Oversight Board Committee - Regular Meeting

Him or her was two highlights.

That's what I'm saying. Two highlights. Oh, yeah. Okay. Ready? Yes. Okay.

This meeting will be recorded. The Zoom application will notify you that this meeting is being recorded. Please press continue on the Zoom application to stay in the meeting. Use the raise hand feature in Zoom when you would like to speak on an item and also to lower your hand when you are finished speaking. Please unmute when called to speak and mute yourself when you are done speaking.

If you're calling by phone, identify yourself by name before speaking on an item. Press 9 on your phone to raise and lower your hand. Press 6 if you are participating by phone to mute and unmute. Okay. I would like to call this meeting of the governance and ethics committee meeting on Friday, January 16 at ten sorry. At 10:10AM. We're meeting in the Speracino Conference Hall Conference room. We have, I guess I would like to ask for roll call.

Chair Jane? Council member Park?

Here.

Council member Shahal?

Yes, sir. Okay.

Now we don't have anything on consent, so we're gonna move on to public presentations. So any person who would address like to address this body on a matter not on the agenda that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the body. The law does not permit action or extended discussion of any item not on the agenda except under special circumstances. Are there any anyone who would like to make a public presentation?

I have one. Doctor Shanks, if you'll unmute yourself, you should be able to speak now.

Yes. Can you hear me? Hi.

Good good morning. I'm doctor Tom Shanks. Let let me turn off my phone here.

Okay.

I and I'm actually not sure whether this is public presentation or speaking to your agenda. But your agenda packet is so confusing that even I, who created these programs and advised them for seventeen years, cannot tell what you're proposing to do. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you.

Okay. Sorry. Alright. Section one is labeled proposed edits to the city's code of ethics and values, but the city's code is the 2,001 code. This section contains a replacement document, not edits to the city's code. Section two is labeled LCW's proposed city code of ethics and values. This appears to be what you presented in March. So is section one the edited version of section two? Are you voting on section one or section two? Which one is the actual proposal?

Section three is labeled proposed edits to behavioral standards, but it just includes the original behavioral standards document. Section four is labeled LCW's proposed behavioral standards, but it contains the ethics website pages, a yellow note saying no recommended edits until after others are approved, the original commissioner standards, original council standards, the original code again, and the 2006 calendar insert. I can't tell from the packet are you voting on, one or two for the code, what you're doing with behavioral standards, whether you're eliminating, editing, or keeping them, what no recommended edits means, why the same documents are repeated multiple times, and what you're actually voting voting on. And if I can't understand this, how can residents The Brown Act requires materials that are organized for meaningful public review. This packet fills that test.

I request immediate continuance until you provide clarification sections one or two, what you're voting on, proper side by side comparisons, accurate labels, explanation of cryptic notes, and a sixty day review period. Why are there no public, why is there no public input into this whole process? Why is it now suddenly being rushed after being delayed for such a long time? And why is it so confusing? I created these programs.

I can't understand your packet. So that's either incompetence or deliberate obstruction or I'm an idiot, which I don't think is the case. So which is it? Because either way, you can't vote on documents the public can't comprehend. Thank you.

Okay. That was actually related to item number two and should have been taken during item number two, but I entertained that presentation. Now are there any other public speakers?

Yeah.

That's fine. Okay. So we'll move on to general business. Item number one is approval of the 10/30/2025 Governance and Ethics Committee special meeting minutes. Is there, any discussion? Any questions? Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this item? No. K. Is I'd like to entertain a motion. Motion to approve. I turn the call to what? A motion by Chahal. A second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstained?

Okay. Passes unanimously. Now we can move on to item number two, which is presentation by outside consultant for the review and recommendations regarding potential adoption of ethics commission and the approval of proposed changes to city's ethics policies previously presented to the committee. We have staff presentation? Okay.

Okay. Thank you so much. Good morning, everybody. My name is Maureen Jacob. I'm the managing partner in the San Francisco office at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, which is a law firm that works with the city of Santa Clara.

I am here today to follow-up on some policy updates that we discussed at the last meeting that I appeared at. And secondarily, and really the focus of my conversation with you today is on the potential adoption of an ethics commission. You know, my suggestion with respect to the other policies that we previously discussed, until the committee is clear on whether or not it wants to move forward with proposing an ethics commission to the city council, I don't think those other documents would be ready to to be finally approved until we get some clarity on that. So what you have been provided this morning, I understand, are the red line versions of those other policies that that we discussed when I was here in 2025. And so you have those for review.

Again, what I'm focusing on this morning, and I'm available here today until noon, is the potential adoption of an ethics commission. Sorry. Easy enough. Oh, this

This one is. What

do I need to press? Right there? Okay. Great. So first thing that I want to chat with the committee about are general considerations know, with respect to whether or not to adopt an ethics commission.

What I've done is evaluated ethics commissions that currently exist throughout the state of California, and then I also looked outside of California to see what other major cities in the country are doing. Now ethics commissions can vary somewhat in their structure and and what authority they have, but in large part, they are similar in the sense that they all tend to have, you know, some sort of investigative authority, advisory opinion authority, and some have binding authority, you know, over over their agencies. And so we will talk about various examples, and my hope is that the information that I provide you with today will help inform a discussion that you can have about whether the city of Santa Clara is interested in moving forward with potentially adopting its own ethics commission. And I also have, which we can use for our discussion, is kind of a list of, you know, questions that you should be thinking about and asking yourselves as as we go through this.

Steps. I apologize. I hit on it.

It's okay.

That's doing right. Okay. Yes.

Okay. So focusing on cities in California. So I reviewed San Francisco. The city and county of San Francisco has its own ethics commission, which was created by Charter, and they have enforcement authority over ethics rules and policies, campaign finance rules and excuse me, laws and policies, and lobbying laws. And I'll do a deeper dive on each of these as we go through the presentation.

This is just kind of an overview of what I'm going to talk about. City of Oakland, another Bay Area entity, also has an ethics commission that has authority over issues involving ethics, transparency, and campaign reform. City of San or City of Sacramento, another Northern California agency, has an a commission that's complaint driven. So when complaints are brought forward, there's authority there to investigate and propose action. And then they also have an enforcement authority over their local ethics codes and campaign finance policies.

And then in Southern California, both City Of San Diego and City Of Los Angeles have ethics commissions. In San Diego, it is quite resourced and structured. They've got an independent department with their commissioners and staff that enforces local ethics and campaign laws and conducts audits and investigations. And we'll talk a little bit about how that works at these agencies. There are major cities outside of California that also have some sort of ethics body.

One thing I wanna point out, city of Boston is listed here. So they have a board of ethics, but it's actually a state department. It is not a city department. So, the state there is enforcing and investigating ethics issues, but these other cities identified here are all city based ethics commissions with authority. Again, it's generally over campaign finance issues, lobbying issues, alleged ethics misconduct by either public officials and or staff.

Now there's a lot of leeway that the city of Santa Clara has in considering what type of commission, if any, you end up adopting. So for example, you can have a commission that's purely advisory in nature. You it could be set up so that they would be advising this body. It could be set up where they're advising the city council in full. So it does not have to be a binding entity, and you have a lot of freedom and flexibility in terms of how to set that up in a way that works for the city.

All of the commissions that I surveyed have investigative authority, meaning the ability to conduct investigations. And that's either being done in house by staff or they are being resourced out, sourced out to investigators to to do that work. I'm not seeing agencies where the commissioners themselves are doing those investigations, but the findings of those investigations come back to the commissioners. And they all of the identified commissions have at least the authority to make an advisory opinion to the legislative body. Some of the ethics committees and I'll just, in a blanket way, refer to them as ethics committees they have enforcement powers such as sanctioning offenders, fining offenders.

Not all of them do, but some of them do. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami, for example. So those are commissions that are more independent, function more independently from actual city council. Also, you know, you've got some scenarios where commissions were established by vote of the public as opposed to by the city councils. Yeah.

So where you see the public voting and ethics commission, and you see more independence. So right now, city of Santa Clara has, you know, a lot of freedom, again, and leeway in terms of how you wanna set this up if it's the council that's actually doing that. Some of the ethics commissions, you know, have that campaign finance oversight. And, you know, I think that you're seeing that sort of emphasis in these larger entities where that may be a bigger issue. And conflict of interest laws, ethics laws, and policies are reviewed and enforced by all of the ethics commissions that that I took a look at.

My understanding of this committee is that this committee reviews city policies at this point. And so another thing to take into consideration for this body, if

you

make a recommendation to the council to adopt an ethics commission is how will the two bodies function together? Because you've got this governance ethics and governance committee. And if you add an ethics commission, there's going to need to be a clear delineation over what your powers and authorities and your roles are. Okay. So focusing on San Francisco's ethics commission for

Can I ask a question? Yes. What was the smallest city that you found that This

yeah. So I think it's made a list.

Was my question as well. Yeah. Jurisdictions that you presented close to closest in size to Saint Laurent.

I, you know, I didn't specifically look at that, but looking at it, I would assume Oakland would be the closest in size, but could be Sacramento. I did not look at that specific question, and I'm happy to follow-up with that. And when you when you're saying closest, you mean population wise of This is budget.

Budget. Population.

Okay. I did not look at that.

Administrative point of view because depending upon the size of city, they have manpower to manage some of these things. What about city of Santa Clara, whether they have capability to manage them?

Excellent point in question and something that I was thinking about. You know, you have city of New York, for example, which we'll talk about, which has a lot of resources, city resources devoted to their ethics, commission, which includes stand alone departments that help the ethics commission do their work. But their resources are not the resources of city of Santa Clara. So that's a fair point. I did not look at that specifically yet, but can.

I think, councilor Abhiksha Hari.

Can I, maybe I can pull it if you Sure? Refer to that. Like, some of these things we are talking about, campaign finance conflict of interest and other term, they are managed by FPPC right now at the state level just like Boston had a state level. So what would, you you can answer later on. We can go through it. But my question is, what difference would it make from administrative point of view to have a separate ethics or, campaign finance commission, whichever you wanna call it, versus the following FPPC? That's my

Great question. Happy to address it now. So it is

I I had a similar question Mhmm. Which which is we have the grand jury, we have the FPBC, we have the city. Where is the delineation between roles there? How would you see that we would be doing something that's not covered by grand jury or not covered by FPPC?

Okay. So when you're dealing with a body like FPPC or grand jury, those are separate entities from the city of Santa Clara. Right? So we start from there. So they have your local grand jury and the FPPC have their own missions, charges, roles, and responsibilities.

And, you know, for example, with the FPPC and a grand jury, their own investigative authority. And so if the city of Santa Clara has an interest in having its own system set up to handle those things for any reason, then that's an opportunity to do that through a commission. And the without having looked, I have not, in advance of this meeting, looked specifically at what the jurisdiction of the FPPC is, but you could set up your commission so that you're not overlapping with the FPPC. Alternatively, it could overlap, and you would just have your own process, which gives the city of Santa Clara just some control and information. Because the FPPC and the grand jury, they're not working for the city, and so their interests are are different.

They're not necessarily aligned with the city's. So you could have overlap in duties, or you could decide to not do those thing not have your ethics commission handle anything that would be covered by the FPPC, for example. And the grand jury, they're more broad. You know, they a grand jury can investigate, you know, presumably investigate all sorts of things, right, that that come before a grand jury. So it would be hard to try and carve that out, but I could see if you wanted to focus in on what the FPPC is doing so that we're not overlapping there. That is something we could look at.

I think yeah. Go ahead. So if I this is from discussion point of view only. Yes. Campaign finance. Everything is covered by the FPPC as per the state mandate. We are governed by that.

Yeah.

And, some of these conflict of interests are governed by FPPC Mhmm. At the state level. It's not that I know you mentioned they're a separate body, but we still responsible to follow FPPC guideline and, a, are the decision making for the legislative people Right. Basically. So how we delineate, like how how we say that this is not a duplication of work, but we already have a state level body, which is much more experienced, much more

Right.

Administratively handle a lot of these things. How we delineate that? Why we do a duplication of Sure. You you can avoid a duplication by having your ethics commission focus on the city's policies. The FPPC is focused on violations of the law and not necessarily your local policies on things like campaign finance, ethics, etcetera. So that would be one way to ensure we're not duplicating.

So, Amina, I wanna point it later, which is I understand that we have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions as well, but I would like to get to the presentation so that if the if the questions come up through the course of the presentation, it would be better. But I I would just like to because I a lot of the questions lot of the comments that I hear now are also comments and questions that I have as well, but I'd like to make sure that they're covered. I mean, this is one of the reasons why letting a public member speak on public presentation for an item on the agenda is a very like, it's not a very good thing because now do we let them speak again? Because they've already spoken on this subject.

There's a lot of things that we need to do following process, and there's a good reason for them. It's not about being kind. It's about how do we be fair to the people that are coming to this to this committee meeting.

And so I was trying to

I don't wanna hear an explanation. I'd to continue with the the presentation.

Well, I'm running this meeting, Kevin.

Understood. But I'm saying as a point of

order to make it to work to you. Interactive different than a council meeting. And as the chair, I have the ability to do that. So this will not be, you know, full presentation then questions.

So okay. Okay. Thank

you. So focusing on San Francisco's for a moment. And even though it's a a legitimate and a good question, well, you know, who's most similar to us population wise and budget wise? I would encourage you to think of this presentation as a discussion of other ethics commissions that I found so that you have a sense of what the options are out there for for the city of Santa Clara. So I'm not suggesting, for example, that the city move forward with any one particular commission.

I want you to sort of see the buffet of options, and then should you decide to move forward, then we can focus in on what elements you want in an ethics commission here. So San Francisco's ethics commission has a lot of independence. But as I mentioned, those commissions that are adopted by, you know, voter initiatives, propositions generally tend to be that way. So SF Ethics Commission enforces laws on campaign finance, lobbying, conflicts of interest, and ethics. They have investigative powers, which includes the ability to issue subpoenas, which requires parties to produce records.

They can impose fines on offenders, and they have audit authority as well. The they have five members on their ethics commission with six year terms. Another consideration for for this committee is, you know, how do we set up an ethics commission? So the way San Francisco does it, they have so they have five members. The mayor appoints one.

The board of supervisors appoints one. The city attorney appoints one. The DA appoints one, and the assessor, appoints one. Any proposed rules and regulations of the ethics commission do ultimately end up going to their board of supervisors for a vote. So on, policy changes, they're going to their board of supervisors.

But on those investigations into alleged violations of the local policies, they have the authority to issue fines, for example, and make findings. In terms of Oakland's ethics commission, the jurisdiction, you know, is similar. It's over campaign finance, transparency policies, and government ethics. Also have the ability to conduct audits, investigations, and enforcement of their transparency policies. And they also have management authority over lobbyist registration, gift limits, and whistleblower protections.

So the the role of the ethics commission in Oakland is to the stated role is to promote government ethics and transparency. It serves as a quasi judicial body that that adjudicates enforcement matters. In order to get appointed to the ethics commission in Oakland, they are you have to apply. So there's an application process at the city of Oakland. It's a volunteer position.

Across the board, that is consistent. You are volunteering for these posts, and you are not to have any financial interest with the city. You're not to be an employee or an elected official of the city, so that true independence. And they serve three year terms at the city of Oakland. They were interesting.

It's the commission itself selects its members who will join the ethics commission. So that was a little different. The San Diego Ethics Commission was also adopted by voters like the San Francisco ethics commission. It's, again, a volunteer city body made up of appointed members. There are seven members that are appointed by the mayor.

Now in San Diego, they have specific qualifications that have to be met for someone to become a commission member. So for example, at least two of the seven members have to have held some sort of public office before, and at least three of the commission members have to be attorneys. And presumably, the reason for that is because they want their commissioners to have public sector governance experience and or legal experience since we are you know, when you're talking about conducting conducting these these investigations into potential policy violations and legal violations, you're there is a benefit to having people who understand how to read and interpret policies on the ones and how investigations are conducted. In order to get on the San Diego's commission, you apply. The mayor makes recommendations to the city council, and then the city council votes on who the actual commissioners will be, and they serve a five year term.

Yeah. So it's a a large department at City of San Diego. The Sacramento Ethics Commission was created relatively recently by ordinance in 2017. They enforce ethics rules for elected officials, candidates, and commission members. They will handle complaints that come into the city about alleged violations.

They have the authority to conduct hearings on the issues, to investigate, and to impose administrative penalties. The it's a five member body. One of the requirements is that you must reside in Sacramento. At least three of the members have to have experience in either law, ethics, local government, or a similar field. They require annual training of their for their commissioners to help keep them up to speed on the city's policies and on any legal changes.

Anyone interested can apply to the commission, and then the commission itself makes recommendation to the city council, and the city council votes to approve who will be on the commission, and they serve for your funds. In terms of the commissions outside of California that I looked at, again, overall, their charges and what they are doing are similar. I didn't find any ethics commission anywhere in the country that really went beyond what we've what we've talked about so far. That doesn't mean that the city of Santa Clara can't decide to do something different. So, again, my point here today is to just educate you about, you know, how things are being done.

So in Chicago, there is a board of ethics that was created by ordinance. It governs the conduct of elected officials and employees. It enforces ethics, conflicts, gift limits, lobbying laws, campaign rules. They issue advisory opinions. They conduct investigations, and they can impose some penalties.

They also the Chicago Board of Ethics provides mandatory training for all city employees and officials on their local policies that they have the jurisdiction over. Now in Chicago, the city also has a a committee on ethics and government oversight. And that committee, which is kind of similar to this committee, that committee actually oversees matters involving city council members, and so they are policing themselves essentially. So if the board of ethics is involved with something related to a city council member, it's going back to this committee that the city council has formed for consultation. Let's see.

Chicago also expressly says, you must reside in the City Of Chicago. You cannot be engaged in any political activity. You cannot hold office, a little a public office. You cannot have a financial interest in any city business in order to serve. It's a volunteer position and a four year term.

City of Seattle has an ethics and elections commission that oversees campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying. Again, here we have the FPPC in California. I don't know if there's a similar body, in the state of Washington. So in Seattle, their ethics commission is doing a lot of work that's election related. They are also volunteers.

Seven members of the community, three of them are appointed by the mayor, three of them are appointed by the city council, and then the commissioners themselves pick the seventh member. All of the appointments from the mayor, the council, and the commissioners do get ultimately confirmed by the entire city council, and they serve three year terms. We spoke about New York already. They, as I said, have a lot of resources devoted to this. They were structured the most differently of all the agencies that I that I look at.

They work with a department of investigations, which is its own standalone body that conducts the investigations. And they also have a campaign finance board that is separate from their ethics commission. So they they all work together. So the conflicts of interest board, which is the equivalent of their ethics commission, specifically enforces city charter provisions that are tied to ethics issues. It's a five member body appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council.

New York requires that you not be a city employee or official. You may not hold any political office, and you cannot have any conflict I'm sorry. You cannot have any financial interest in any city business, and you cannot have any conflicts with city business, and you serve a six year term. The Miami Dade Ethics Commission is an independent investigative agency. So it investigates complaints against local government officials and staff and enforces local ethics laws.

It has subpoena authority and can impose penalties or refer matters to local law enforcement for prosecution. It was created by voter approval. There are five members. They serve four year terms. They are appointed by one appointed by the mayor, one by the county commissioner, one by a a judge of their eleventh circuit, and that's their state court judge, one by the deans of all of the law schools in Florida, and one of the one member is appointed by the deans of the business schools in Florida.

Now Miami Dade was the only commission that I found that actually pays a stipend to its commissioners, but that is not common. They were the outlier in that regard. Boston, we talked about. It's the state that runs it. It's not they don't have a standalone ethics commission.

Washington DC has a board of ethics and government accountability or as they call it, and it was established in 2011. Its focus is on, you know, ethics violations and the midst of potential or alleged misconduct by city officials and and staff. They have the authority to investigate. They can impose fines and refer to local law enforcement for prosecution, and they oversee and investigate alleged violations on, you know, city policies on lobbying gifts, nepotism, and outside employment rules. It's a five member body appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council.

They serve five year terms, and they cannot have any conflicts with any city business. The last agency that I took a look at was the city of Philadelphia. They have an ethics board that enforces city campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics ordinances. They have the authority to investigate and adjudicate complaints, which means holding hearings on issues and have the authority to issue fines. Their authority is by city charter, and they have independent authority to hold hearings, you know, investigate, and take punitive action.

They are a seven member body. Three members are appointed by the mayor, three by the city council, and one member jointly by the mayor and city council. Philadelphia does not have an application process. It's essentially, the mayor and the city council go to people and and select who they would like who they think would be a good fit. No conflict. You cannot have any conflict of interest to become a commissioner, and you serve a five year term. Some of so that's a a general survey of what we see out there. I wanna talk a little bit about the pros and cons of

Can I

Yes? Chen? Yes.

When you talk about independent bodies, k, typically, these are gonna be investigating any city employee or just the mayor and council. And then if they're being appointed by the mayor and council, how are they independent? Mhmm.

That's a great question.

Have you looked at that issue?

Yeah. So what I will say is what struck me was the appointment process that some of these agencies have, where, for example, Philadelphia doesn't even have an application process. They're just handpicking their commission members. So that's something for you to take into consideration. You know, what process would you want set up?

How independent do you want it to be? What I can say is many of them have the involvement of the mayor and the council in in making those decisions. Whether or not you have your commission, have authority over staff and elected officials, I think across the board, it's both. And so, again, city of Santa Clara can decide what the jurisdiction and the authority of any ethics commission would be, whether it's city staff and elected officials or one or the other.

Good. Thank you. Mhmm.

So then let's chat a little bit about whoops. I hit the wrong button, Amy. Sorry. I was doing so well.

It's okay. Thank you. Thank

okay. So in terms of the benefits to having an ethics commission, it enhances public trust by promoting transparency and accountability of your officials. I'll just use that term broadly. And and what officials mean, again, is up to the city of Santa Clara. It provides independent oversight of elected officials and public employees so that there isn't this sense of, you know, you policing yourselves, for example.

An ethics commission, particularly if you choose to have members who have certain qualifications like some of the agencies do, can help you ensure compliance with ethics lobbying and campaign finance laws, and they can bring an expertise, you know, to and and knowledge base to the commission that can really help make that happen. They can offer advisory opinions. They don't have to have binding authority. And, again, if you have, for example, people with a certain level of expertise on your commission, that could be very helpful for the city council and the city. They could also provide training.

You could use your commission to to implement training to city officials, which would have included elected members of the city council and staff members. All of this, the advisory opinions, the training aimed at reducing any violations, whether they be intentional or unintentional. But, you know, we see for those of us who are attorneys in particular, we see violations where there is a lot of inadvertent activity going on. People may not even have an understanding that, you know, their actions violate policy or laws. So a commission, you know, that's doing training, issuing advisory opinions could really help your your base here at the city.

And it can also serve as a deterrence. So if elected officials and city staff understand that there is this ethics commission that's charged with doing investigations, maybe doing hearings, has the authority to take some level of action against officials, that could deter misconduct, keep people, you know, operating professionally and in compliance with laws and policies, and, you know, can also then reduce corruption in public office if that's a concern. Some of the downsides to having an ethics commission, depending on how you structure it, it could be perceived as a a politicized body or a body that doesn't really have independence. Right? And if if that's the perception of your ethics commission by your community, that could really backfire.

So, you know, when you think about, you know, how do we structure this, that's something to be taken into account. It can be very expensive. It will, you know, create essentially a new entity within the city with legal and administrative complexity, especially in those instances at the outset. You know, there was a great question about, well, what about the FPPC, and what about the local grand jury? How do we avoid stepping on each other's toes?

That's an issue that will have to be taken into consideration. And, you know, what do we do then when there is an overlap? Because that can happen. So that it just adds a layer of complexity. Investigations. Who's going to conduct the investigations? Where's the money coming if we're having to hire an outside investigator to do that? You know, what will the budget for that be? And the investigations could lead to reputational harm even when no violation is found. And so that's something, you know, to bear in mind as well.

I've talked about budgetary resources. They will be required. This will not be something that is a zero cost impact on the city of Santa Clara, and so that is something that will need to be taken into consideration, and that includes, you know, use of your your resources within the city. So your existing staff members and the drain and strain on on those individuals who already, you know, have the work that they're responsible for here in the city. And the effectiveness of a commission depends heavily on what enforcement powers that they have and what type of public engagement with your will your commission have.

Will there be some sort of reporting that's done to the community about the work of the ethics commission? And, again, it could take a lot of time, a lot of resources to do that, and, could create a lot of chatter in the community that may or may not be positive or healthy for the city. If the city decides to move forward with exploring the adoption of a commission, you know, the roles and the authority of any commission needs to be very clearly defined. And so some of the key questions that you would want to take into consideration are, you know, first of all, what is the purpose and the scope of your ethics commission? What is the problem that they are charged with trying to solve?

What misconduct will the commission address? And examples of what other commissions do, ethics policies they investigate and enforce, which includes conflicts of interest, misconduct by elected officials, which is relatively broad, misuse of office, campaign finance issues. It can be really anything ethics related, but you'll wanna clearly define what the scope is. You'll want to determine, will the commission be primarily advisory to this committee, to the city council, or will it be will it have the authority to take enforcement action? And if you give the ethics commission enforcement action, do they also need to get some sort of approval either from the city council to do that for this commission, or will will the commission be truly independent in that regard?

Or will you have a hybrid situation where with some things, they will have binding authority. With other things, they will be advisory in nature to the city council. One of the questions raised was, well, who will the ethics commission have jurisdiction over? Is it city staff and elected officials? Is it one or the other?

That's that's the committee's decision to make. Some ethics commissions oversee city staff, elected officials. So cities have appointed officials, you know, to certain subcommittees and whatnot. Can It cover them. Contractors, outside contractors with the city, they can have oversight over their activities that are city related, which would include, you know, lobbyists, for example.

The last question on purpose and scope, is there an existing body that's already performing some of these functions? And so that's for you to ask. Like, are we or this committee, are we doing some of these things already? And do we want to delegate that authority to an ethics commission and delegate it completely or have them be advisory to us? So these are the types of things, the questions and issues that that you wanna address when you're thinking about the purpose and the scope of your ethics commission.

A second issue that you wanna take into consideration is the legal authority and the structure of any ethics commission. How will the commission be created? Will it be through resolution of the city council or through ordinance or some other means. We've talked a little bit about what powers the commission will have. Will it have investigative power?

Will it have the power to issue subpoenas? Will it have the power to hold hearings? Will it have the power to either recommend or impose penalties? Will it have the power to make referrals to law enforcement or the grand jury or the FPPC? Those types of things we'll want to drill down on.

What due process protections will apply? If your ethics commission makes a finding that someone has, for example, violated, some sort of conflict of interest policy, what sort of notice will that individual or those individuals be provided? What opportunity, if any, will they have to be heard on the findings against them? Will there be an appeals process? So those are some of the structuring and the legal authority issues that you wanna take into account.

A third area that you'll want to take into account is the appointment and, you know, how do you compose the ethics commission? Who will appoint the ethics commissioners? I I didn't find any ethics commission where they're voted by the local community. So it's all by appointment is how it's done. And so, you know, who will who will be responsible for the appointment? Is confirmation by the city council going to be required? How many commissioners will you have? How long will will their terms be? And will you have some sort of mechanism set up for the removal

of the

commissioners based on misconduct by a commissioner, for example? I think that'll be important because some of these agents I'm sorry. Some of these commissions, you know, they're serving six year term, seven year term. So you wanna take it into account. What if we have a commissioner who goes rogue? We've gotta have some sort of mechanism, you know, to to remove them. Your when you're thinking about your commissioners, you know, what are the qualifications? Do we want specialized knowledge? You know, we've got some of the agencies want a certain number of lawyers. They want a certain number of individuals who have some elected official experience.

So what are the qualifications that we would require? Who are is anyone disqualified from serving? For example, a current city employee. Do we wanna disqualify city employees? Do we wanna disqualify city council members?

Is there anyone else we wanna disqualify? Anyone who's engaged or interacted in business with the city, you know, they you may wanna disqualify those individuals as well. Staffing budget and operations, how will it function? This is a significant issue for the city to take into account. Can't just set up an ethics commission and then not have it have some sort of budget for the work that it is doing.

And so that will be something that needs to be taken into consideration and and hopefully by the city, you know, before the decision is made. Will you have dedicated staff to the ethics commission? Will you have legal counsel for the ethics commission? Will it have a budget? Who will control the ethics commission's budget?

Is the budget large enough to support the work of the ethics commission? So if they have the authority, for example, to hold hearings or to do investigations or to provide training to city officials, how will that be funded? The next overarching issue that that this committee will need to take into account if it wants to move forward with a proposal for an actual ethics commission to be set up, you know, is confidentiality and transparency, which sound diametrically opposed. But both both will be intro and will be very important. So will certain complaints be kept confidential?

Are anonymous complaints going to be entertained by the commission? When there are findings made, say, for example, if there's an investigation, will those be made public by the commission? And if so, how will they be communicated? And if they're not going to be made public, how do you address that that component, you know, with the public if and when there are questions from the public about why things are being kept confidential. Enforcement and penalties.

Another major area that we'll wanna look at if the committee decides to move forward with trying to set up an ethics commission. What, if any, penalties can the ethics commission impose? Let's assume they the commission does get the power to impose penalties or fines. Who will enforce those penalties? Will there be a cap on any type of action or penalties that the ethics commission can be imposed?

You have a city attorney. What will the role of the city attorney be, if any, with the ethics commission? Will the city attorney represent the commission? Will the city attorney provide support to the commission, which will take your city attorney away from other things that he or she is doing, currently he, at the city? But that will be something important to take into consideration.

Education. What will we do, if anything, to keep our commissioners trained up? And will we require them to have a certain amount of training annually on ethics? Will will we have the commission do training for our city officials and staff members? So those are, you know, some of the things to be taking into consideration.

These are you know, if you were to say to me, Maureen, we wanna we wanna see a a proposal, you know, for an ethics commission, these are the types of things that I would be looking at in, you know, bringing forward something for your consideration. But, you know, what I wanted to do in this presentation today was talk with you about what how these are structured out there, give you an opportunity to have a discussion about the issues, and I'm here to, you know, help answer any questions. If there's any follow-up that you would like me to do specifically on any of these issues, I'm happy to do that. And yeah. So I will stop there.

I think council member Park, this is a good time, you know, to stop for questions, I think, if there are questions. Yep. Hey.

Do we have any questions? Okay. I go ahead. Go ahead.

Questions or discussion and. Yeah.

K. I have a lot of questions. A lot a lot of comments. I'll just make a few. I mean, we know that the only thing worse than rules without enforcement is enforcement with without rules. We talk about backgrounds, and I think that not having elected positions or financial interests does not go far enough when it comes to investigative boards that, you know, as we have seen. When we talk about legal guardianships or probate, we have something called guardian at at at Lytum. I don't know what that is, but it's it's the you have to show that you have no relationship with the people. This is something that's very difficult. It it was brought up earlier about if they're appointed, then it's very difficult to show that there is no you know?

But I think that having no relationship or showing independence is a is the one of the most important things when it comes to something like this. When I hear about the appointment processes, when I hear about the I don't see anything that even touches the bar of independence. And and there's a lot of questions. I mean, at some point that that a a GAL is is a legal oath at some point, and you can be removed for, you know, not having your legal oath violating the legal oath. Mhmm.

There's lots of questions. Like, when do commissions not refer or investigate items? Can they be coerced to to investigate items? What accountability do they have? We talked about this a little bit, but, I mean, without talking about how we do account because we don't have accountability even now. I mean, elected officials are already subject to laws. There's FPPC as you suggested, but there are state laws. There are federal laws. There are many things that that elected officials must do that nonelected officials do not. And this comes into conflict every election period when you've got candidates who are not elected, who are not subject to the same rules.

And they go they can go out and claim whatever they want. The ethics of having candidates sign private ethics pledges, it's like, what is that? I mean, at some point, we've got an ethics person that purports to know a lot about ethics and uses historic background with the city to talk about legal matters, which they don't which they clearly do not understand. To, you know, have people sign ethics pledges that require stances on items that may come up before a board, which that's not legal. I mean, when when an ethics pledge requires that you, you know, break an ethics rule, I think at some point, we need to question what the pledge is, and we need to question where the pledges are coming from.

I mean, if if there are no ways to hold elected officials accountable for actions outside of the legal requirements I mean, there aren't. I mean, outside, you have to wait till the next election cycle or maybe you go through a recall process. We've had admonishments and censures in this council, and those don't actually mean anything. They don't actually come with consequences. I know that other jurisdictions, higher offices, county supervisors, assembly members, senators, congressmen, they're all subject to censure and admonishment, and those often come with removal from committees.

They often come with, you know, lots of different things. There's but that doesn't happen in the city because we don't have a policy for that. And not having a policy for enforcement, it has created a terrible environment. Like, I used to sit at the very end of the council chambers where I'm looking at the the conduct. I mean, the the and the conduct clearly says we should be professional. And we have, even today, people who are on the council who they don't even say hello. They actively move against you. They actively, you know, insult you to your face in public meetings when all you said was hello. They yelled at children. You know, they yelled at my children, not my child.

Again, like, are we are putting the cart before the courts, which is we're trying to say, let's have another committee to try to do things that have that without any kind of rules or justification. And I understand the the appearance. The appearance is we'd like to be more transparent so that we feel better about this. And I'm gonna say what I said last time knowing that the same people that were here last time are are on online, which is when I talk to the people in my neighborhood, when I talk to the people across the city, when I talk to people outside the city about Santa Clara who are very, you know, well well versed with the politics of Santa Clara. The ethics of the people complaining are are not what what what's what's concerned.

I mean, they're concerned, but they I think what they would like to do is they'd like to weaponize groups. They'd like to weaponize committees and commissions as they've always done. I mean, even here, many policies give, let's say, to the mayor or of the jurisdictions. These are large cities. They are not like Santa Clara at all. If I take a look at Oakland, Oakland is three times larger. It's got 440,000 people. It's 78 square miles. You know, it is four times more than four times larger. It's got a larger budget, and our budget is enhanced because we've got our our utility.

We've got a enterprise funding utility. And right now, we give, I think, executive staff and and staff are give given an inordinate amount of power to the mayor without support. It's not supported by a charter. I mean, it's funny, but we literally had in the governance and ethics committee a statement by executive staff saying, well, this is what the mayor can do as stated by the charter, and there was no support in the charter. Even in the report that executive staff gave, there was no nothing in that executive report that supported the statements that they have made.

We have heard on one side that, well, the mayor should be allowed to do this because in my professional experience, because we have seen that other jurisdictions allow this. But council members, you can't do this because there is nothing that explicitly states that you can do this. We've got this double standard where council members cannot do things because there is no rule allowing them to do that, and the mayor is not prohibited from things because there is no rule disallowing this. If we cannot solve these underlying problems first, then setting simply setting up another committee, you know, with no clear way to show independence, with no clear this doesn't make any sense. I mean, I've I've got a lot more saying, but I would like to to address some of these issues.

And at some point, like, I have no confidence that executive staff will be open and honest about this. It's like we trade, you know, we trade justice for consistency, and then we trade consistency for convenience, and we trade convenience for I don't know. But these are not the this these are the slippery slopes that have that have plagued this council more than the ethics. Meaning, we have a lot of transparency policies. We've got council calendars.

We've got dark money ordinances. We've got communications with with constituents and lobbyists. Communications apps that that have come into question, and none of those are followed. I've had executive staff tell me explicitly that, oh, it's no use. I've had staff tell me explicitly, it's no use, filing PRAs against the mayor explicitly because, well, they won't they won't follow it anyway.

This is a huge problem. Right? When even executive staff will not do this, and if and I see people are wrinkling their brows. But I'm sure we can get people who will will validate these statements. If we can't even, you know, correct the problems with the rules and regulations that we have, if we don't see the problems with our transparency, you know, our ordinances and our policies that are there for transparency, then having another ethics policy that's being driven by people who are the ones driving a lot of the the ethics problems, that's tremendous. Like, this is a big problem. And if this if this body cannot see that and will not see that, then, you know, they deserve whatever they get.

Rose Kay, did you have a question in there?

Oh, there were some questions already. How do we do accountability? What do we do about GALs? What do we do? How do do this? How do we get accountability? How do we have consequences when, you know, people don't even follow the basic rules of conduct? And, you know, we don't do that. Are we good at people don't follow conduct rules? Do we investigate those kinds of things? Like, what what kind of accountability that you know, the accountability? These are all baseline things even before we talk about. We're talking about how do we set up a committee and we'll worry about these details. I'm sorry, but what you said here is very important. You've gotta set up the details first. If you don't have those details, you don't have those rules, you don't have the the things set up well, simply putting together a committee is dangerous.

Yeah. So if I may

Yes.

Thank you. The the surveyed agencies all appoint, their commission members. So, you know, that is information for this body. You would have the authority to have the selection process work however the city wants that to work. So, you know, I don't have anything council member Park to share beyond that.

It's the prerogative, you know, of the city. Assuming you decide to move forward with this, there's nothing that, you know, requires you to have an ethics commission. I wanna make sure that that's clear as well. So if there are concerns about, well, we don't want the elected officials making the appointments, I'll point to the Miami Dade model where they've got the local deans of the law schools making one appointment. They have a local judge making one appointment.

They have the deans of the business schools getting together to make one of the appointments. So that's, you know, an example of how to do that. Nothing stops you from having people elected into the position. Again, I'm not making recommendations around that. These are options that exist, for the city.

But even with those appointments, my question is how do we address the the questions of independence as we would with the with the gal?

Yeah. I I think inherent in an ethics commission that is tied to the city, you will always be addressing questions of transparency, independence. I think it's inherent in the

nature the work. And and I know we have. I've given examples of how we try to do that. I can give you can give you lots of examples how that doesn't that is not working, that that doesn't work. I mean, the people always there's a question that people ask, which is why do cheaters win? And the it's often met with the answer, cheaters never win. Oh, I'm sorry. Like, we say this all the time. They avoid consequences. They avoid investigation. They end up you know, they don't have to turn over. Rules only restrict those who are following the rules. Right? The the real answer to the question, why do cheaters win? Is because they cheat.

Right? And at some point, cheaters love rules. Cheaters love things that make it harder for other people to, you know, to to play the game or to or to win. And if you don't have any intent on following those rules, it's very easy to put more and more and more rules in place. And I think at some point, we need to look at that process, the process of what rules are we putting in place, how are we enforcing those rules, how are those those rules being applied equally and, you know, consistently across the entire board? And if and when that does not happen, then we've got a problem. Like, we had a central motion three years ago, four years ago. And people think I mean, it's been lost in the narrative. People think that censure motion was for denying people the ability to speak. Oh, I'm sorry.

That was not the censure motion, and that certainly wasn't the censure motion that I put for you know, that I voted for. The censure motion was because a council member lied. Lied. They lied about the the setup of the the events. They lied about what happened at the event, and then they tried to cover it up. Right? At some point, this was not about denying people voice. That happens all the time. I mean, nobody cares about that. But when you've got elected official lying and on on a recording, on video, lying about something, we can talk all, you know, about lies all day.

And staff did has done absolutely nothing to to correct this. Right? I could tell you about 06/07/2022 and 06/21/2022 where mayor lied about the DARE program, was corrected by staff twice, and then lied again on 05/24/2022. You know, I you can see it. The you know, on the on the YouTube video, there is at three hours and nineteen minutes in, you know, they'll lie about the care program.

The council cut it last year. You know, something we have no jurisdiction over. On the June 7 meeting, you'll see, you know, two hour two hours fifty six minutes in for the next twenty minutes. There's just outright lying. I literally read the staff response, and it was repeated.

Like, at some point, there is if we have no accountability, if we're not actually gonna do anything about the rules that are being violated already, than simply setting up another committee, again, with no accountability, with no promises of independence, with no signatures that say, I you know, without a good appointment process doesn't make any sense to me. And at some point, you know, it's not just a council problem. This is the problem with staff and and executive management. And for people who say it's not, I'm saying you can blame the kids for you can blame the children for for getting into a lot of trouble. But if there are people who are supposed to be managing those children, at some point, they need to be held accountable too.

Like, we say talk about legal standard. Legal standard is the absolute lowest bar. You know, I've said this many times, and I'll say this again in the governance and ethics committee, which is the worst city manager that we would have hired is still bound to legal rules. Like, there is no there is no greatness attributed to simply I'm following the rules. I would like to also, you know, point out, especially during this time, that it's not the people that were following the rules that saved, you know, millions of people during the Holocaust.

It was the people that were not following the rules. At some point, there is a legal standard that we talk about that doesn't make any sense when we actually talk about feet on the ground, rubber, you know, meeting the road and getting stuff done. And if we're not gonna hold people accountable, having simply having more committees to to look at things doesn't make any sense to me.

Okay. Do you have some questions? No. Okay. So, really, what we're faced with is ethics. We have law where you have to follow them. And then ethics is more of a subjective gray area where, you know, people we don't have a lot of hold up to that. We have maybe admonishment or censure or shame to do that. What we're trying to get to is how do we hold people more accountable for those things that are not law.

Right. For those things that are not

That law. K? And so the FBC supposedly handles matters of law, but they take a long time to resolve some cases.

Yeah.

And they don't actually do a lot of investigation. They I found their investigation to be very poor. So we had a situation in the city of Santa Clara where two council members were accused of doing an operational tour of the stadium, and there was an FPPC complaint. It took two years to resolve, maybe three years. And there was reputational harm because there was an FPPC investigation. Right. The FPPC investigation found there was no issue there. Right. But there was extreme reputational harm Sure. That happened.

And so my question is that if you look at these I don't know if you watch some of these ethics commission meetings in these other cities, but I've had a large number of FPC complaints against me that went nowhere. So how do these ethics committees handle the weaponization of complaints? And then if you could just I know you surveyed how, in all of these cities, people were appointed Uh-huh. And kind of what the jurisdiction, you know, whether they could impose fines or refer things. But what I'd like to see for each of those is what was their annual budget, what was their meeting schedule, and what was the purview for the for the ethics commission?

Was it the just the council members' actions, or was it contractors and staff like you had already mentioned? Okay. And so I wanted to understand if you have any sense of how these commissions handle bad actors creating hundreds of PRAs, hundreds of FPPC complaints, and getting overwhelmed and consuming huge amounts of city budget. Mhmm. So if you have any sense of that.

So I don't have information on, you know, their annual budgets, but can absolutely or meeting schedule, but I can absolutely get that information. In terms of the purview of each of them, they are relatively broad. So they are overseeing alleged violations by elected officials, city staff, and outside vendors and contractors. But I think it was city of Sacramento, yeah, is, I think, more limited. But I can, you know, get more information on that as well.

To your point about the weaponization of the commissions, I wanna make sure I'm understanding. Are you referring to individuals making complaints that would or bodies making complaints that would come before the ethics commission that they you feel are being made for insincere reasons like they are yeah. To weaponize them. So part of the purpose of giving your commission and investigative authority is to deter help to determine that. And so that that is the only way that that would be determined.

When an investigation is done, if there's an allegation by the person or persons being investigated that, in fact, this is not reality, this is being weaponized, then that's something that would be, hopefully, be included within the scope of that investigation. And then if the follow-up question from there is, well, what action can the ethics commission take against the individual or individuals weaponizing those complaints? That you know, I don't I want to look to see if I can find examples of that within these other commissions. Yeah. So I can I can look into that further?

I don't have an example for you off off the top of my head. And I'm trying to think, you know, without violating the attorney client privilege, obviously, I I work as an employment lawyer, so I'm representing agencies throughout the state. And, you know, there are there are steps that can be taken to address these types of issues that can be taken outside the scope of an ethics commission. You don't need an ethics commission to do that is, you know, my point. But I'm happy to look into these other jurisdictions to see if they've got any issues like that.

Yeah. Because I know a fact for a fact, the PRA process in California has no guardrails. People can submit hundreds of FPPT complaint or or PRA Raids.

That is correct.

That bombed down city staff and bombed down the whole system. Mhmm. So I wanna make sure there are guardrails for bad actors, insincere actors, weaponization of these commissions.

Yep.

And then, you know, there's some gray areas that we have in the city. The city has its own ordinances that are rare among other cities, like our public calendar ordinance and our lobby registration ordinance, which there is no enforcement whatsoever for those. So there the council member doesn't push meetings on their public calendar, nothing happens. If a council if a lobbyist, somebody who's representing a business interest, doesn't register, there is absolutely no recourse for us to really make sure that they are. We had one person who just lied about how much time and money they were being paid to lobby, and we didn't the city has no subpoena to figure out how much did you really get paid.

Yeah.

So those are things so when I see the FPPC, which has their laws, the city has our our rules.

All fees.

We don't have any enforcement in our in our own rules, and that's probably where the ethics commission will get involved. But you would have to go like, people, I presume, are lying on their form 700. How do you I mean, financial information is very proprietary. It's protected by lots of laws. Right? Can these commissions actually subpoena tax records and things like that?

So the scope would be subpoenaed out?

Yeah. You should find that somebody is not representing their financial interest properly. Yeah. It's almost impossible to find that.

But you can give that subpoena power to your commission, but then if the person or entity subpoena refuses to comply, then what do you do then?

That's exactly

And you may end up having to go into court to enforce anything more than that. And, again, there's a cost and an expense associated with that, not just monetary, but time wise.

And And, you know, we've had Brown Act about Mhmm. Allegations, you know, four council members meeting at a Denny's. Right? Mhmm. And how how do we control that? What are we supposed to do about that?

Yeah.

So and then, you know, apparently, somebody on the council had business interests close to the Morse Mansion and voted in closed session to purchase the Morse Mansion. So what recourse do we have for that? Yeah. You know, I don't see any recourse for that. So there's a lot of things that I'm trying to understand how other commissions deal with these types of issues.

Yeah. They can deal with them within the scope of the authority that they have. So if the commission has subpoena authority, they can issue subpoenas. To enforce a subpoena, you have to go to court. In terms of, you know, the examples you gave of alleged misconduct by elected officials, you do have censure authority as a a city council.

And people may feel like, well, what does that do? Ultimately, elected officials are accountable to the voters, and so that is a public way of getting the information out to the community about what the misconduct has been. And, ultimately, it's the community that's that's making the decisions about who will serve on the on the city council. So although it may not feel adequate at times, that is why those mechanisms are there, you know, and in place. And so when you think about, well, what can an ethics commission do to support the work of the council to promote transparency with the public, to promote accountability?

Again, it'll depend on the scope of the power. So will they have investigative power? And if so, what are the resources they have to conduct an investigation? It's not free to do to do an investigation. Right? Nope. What sort of hearing power will they have? Can they call witnesses, have hearings? What sort of, you know, penalties can be imposed? So you can empower this separate body to do that while also bearing in mind you brought up PRA examples, violations of the PRA Act, brown brown act violations.

These are all governed by law as well. So the city can take litigation action against individuals, for example, who are abusing the PRA for individuals who are violating the Brown Act. Like, there are already mechanisms in place for, you know, dealing with a lot of what we're talking about here, and the ethics commission role is to help investigate those and, you know, either make findings either through an investigation and or hearing process. And those findings are either acted upon by the ethics ethics commission or they're submitted to the city council or maybe this committee, which will then submit to the city council for action. And then the the authority the city council has, things like censures and and admonition, again, that's to make to shine a light on the misconduct so that the voters have the information so that then, you know, when they're voting as to who is going to be on their city council, they they know what what their council member is up to.

So when these commissions are doing these investigations, are they putting people under oath? Like, let's say there's a Brown Act violation, and you call those people in

Mhmm.

And you ask them if they met at Denny's, are they under perjury for that?

So if there's a hear if there's a hearing authority, it is then, yes, they can be, you know, sworn under oath when they testify. They're giving testimony at a hearing. Generally speaking, with investigations, you are whoever the investigator or the investigative body is is, you know, asking that people be truthful and getting their agreement that they be truthful. And so if they're not truthful, then adverse findings can be made against an individual as part of that investigation. So generally speaking, that's how how that works.

Okay. Thank you. I think we had

Understood. But I have a question about that that last comment. Yeah. So when you say that adverse findings can be made against inhibition, that's if and only if the investigative body decides to pursue that. But, again, there are many instances where there seems to be a lot of reason, there seems to be a lot of justification for doing something, and the body says we will not do that.

At some point, that could be a question of of independence. That could be a question of, well, where's the ethics there? How how how does that get addressed? How does that I mean, what are the mechanisms to ensure that, you know, even the people, you know, watching the watchers Right. Are in fact they have oaths that they are taking which subject them to the same types of prosecutions, the same types of investigations that they themselves honor.

You mean the commissioners themselves? That's correct. Yes. So oaths, training on what their roles and responsibilities and obligations are, a removal process should, you know, that be required. So you can build all of that in two.

Because the first two do nothing to Mhmm. Provide consequences. A removal process, which we didn't have even touched on, those those that's a more more important procedural matter. Like, we're talking about logistics. Like, how do we do this? You know? How often do we meet schedules? Logistics do nothing

Yeah.

To make the body a better body to improve its job. And we have not talked about any of the things that are required to make ensure that the body is is is good. Mhmm.

K. Member Chaw. Thank thank you.

Coming back to the body, like, defining the rule and authority Yep. Is a must. And Yes. It can be different for different jurisdictions, basically. Yes. And, at the same time, we should not be duplicating the work.

We should not be duplicating? The work. Okay.

Like, I You mean between your committee and a committee? Committee or FPPC or censure policy or something like that. If we have a defined censure policy

Mhmm.

Council should be able to take action. Okay. Let's take action. Mhmm. Depending upon what because it's a two third council majority has to decide on that. The guardrails on that so we can take action on that instead of burdening some other commission or whatever you wanna decide about it. So that's very paramount. Like, what authority, what rules, if we at all we are going that route, what are we really define trying to solve, basically, from testing? Right. All the cities you mentioned, they're all metropolis.

Most of them are huge cities. Right. So I I'll I know council member Jane mentioned budget, frequency, of meeting. We need to find out, like, how much budget they are spending on this thing. Right. For a city like us and that's the reason we were asking, is there any comparable city which has, this type of a setup? So that because we have to count of staff time. We have to count of their who will manage the meetings, who will, like, sit down with office bandwidth, who will manage that part of it. And, then we can make a decision. We have to correlate with the staff also.

Do we have a budget? Do we have a time line some days for them? And what frequency? Is it going to be monthly, weekly? Because we had meeting which have been postponed in the past, not holding meetings for almost a year.

Like, marketing and those meeting, we could not hold those meetings. Are we trying to burden the staff or, even financially? What can be the solution? And, laws, how we define the I know laws are already defined of the books. But at the same time, what suggestions can come from this council or the community or the staff, how can we make implementation of those laws more transparent and trustworthy?

Mhmm. Like, if somebody's breaking the laws or whether it's brown act or whether it's something else, blatantly, what course of action we have? Like, in addition, like, we can decide about this commission. But in if we don't decide about it, what can be the the ways to solve these things, basically, in the existing framework. Appeal process, let's say we even if we have a disc commission, they find something. What is the appeal process for the person who has been, decided, I guess, basically?

Right. That is something to take into consideration, whether there would be some sort of, appeal process or due process. Yes.

Primarily, this came from the grand jury findings, basically. Right? And grand jury findings, the council and the people like me and other people on the council have blatantly mentioned this is wrong. That was highly politicized or whatever you want call call it. Right? Like, Mike, with was mentioning, operational tool which went ahead and for gradually impacted for me that, oh, you did that. You did that. And FPPC, which is the body current body, which is the current body which solved those cases after two year. I don't know what time frame was it. They know it.

You didn't do nothing wrong. And you are already basically in the community, in the Reputational. Reputational harm was done, basically. Right? After two years, you're you know, you didn't do anything wrong. Even in the other grand jury, like, I spoke for five seconds when the gavel was hit, and it became one of the big issue with the grand jury. Like, can I believe that grand jury what they are sending that? Can I believe that? Can I believe that the grand jury recommendation for this commission is only because of all those things which they define? I don't agree to that, basically.

So politicization of one way or the other, how we stop that? How can we stop that, basically? Weaponization, whether it's grand jury weaponization, whether it's commission weaponization, or other filing complaints itself. Like, you you you'll be blamed, but you didn't do anything wrong, but your decision doesn't come. And it's harm to a person against whom you are finding a claim.

So those are the things, like, we would like to find out. Like, if we do that, where we land up? But if we don't do this commission, how can you fast track solution of some of these things in in the current system? Is there a way out we can find a solution to that, fast track of these things, basically?

If I may. In California, I did not find a city comparable in Santa Clara size that has an ethics commission. It is these larger jurisdictions. And so that's something for you to take into account. And I think part of that is just the resources associated with, you know, establishing something like this. To the point of, well, if we don't have the ethics commission, you know, how do we address these issues? There are a variety of ways. You know, you've got state laws. You've got federal laws. If there are alleged violations of those, the city could take legal action.

And, you know, you maybe use your city attorney's office, outside counsel if there are issues that are legal in nature where you can bring action against an individual for violation. You can treat issues that arise on a case by case basis. If there's an allegation of misconduct by a city council member, for example, and I'm just speaking hypothetically, the city council could decide to retain the services of an investigator to investigate that particular issue to help the city council decide, do we need to take some sort of action against this city council member? There's only so much that a city council can do in that instance. And so maybe you will vote to censure the member based on the findings of this investigation.

So we have you know, in California and here at the local level, there are mechanisms in place. If you were to adopt a stand alone ethics commission, they would help you maneuver through that system. So they would could help with investigations. They could help with holding hearings to determine, you know, whether something happened. You there is no requirement that you have an ethics commission.

So this is something within it's within, you know, your jurisdiction to make that decision, and there are no smaller, population wise, smaller agencies in California that have these types of commissions.

Okay. I'd like to what? Oh, member Park.

Oh, I'd like to go to the public. I mean, I'm not responsible.

I need to Yeah.

Here. Once the council is done, I have a question. Slash comment.

So I'm just gonna make a couple of comments, and then I would like to go to the public. The thing that I like about it is maybe putting it to a vote of the public, you know, passing it by measure. The other thing I really like is and this is something that I saw was a problem with even our grand jury, was you just have ordinary people with no expertise on the grand juries. You don't have any people with legal expertise. So having you know, like what Miami Dade does, which, you know, you get somebody from a business background, you get somebody from a legal background, Some of them require a large number of attorneys.

You know, some require previous electeds. Right? I I like that idea to bring in some level of expertise into this commission. So those are things that I I heard that I like about this. But I think there's just so many outstanding issues that my preference is to have you come back with some answers for this, or you could maybe do them by mail to us, however we wanna do this. I know it's been tough trying to schedule these meetings, so it's up to this committee to decide whether we wanna agendize it for a future committee meeting,

or we wanna just have you respond in writing to us.

And I'm happy to do it either way. I have I was on leave for a period of time in 2025, but I'm back. And

K.

Yes. I think even if we get response in writing, we'll have to come back for discussion for transparency point of view as Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So I think at this point, I'd like to go to members of the public for comment.

Ask a just a point of clarification on comments from the public. Am I to respond to comments from the public?

No. No. We just we just listen.

Okay. Thank you.

I think I'm unmuted.

You are unmuted, Wanda Buck.

Wanda Buck, you're one citizen or two. You know, considering that we all want positive ethics to do what is right, and that includes the appearance thereof. I sincerely hope, and I I think I hear a lot of good questions, that there will be consideration of the possibility of a new program, a separate commission with more information. And I'm sorry to have to defend myself because I've been following this for years. And we do have an ethics problem, in my opinion, in Santa Clara.

I know thousands of people. I'm connected to many nonprofit organizations, voters' leagues, the universities, and I'm not speaking on behalf of that. And even in the pool, it's a senior center. And there's hardly a person that when you mention ethics in Santa Clara and all the notoriety, right or wrong from the grand jury, that my nephew in Santa Cruz and the news, that there are a lot of people that feel negative about our ethics. And so the idea of moving towards improvement, there's no perfection in the human nature of lying and cheating.

But moving towards improvement, you all still as council members and the full council, you know, will have some control. There's no perfection. But my interest in this, and since I've been in grammar school, is that if we all contribute a little bit to the communities that we're in, that they're better. And our the council has questioned why people don't participate more, and part of an example is being put down. I I'm not running for office.

I'm not for you know, representing some council person. This isn't political with me. It's to make our city better. And I've been involved in professional standards in the real estate community for over forty years. So I know we could do better, and I hear from the discussion and the questions you have that we really should go forward to explore more. Thank you.

I have no more members of the public who wish

to speak.

Okay. Wait.

Just raise their hand. Doctor. Shanks, you are unmuted.

I have a point of order. A point of order is we've had a public member already speak on this item in the public input. And, again, I suggest that the chair, by not following the guidelines, is creating an unfair advantage in a public meeting. I mean, that's my suggestion. I understand you'd like to make this more open, but, again, this is one of the dangers.

I think that if this member would like to speak, I would like to I would like to hear that somebody has given up their time for this number to speak as they have already spoken. We usually have a rule against people speaking twice. In this case, I'm willing to to, you know, look at this, but I would like somebody to give up their time for them to do this. And this is, again, the danger in a public meeting when we are trying to give people time and we are trying to follow rules for not following the guidelines.

I fully understand that, but we are not running out of time, and we don't have

Oh, this is not this is not about time. You have not heard my complaint. My complaint was about fairness in a public meeting.

It's fairness, and I will entertain somebody else who wants to come back and speak again. So, doctor Shanks, go ahead.

Doctor Shanks, you should be allowed to speak if you unmute yourself.

Okay. I've I've been having trouble with this. We we can hear you. Okay. So did you hear what I was just saying about I saw a difference between the public comment and this because I was not addressing this specific agenda item.

And I wanted to have the opportunity to respond and to suggest that I I really like the questions that you're addressing. I like many of the positions to the extent you're taking positions. I like those. What I was going to to say is why not open up this discussion and listen to what the public has to say, not just during this particular meeting, but in a a much broader sense. If purpose of of a commission is for public trust, then it seems to me some of this should have been in the agenda and that there should be a process that involves the public before the report is done and, the city staff has a chance to respond to it, which is what the the contract, says or suggests.

I was just gonna say listen to the public. And to the extent you don't, then you really do raise questions of public trust. That's all I was gonna say.

You any other

and

no. Right. So we bring it back to the committee. Any suggestions for how to move forward?

I have more comments, which is, I mean, I've heard vote of the public, but a vote of the public without thinking the details through is dangerous. I mean, putting something on a ballot without background worked out, usually leads to things that do not happen and things that, you know, are get get put on and we discuss for one hour at a meeting with public input, and then we don't get a good process. I've heard comments about people with backgrounds you like, oh, but I'll tell you, there are bad lawyers too. There are bad prosecutors. There are bad bad teachers.

There are bad doctors. And we need to find a way to identify bad actors for the sake of the good teachers and for the sake of the good doctors, and the good people are trying to to do the work. Like, when people talk about what we could do, the short answer is how do we build trust? And the short answer is we say what we will do, and then we do it, which we do not. I think that this is one of the problems.

And because we do not, we allow a lot of bad information to fester and grow. I mean, we've had a censure motion on council council priorities for years, and that was just recently removed by executive staff, supposedly because nobody voted for it, but I guarantee that people did. Right? I feel like we are not, you know, following through with the the items that we have already discussed and voted on. We are asking for additional food while ignoring the food already on our on our table.

And I think this is one of the things that erodes trust in the system, not just from the public, because a lot of people complain about that, but also from the people on this council. Like, I'm gonna say that just just outright. I mean, the jury grand jury recommendations for an ethics commission, they should be taken taken with the same seriousness as the reports. I mean, the reports were factually incorrect. Factually incorrect. Some of them were so factually incorrect that it's like, don't even have to address this. Why? Because I can't address it because it never happened. The claiming that I went on a stadium stadium tour. I've never been on a stadium tour.

Like, even recently, I the closest one we had was the one several weeks ago, but I didn't even go on the I'd never been on an operational tour before a game either. Right? But we all know that just like the f p p FPPC complaints that, you know, committee member Chahal and other have been suspect to. It's not about the the it's not about what happened. It's not about ethics. It's about accusations. It's about media. It's about presence. It's about news stories. Because we know that the accusations that can get repeated are the most important thing, especially if the findings exonerate the members.

Like, at some point, this is not about ethics. This is about reputation. This is about trying to create a narrative. Like, we have a member of the the audience, the the audience who claims, oh, they they left when the city abandoned the ethics program. We never abandoned an ethics program. You know? And if you do a PRA request on contracts for the people who have been the ethics advisers, you will find that we never renewed a an ethics adviser contract from 2014 to 2018 for this person. We've never done that. Again, I've done this request. I have the the receipts right in my office.

I suggest everyone try to do this. And when their claims are made by an ethics adviser, someone who's purporting to do ethics that cannot be supported, that seem unethical in and of themselves, at what point are we going to stop and say, well, we need to ignore this. We need to look at this. We need to look at the facts and move forward. But but we don't do that. And I don't care about budget. Like, somebody could come in, an organization come in, could come in and say, we will do the ethics committee. We will do the management. We'll do that all for free. Right?

And volunteers already work for free. But without accountability, without, you know, all the things, the independence, without the findings that that that that are more important than the work itself and logistics, we should say no. I mean, the PRA danger, we talk about this all the time. This is work. It's not just about taking up staff time and and, you know, taking up taking up system and money, but every additional hour of addressing a PRA, especially long PRAs, makes the system open to mistakes, and mistakes happen.

I've talked to reporters who put in PRA requests, and they've told me, oh, these were not you know, these were unredacted. We I've got personal information that's out there. And it's not that people did this maliciously, but it makes things open, you know, open to mistakes. Some of those mistakes, I I can't help seem purposeful. Like, I've had a number of reports against me.

I have a PRA request where police re released a report, which clearly showed that there was no domestic violence against me. But then they had to say, well, we released that report. You know, we should not have released that report. Right? And even though the reports show that there was no problem with me, that the accusations being, you know, laid against me are not true, The fact that the police then said, well, you must re re destroy those those reports because, well, we unfortunately released those reports inappropriately.

Now the the narrative is, well, they're asking us to destroy the report, so they must be hiding something. You have the reports. You've seen what the reports say. All you're doing is change the narrative because the people who are trying to do bad things by telling us, well, you've got an ethics problem. Oh, you know, these bad things are happening. Council members are doing these bad things. We've got council members not following that are that are not following FPPC, you know, legal requirements. This is all this is, you know, this is wagging the dog. Like, we've seen this. I mean, we we know why lies are effective.

Lies are effective because they work. Because lies are really easy to say loudly and quickly. And following up to find out what those answers are, that's really difficult. And I think that this is what the people who are trying to create a narrative and disrupt the flow are trying to do. And every time an issue comes up that we do not investigate, that when we investigate, we motion, we make a motion, and we pass that motion, and we do not actually go through with the action on those, that's what disrupts trust long term from the people on the diets and for the public, where the public's asking, why why did this happen?

You know, we talk about the the seven people outside of council that watch the council meetings, and it seems very true. Right? I I I know that this council, knowing no better, is going to try to do something that appears to be good. But I'm gonna say that doing things for the for appearance without actually putting the work in, that's very dangerous. I come from aerospace.

We have one rule, and this rule goes against almost everything that I see in in real life, which is things that are broken should look broken so that nobody accidentally uses them and causes a bigger problem. Like, if we are putting in place a quick fix, so we wanna put together an independent ethics commission. We wanna do this. We wanna do this for a quick fix to make it look like we've got more transparency and ethics. That is not the problem.

The fact that we do not actually follow through with consequences. The fact that we actively remove censure motions, the the things that we talk about we should do more, we actively remove that. That is a bigger problem. The fact that we don't address the issues that are already in front of us. You know, the fact that we claim we are we don't want to pursue them because it's a waste of our time.

It's a waste of resources. We've got other priorities. This is the big problem in this city. Again, people know people know that there are lies being said and that every single time this city and this management, this staff chooses to ignore them, it makes the problem worse. And it lets the the voices that are asking, that are putting together the civil grand jury investigations and and referrals, it makes their voices louder.

And at some point, if we do not think about this, then again, you deserve what you get. These are these are terrible, terrible times. The fact that we are not looking at where these recommendations are coming from, from the civil grand jury that lied on their reports, the civil grand jury that has no accountability, the civil grand jury that doesn't release transcripts, that chooses not to do investigations for things that you know, for some things when they will for others, it it again, we should not be asking for more when we are not dealing with what we already have. And as long as we intend as long as we continue to do that, we are just making the problem worse. And the people that do not understand that there is a better problem, that if you don't put the the the foundations in, simply putting walls on top of the the ground that's already there is not a safe thing to do.

I would like to see more and more discussion about this before we make any kind of referrals. I would like to know more about how we can put together consequences, how we can put together oaths that hold the people on the ethics commissions responsible, accountable for their actions, how they can be prosecuted if things go bad. Because right now, civil grand jury, they can lie. I'm not saying they do, but they can lie, and there are absolutely no consequences to that. They can withhold things.

They can tell me there are things that I cannot talk about that seem obvious. I'm not allowed to talk about that. I think that these kinds of rules, the rules that remove accountability, the rules that hold you know, that give power to some and not to others, these are the problems that we have. And right now, without following through on the things on our plate. We've essentially done that. We've essentially said that some people are more equal than others, and this is not a good thing. Right? Guidelines are very good. Rules are very good. We have them for a reason.

And when we choose not to follow them, then simply putting more rules in place, more guidelines in place does not help. Putting the guidelines in place suggested by people who, you know, put forward the grand jury investigations that put forward you know, that have actively lied on council without accountability, those aren't the voices, and those aren't the followers we should be listening to. What we should be doing is we should be looking to staff. We should be looking to the people in the city that have the responsibility for action, have the responsibility for reporting, have the have the responsibility for the actions, then we should make them do you know, hold people accountable. And once we see how people are being held accountable, how actions, how bad actors are are being considered and taken care of, then then and if and only only then should we proceed with additional rules or additional committees.

So I'm willing to hear. I'm willing to discuss this, you know, more as largely. I'm willing to discuss this even in public. But, again, the chair stated, I mean, I state this all the time. What what does an elected official know about anything? Like, we assume they know about a lot of things. But to be honest, I tell people this all the time. I'm not any smarter about municipal governance. You know, I wasn't any smarter the day after I got elected from the day before I got elected. At some point, people care about things more or they don't.

And they learn about them or they don't. They get a background or they don't. And when it comes to ethics, if there are no consequences, there are no no enforcement, if there's no accountability, then people will follow them or they won't. And executive staff knows this too because they literally told me that they will not do pursue certain things because they know some people will not follow the rules. Some people will not follow the laws, and this is a

problem. K. Yeah. Steve Madden. Sure.

A couple things. So, Maureen, as you know, we haven't talked a lot about your recommendations, and I was very clear that I didn't want anyone to think that I or staff had their thumb or were somehow guiding the recommendations that you received.

Yeah. So discuss those. Yeah.

I'm I'm sort of saying that for the record, but I also have a question. Listening to some of the comments, what I understand from the committee is that there are a number of questions and they want you to come back Yes. With with responses to those as well as look at what smaller cities do. Totally understand all that.

Yes.

In the work you've already done, have you seen any cities that utilize either a third party or a more professional approach? Right? I'm looking I was looking at your Con Love and Ethics Commission, and I think the word was like, politicized and, you know, lack lack of independence. And I've heard that from the committee. And so what that makes me think, right, is is there a way to more professionalize this? Mhmm. You know, one of the things, if you have a body,

if they're

appointed, they could, you know, sway to one side or the other. If they're you know, almost no matter how they're configured, right, I think the truth of the matter is Santa Clara and other cities have a very polarized political climate. Right? And so is there a way to have a more professional lives approach? And and so the question is, are there cities that that have done that?

And I know the Markula Center has been mentioned, and we used them before. I did hear that they now have new staff over there. And so, you know, are there centers like that? That's a local one. But are there other groups like that that we could look to that could be the city's ethics consultant, ethics entity investigator? Mhmm. But I think address some of the cons that that that that that you mentioned, address some of the con the comments about politicalization or and the And then the challenges of, right, how are how are they appointed. Right?

Yep.

So

I can look happy to look into that as well.

Alright. City attorney. Yeah.

If I might add to that too. I'm hearing lot of questions asked, right, and and coming back with answers to that. I'm hearing also, which was a comment I was gonna suggest, what for lack of a better term, I think it's the right term, what professionalized versions, right, of this type of oversight, you know, exist, you know, or or or might be applied if in fact there's not because of all the pros, cons, you know, the full blown ethics, you know, commission that might not be the the the approach this city decides to take. I agree, but have not studied it completely with Marine that I don't think a lot of smaller cities have ethics commissions. As I think I've mentioned before, city of Chula Vista had one.

They had a board of ethics. I wasn't the architect of it, but I did preside over it for my thirteen years, you know, of tenure down there. We did make some improvements to it. If the commission's interested, I could be part of the next presentation if you're if you're hearing about how things work because a lot of the issues that you've raised are ones that were grappled with down there, and they there are things that you can do to manage that. They're imperfect.

There's good things about, you know, how bad commissions work. There's bad things about it. And so if you're interested in a kind of a frontline experience with a smaller city's version of that, I'd be happy to work with Maureen and come up with with and for the same reasons that, Jovan, I've been on the sidelines, you know, of of this too, not wanting to influence what, you know, your the the the professional outside assessment and recommendation might be, but it might be valuable to you to hear about, you know, one of these that's worked in a smaller place. The good, bad, you know, the the the otherwise with that. So I'd be happy to do that if that that that's in the interest of the committee.

Let

me comment on that first. I would love to see that. Would it be possible to get a commissioner from one of these other cities that you did discuss? I don't expect that the attorney would be biased in this respect, but to avoid any, you know, biases, could we just get rid of these other cities like Sacramento or something to come and speak to us?

No harm in asking. Alternatively, I could try and reach out and speak to them and then report on that if, you know, someone is not willing to come to a meeting. But, yeah, we can certainly ask if that's Okay. The desire of the committee.

I would certainly like to hear the the experience that a city attorney had in Chula Vista. First, we have member Park.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I I hear what the city attorney is saying, but I will also say that you're not addressing my explicit complaints about what's happening in the city. And at some point, if we're not talking about the censure and existing matters, if we're not talking about enforcements and ordinances and policies we already have and how things are being sidelined, if we're not if we're looking at any, you know, how the charter enables and does not enable without looking at fairness. We're trying to apply rules, you know, asymmetrically, then I'm gonna say I I don't really I really don't have any opinion as to to what the involvement of executive staff is because I don't care about the reports if if the actions cannot support what I'd like to see in a report. If we're going to have somebody that talks about, you know, experience on an ethics commission, I'd also like to spend additional resources on hearing from somebody who said it doesn't see, can can tell you why a city like this doesn't need an ethics commission and what other recommendations we could have outside of a an ethics commission that will improve transparency here.

Like, I I agree. I agree that we don't expect people who follow the law to do bad things, but I also realized through the years that the law is, again, the lowest bar. And the laws don't don't change things such as people's actions. And, again, we've got rules and ordinance already that people do not follow. And if we cannot and if we show and we show council and the public that we are not willing to enforce the ordinances and policies that we already have, then, again, simply putting more ordinances and policies, putting more committees and other things together, if we can't show the independence, if we can't show that there's accountability, not just of the people that there that are investigated, but also of the investigative body, then I think this is a very dangerous thing.

I would like to see something that not leads that does not take us to an ethics commission, but something that takes us to transparency whether the vehicle that takes us there is a is a committee or a commission or not. And we're not we're not suggesting we're not looking at those things. And the first thing that would, you know, convince me that we are a city that's committed to this is let's look at the infractions. Let's look at the complaints. Let's look at the things that are already on the table.

Let's have an open and honest discussion about the civil grand jury reports and investigations that that brought us here today. Let's take an open and honest look at those. If And we're not gonna do that, then at some point, it doesn't matter what we implement because the implement will not give us the outcome that we're looking for. Just like providing micro units will not ensure that every on house person has a home. We are conflating a lot of things because we do not understand the situation on the ground.

We do not understand things that are not logical or, you know, we have not learned that there are so many so many shades of gray. In fact, there's not just shades of gray. There there are trillions of colors, even things that we cannot see. And as long as we're we are being molded and guided towards one one direction, this is a very dangerous process.

Okay. So

I'll make a I'll make a motion.

I'd like to see some sort of concrete recommendation. I'd like a motion motion.

Yeah. That I think is I'd like to to have this city, whether it's through contract to the the people that we come back with additional information, whether it's in person or whether through its reports, I personally would provide would would prefer having people that we can ask questions to that we can because you can't question a report. If you see something in a report. You can't correct that, but I would like to see that for the benefits of having an ethics committee and a commission and for though somebody or a a group that understands, well, the problem is not about ethics commissions or committees. It could be about other things.

I would like to see some investigation of what we can do outside of simply putting together an ethics commission or or committee. Right? And I would like to hear a lot more, not just of what the process is. I don't care about size. I don't care about how it's appointed. I don't care about these things. I would like to hear about the underlying. How do we make how do we make the people on committees? If there are how do we make people on staff? How do we make executive staff accountable to to ordinances, policies?

How do we ensure that that, you know, things already get done? But, again, this there are so many things here. I would like to see those reports. Park. Yeah.

You would drive Nora crazy with that with that motion.

Can you I'm gonna say at some

point your motion more concise?

Things should be as simple as they need to be and no simpler. And at some point, I think that all the things that I talked about, because I've heard I have learned from this executive committee that if the if the ideas are not contained within the motion, then they they can be ignored or dropped. Because I've learned that from this executive staff, I want to

keep that that motion as is. I I cannot I cannot under I don't

I'm I'm not asking you to. I am saying that I would like to see these things in another report. I'm not gonna second it.

A

couple of second.

You can you like, same point, though. Can you repeat that? Like Okay. Let me let me let me Let write this in AI sample.

So we are asking for another another report. Right? And in that report, I would like to see input from, and if we can in person, somebody who has been on an ethics or somebody who is on an ethics committee or commission. I would like to also see kind of all sides. It doesn't have to be one other person.

It could be there several other ways. It's been an expert who can discuss other ways beyond a commission or committee to address transparency and ethics. I would like a report on how city staff is addressing existing I mean, these are voted on actions. These things have been voted on. They just haven't been set priority.

Existing complaints and items that have been voted by counsel. Again, these are not ideas. These have been passed. We voted on them. They passed.

Well, when we say existing complaints, that could be from anybody.

That's the true, but but but very few So Let let's stay with the ones that that that council has prioritized. They were they were on council agendas and prioritized.

As long as that's in the motion.

That's a that's I'm putting it in the motion.

Me that.

Sure. Sure. Can I ask for a point of clarification?

I'm not sure exactly what council member or committee member Park is referring to, but he and I have had prior discussions around actions that the council previously directed,

which is why I think you do understand. Well, one

of them was censuring the mayor.

That's

correct. That was also on a council priority list, I believe, two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago at this point, and then removed from that count council priority list once council narrowed down their priorities. So it fell off. And so it is not currently a directive of staff. I think the council member's concern is the initial point when it was put on, not when it was taken off.

Right? Because if you were to ask me right now a list of of things that staff is working on related to investigations or things like that. That would not be on the list. And so that would purposely miss, I think, the the one of the issues that I've heard the council member articulate when I hear the council member articulating his disagreement or a displeasure with council taking that off the list. So again, let

me address that. Like, since you've been here, we've had two two priority setting meetings. The last meeting was not actually a priority setting. We never talked about priority setting. It was a priority set it was a priority report. It was a status report. Prior to that, we had a meeting where we did not set priorities. We talked about put things on. And then afterwards, there was no discussion about the priorities. And at some point, if you tell me it fell off, it fell off because not enough people put things on, that was not a discussion. That was a decision by my staff to say, this is where it should be. Mister chair,

if I might interrupt, I I appreciate that this is a meaningful and important issue and that there are discussions that are ongoing about it. I don't see how it relates to this. Oh, I'll tell you how it relates. And it's a it's it's a much broader and more complicated Yeah. Issue than than that.

I think this item on the agenda is I've been pretty indulgent about variety of different kind of comments and conversations about it. This item on the agenda relates to the pros and cons of of forming an ethics commission and introduced to this, I think, alternatives, right, to a full blown, you know, ethics commission. That's that's really the nature of the discussion. The idea of a a perceived or actual failure of staff to follow through, you know, on items isn't necessarily an and and probably not even at all an ethics issue. It's a question of, you know, performance and and and professional relationships, instruction of government that I think is different.

And so I'm not dismissing the the the the grievance or the idea that that's important, and I I think member part ties it to a certain extent to what we need to solve all these other things first if we're gonna make other other different rules. But I think that's a separate topic, and I would suggest that it would be very difficult and probably confusing to include a lot of that in a staff follow-up and discussion of the item that's on the agenda. So a separate referral, I think, I'm I'm just observing and recommending, and it's up

to you. A separate referral could

be made for that, but it'd be difficult to kind of have that be a a a part of the discussion relate that relates to the agenda item

that's front of So let me make it very clear for the That's the thing. Which which is time. I do not want the next item to be about an ethics commission. I think that it is very leading to say, well, this is about recommendations regarding potential adoption of ethics commission and the approved and the approval of proposed changes. It's I think at some point, it should be about what we're actually looking for, which is let's actually talk about what we're trying to achieve, which is transparency, accountability.

Right? And when you tell me that, oh, looking at past priorities is not relevant, it's about trust. We've had people in the public tell us it's about trust. That if we don't follow through on the items that we claim that we are trying to address, you know, in this meeting with governance and ethics, then how can we, you know, build trust even with the committee members? I mean, I've stated this multiple times.

And when you try to, you know, try to divorce, you know, our actions, our accountability, holding you know, following through with items with, you know, ethical items with with items that go against our behavioral standards, when you try to dismiss those and say they are not relevant to what should be not just potential adoption of ethics commission, but transparency and accountability and trust in the city, I find that Okay. I'm gonna unappetizing. So I'll try this again.

Yes.

Which is I would like a a report on transparency and accountability beyond simple adoption of a

I could interrupt for a second.

Of an ethics commission chair.

What we determined today was we do not have enough information to vote on establishing an ethics commission. Agreed. So we are deferring a decision pending more information. That will be the only one sign in a motion is what information do we need to to take next steps.

Okay. Like, again, I don't want the motion. I don't want the next item that we have to vote on to be a recommendation regarding potential adoption of ethics commission. I think at some point, we need a a lot more information beyond that simply than simply putting a solution into, you know, a specific solution into the the next item.

So if I may

city manager. So, certainly, we can reword how

we bring bring it back

to you. I'll say the ethics commission was there because part of the referral from the city council was based on the grand jury recommendation. I think a a very simplistic way would be come back with recommendations for an ethics commission or alternatives to achieve transparency, accountability, etcetera. That could work. So I I I I'm proud for that.

Okay. We we can we can actually state something like that without putting the the words ethics commission in that in that motion as well.

I think I want to leave ethics commission in there because that's what the public has been asked. It's an option. We don't have to move forward on it. And, eventually, if we took it to a vote in the public, it would be a charter review committee that would have extensive discussions about exactly what we want

And there can be five options. One, two, three, four, five. Like, one option outside consultant. Like, what so it can be one of the five option.

And I might I'll again, mister Sheriff, to your point, the referral was ethics commission. So leave it out. Yeah. I think I I think the thing that I'm hearing and staff's very supportive in, you know, identity identifying alternatives, you know, to that for for everyone's consideration. So that we I I think we've all heard loud and clear.

K. Then I would state it, and I'll put the words ethics commission in there. Another report on transparency and accountability with input from ethics committee or commission, you know, expert. I would like and that my my preference is that be in person. Experts who can discuss other ways beyond committee to address transparency and ethics with options in addition to an ethics commission. Alright. I'll leave the my comments about staff and priorities out of that motion. I will

I'll I'll say it.

I'm sorry.

Can you

at this.

Can you repeat that one more time so I can get it properly? Because it The

next report on transparency and accountability with input from an ethics committee or commissioner expert who can discuss, you know and not just one expert, but if if there's, you know, several different options and each of those options has their own expert, I can do that. Experts who can discuss other ways beyond commissioner committee to address transparency and ethics with options in addition to an explicit ethics commission or committee. And if possible, I would like those experts to be in person.

You have a comment?

I have a suggestion in that the next that the information that comes back also include the role of staff in each of those options. I think, you know, certainly since I've been here and even comments made today, the role of staff is unclear. Right? I've we've heard even today, council members have lied and said and staff has not done anything about that. Right? And so I think it's important to have a very, very clear understanding of what are the bounds and responsibilities of staff vis a vis council action. So I just would like that included explicitly. So, basically, role of all

the stakeholders, including staff, including council, including our commissioners, basically, and the employees. We include everybody on that. Yep.

Sure. I think I and that's why I think that censure motions for lying and things like that were what what council members tried to do to direct staff, and then staff dropped them. But, again Let's

Can I just focus on ending this meeting, Kevin? So I think we're just adding the role of staff

I can repeat that already.

Gonna ask Amy to see if she was able to capsulate what you were saying.

There's a portion I still don't have. I notated to watch the video back to get it properly because you you spoke faster than, like,

the thing. I can repeat it. I can repeat it.

Why don't you repeat it once more?

Okay. Which is

And then she will And send it. If you already did tonight, she will check with the recording because that's the truth.

And I will add, you know, another report on transparency accountability with input from ethics committee or commissioner or and other experts who can discuss ways beyond the commissioner committee to address transparency and ethics in person if if preferable with with options in addition to ethics commission and also include role of staff in those recommendations.

Second here? Yeah. Okay. I think we're good. I'll take we'll take a vote now. All in favor? Aye. Yes. Opposed? Abstain? Pass it unanimously. Okay. So do we have a report?

So yes. We just wanted to provide you the dates for the 2026 calendar year. This com committee does meet quarterly. It's generally the first Monday of the month, so we've included the dates on the agenda for for the for the committee meetings. So we just wanted to provide that information.

I I have a comment. So we've had a number of complaints that the ethics that the governance and ethics committee has had a number of cancellations. I I I would like to minimize the number of cancellations. And in fact, with the backlog of materials that we have on, I would also suggest I'm not a motion, but I'd like to suggest that we look at additional meetings for governance and ethics. Because there are so many items that I've got that we're never gonna go through.

We've got and, you know, things that have been brought to council from from the governance ethics, I've been supremely unhappy with the way they've been brought to council about wording, about, you know, so many different things. But I would like to have time, and I would like to have meetings so that we can clear the backlog. I would like to discuss more items in governance and ethics. I would like to have fewer cancellations, and I would have to I'd like to see, you know, discussions. I will talk to the chair about what the issues that that I have. I would like to see these these issues addressed.

You actually can't talk to the chair.

No. I can give you a list of I can give you a list of my my priorities.

You have to go through staff.

Okay. Then I'll give my my staff my my list to staff. I was not gonna talk to you about the items. I was simply going to show you the list of items that I mean, I I still have a backlog.

K. Very good. City manager, do you have a comment?

Of course, there's a band bandwidth and a workload issue. Right? And so if the committee desires additional meetings, we we could certainly have that conversation. I was going to add at the end

of this

meeting that at whenever the next meeting is, I would like to bring a discussion about the council's priority setting process to the governance committee. There has been a number of conversations both at this meeting and after the last governance about the process and the goals of the strategy for that meeting. So I think instead of staff working with the consultant to configure that meeting, we need to have a more global discussion, with the governance committee, and potentially subsequently the city council on what that meeting looks like. And so I'd like that to come to the next meeting if the committee is amendable.

I I think that's a great idea. Okay. Any reports, referrals? Okay. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you.

Anna's souvenir. I I have plenty.

Thank you.

No.

Have a vinaigrette.

No. Will you lull us off?

Oh, sorry. I heard sauce. I'm so sorry.

Wasn't gonna give me my sauce.

You have a question.

Also,