

Appreciate that. And thank you for reminding me that candidates as well as city office holders file form seven hundreds. Does the city audit I know I'm slightly far afield but not too much. Does the city audit form seven hundreds either for commissioners, council members, employees as well as candidates?

That's a great question. So right now the office holders and candidates file with the FPPC, their Form 700. So 87,200 filers now file with the FPPC. That's new this year. All other city officers file with the city. We've got over a thousand filers. And the requirement is that we audit late reports. So we spend an incredible amount of time making sure that people file their reports on time. So we have to audit their late reports. So if they're not if everybody files on time, I don't do an audit.

Okay. So so so there's somebody your office clearly a very circumscribed universe but your office does do some auditing of Form seven hundreds if I understood. Absolutely. Okay. That's helpful.

Okay. So I'm going to conclude my remarks on expressing intentionally great positivity toward all of the issues you offered, Commissioner Kelly. You're you're you're creating work for yourself. As it relates to the substance, I do think that oh, and I did want to say, I have a brief past as a member of the Franchise Tax Board and I've read those FTB audits from the FTBC. And actually, I thought they were pretty good.

But I I think it's very valuable to think about these different potential avenues of solving the problem. I do think a future agenda item where the FPPC fills in the blanks and talks to us about their perspective just to better educate us, I think, would be valuable. So as I prepare to yield, I am interested in hearing commissioner feedback on what particular avenues along the lines of Commissioner Kelly's suggestion that members think are potentially fruitful. But again, apropos to my introductory comments, all we get to do is recommend to the extent that we come up with well thought through recommendations that thread the needle from where the commission excuse me, the council started in '17 to where we are today with our history, I'm optimistic that we could have a very positive impact. And with that, I conclude my comments for this round.

Vice Chair Hernandez.

It still ends in a Z. So of those seven that they audited, those campaigns, was anything ever found worth noteworthy or that needed required action?

I believe there was one small tweak, but their report stated that the filers have substantially complied with the disclosure and record keeping provisions of the political reform act related to regulations of the FPPC Commission and the City Of Sacramento campaign finance ordinance.

Okay. Thank you.

And my apologies for not calling you Vice Chair Velasquez. Vice Chair Velasquez. Sorry about that. Any other commissioners with a comment or question? Commissioner Emery?

Because I know when I've given like the presentation groups and that's the part I've always sort of muffled through because I know we have not had a contract. This is very helpful to understand that yeah, they wanted all this money. It was a lot more than the work they were doing. Excuse me. I'm falling apart my old age.

So I just think it would be really I'm really not sure. I I I really I think I have a lot of great ideas compared to Kelly because I'm also thinking it'd be really helpful to people writing for city council and mayor to know everybody is following the same rules, however that works. So I'm open to any ideas.

We

currently have in I understand that we're not FPBC or whatever those acronyms were. Our own website for campaign rules, is it significant? I mean, it's it's we had that before. They made their own for us. We we have adequate information on our own website, yes?

That's correct. Their website simply linked back to ours. Okay.

Thank you, Vice Chair Velasquez. One more quick round on this interaction between us and the state. I'm gonna cut short my lengthy introduction and I think I'm gonna direct my question to you, mister Lindsey. But I well, as I cogitated through a question that I asked at the last meeting about incorporation of the Fair Political Reform Act, and I reread the I think it's March 2137 staff report. Part of that contained some revisions to the campaign fine ordinances that, at least in the cover member, were characterized as aligning the campaign finance ordinance with either the with the political reform act.

I read that, although I wasn't able to see the language in the ordinance text itself to understand 100% what that meant, I interpreted that to mean that there's intentionally some alignment in terms of the specific requirements on city candidates governed by the city's campaign finance ordinances and and whatever the the requirements of the political reform act is, at least the campaign finance parts of it. Do you have any comment on that?

A very short comment. I'm not the lead on those issues as far as in the city attorney's office, but this is partial speculation. I would just guess that a lot of it would have to do with the city trying to avoid any situations where its ordinance might be challenges preempted by state provisions.

Appreciate that. Okay. Thank you.

Could you repeat that again? I wanna

make sure.

Yes. So just general, there's a concept as far as conflicts in state law versus, say, local laws. I won't get into the whole thing about charter in general though but long the long story short is that depending on the situation if there's conflicts between what the state is requiring of someone in a law and what say a local government is that often you'd have a situation where the under the doctrine presumption, a preemption that, the state law would prevail and depending on situation effectively nullify or invalidate the local law. So a lot of times, local government's trying to be conscious of such things, especially if it's in a particular field or area that's already been regulated by the state, trying to not on step on the state's toes and end up in a situation where the given ordinance is ultimately validated, say, by a legal challenge, for instance. Say, say, a council member or, say, a candidate, for instance, saying that certain requirements in this situation by both by the city are too divergent from those of the state that maybe the city is out of line as far as requiring it, essentially.

Those are in layman terms.

Again, I appreciate that extended elaboration, Mr. Lindsey. So I don't know if there are some further comments or questions from commissioners. Commissioners willing, I think we have a direction which is this ad hoc. You are nominated, Commissioner Kelly.

I'm willing to be the other culprit and join you. My only primary hesitation is I think in anything we do. Overloading an ad hoc with the lawyers has a downside. So I favor the ad hoc, but the number one thing I want to do is leave space for other commissioners who might want to participate in this in greater detail with Commissioner Kelly and be the other member of the ad hoc. Vice Chair Velasquez.

So

I would have said it would be great to look at other entities that could provide. That's fine. I don't think we need to renew a contract for with FPPC. Is that what the ad hoc is about, that you guys are gonna do that research? What is what is the ad hoc about?

My opinion is yeah. I think this is a good opportunity for distillation, and I appreciate that. My opinion is the ad hoc would be to explore avenues to incorporate audit auditing in the city's ethics compliance programs with options and details to be researched by the ad hoc committee.

Okay. So I'm gonna shoot that back to you. In layman's terms, are you asking are you saying that you wanna create a proposal that you give to, I'm guessing, the City Council to have that included in our duties or for that included in somebody else's duties with the city?

Doctor. The first part of your distillation I say is right on. This question as to whose duty it is, one of the reasons I sounded a little I wanted my language to sound flexible is because I don't want the ad hoc to be constrained on that. Again, one of my introductory comments was I think there are a number of things that the city council had strong feelings about regarding what it wanted to give to the ethics commission and what it didn't. My opinion is also that my high my highest level goal as an ethics commissioner is to improve the ethics climate in the city of Sacramento.

So if that means persuading the city council that there's a function that the city should do that's about ethics, but some other actor in the city should do it, would opt for going that direction either if a, it was the best answer or b, it was that other entity were the only people the city council wanted to entrust with the function. So agnostic on the question of whose responsibility it becomes.

Okay. So it wouldn't be the ethics committee. It would be whomever the City thinks would be aside from the audit, because that would be a conflict.

Generally speaking, probably because generally speaking, we're not going to audit because none of us are auditors. B, generally speaking, you know, commission style government in Sacramento doesn't give a lot of direct staff authority over staff to commissions. It usually goes, you know, kind of through a process, you know, through the assigned staff and the charter officer, yada yada yada. So the only gray area in my opinion would be, you know, would we have some kind of approval authority on the function at the high level? Would we have some kind of review function on the activity at the high level? Something like that.

Okay. So before we move on, I think that if we were to propose something to the City Council, then we the second question from the City Council will be, did we call anybody else to any other entities to see what they would charge? So if we're going to do the ad hoc to see maybe who internally would be as responsible, they're also gonna ask the question, did we contact anybody else? So I think we still need to do that as well.

Commissioner Kelly, you have a comment?

My understanding is, as I hear this, there are sort of three prongs that should be explored. One is whether the FPPC today, which has completely different management than it had ten years ago, and and completely different authority over local auditing, whether that's viable, whether we use an outside vendor, which would be could be an accounting firm or a law firm, something like that, or whether there's somebody in house, probably not the city auditor, but maybe some other employee could be designated. And again, maybe there are other things we haven't thought of that we still need to again contemplate outside the box.

I appreciate this and in my own, I will endeavor to break it apart a little bit. I appreciate your questions, Vice Chair Velasquez. I'm trying to I'm trying not to rigidly write the the charge of the ad hoc to the point where it can't pursue options. But I think you make a great point that there are a couple of things that can proceed outside the context of an ad hoc. They can be one.

If the clerk is willing to reengage some level of discussion with the FPPC along the lines of commissioner Kelly's notion that it's a different entity than it was last time you spoke to them. You know more about that than we do. But I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to articulate something concrete with without, with with the appropriate level of direction that incorporates your expertise, your role, and your experience. But the essence of it would be take another round at the FPPC. That would be one thing.

You don't need the ad hoc to talk to you about that because it's being talked about here. The second one would be, again, to the extent that it's worthwhile or you're willing or you have done, whatever other options we've spoken about. And the one that you were specific about, I think, was having engaged the independent evaluator to some greater or lesser extent about something they might do. Again, I'm just trying to put it concretely on the table. And since you indicated you had thought about it or initiated it, it seems to me it's pretty reasonable to ask you to sort of to say, yeah, we like that. Please, please, please, you know, please please follow through on that if you were if you were starting it up.

So thank you. Chair, if I may, I want to reread a comment you made. The power is how complete our recommendation is to the city council. And so look at every creative aspect, what vendors are there that do this type of thing. I know the FPPC last time I looked into it and I can't speak to that, it's been a couple years, they had adopted a contract and that had a $55,000 floor and there was no negotiating.

We spent months the city attorney's office and I spent months negotiating with the FPPC, and they were not budging on that. At that time, I reached out to our independent evaluator at the time and said, would this be a service you guys could do? And they said, Absolutely, we could quote it. So I could see the ad hoc committee coming back with a recommendation to counsel, which would go through PNPE. There's more processes, but I can share that later. To recommend, we reengage the FPPC, we get an RFP, we get some quotations, we think of can it be in house, can it be outside, what's the most responsible method and to propose, you know, some creative solutions.

I appreciate that. I'm gonna make one comment and then I'm gonna recognize Commissioner Emery. So I appreciate that. I am trying to straddle in essence defining a functional, not too specific, not too general charge for an ad hoc and be responsible to Vice Chair Velasquez's specific concerns. I wanted to itemize two that I thought were reasonable and feasible and that you had taken steps toward that I thought were well outside the ad hoc.

My opinion is anything else, like like there's obviously issues with engaging the city auditor but I just I don't want to debate the whole ad hoc process here. I want to give it a charge and set it on its way and with this informed discussion. So I'm going to leave it My view is to leave it to you, Madam Clerk, as to whether you have exhausted the opportunity to circle back with one of one of the two entities that I have named back to you, the independent evaluator and the FPPC. Any additional one that you want to specify to us that's in your feasibility opportunity zone, hope that term makes sense, and then leave everything, every other potential option to the ad hoc. My hope is an ad hoc reports back to the main body and if that ad hoc in three months has been saying, we've been thinking about this and thinking about this and thinking about this, then we might bring back to this body, we can have some more precise questions but better thought out with more homework, being more concrete to you in what we are asking you to do or asking you to advise us on.

So that was a little bit long winded. But can you satisfy at minimum my colleague, Vice Chair Velasquez, and take on whatever you think is doable relative to the FPPC and the independent evaluator and then leave the rest to the ad hoc to come back to you after they've done their own research?

If I can comment. The FPPC is dead is what I'm getting from it. It's not there is no more wiggle room, it's dead, right?

That's my understanding.

Yeah, they're out.

I'm sorry, Commissioner. So just for clarity, Vice Chair Velasquez, we do not have to ask the FPPC one more time to do the ad hoc? Correct. Got it. Thank you. Commissioner Emery.

I just want it's one thing I heard when we were going through some of those bills that you mentioned earlier and the question came up whether these were Sacramento specific, and they said there have been two. And the other one had been San Bernardino County. So I think it might be worth the ad hoc committee finding from San Bernardino, what do they do? You know? Yeah. So that was just my idea for the ad hoc. It'd be nothing for them to look at.

So just one final thought. In the bill that was passed last year, again, one of my points is that the FPPC now has the power to engage its own internal auditors, which is a different power than they had prior to January 1, in which they they factored everything out to the Franchise Tax Board. And I wonder if the floor stuff has may have something to do with what the Franchise Tax Board was going to do than what the FPPC was going to do. And so I think we need to at least ask them the question, can they give us a better deal, or are are they fixated on a particular can contract now in 2026 when their authority is different from what it was last year.

I appreciate that, Commissioner Kelly. I think at this juncture, given we've gone around on the FPPC a couple of times, I think it's wise to leave with the head off this question of refining how to best approach the FPPC if potentially there's opportunity there. So unless there is no further comment, if I'm allowed to do this as chair, I hereby create the ad hoc Sacramento good governance program auditing. I set its scope in an answer to Commissioner Velasquez, excuse me, Vice Chair Velasquez a while back, I liked it, so I don't want to restate it and screw it up. I hereby appoint Commissioner Kelly as one of the members of the ad hoc, and if there is no objection, and I hope there is, appoint myself the second member of the ad hoc.

Is there objection? Darn it. Okay. Appreciate that. Have I done all the things I need to do to create an ad hoc, Madam Clerk?

We have.

Okay. I think we are landing on a close to this item. Any final commissioner comments or questions before we close this Commissioner, Vice Chair Velasquez?

So I just want to reiterate, ad hoc has been created. You guys are gonna, create language, do some research, and find out if there's something, or someone or a unit or program within the city that could possibly be charged with, auditing for campaigns. Correct?

In essence, yes.

Okay. And then we're also gonna we're also asking the city clerk, Mindy Kuppe, for her staff to look back at or look at new entities that have those kinds of services and what they would charge, what the floor would be like the independent evaluator.

So let me reiterate. So an ad hoc is appointed to do that work. The ad hoc would go do that work and bring that back to this body. If they wanted to recommend that the city go find other firms, that would be the recommendation that they move forward. That find other firms. I believe the FPPC contract is on their website. Last time I looked, I wouldn't swear by that today. But that contract is out there. If the ad hoc wishes to reach out to that FPPC and ask questions, they can. But this body makes recommendations to the city council. Council.

Got it. Okay. So the ad hoc would be to create a proposal that the audit can either be within the city or that there's these other entities that provide services and this is what they provide and this is what their baseline would be.

And the recommendation could be that we believe we should do audits, whether full audits, partial audits, random audits, whatever the ad hoc wants to bring back to this body. This body would then adopt it, forward it to the City Council. The City Council then could give me direction to do any one of those things.

Got

it. Do an RFP to find a vendor to do this. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Velasquez. Commissioner Emery.

I just want to say thank you Commissioner Kelly and Chair LaFosso for taking this on. I'm gonna feel a lot better because that was always confusing to me about what what how this is supposed to happen. So thank you very much, and I know you're both lawyers, but I'm sure you'll be able to talk down to us little people enough to make us understand what you're talking about. So thank you. And and I'm sure mister Lindsey can tell you how to do that. He's he's plain spoken which I appreciate.

Thank you, commissioner Kelly for initiating this. So concluding item five, that brings us to the generic commissioner comments, ideas, and questions matter. Do we have to is there potential public comment on this item? Do I need to ask you if there are speakers' lips?

No. Not for commissioner comments.

Got it. Thank you. Are there any commissioner comments or questions on this item? Commissioner Emery.

And I guess, you know, the this body is more important than ever because I I think I I don't live in District 2, but live next door to it. And there had been rumors for a very long time about things going on with the city council person there even when he was running, and that's why I think it makes it more important than ever when we see that a Sacramento city council member is you know, has a huge fine. He's gonna have jail time for what their actions. And and I have always been sorry because people are going, well, didn't anybody complain? The ethics commission.

I said, there's only one towards the very end, but never anything about some of the real, you know, like, where he lived and stuff. So I think it just shows that this is an important body, and we just need to get people understanding that we are doing the work so that we can make sure that we do have good governance in this city. And it it just it was, you know, it reads like a really really bad novella or something instead of instead of somebody who was actually a city council member and should have been working with for his constituents. So, it it just was a lot to think about. Thank you.

If I may, I'd be happy to connect Commissioner Emery with the D2 council member if you wanted to get in front of those organizations.

I I have talked to him. I'm going to talk to him again. So, yeah, know him quite well and his chief of staff. So, I will I saw him there and I think, oh, I should have bugged him again. So, thank you.

Although the allegations are unfortunate, none of those are laws that would be under the purview of this commission.

Thank you very much. Any other commissioner comments or questions under this item? My only last one will be to offer a friendly reminder to my colleagues that your form 700 is due on Thursday if you have not done it yet. And I learned in this meeting that you want to do it because miss Cappy doesn't want to audit you.

I'm getting the weekly emails. Thank you very much.

Very welcome. We appreciate

I love those constant reminders.

There'll be dailies starting tomorrow.

Ah. And did I get mine done? I think I did. Yes. Yeah, I did. Okay.

Okay. Camera's still on. Just everybody now. Okay. Mister Lindsey.

Chair LaFazo, if I may, going back to just the tail end of, commissioner Emory's comments. And also, while clerk Cuppy is correct about, say, the violations that ended up being in question, that sort of thing, right, even if you have situations where it ultimately doesn't follow within the ethics commission, right, if somebody's trying to essentially blow the whistle on corruption, that kind of thing, if they steal a complaint and there's still somewhere else including criminally to refer it, then there is we still have the process of if there's somewhere else to refer things, to refer things, and it might be a situation where incidentally or just someone who's more comfortable doing it, mentioning first alleged wrongdoing to the ethics commission and through the ethics commission, even if it's not something that the ethics commission would have in its own process to review, might through the clerk's office end up ultimately with those who have the authority to deal with the situation. So the reason I say that is that it goes to what you mentioned about outreach and people knowing about the ethics commission and that sort of thing. And, you know, get people might just based off of, you know, how they might feel about, say, the police or law enforcement or whoever, they might feel more comfortable depending on situation, having others that they initially wanna complain to, even if it ultimately isn't that group that handles it.

You know? So so I see that, you know, people have concerns even if the ethics commission isn't ultimately the one to handle it. This might be an avenue situations to come to light one way or the other and end up where they need to be handled.

I appreciate that perspective very much, mister Lynch. Just quick follow-up question. Do I understand that I've read somewhere that if some matter of the type you describe enters the Ethics Commission's intake process and it is appropriately something that would have gone to the city's whistleblower hotline, that it is diverted to that in that direction?

Yes, that's correct. For instance, I don't have it right in front of me, but the provision you're referring to, it's to try to get it to, if the FPPC law enforcement, it might be, it's the DA's office, whomever, whistleblowers, auditor, that sort of thing. We've had whistle, we've had things that have for instance in the past and actually been heard matters here that started out with whistleblower that we figured out were actually complaints and would internally, for instance, refer to the Ethics Commission. Not regularly, but it has happened before. For instance, certain whistleblower

or

auditor, where they're the first point of contact, ultimately ended up with the Ethics Commission.

Helpful. Thank you very much. Indeed. So concluding this item, the last item is public comments, matters not on the agenda. Do we have any speaker slips? Mr. Bredberg.

Thank you, Chair. I have no speaker slips for matters not on the agenda.

Okay.

Chair, I do have a quick staff comment before we

Oh, yes.

Thank you. On your follow-up log is to have training from independent evaluator on how they process a claim. I just wanted to get confirmation that is still something you're interested in. The cost is approximately $5,000 for the evaluator to make that presentation for you. I'm seeing nods.

That's a significant cost. Do I have anyone that would like to work with the evaluator to determine what you really want? What is the scope of that training? Do we just want him to and we can't talk about that now, but I didn't know if there's somebody interested in collaborating on what you like to cover or if each of you would like to send me your thoughts on what you'd like to cover, I can share that with the evaluator so he does cover what we need.

I think that's good. I certainly think it makes sense for individual commissioners to communicate with you individually. If you wanted someone to take a little bit additional responsibility, I do recall that this started out as your request commissioner Emery, so I was going to nominate you. But if you don't want that exposure, really that's okay. That's okay because I do think the idea that everybody who has a thought just send them directly to Ms. Cuppie is perfectly fine. Okay, we'll do that. Okay, thank you very much. So we've dispensed with public comments matters not on the agenda, which means unless there's anything else to say or do, we are adjourned. Thank you.