FIERCE Committee (Elections Commission) Meeting

R than my Outlook so I mean I don't need to be on

yeah I don't need to be on honest just helpful soone somebody else is proba having the same experience I am okay um

apologies as usual for our technical challenges they keep changing the

interface on us um let's go ahead and get this thing

going oh come

on me out I can't actually okay I I just opened up the PDF

of the agenda and that might work we'll see all right great thank you yeah there we

go so the PDF worked it there were many many um letters that are missing from

that I can see on the website but it did work for PDF so maybe could say that all

right me too it's working now great with the

PDF all right uh once more with

feeling uh we are ready to begin do you need to I turned it off

okay welcome everyone to the uh October 30th 2023 meeting of the San

Francisco elections commission Fair independent and effective redistricting for Community engagement or Fierce

committee meeting I am the chair Cynthia d The Time Is Now

609 and I call the meeting to order before we proceed further I want to briefly explain some procedures for

participating in today's meeting the minutes of this meeting will reflect that this meeting is being held in

person at City Hall Room 4081 Dr Carlton B goodlet Place San

Francisco California 94102 and remotely via WebEx as authorized by the election

commission's May 17 2023 vote members of the public May attend the meeting to

observe and provide public comment either at the physical meeting location or remotely details and instructions for

participating remotely are listed on the commission's website and on today's meeting agenda public comment will be

available on each item on this agenda each member of the public will be allowed 3 minutes to speak 6 minutes if

you're on the line with an interpreter when providing public comment you are encouraged to state your name clearly

once your three minutes have expired staff will thank you and you will be muted please direct any of your comments

to the full body and refrain from directing them at individual Commissioners while providing public

comment when providing public comment remotely please ensure you are in a

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muted and in listening mode only to make public comment dial Star three to raise

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again to lower your hand in addition to participating in real time interest interested persons are encouraged to

participate in this meeting by submitting public comment in writing by 12: pm on the day of the meeting to

elections. commmission fgo.org it will be shared with the commission after this meeting has

concluded and will be included as part of the official meeting file thank you all right roll call Commissioners please

verbally State Your Presence at today's meeting after your name is called I the chair and I am present commissioner loli

present commissioner Parker here with three members present and accounted for

this Fair committee meeting we are ready to proceed

okay so um with that I am uh going to ask

commissioner loli to please State the land

acknowledgement

the San Francisco ele elections commission acknowledges that we are on

the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramatou alonei who are the original

habitants of the San Francisco Peninsula as the indigenous stewards indigenous

stewards of this land and in accordance with their Traditions the Ramat asalon

have never seated it lost nor forgotten their respons responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for

all people who reside in their traditional territory as guests we

recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional

Homeland we wish to pay our respect respects by

acknowledging the ancestors and relatives of the Ramat Alon community and affirming their Sovereign rights as

first people thank you commissioner

laly all right um moving on to item

number two general public comment public comment uh oh before I move on to that I just wanted to

apologize to the public um it looks like the room was uh incorrectly put as

416 it was correct on the pdf version of the agenda but it was not correct on the right hand side we do have a note posted

on room 46 to redirect people here to room 408 okay moving on to General Public

comment public comment on any issue within Fierce General jurisdiction that is not covered by another item on this

agenda hello hello this is [Music]

like okay let get my glasses on good good evening AB 1248 was an

ill-conceived knee-jerk reaction to the debacle LA City face this last cycle that's when council members were

secretly recorded drawing their own safe districts Governor Nome wisely saw that

ab1 1248 was a blunt instrument that would lead to all kinds of unintended consequences and cost a lot of money La

needs reform but ab1 1248 created an expensive corruptible bureaucratic mess

why a blunt instrument because most other jurisdictions in the state are not remotely similar to that of LA City

specifically Us in San Francisco La city has an advisory redistricting commission where each member is directly

appointed by each council member La city mayor appoints two of the Commissioners

those appointed advisers are not included in the final map drawings the maps are finalized behind closed doors

amongst the council members themselves who then draw safe districts this process is totally different than what

we do here in San Francisco despite the fact that we've been told by this committee that they are similar San

Francisco county was among the earliest adopters of a truly independent redistricting commission and we call it

our redistricting task force our Board of Supervisors our mayor and our elections commission each appoint three

members to a nine member redistricting task force our process has worked beautifully for three census Cycles

despite significant and highly publicized interference from a number of special interest groups professional

political organizers and our own elections commission during the most recent cycle yet this blunt instrument

called a1248 wanted to sweep even San Francisco into it multiple appointing

authorities including electives is good for San Francisco AB 1248 would have

taken San Francisco backwards not forward why let's just look at San Francisco's three appointing authorities

one the mayor there is no chance of incumbency protection to be provided by three mayoral appointees because the

mayor is elected at large two Board of Supervisors there's no chance of

incumbency protection to be provided by these three appointees because they are voted on and approved by all 11

supervisors and only represent onethird of the redistricting task force elections commission there's no chance

of incumbency protection to be provided by these three appoes because they are

voted on and approved by seven appointed Commissioners and also only represent one-third of the redistricting task

force for these Reasons I'm urging this committee to make no recommendations to change our appointing authorities thank

you thank

you hi there uh I'd like to reemphasize Alan badell just date I'd like to reemphasize

a few points that are often made here uh first about why ab1 1248 was bad for San

Francisco and then why the elections commission must once again step back from the brink that they've been pushed

to by commissioner D and not make any recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and certainly no

recommendation that includes change in the appointing authorities to the redistricting task force ab1 1248 was a

blunt instrument was designed to address problems in LA City that we don't have here in San Francisco AB 1248 would have

turned redistricting into an expensive combersome bureaucratic mess run by insiders not directly accountable to

voters state and local political groups as well as our elections commission interfered with our most recent

redistricting task force why did you elections Commissioners stand behind groups who

decided not to participate in the work the task force was sworn to complete

these groups started drawing their own Maps based on unknown information and during meetings we have no record of

then they presented these maps with demands for the task force to adopt them

and you all then drag your appointees into a commission meeting four days before the deadline to tell them they're

not listening to these people who didn't participate with the redistricting task force in the first place it's

outrageous ab1 1248 called for a non-political body like the elections

commission to be the vetting and selection Authority for an independent redistricting commission here in San

Francisco well ironically the only non-political appointing body to our own

most recent redistricting Comm was the only body out of the three to so

grossly interfere with our redistricting process Did the mayor's office pull

their task force members into room 200 to tell them they'd be terminated 4 days before the map deadline how about the

Board of Supervisors did they call their appointees into the legislative chamber to berate them about not listening to

the community no they didn't substitute their judgment for that of our

redistricting task force the only body to do that was this supposed

non-political body the type a1248 thought would be perfect for

vetting and selecting future independent redistricting task force members this supposed trustworthy appointing

authority acted recklessly and at the behest of the political advocacy groups common cause Asian law caucus and the

league of women's voters this is why bodies that are unelected like this one

should be kept far away from our redistricting task force I urge the San Francisco elections commission to step

away from the brink here and make no recommendation to the Board of Supervisors and of course none that

require a change appointing authority thank you okay

um see if there are

any folks online yes we

uh Miss jardan go ahead hi thank you yes this is Lauren gerarden with the League

of Women Voters of San Francisco thank you so much again for meeting on

Halloween Eve uh which is often a big night for folks in San Francisco almost

a holiday um but you know the work that you're doing is important and and worth

it and we're glad to see you here to to put recommendations together and you

know this work started well before AB 1248 was a glimmer in anyone's

eyes um we knew before then that San Francisco needed to reform its

redistricting so that people not politicians are there from start to finish elected officials should not be

appointing people to the redistricting task force it's a model that's proven to be

uh ineffective outdated and in need of updating and we're reassured by so many

other redistricting processes in the state and even outside California that

have been even more successful because the politicians were removed from the

process so thank you again for doing this work we really look forward to hearing your conversations tonight and

for this conversation to continue with the full elections Commission thank you thank you Mr

Arden see if there are any other

hands I don't see any so uh with that I'm going to close

uh item number two and move on to item number three approval of previous

meeting minutes discussion and possible action on previous Fierce committee

meeting minutes uh including the marathon meetings that we had in August and

September um the draft meeting minutes have been posted um

any suggested edits or comments um I think there thank you for

putting them together it's hard to um pull all that um just one note is they both at the top say special meeting

minutes and it wasn't a special meeting well I had asked uh vice president jonic

why all of the BC meeting minutes said special meeting minutes and he said that's because we don't have standing meetings and so by definition all of our

meetings are special because especially since we're a temporary committee oh so

yeah actually all of our previous meeting said that too um I think that I had noticed it before so if that's what

our meeting well I guess this may be our last meeting as a committee but um hope

so maybe that's what we should be calling it when we post it too just because there seems some inconsistency

if our minutes say special meeting but the actual posting of the agend of the

meeting online doesn't say that oh yeah I mean like that's where I noticed the disconnect so if that's actually true

and I either haven't been paying attention sometimes or or what but that they should probably be consistent you

know for for our commission full commission's um in the future we should

probably request that they are that is posted the public consistently with how we have to record them that is an

excellent point um yes I like I said I had asked

uh vice president jonic because all of the vek meetings also say special and he

said basically only the elections commission has regular meetings

so um any other edits on the content I try to

capture a flavor of our discussion and for all of the key questions so okay so uh seeing no other

suggestions um I assume these minutes can be approved by General

consensus um and let's open it up to public

comment okay uh no one in the room and no hands online so I'm going to go ahead

and close item number three and and move on to the main event

uh redistricting initiative discussion and possible action on recommendations for changes to San Francisco's

redistricting process so uh uh as commissioner Parker

said hopefully this is our last meeting um this Fierce committee was

convened solely to provide recommendations to the full elections

commission and uh we did not take a vote after six

hours of discussion on the detailed reforms and uh we were awaiting seeing

them all together as a package they are um uh posted there for you to look at

and we'll throw it up on the screen shortly uh first for members of the

public who miss the October commission meeting a little update on the state

bills we got a split decision from governor Nome on the state bills the

good news is that AB 764 which included key enhancements to the fair Maps Act was signed into law

and there are some minor but important impacts for San Francisco which we'll discuss

shortly AB 1248 was not signed supposedly due to

budget concerns ough the governor said he shared the goal of ensuring community

control over the redistricting process process he also vetoed SB 52 which would

have established an independent registrating Commission in Los Angeles but did sign several other bills

establishing irc's for Sacramento County and Orange

County uh it may mean that he want San Francisco and other large jurisdictions

to develop something more tailored on their own which implies that all of the

hard work that we have done as a commission and a committee over the past 17 months is even more

relevant uh in fact I received between 50 and 60 emails from San franciscans in

support of a charter amendment to ensure truly independent redistricting in advance of our meeting I have forward

the forwarded these to commission secretary Davis to share with our fellow

Commissioners uh at the last elections commission meeting I verbally summarized our discussion of the key

reforms and in the agenda packet is a table I created to help our final

review uh we also solicited questions and concerns from the other Commissioners and you'll also find a

written suggestion from vice president jonic that we can discuss after we go

through all of this um would one of you like to share

that document it's which doc the uh table the

um preliminary recommendations if not I can I can share

it too it's just I'm juggling a bunch of things here do you mean on the the in

the agenda packet do you mean share of the screen is that what you're talking about yeah because I think I have to

switch it to look see

[Music]

well I think you to

y

it's

stop going

on okay so

um as it notes at the Top This is a summary of the discussions to align

local redistricting practices with best practices uh based on our six hours of

discussion August and September um as well as updates from State

legislation and um I will note that I did speak to DCA Flores last week uh to

get some clarification on some of the impact of ab 764 and I will uh share um what I can

from that discussion I try to incorporate it in this table here

so with that why don't we go to the first

page would you like to take us through it commissioner Parker what did you want me to

do run through the table uh sure so this is the element of um the

composition of the body the current San Francisco redistricting task force has

nine members three are selected by each um each appointing authority there are

three appointing authorities no diversity of representation requirements um as part of San Francisco law and no

alternates are allowed for the preliminary recommendation um by the committee 14

members plus two alternates eight randomly selected from a pool of 40 of the most qualified candidates elevated

by the vetting body each of the first eight should not be from the same neighborhood or region um see location

below six the six remaining plus the two alternates should be chosen by the first

eight members to balance diversity alternates serve as non- voting members

until seated as voting members diversity factors to include gender wraith

ethnicity location um considering Geographic diversity of San Francisco neighborhoods

and regions of candidates homes independent of existing districts and socioeconomic status Equitable sty to

allow for differential effort and assist those of lesser means the rationale consistent with best practice

um California citizens redistricting commiss uh commission commission councel who care the last C for this moment

commission and other successful local irc's which have 13 to 14 members for better representation balances random

selection to minimize political influence with diversity concerns alternates recommended by the

redistricting task force and ensures hot stand stand by Replacements in case of resignation or removal Geographic diversity should not

be based on existing districts which may split neighborhoods or areas of the city arbitrarily in additional

comments this deviates slightly from State legislation which specifies that the first eight must be from different

existing districts stipend to be determined by the Board of Supervisors outside of the charter and be commencer

it with effort required versus other typical commissions for example the CCRC

um has $378 per DM Long Beach IRC has $200 per

DMS excuse me common cause recommends $450 per DM for the LA

IRC um San Francisco consider the be the jury program to en um as a reference to

encourage jury participation for low-income residents as a potential stiffened

model so uh mostly just check in with everyone to see if there are any tweaks to this

if we're still comfortable with it was hoping I could see both but I

can't oh I have aint out that's fine I'll just sit my phone I guess

um so this was quite similar to the

um to what was proposed as the default uh structure

in uh 1248 which obviously was not signed into law uh but as pointed out

just a slight difference not to tie any of the uh members to existing

districts and I think um the main thing that uh if we want to enhance

anything in the rational just to make sure we address questions that may may come up from our fellow

Commissioners so why why 14 a great a bigger number more

representation why the two different methods of selection randomization um and allowing self-

selection and why alternates and then just explaining how

it deviates from uh the state bills and then we agreed we weren't

going to suggest a specific stipend but just say Equitable stiens which comes up in some of the other elements as

well we agreed that we would leave that to the um legislative body

Y and this again is a contrast with um our current system which has two sets of

political appointees no diversity of representation requirements and as we

discovered to our dismay no no alternates right yeah go

ahead um so I think just a couple of notes as I was reviewing this

[Music] um and we we had this preliminary IRC recommendation of the 14 members and I

was talking with um some folks just leading up to this and they asked why we wouldn't consider um an odd number just

in case there was a tie and I thought that's a reasonable um comment you know whether that's 13 or 15 but it might

might be something we want to consider I mean when you have 14 people on a body um that is probably less likely to have

a tie because there's a number of people and you can have a tie because it's an even number of people and so if we were

to think about having an odd number of 13 or 15 for instance um I would think

we could start with the same base as eight you know who are chosen to get some geographic representation and then

have the balance of that either five or seven be selected but that to me that's a pretty good point um you know to um

try to avoid ties um so that was one thought um I can pause there or I can

give my a couple of other thoughts um just one immediate thought is it was

kind of Irrelevant for the CCRC because every

decision required nine

so it doesn't it kind of doesn't matter so it had to be

nine so so it doesn't matter if it's a tie because if it were a tie it wouldn't

pass it wouldn't pass anyway it wouldn't pass anyway yeah so

huh that's a fair point but yeah that's a was a Fair Point

except like I said in practice it didn't matter yeah no that's a fair point uh it might be good to note that

we considered it uhhuh yeah that again

as we noticed as we kind of went through slog through all these reforms they're all interdependent so that only works if you

stick with the nine you know the the super majority for decision- making so

if you have that you don't need to have an odd number because having a tie is irrelevant that's a fair point um I

would say probably would be good for us to note something like that in the comments because that's a very reasonable question um um and it will it

should it may come up again yeah right it could come up for anybody who's looking at this later as a reader

reviewer not just people on the Commission in fact um to the degree that we can note where there are inter

interdependencies I think that would be great so that might be another little section to add because as we talked

about stien comes up in a in budget it comes up in a bunch of other places um so there are things that are

in common for some of these reforms um and then some of these depend

on other reforms to work um so um the the next note that I

had is um with the rationale for the geographic representation we have this

like from the same neighborhoods regions things like that I wonder if

that I I wonder if the actually the main core rationale is like we just have too

many districts you know so like we can't there are 11 districts in San Francisco and so there's just no way you can have

a representation across every single district and so that's really the core of it because neighborhoods are going to

be split no matter what there's all kinds in fact there's many many neighborhoods in every District so saying neighborhood shouldn't be split

as like there's a million neighborhoods in every District so it feels like maybe

there's just so many details there that don't matter that it really comes down to we have more districts than allow

than there are seats um so I'm just wondering how much sort of editorializing is even necessary

because that's just the reality I I think um again to the degree because

again our goal is to put this together so that our fellow Commissioners can sit down and read through it and really

understand how we came to these decisions so I actually think you know we should air on the side of providing

you know more so that they can not you know not have to ask the question in the meeting that they can read it and

realize we thought about it um so I think you're right commissioner Parker that one issue is that we have too many

districts and and the other issue is that we do believe Geographic diversity is important that the you know different

parts of the city are distinct um so you know whether eight is exactly the

right number or not is is has more to do with you know balancing the two

selection processes and making making sure that we have a minimum number to represent that Geographic

diversity right and I also think to commissioner Parker's point there there should definitely be an explanation as

to why we're not doing 11 because that's that that may be a question because if

we're saying that we're doing this to have better representation and to make sure that

more people have a voice and we're removing political influence from it then I think we need to give some kind

of explanation as to why we are not having 11 right members um so because I think

that's a question that will come up so I think um some short explanation as to yeah to why we're not using that model

right yeah I I think and and that was originally what was proposed in 1248 and

then it got amended because people realized it would really screw up the diversity part right and so so I I put

in this General sentence here balances random selection to minimize political INF influence to diversity concerns and

maybe an example you know like we talked about you could you could end up with um you

know you know 11 11 men 11 white men whatever right you you could get

something very very non- diverse in the case of of the 2010 CCRC you ended up

with half of the first dat or Asian which was also not representative so it

it just screws up with diversity if you if you do it that way well it also comes down to size of the body because if we

were to have 11 districts represented and then still wanted to have that um the diversity balancing um you know and

we were to have five or six seats for that then all of a sudden you have a ginormous um body and and I think we we

are seeing that um what seems to be successful is a certain size and that would make it

large yeah um and so that I think was one of the reasons why right if I recall

correctly it was both sze um and if we were to keep it at the kind of 14 but

you have 11 districts then there's not very many seats left to do the balancing for diversity right since the first 11

are randomly selected yes so um that's that's what I recall so I would say that

we should probably include both of those notes in a rationale um and in fact um we we should

borrow the quote that you had used which is which I did

put on the draft slide I did include it because I thought it was represented what we were trying to do but a few

words might not hurt to just expound on that um that it's a manageable size

right so that's part of it's not only because it's it's consistent what with

what other Ires have done but because they've shown it's a manageable size so um so I would also maybe just

add that uh and it's it's so hard when you're trying to make things um brief and

digestible and also make them clear as you're saying for people who are going to read this without anybody walking

them through it um even the sentence of balancing balances random selection to

minimize political influence with diversity concerns that might sound like a bunch of a jumble to people who

haven't been watching and so there might be a way maybe maybe it needs an extra sentence to really make clear what it is

the English of what we're saying you know what um like I said this was just oh no no no I appreciate what you're

trying to do with this like we there's only so much space I was dealing with it when I made those original slides it was very hard yeah so um but but I think

this is important to include it because we I mean actually when I first saw 1248 and I saw

one from each district I already said this is not going to work for San Francisco so I was actually not if you

recall at our at our very first meeting back in May that was the first thing I said this isn't going to work for San

Francisco right right so um and then I can just share the last

thing and then um if you all have anything else um I think this is probably um as you were just mentioning

a place to know interdependencies because I still like I understand why

why we have or why you have this stipend reference here you know in the composition because we're looking for

diversity in representation and sort of the the getting into the the details of

that like I just don't know if this is the place for all those details it feels like funding the funding area is the

place for all these details about you know here are some of the ways other places have done it you decide this is

you know uh not in the charter whatever um I think it it feel like more of a

reference here and then the details go belong on the funding side I think we should say C funding yes that's what I

think yeah as a note of the interdependency but it just it's it's not about the composition it's more

about the funding of it well I if you notice I composition and diversity because part part of this composition

was about diversity and that's um but I I think it's fine to put the details in

one section and just refer to it in the other sections to cut the word count

down commissioner Parker just so that I understand you feel that um the examples

of the pum is something a detail that we don't need to put in here I do think we

should have it I just think it goes on the funding SE as opposed to here because this this slide to me feels more

about what is the body how is the body composed you know who how many people

are like our big headliner question was how many people and who and so we do want a diverse body that is

representative the city we want qualified candidates we want you know to reduce political influence there's all of those those goals um and diversity by

mentioning the stiens that that says we want economic diversity on this and make it you know it it be a possibility for

for people to consider serving on this and the details of that seem more appropriate for a funding side right

that makes sense okay thank you for clarifying so if that's good let's go to page

two you have any other further do not so we're otherwise good with the basic

recommendation and we've beefed up the rationale to try to address any questions

are our fellow Commissioners may have um so I think we're moving to the next

element which is um selection and removal which had four sub points so the

first uh was on Outreach in recruitment uh and I will run us through

this really quickly so there is nothing in the uh Charter about Outreach and

Recruitment and there was actually very little of it done the last time which is why we only know of about 35 candidates

applicants um so our preliminary recommendation is to require a comprehensive Outreach and public

education plan to build a large candidate pool representative of San Francisco demographics an open

competitive application process that is accessible available in language and not overly burdensome to potential

candidates require regular public reporting on the size and demographics of the pool and consider a separate

agency with experience and Outreach to run this phase of the selection process and ensure funding is available to do

this effectively under rationale to create a well-qualified ified representative body

free of conflicts of interests it is necessary to Source broadly from the entire Talent of the city not just the

politically connected public reporting provides accountability and may spur mobilization to ensure a diverse

pool and of course we want to leverage the city's existing agencies with extensive Community connections and

Outreach experience um this was pretty consistent with ab1 1248 and uh CCRC uh

practices um so we had discussed some possible agencies that might run a good

Outreach process so we mentioned the Department of Elections and the office of Civic engagement and immigrant

Affairs um there may be others I think we we agreed that they know who they are

um in terms of Outreach I mean could be the Department of Public Health I mean there are a bunch of departments that

that have engage and Outreach regularly um and then we also wanted to

encourage the city to Leverage kind of creative Outreach efforts like long Beach's use of inserts and utility

bills or the DMV posting at the libraries we had all kinds of great ideas bus steps Etc um that's just for

information obviously that wouldn't belong in the charter Amendment

itself so um so here I wanted to note that while AB 764 does require public

Outreach plan that that is after the IRC is seated so it actually um AB 764 has

more to do with the processes and procedures for the IRC and this is about

the selection of the IRC so it it actually doesn't say anything about an Outreach to potential

applicants any thoughts on this comments on rationale Commission

Parker I'll have comments on everything that's great um uh yes just actually just a little

bit um and one this is more just to include in comments because this is the recommendations and I don't know at least how I'm viewing what we move

forward to the commission that might possibly also move something forward to the Board of Supervisors is is some of

the background right like we know some things it's going to be part of their job to decide what goes into Charter and

what should be done should only we can talk about that later but um we should be really we should really encourage

them to only put things in the charter that need to go in a charter yes um and everything else should be done otherwise

um but here I thought maybe um we might

want to specify we had talked about in our in our discussion prior um about the

in language you know providing this competitive application process in language um we had talked about using

the standard languages the department of Ed of Elections uses and so I think that probably is worth here um that's more

than just a couple um and then the other thing um is maybe in the comments just

because uh you have mentioned here long Beach's creative ways to do its Outreach

and just mentioning that there there are cities that we know of who presented here um also uh in other reports we've

seen that they should just there's no need to reinvent the wheel like there are some cities who are doing a really good job and we should just um try to

build or use and you know steal ideas um so I would just maybe just some quick

reference to um you know leveraging or us using um

learning from other cities best practices yeah I think that's a a good idea and we actually have the links to

their report in our um link to in our redistricting initiative which talked about what they did so we could actually

provide them the direct reference as well

any other tweaks um or details um I I think I had also made a

comment that you know uh we could we could link to the Michigan icrc site which which U we'll

have to see if it's still up but they regularly reported on how they were doing and their process was completely

random so that was all they could do report on the

demographics any else either on the recommendation itself that we need to clarify

or um in the rationale

um it probably it's good to mention the fact that there were only 35 candidates in the previous process

oh yeah that's the outreaches sorry Mike um maybe rationale for that type of

Outreach is that we only had that that's where it would fit I think yeah and also

I think um I think Long Beach had 400 applications so we we have that data

somewhere I think in fact uh yes 400 plus

applicants were screened for Long Beach and Michigan of course had almost

10,000 and state of California had 36,000 but I think Long Beach is the most

appropriate Michigan is not SP State

okay anything else on this

one NOP okay let's go on to the next

one okay so this is also part of selection and removal and it's the qualifications and

restrictions and San Francisco has no guidelines on who may be a member there

are no standard qualification criteria and there is no ban on a conflict of

interests um the criteria was determined by each appointing authority and they were not necessarily

consistent uh the preliminary IRC recommendation is that uh this should be

open to San Francisco residents who've been here at least a year uh and we're clarifying that we are

not requiring them to be a registered voter and the subjective qualifications

are ability to be impartial relevant skills and we had talked about some of these relevant skills Communications

being a good listener collaboration being critical thinker um being analytical enough to understand data and

an understanding of San Francisco's diversity and demographics um disqualifying conflicts

of interest for a candidate if um she or he spouse or

direct family members have been candidates elected officials staffers major donors or lobbyists for the

previous 5 to8 years is what we came up with last time I think it's worth taking a closer look given some of the comments

at the last uh elections Commission meeting um Financial disclosures

required but form 700 need not be F filed until the finalist stage um this

was we talked about it not being burdensome and they cannot run for office in districts they drew or

Citywide office for 10 years rationale being that's the census

cycle and the rationale is that residency is more inclusive versus voter registration since um San Francisco is

relatively low voter registration and this would eliminate 21% of voting age

residents um and that this is a proven combination of both objective and

subjective criteria to eliminate political conflicts of interest and ensure that candidates are qualified for

the task without attracting those with aspirations for elective office and it's

also consistent with the redistrict task Force's recommendation to consider the ccc's CR

ia uh so our recommendation is consistent with both AB 1248 and

764 both of them had these disqualifying conflicts of interest and pre- and poost

Service uh requirements um however revisions to elections code

233 required both pieces of legislation to pass and unfortunately Governor NS

only signed one so as a result they did not pass however all the language is there available for us and I thought it

would might be useful for us to actually look at that language um there was a question we had

discussed and I don't know that we resolved it about requiring a longer residency uh most commissions require uh

a year which I think we agreed it should be at least a year um and you know there

was a question of whether it needed to be longer so we can we can uh just make

sure we're still in sync on that and then of course the the length because we

came up with five to eight years I and I'm going to suggest we actually review each of these in detail since that's

where we got questions from other Commissioners um so I think we all

agreed it was a minimum five but then there were questions of whether it should be eight in certain cases and

then of course we were encouraging the Board of Supervisors to further validate this with Community input

but uh we will give them our best recommendation um and then I added to

consider more inclusive alternatives to written essays for evaluating subjective criteria so one of my ideas that I had

suggested to Michigan was allowing video and not requiring a higher education to

write you know essays um right a video with a a time limit yeah so again I feel

like that's in the neighborhood of suggestions and you know shouldn't be in the charter but we're going to share the

ideas that we've we've discussed um

so I um would suggest that we take a look at

the language in um 1248 which also appeared in 764 but was

invalidated um and these are the disqualifying conflicts of interest and I'm going to

read it out aloud and we can stop and each one if you like a person shall not

be appointed to serve on the commission if a person or any family member of the person has been elected or appointed to

or has been a candidate for elective Office of the local jurisdiction in the eight years preceding the person's

application so that's one of the eight-year ones and and

then um should we talk about each one at a

time or do you want me to read them all first and then we can go back should I

read them all first just so we can get a lay of the land here and then it says A person shall not be appointed to serve

on the commission if either of the following applies one the person or person's spouse has done any of the

following in the eight years preceding the person's application served as an officer of of

employee of or paid consultant to a Campaign Committee or a candidate for elective Office of the local

jurisdiction served as an officer of employee of or paid consultant to a political party or as an elected or

appointed member of a political party Central Committee served as a staff member or

consultant to or who has contracted with a currently serving elected officer of

the local jurisdiction D been registered to Lobby the local

jurisdiction e contributed $500 or more in a year to any candidate for an

elective Office of the local jurisdiction the local jurisdiction May adjust this amount by the cumulative

change in the Consumer Price Index California Consumer Price Index or its successor in every year ending in

zero next a family member member of the person other than the person's spouse has done any of the following in the

four years preceding the person's application so there's eight and there's

four now served as an officer of employee of or paid consultant to a

Campaign Committee or candidate for elective Office of the local jurisdiction same thing for a political

party um including political political party Central Committee served as a

staffer um or a lobbyist so the same set

of um requirements uh contributive $500 or

more same Clause there so this is for family

members other than the spouse so it's a it's a shorter um time period look back

period and then this is um juring service a member of the commission shall

not do any of the following while serving on the commission endorse work for volunteer for make a campaign

contribution to a candidate for elective Office of the local jurisdiction be a candidate for an elective Office of the

jurisdiction if any of the following is true less than 5 years has elapsed since the date of the member's appointment to

the commission so that means five years after appointment the election of that

office will be conducted using the district boundaries that were adopted by the commission on on which the m

served and whose District members have not been subsequently reopt by a

commission after the end of the members term on the commission so that's similar to what we said about not running in the district you just

drew the uh election for that office will be conducted using District boundaries that were adopted by a

legislative body I don't think this one applies to us pursuant to a recommendation by the commission on which the member served and those

District boundaries have not been subsequently reopt by a legislative body

um I think that's to cover advisory commissions all right and then the third

one is for four years commencing with the date of the person's appointment to the

commission um cannot accept employment as a staff member of consultant to or

elected office official or candidate receive a non-competitively bid contract

with the local jurisdiction register as a lobbyist for the local

jurisdiction and for two years commencing with the date of the person's appointment to the Commission accept an

appointment to the off to an office of the local jurisdiction the commission shall not be

comprised entirely of members who are registered to vote with the same political party preference this was

something that um we didn't discuss very much but it's something that we thought was interesting

and probably probably okay um probably out

of 14 you would get someone who was not a Democrat even in San Francisco

um and then uh each member of the commission shall be a designated

employee in the conflict of interest code for the commission so this is uh something that um

um uh is a reporting thing for conflicts of interest okay so I think that was I

think the others are on other issues okay so to start from the

top the first one is

um covering um a person or their spouse has done

anything eight back eight uh year look back period and at the time we were

thinking does this have to do with a supervisorial you know two terms uh but

actually I was thinking back it actually has to do with the actual elections that

are covered because redistricting takes place in the year ending one and runs into the year

ending two so usually the first Maps take effect in a year ending twoo so

that gives you eight years so that's that's where that came from

so and for example uh in the 2010 CCRC we finished our job in uh uh 2011

and our Maps took in if you know you first voted in the new districts in 2012 so this is actually a look back

period for a census cycle essentially the the for for the election Cycles actually so it's not the full 10 years

of the census cycle but it's the effective elections that are affected by the new maps so so that's the reason for

eight years and so again it is campaign committees you know

Consultants candidates um you know basically staffer you can't have been part of the

DCCC or republican counterpart um you can't be a staffer to

an elected and you can't be a lobbyist and you can't be a major donor and 500 is the is the maximum

contribution an an individual can give in San Francisco and many other jurisdiction which is where that came

from and at the state level it was 2,000 which is the maximum you could

give so um so that's the eight-year look back

period and then the fouryear uh look back period it's a half

of that time for family members family members yeah

so if your daughter you know has done this or your

father has done this immediate family members so that's

four but the same same restrictions so it's just a shorter look back

period are there any thoughts on the shorter period

especially since we came up with a minimum of five because we don't have to follow this this is just what was in

1248 uh I mean so for me for the longer one for self spouse I'm going to be honest like I think

that five years is a long time um in San Francisco and political world and if you

haven't been doing anything U any of these things for five years like I am still comfortable with five years being

kind of the bottom of it I don't know if it if we had a range of 5 to eight I'm

okay with that um I I personally wouldn't want it to just say eight I'd rather have a range just just because my

obser mean living here for 25 years um and being very civically involved for

many many of those years five years is a long time to not be involved with things um so that's

um so I'm comfortable with a range you know I'm comfortable with having some kind of pre-service restrictions I'm

also comfortable with it just being five um but AR range would be okay with me and with the the shorter period of time

for family members I mean that makes sense um to me

you can't necessarily control your children or your parents or your spouse um well that you know they're very clear

that you and your spouse are considered the same so they no that's true but sometimes you can't control them um

that's still true I do like the range I don't think we should get into into

specifics because these are recommendations so I'm I'm comfortable with the range I I think a lesser period

of time for a family member make sense um but I just wanted to hear what others

thought um and I I do think it's important to have AR ranged because we're making a recommendation then leave

it up to the legislature decide um because they're going to have input from the community as well so so I think it

would be helpful to indicate the rationale for the 8 years being kind of the last you know the elections that are

affected by the previous Maps um and then your comment that five years is a

long time in San Francisco politics so it's still significant

um I think the other thing that uh an argument for the longer end of it would

be that even if you're not involved in specific issues you probably haven't

lost your relationships and so back to minimizing political influence that

might be an argument for going on the longer side but I I I'm also comfortable with the range and I I think we should

you know give them some of the reasons why to lean on the longer side and why you might go with a shorter one but um

what we had talked about last time was a minimum five years and I'm actually still very comfortable with that yeah I'm comfortable with the minimum of five

years to commissioner Parker's Point um 5 years is a long time in San Francisco

but I think it should be the bare minimum for as far as our

recommendations okay bare minimum of five I like that and so but all these

categories were still comfortable with basically electeds candidates staffers

uh lobbyists and uh um and then of course

um uh major donors so those five

categories um question I can't I can't pull up my notes because I'm sharing my

screen um and so I can't refer back to some of the comments we heard from our commission meeting around the concern

around donations can you um remind me because I I was going to pull them up I just can't yeah uh so I I think

um so I it was coming commer Hayden Crowley who had brought up a concern um about the uh donors and part

of it was because she said that she could see giving $500 and you know she

she commented she would never give 2,000 but you know I said basically the analog is that 2,000's EST State and 500 is

what it is for San Francisco for the local jurisdiction um I think she had expressed a concern about excluding

people you know who wanted to serve on the commission [Music]

um and so so we did bring up the example about you know if we've required she had

you know pushed a little bit on the voter registration and that's when we talked about the fact that you know we

have a pretty low voter registration rate we have a lot of immigrants in San Francisco and if we want to be inclusive

that would take out 21% I did follow up with um commissioner

Hayden Crowley afterwards I did a little back of the envelope uh calculation using the the um voter data tools that

are provided um uh by the elections department and I actually calculated

that uh based on the last major election uh the number of major donors in other

words people who had given the maximum $500 who who might have been excluded

was less than half a percent of of the voting age population of of San

Francisco less than half a percent yeah okay of course I can't tell exactly because I had to extrapolate a little

bit but um it was I was looking at data that showed all the money that was

poured into the November 22 race and so if you separate out the um measures

which was actually the bulk of it and you looked at people who are giving to candidates uh and you looked at how many

of those gave at the 00 level it's a very very small number of people so it

does not actually exclude very many people at all commissioner Parker um and

I recall her just saying you know if we have people who are very active you know that that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be biased I think that

was part of what her um comment was um which I think sometimes is there's no

generalizations we can make right there are some people who wouldn't be affected by that and other people who would be

and you know who knows um but I think it's also worth noting that people can have made a donation to a

candidate of $100 or $200 the year before they come on this task force it doesn't exclude people who have ever

made a political donation in the previous time and there are probably many many more people who have given $20

or $50 or $100 um and so um we have a

very we have an activist City you know we have a lot of people who show up and give us public comment who um who are

civically engaged in many ways including on the many many many many campaigns that happen every election cycle because

we have so many ballot measures or so many candidates so um you know we want to encourage them to continue to be

civically active and it's okay if you have volunteered for a candidate and you have given some money like that is we're

not ex I think it's important for us to note we're not excluding that behavior and saying You must be pure and never

have showed up in a civically active way that's actually we're not we don't want that at all and so it's probably worth

noting somewhere that it's not excluding folks who have been even politically

active it's just there's some sort of if there's a place to draw a line where it's probably more likely that you're

very devoted to a particular issue or candidate then it's probably more likely if you've given in that amount because

that is our max out level you know so I don't know there might be something worth saying the comments I I think

that's right um in fact we actually want civically engaged um

people and uh I was looking uh in my notes

Here uh this might be something we want to uh include actually

under under um qualifications for

consideration is something about Civic

engagement it actually doesn't explicitly say that but I believe that

uh uh I'm looking for this now maybe that's in the CRC you're supposed to provide evidence in some of those essays

right in the California CRC yeah um about Civic engagement do I recall correctly yeah well these were the three

um official criteria ability be impartial relevant skills and an

understanding of San Francis of you know the state's diversity and demographics and yes they absolutely asked for that

um you know that history of Civic engagement and so we might want to

just yeah note that is something that we're interested in and I'm I'm looking in my notes here because I think Long

Beach had something like that where they asked for um uh for evidence of Civic

engagement uh which can look like lot of things like yeah it does it we're not

saying anything and and you know we had um uh you know we had a commissioner who

was chair for local Republican women's committee so it absolutely did not exclude people who were involved in

political activity it was you know it just ex excludes major donors so

that's uh I think the the main point as commissioner Parker pointed out there

are many people who might get the $25 level or the $50 level even a 100 but I

I actually can't I personally can't name anyone that I know who's given 500

but it's a small number of people because I did math well I think it'll be important

to in the rationale that commissioner Parker just

outlined to to put the percentage or estimate of the percentage of people

people in San Francisco who donate at that major donor level to make it clear

that it's a very small number so it is not an ex it's not excluding yeah um a

significant number of people who may be politically active you know I know lots of people and I myself have given $100 I

haven't given over that um and people are active in many ways people volunteer

their time um so it's we're not excluding we're saying major donor because the goal here

is to limit limit and Safeguard um political influence so I think to

clarify that I think we should clarify that and clarify this the small number I'm happy to share the math that I did

and the data set so I'll I'll make a note to give that to you

um but yeah uh and and I think the other thing it's

worth calling out explicitly and you you can feel free to reward some of these things like I I was

just trying to get the ideas down but basically um a lot of the juring and

post service requirements were there to exclude people who want to use this as a

stepping stone to elective office essentially um and so and some of these

uh requirements are consistent with for example our requirements as elections

Commissioners right so so let me just go

through um while serving on the commission you

can't endorse work for volunteer for make a campaign contribution to a

candidate for elective office at the local jurisdiction that was some of the controversy for certain members of the

last redistricting task force um and that is something that we as elections Commissioners have to abide by so that

might be something we can we can reference as a standard and

then you can't be a candidate if less than five years has elapsed since the date of the memb

appointment to the commission that was true for this um CCRC members we could

not run for office Even in our local jur even though we served at the state level we couldn't run for office in the local

level until at least five years had passed um so that's

consistent and then this one explicitly says obviously you can't run for any

office where you drew the lines and those lines are still active we agreed on that last time that's just

logical so the example for that in San Francisco might be if you are on the redistricting task

force and you were to run for the City College Board you could after 5 years

because you didn't draw those lines but you couldn't run for district three supervisor seat for 10 years that's an

example of where you could and couldn't Pur these Post Service I think that's I

think it's great to provide an example yeah um that's an excellent example um I

also just want to um just this is actually just a question as I was thinking about this is how is that

actually enforced who enforces that is that something the Department of Elections would then need to put into their

their round of we do these things when you file paperwork is we're just going to make sure you didn't serve on this

one particular body I think it's going to be a checkbox I mean we know who served on the body right and it's a

small number of people so it's pretty right but it's not part of anybody's process so it's it's something that would have to be imped into a process

that ensures that it doesn't happen that's an excellent point and it

probably would fall in the Department of Elections and just a box or maybe the city does the

City attorney vet that or but it would probably just be a check box it's probably a check boox that you add to the paperwork you have to pull when you

file yeah no it's excellent point about imple actual implementation I think um

for the state body I mean we knew who we were we knew what the rules were and none of us did it so um but yes for San

Francisco we probably need to make it a process okay so that's

during uh and after and then there was also

um they had a four-year one that a for four

years you can't accept employment uh be a staff or consultant

to unelected uh or a candidate how do they

how is that enforced again like is that HR is going to add

that as a question for the city is that like that's a pretty how was it enforced on the state

level uh is that a requirement at the state level I don't remember I know um I

paid attention to the one about elected office because you know when I applied

all of these things had crossed my mind since I'm a civically active engaged

person and that was something I had to be okay with before I applied um I on the other hand had not

thought about being a staffer so I probably didn't pay attention to it but it wouldn't surprise me if it was part

of it I understand the rationale behind that because you can certainly help um

folks who you drew L lines for and I think the enforcement sounds very

challenging again I think you're going to know who these 14 people are but we're making recommendations and so I

think that's really the purview of of the legislative body to consider implementation implementation of it I

mean we're we're in the process of recommending what we think is best for

this Charter um and I think that that's a detail that that they need to concern

themselves with and I think public input will will definitely

ask I think people will ask those question questions I I don't know if it's I hear you but I'm I'm not sure if

that's the best use of our time at making recommendations yeah I totally take that point that's that's fair and I think

you're you're right and that they get to make some decisions the other thing that they're going to have to consider with any of these things is their available

resources and so you know especially things that are not in the charter you know what are what are they going to

budget for and it could be that some things feel much more important to prioritize resources for and other

things might be nice to have but if there are limited resources that would take you know um all all of the the

process admin side of things if it adds too much they may choose not to do that but it's not our choice to make they they are the ones who are making

recommendations and decisions regarding the budget yeah and they also have like receive a non-competitively bid contract

with the local jurisdiction so we have rules um about that for the city and I I

don't know uh if that's already covered um I don't know if we have Post Service

kinds of restrictions like that in the city but that's something uh that makes a lot of sense

especially given San Francisco's history of no bid contracts so so anyway that

one's in there and then register as a lobbyist that's something that should be easily that one should be easily

enforced and then it says for two years um after appointment

they can't accept an appointed position I think for the CCRC it was 5 years for

both appointed and elected if I recall correctly but um so they're just making it lower for appointed position so you

could be appointed to another commission uh within two

years so that's that's that's what was in both 1248 and

764 I think it's a I mean the the categories are

reasonable I think we can stick with five to eight years that

seems comfortable yeah I mean I think we

should always bear in mind that we're not writing the legislation we're making recommendations and so I think the more

options we give or the or more ranges of possibilities um is is a good

idea without being too specific yeah and the reasons for the the low end of the

range right and the high end of the

range so I think we've got all of these um categories one two three four five

yeah okay and then we had discussed this is something that commissioner bernholz brought up about form 700 and it turns

out that you know a lot of it's required for any commissioner anyway in San Francisco so it this was more about when

would we required in the process so that it wouldn't be too

um burdensome or also prevent people from applying because it just scares

them

off okay anything else on this one that we

feel we need to provide more rationale for um I just U just couple quick

details so if if we were to say the form 700 need not be filed until the finalist

stage the finalist stage was like the 40 so that is when we would recommend that

they fill it in so it's like we get to the 40 because any one of them could be picked it's random after that right but

I'm wondering that even in that form if the form 700 disqualifies any of those 40 then do they fill in the rest of the

40 like how do they deal with that if that ends up disqualifying so it changes your pool yeah because I think well it

says the 40 most qualified so obviously if they get disqualified then the next

person up would be qualified so that's a detail and implementation this is why it

took the uh the uh what was in the Bureau of State audits now the state

auditor's office this is why it took them 18 months to write the actual regulations to implement the

law but the I think they're established processes now so for example when we did

the initial um first round of of application

remember I told you was like took me five or 10 minutes on the internet all we had to do is self-certify you know I

have not been a major donor I have not been a lobbyist I haven't been so they could require a self-certification so

they require self-certification and then they check it when they when they get further along right that seems

reasonable yeah maybe we should that that could be a recommendation to just to include is

just self-certification up until the finalist stage that way people realize that that's going to be a requirement so

that they don't put all you know the effort into it oh it might coming right if it's just a check box you know

basically that says yes I certify that I meet these requirements right um that

could help make sure that it's a little easier to get that 40 group of 40 yeah no I think that's good uh and the other

thing that that uh was done um at the state level

was that all of our applications were open to the public uh so if you self-certified and

someone knew that it's not true they would report it and then the the

Auditors would investigate so there were people who were thrown out of the pool for that

reason um the one other just note I wanted to make was [Music]

um related to The Residency requirement um um you already listed here in the

comments that um you know most commissions require one year actually I believe I think we had a public

commenter draw attention to the fact that we actually passed um a ballot measure that allows any commissioner in

the city to be a resident and so they don't have to be a citizen um and

so that is probably worth listing in the rationals like that's just following city law right you know I think it was

Proposition H was it or was it a c I can't remember I can't remember which one it was it's um it was a public

comment and it was recorded so we could just go back and check the recording I believe it was Jen say from the League

of Women Voters who called that out yeah I I think I wrote it in my notes because

I was when I was looking through again in prep preparation for tonight so anyway that that seems worth noting that

that's already city law that you just have a residency requirement for all of our commissions I I think that's

probably the stronger reason so um so it's probably not necessary to

to note that it was in 1248 and 764

because our city law is going to Trump that anyway

um okay anything else on this one NOP

moving on to the next one okay we are in the next subsection of

selection and removal which is fetting and selection uh as we all know it's three

three and three right now mayor Board of Supervisors and then the elections

commission is the independent body that appoints three

uh as we have seen in report after report non-political vetting and

selection of finalists um by uh trusted and adequately resourced bodies that that

that leverage existing capabilities of the city systems and

processes uh we want that this this could entail different agencies for the

Outreach and recruitment phase which we just talked about and the actual vetting and selection from the finalist pool so

we are asking the board to consider the possibility of using um

the best suited agencies for different parts of this process so this is consistent with the

risting task Force's own recommendation to consider the CCRC selection process

I.E without the involvement of elected officials um and part of this is

restoring public trust in the process which is key to Faith and fair

elections and uh this is exactly why um

B 1248 was written was to ensure that um

political appointments are taken out it's why we're considered a political

commission and uh why we would have been forced to change so um this is where we didn't

want to name particular agencies because there are pros and cons for a lot of

them and this is where public input would be most valuable but we indicated

characteristics instead which was that they are trusted and resourced to do

this job well um something we talked about last time I think commissioner loli brought

this up of making sure they had investigative capabilities so that they can do the actual vetting after the

self- selection certification but we did come up with these four

possibilities um I don't know if it's worth noting some of the other choices is in uh AB 1248 I did ask DCA Flores

whether we look at the city or we look at the county stuff and she said that that the City attorney always looks at

the city because um Charter cities have more power her wordss so they tend to

look at the choices for the city so could be worth throwing those up as as also possibilities for

consideration it might be worth stating that uh just

like in the original deck that you put together that we never have considered

the possibility of not having a truly independent body that that's ultimately our goal here and and this is

fundamental to that to to eliminate political

inappropriate political influence

any other thoughts on this one I think this one is pretty straightforward um yeah uh a

few um yeah well let's see there's there's

well there's so there's a few thoughts I have just on kind of tweaking some of the things on this slide I also just want to acknowledge I have heard I have

heard a lot of I've been contacted by the public I've heard from lots of folks talking about when of the the good things about our current process yes

it's a political process as we've talked about and it's distributed across three bodies and I I do actually think that

that the distribution is really good I wish there was some I think you end up getting that same effect by having the

random and then balanced like the selection process that we are recommending you know where you have

qualified candidates who are vetted and then there's a random selection of those for that first eight and then they are

balancing the diversity I think you end up getting a very similar effect that they're coming from a lot of different

places and um so I do think you end up getting the

same effect of of that that kind of um distributed without having the political

influence or or even if you don't have your political folks saying You must do this you must do that um you still as a

person sitting on that body feel that attachment you know and you may feel the pressure whether is it it is exhibited

publicly or not not it is something that you can feel um so I just just want to

acknowledge that it's I I the the what resonates with me about a lot of the comment we have heard is about that kind

of distributed um appointment I think that um I mean San Francisco was really

Innovative I me it was one of the first two in the state to even suggest taking

it out of the hands of the legislative body and right this was kind of the best

that they came up with at the time there were not other models so right um so I

think you know certainly compared to having the Board of Supervisors do their own lines it was a dramatic impr so much

better right but but now we've seen systems that are even better which you

know takes the politicians completely out of the process and have you know shown that it it works better results in

in um uh maps that are that meet the redistricting criteria more

consistently um so I think this is this is where it's just an update um right so

one thing that but to that to that point I wonder if it's worth in the rationale adding um the in the slides that I

originally prepared I included a quote from a report um is I think it was from the the promise of fair maps report um

that listed a bunch of evidence that shows that this process leads to more transparent inclusive mops maps that are

oh yeah here we go um irc's whose members are not selected by incumbant

and meet certain qualifications to ensure impartiality were more transparent more encouraging and receptive to public participation and

more likely to draw maps that kept communities hold in legislative bodies so um yes we did not have a legislative

body drawing our Maps so I don't I don't want to say there's an exact equivalence um because I think that there was lots

of good process that happened with our um most recent redistricting task force I really do think they put a lot of time

and thought into process um that they all supported and agreed on and the

reality is that the evidence shows that all of these other jurisdictions who have um implemented this kind of a

selection process with a truly independent body has resulted in generally more transparent more

receptive you know all of those things are more likely doesn't mean they're impossible with other ways but they're much more likely with a truly

independent body as the evidence shows they list lots of examples in that report so I think that's worth listing

in the rationale um just mentioning in the rationale um and uh I also wonder if

we want to list again you know as I was reading this thinking okay this is about the vetting and selection but in this

the recommendation it just says the selection by trusted resource I think that's important adequately resourced

bodies um that leverage these capabilities in process but it doesn't

actually say what they're selecting or who they're selecting and so I think we need to add

in here they're selecting the finalist and that they're they're actually

selecting that first eight right no no the Rand that's random right but they still have to do the random process

people don't just right they administer administer happen yes they have to actually administer the Rand they to buy

the the lottery balls exactly which is what the state auditor that that is that's what I mean yes and so I we I we

need to that clarification absolutely here um and that was all the notes I had

yeah anything that to make it clearer so the 40 most qualified and administer the

random selection of the first

eight yeah and so for us that was the state auditor's office and then the minute the first date were chosen they

literally turn it over and says okay have your first meeting now and you you're you're on

um so so I think the the difference in the in the newer process is this idea of

most qualified um the challenge with three separate appointing bodies is they all

had different criteria and only the selections only the elections commission's process was public right so

we you know there was a public discussion of what the criteria should be and and all that and nobody knows

what happened with the mayor's office so

uh okay excellent points and excellent detail to

add all right that's good let's go to the next

one okay this is the final part of the selection and removal this was removal

and replacement uh and here we note that registrating task force members serve at

the pleasure of their their appointing authority and uh we footnoted that just for Mr burdell um that was in the actual

ordinance uh and our recommendation was to allow for resignations especially

they we're looking at a longer process now uh removal only if the IRC

determines that a member is guilty of neglective Duty gross misconduct or misrepresented themselves to qualify

this is we find out after the fact that uh they shouldn't been seated um an IRC

and then the IRC would choose a qualified alternate to replace um to

replace doesn't read right to to replace some someone

selected in the initial selection

process I I think that the order this is wrong the an alternate who was selected

in the initial um selection process that met the same requirement so the point here is that all Al alternates were part

of that 40 most qualified pool so that might be a detail to add that the two

alternates were also chosen from the same qualified most qualified

pool um and I don't know if we need to be

more detailed about it uh Long Beach actually says that that they're selected randomly that from the two alternates I

don't know if it's necessary to be that uh specific part of me feels like we should

note here that if we've gone through this process

of picking highly qualified vetted candidates that they should be trusted

to make this final you know decision on their own there's no reason for the selection body to get

involved again because they've already been part of that 40 most qualified well we've already asked the

eight to choose six so why would we not just let them choose next replacement or

the next replacement you know I mean well they're choosing the two alternates and then the alternate step up if

there's the seat so they're they're selected at the same time y but I mean we can also trust in the choose which of

the two steps up if we're asking them to fill diversity um requirements then it

seems that that is still the Mandate when they are filling the alternates that they may find

that they were on the edge with gender balance or with other kinds of you know representation or whatever it is like

something that person's background that fills out they need a particular skill that person has okay so I think that's

that's good to add that detail um and the rationale of course is

that uh we should allow people to step down if they can't fulfill the

duty uh and and then uh back to being truly

independent uh this was consider consistent with ab1

1248 um but it's just common sense I

think and this is something that every past CCRC commissioner wishes

that we had and the rdf as

well well maybe to that point is um well I actually we already put that

on the initial composition slide but it might be worth adding here again that the most recent task force also

supported this wished they you know well not wished I mean maybe they would have used them maybe they wouldn't have but

they think it was a good idea yeah they thought it was a good recommendation yeah they they love the idea of alternates and having someone as a

backup so um they might have liked the idea of

being able to resign too okay

I

need moving on to the next element redistricting line drawing criteria uh so as everyone knows the

charter does not rank uh the criteria and the criteria is fairly Bare

Bones uh basically says we should comply with one person one vote that the

district should be contiguous compact uh and recognized neighborhoods and there is a stipulation

on population variations being tight uh 1% to a maximum 5% for one of the

previous reasons and it while it says that that communities of Interest must be

considered there's no definition for what a community of interest is and there was no prohibition on

protecting incumbents so

uh the preliminary recommendation is actually to remove the existing Charter criteria and replace it with explicit

rank criteria including compliance with the federal law case law existing state

criteria and the state constitutional definition of communities of interests

um all of this is in the fair Maps act uh it would have applied for San Francisco if we had not had our own

special criteria so um so we could

simply remove the existing criteria and then put in the same criteria in the

fair Maps act and also require the final report to include a rationale for map lines

against the rank criteria and basically our discussion last time was there's no strong reason

to deviate from accepted best practices it is the the law of the state for all

General law cities um we've seen how rank criteria forces the tradeoffs and and causes uh

higher rank criteria to come first and this um

allows uh kind of more predictable choices than than

the you know ability to cherry-pick and and say oh well I'm going to use this

criteria to justify this district and a different criteria to justify another District

uh we had a discussion about case law about population

deviation uh and I'm not having a special rule on that that is inconsistent with case

law this is a consistent with the fair Maps act and also AB 764 which is now

known as the fair Maps Act of 2023 um it would have applied to us

except it has the same exception that was in the original Fair Max sa which is elections code 21130

g exempts Charter cities that have its own criteria so that's what took us out last time it takes us out

again so we have to explicitly put it in to to to have rank criteria and take out

what we currently have so we had a brief discussion about

Charter uh cultural districts last time and decided it didn't need to be

explicitly in a special criteria but that it could be cited as evidence to support communities of Interest

testimony

so any thoughts on this you um I have two thoughts um one

is it I mean know I know it's a lot of text believe me um but I wonder just

because we're just referring to what the the state

um we should call it outa we need to list it or at least put a link because I think it's too big yeah this way so the

state criteria just just to share with the members of the public is um

compliance with federal law which includes population equality and uh compliance with the

Voting Rights Act those are criteria one and two and then

contiguity um respecting communities of interests uh and that includes

neighborhoods and um we I will note that

Long Beach chose to prioritize neighborhoods above communities of Interest so that's something we can

discuss if that's something uh that we're interested in separ separating them at the state level they were at the

same so was it was actually cities counties uh neighborhoods and

communities of Interest we're all at the same level um and then

uh also uh we had I I realized I'm actually reading

Michigan which is also slightly different um compactness came next

and uh then there was another uh criteria that's not relevant

at the local level and then there was an explicit prohibition on considering political parties candidates

and electeds the residents of any incumbent political candidate or

parties so yeah we can we can list them specifically um yeah I think it would be

good to list them because it's I mean they can be succinct in you know in that list um and I would also say that you

know for something like neighborhood versus Community interest I think we could always just in the comments

say some areas are choosing to place one of those above the others talk to the community see what they want I don't I

don't have a strong feeling about it I think it's up to the community what feels more important if anything or just

keep them all equal right and I think in San Francisco they'll get they'll get that input the community will

will definitely yeah make it voice known just

um to let you know the uh Long Beach criteria like I said they had um they

broke it down a little bit more so they had population equality Voting Rights Act contiguity then number four was

respect for neighborhoods five was communities of Interest six was not dividing neighborhoods that have a

common history culture or language so that's quite specific um

seven was follow Geographic and top topographical City features eight was District should be

understandable by voters nine was compactness and 10 was correspond to census blocks so I don't

know if we need to go to that level of detail but it might be worthwhile to um provide long beaches

criteria as as an example of detailed version of it uh just because Long Beach

has many similarities to San Francisco um well one thing that I uh I

think doesn't didn't the fair Maps I I was thinking or did you list this I'm

um it added identifiable understandable in identifiable understandable lines

also um recognizing geographical barriers did you list that just now um

yes that so I think that we should actually look at what's in the fair Maps

act because it's similar to that feels really good I mean when we're talking about when we've had highways go through

neighborhoods in San Francisco you know Redevelopment like has unnecessarily divided some communities like that's the

kind of thing we don't want to unnecessarily do yeah with big kind of

Geo geographical barriers I what I would do is defer to

what's in the fair Maps act because I'm going from memory from what the CCRC

used which is highly similar but not exactly the same and I do think that there were improvements made with the

fair map app which are similar to what Long Beach did so so I agree let's just

use what's in the fair Maps act I'm trying to see if I can pull it up

um I don't know if I know what section it

is on off the top of my head let me see if I

can could be it it could be in the notes section when I did those slides because

I did note sometimes specific I did site sometimes the specific

sections yeah it's in here I just have to figure out what code it is but

uh uh I think it's right right at the

beginning if if I recall

correctly this is one that I didn't have time to to find the specific code but

um I know that having looked at it it was very

reasonable here we go here's the following order

priority um to the maximum extent so first of all it

says that it has to um follow uh existing law the United

States Constitution the California Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act so that takes care of the

first couple of um the first two criteria then it says the next one it

shall adopt um to the maximum extent Pro practicable election District shall be

geograph speically contiguous and then it specifically defines areas that only meet at the

points of adjoining Corners are not contiguous areas that are separated by water and not connected by a bridge

tunnel a regular ferry service are not contiguous so it goes into a lot more detail that that we on the first CCRC

had to interpret so things like water lines and and things like that and San Francisco

has Islands so these are relevant to us okay so that the third one is contiguity

to the maximum extent practical where does not conflict the geographic Integrity of any local neighborhood or

local community of interests shall be respected in a manner that minimizes its Division and then it defines a community

of interest is a population that shares common social or economic interests that should be included within a single

election district for the purposes of its effective and fair representation so that's consistent um okay that definition that

we talked about before so perhaps in the recommendations it's it's the brief list

with a citation to which section to refer to for a more complete detailed yes description it is elections code

21130 but I'm just uh going through this for just to make sure we're good with it

um so so it defines community of interests and it also defines what's

not uh so characteristics of communities of Interest may include but are not limited to to Shared public policy

concerns such as education Public Safety Public Health environment housing

transportation and access to Social Services characteristics of communities

of Interest may also include aha but are not limited to cultural districts it's

actually in here shared socioeconomic characteristics similar voter registration rates and participation

rates and shared histories I think this is good communities interest do not

include relationships with political parties incumbents or political candidates so there's a lot of detail in

here that we had to interpret so I think this is good that defines it quite well

it does yeah um and then it says the next to the maximum extent practicable and where it does not conflict with the

proceeding criteria the geographic Integrity of a see okay this is not this

this doesn't apply to a city so that doesn't apply to us so we can skip three and then to the Maxim extent practical

where it does not conflict election District shall be bounded by natural and artificial bound barriers by streets or

by the boundaries of the local jurisdiction they should be easily identifiable and understandable to

Residents and then uh election districts shall be drawn to

encourage Geographic compactness in a manner where nearby areas of population are not bypassed in favor of more

distant populations this is California's specific definition of compactness which

is different from mathematical formulas that other jurisdictions use and then finally the districting

body shall not accept shall not adopt election District boundaries for the purpose of favoring or discriminating

against an incumbent political candidate or political party okay yeah so let's just refer just

have a basic list and then refer to it and I think the benefit of listing it

out and you know and we have already in San Francisco Go's Charter you know the contiguous compact recognize

neighborhoods things like that but by giving more detail it just it allows them not to have to do so much

interpretation and work it just simplifies it and there was in general this seems like something that people

will you know there was some thought that went behind that so it can be a really helpful tool instead of having to

figure it out themselves um I do want to note um we need to include in the prim linary

recommendation no incumbency protection it's not listed in the recommend

um yes and that's because um the fair Maps act

actually does prohibit that but yes we should call it out so that is

um the prohibition right and there's there's also

um um let's see there's um it's both incumbency protection and discrimination

I think we should include both yes and it's not just incumbent it's also candidates and political parties right

so this was something that apparently was not clear in the original Fair Maps act and so that was a big an enhancement

in AB 764 that amended the elections

code and so it was looking really good until we got to Clause G which Exempted

Carter City so we're basically saying you know follow everything before

G okay so it's remove and replace the

language essentially is what we're saying

here any other comments on this

one all right

funding okay so of course um the reducing task force received no stiens

they were completely volunteers uh there was a limited budget

for outreach and line drawing consultants and then um everybody else

was just supposed to support the rdf the clerk of the board and the Department of

Elections and the City of attorney none of them got budget

augmentation so our recommendation is the budget should account for outreach and recruitment vetting and selection

prior to establishing the IRC remember the charter is silent on Outreach and Recruitment and therefore there was no

budget for it um the IRC should have a transparent budget that

covers some dedicated staff as recommended by the city clerk community

outreach Equitable stiens and reimbursements for expenses incurred by Commissioners in the course of their

duties the IRC should have influence in selecting key consultants and their scopes of work this caused a lot of

problems with the Outreach effort last time and supporting Department should

receive appropriate budget augmentation in multiple budget years as appropriate

so for example if there is a agency that is designated to really do the Outreach and

selection whether it be the Department of Elections or some other Department that there should be explicit budget

augmentation to cover that phase uh so the rationale is that the

task force face limits on their independence due to their dependency on limited resources of other agencies and

decisions made before they were even seated uh even scheduling meetings was a challenge due to competing duties of the

city clerks and then of course the lack of stiens and expense reimburse limited the pool of Al

applicants uh this is a significant Endeavor once every 10 years and cannot be expected to be absorbed by

departments with business as usual budgets and as an example Long Beach IRC

was accounted for in three budget years and I think you'll see that with most of the other um irc's that we can look at

as as models as well it covers usually covers at least two if not three budget

years so this is consistent with what was an AB 1248 to provide reasonable

funding and Staffing and uh we talked about the great report um that

thoughtful report that was put together by the city clerk it was also endorsed by the registrating task force

members um noting that the city clerk didn't talk about Outreach and selection since that was not required this last

time so just calling that out that that's a separate item and there are sample budgets

available from Long Beach and other irc's it's on public record uh and then we had an extensive

discussion on expense reimbursement including Creative Solutions like offering a Clipper card

to cover Local transportation um parking meals for extended meetings and caregiving

expenses whether old or young as needed to enable full

participation and noted that put all the the stien stuff in the section

too we might want to provide some links to some of the other

budgets um well I think it's it it might be helpful but I think also the funding

piece is something that we should we should stay vague on

um and let the legislature you know look at that I think adding some links is a good idea

but I I I'm not comfortable with us getting too specific on that yeah reasonable funding and

Staffing I think is right essentially what we're saying uh but the fact that

the city clerk said they need to have their own staff at least at least some so did the Rd rdf as well they they were

basically at the whim of when these other departments could fit them in

basically so they having at least a couple of uh dedicated staff to if

nothing else communicate with the rest of city government for them do we want to recommend a number

minimum number of staff I think the rdpf set a minimum number of three two and I

think city clerk city clerk had specific recommendations so I think we can just defer okay to their recommendation since

they lived through this I think I think referring to the city clerks was so

informed and comprehensive as a city agency I it just seems to make a lot of sense as somebody who just went through

it and had to manage a lot of it to refer to that with your note that there were some things that we didn't have as

part of the last process that would need to be accounted for that that seems like reasonable I wonder if um you know to

commissioner L's Point um you I think that the recommendation

as you have it described here is does kind of buckets as opposed to terribly

specific but maybe even just leading with that is the budget should include reasonable funding and Staffing

including in areas such as blah blah blah you know so that it's clear like what you have your job to do you know

better and the agencies know better what is needed but here are the things that should be considered for sure um and

similarly in the the comments I wonder if um you know this was from our brainstorm which which I think is really

important um is is this is just a slight slight wording shift you know that

expense reimbursement or um to to enable full participation or

reduced barriers like that's the headline and it could include such as um re you know reimbursement for

transportation or the stipend is big enough to include whatever variety of those any particular member might

encounter right it's it's the things that you have to consider or Transportation meals um parking child

care or or other kind of care like it might be elderly care whatever it is

there might be something that the stipend or the reimbursement whichever it is needs to allow for some

representative participation and that's the point so I think that's the headline for that sentence yeah with some suggestions of what that that might

include I I think that's that's rather than requiring specific things it's it's to the to what end right

right I think you nailed it it's about reducing barriers and assuring that um

people you know I I've used the term people have lesser means but it's not only that I mean people have other

responsibilities and they want to be part of this process that happens only once every 10 years right people have lives people have lives and you want to

enable people who are you know really committed to have this opportunity uh to to really make a

difference for their city um and even people

who you know are are of surviving fine in the city uh this is

a big commitment and it might re on any level where a person is situated this is a big

commitment and it requires us to think about the barriers that people from many

different backgrounds could encounter yeah so people with full-time jobs for

example like if they really wanted to consider doing this that they um you

know I I think I've mentioned before that of the 14 original CCRC

Commissioners nine of us were no six of us were were self-employed you know had

our own businesses uh and because we had that flexibility and a lot of people are not

and so you'd want some kind of compensation that if someone was going to make a commitment

that that they would not go to the poor house over this that they would be able to still um participate fully and and

live the rest of their lives um I know you already noted that we should add the

the details about stiens to the slide um one thing I didn't think to add earlier

um and that is I think that it's important to encourage the Board of Supervisors if if they do move forward

with any of these things and if we bring our recommendations to them I know there's a lot of ifs before we get to this spot but if we do get there they

should um ask for Community input on what is a meaningful enough stipended you know because we had that

conversation like sometimes you can give it and it won't make any difference the people who you're trying to allow opportunities to participate it it's not

enough you know um or um and they have to balance their

budgeting you know requirements but um anyway I just think that Community input will be yeah helpful of knowing what's

what's meaningful enough allow you to participate if you really want to participate right and I and I think it's

nobody expects this to make you rich right but this is not a job but how does

it make it possible right and this was the same thought that was put into establishing the ccc's original $300 per

DM because normal normal State commissions I think are a 100 uh and

basically the thought was that you know a typical commission meeting was not just going to be an hour once a month I

mean this was going to be intense you know long days Etc and that's why they

Justified the higher perum and I think we did note in thep in the other stien

section that the recommendation from common cost for uh the city of Los

Angeles was 450 be probably because of the cost of living down there and so that I I like

this point of getting Community input it's like what's meaningful in San Francisco that we have a pretty

expensive place to

live so I'm good with meaningful I think one of the other

previous um redistricting task force members said use the term modest

um so in otherwise the idea it's you're not going to get rich on this but modest and meaningful modest and meaningful

yeah so something that recognizes your effort mhm

okay so I see this one um it's having a couple of big sections like components

of the budget stiens being one component Outreach uh the front end of the process

being one component and then referring to the city clerk's thing for for the uh

duration of the of the mapping process once the commission's been seated I think the city clerk covers a lot of

it okay we good all right we're on to commission

processes um so I think a lot of the stuff in this section um some of this

procedural stuff probably doesn't belong in a in a charter um so some of

it so we might just note that at the top that some of it is best is just

recommendations best practice in terms of running a better running a better

IRC um however there are some that might be

stipulated so we talked about training and preparation in particular and that they should have uh

the same training as for permanent commissions so that's just consistent with city

law uh since temporary commissions apparently don't have the same requirements as we learned so that we we

should treat this even though it's temporary commission we should treat it as a permanent commission so I think that's that's the distinction there um

with the addition of of practical training so there were there were no

requirements for training um and no no um ability to mandate it uh with with

the past redist charging task force uh but even they said that by the

time they got the mapping training it was way too late so maybe just a line to add to the

rationale um is just you want them to have the training early on to to be

successful like that's it like it's to set them up for Success yes you want to set them up for Success so that they

have a good Baseline um and aren't having to again sort of reinvent the wheel and you know like this is just

there's some standardized things we want to make sure that this that these members um know that may be

specialized yep special both both General and specialized training um that

is reasonable and required to increase your chance of suc of success

yes yep okay and of course of course um we

are fortunate to have many former CCRC uh and

IRC and R DTF members right here in our city and in the immediate Bay Area and

that's something that um that we might suggest that the city take advantage

of okay and then um including the public again this might be covered by some

other topics so uh I'm going to defer to commissioner Parker who kindly

volunteered to put the final slides together based on our discussion today and this

table um defer to you to to see whether this needs to be called out as a

separate item or not but uh you know there was funding provided

for an Outreach consultant and the past rdf did create an Outreach

plan but they had lots of trouble executing in it partly due to budget

partly due to the fact that they disagreed with the Outreach consultant about the scope and they also had no

control over the selection of the Outreach consultant or the scope of work and so that caused a lot of problems and

the rdf wrote a lot about it in their last report so kind of back to our original

point that it should be adequately res uh Outreach should be adequately resourced and leverage existing City

infrastructure and that includes agency expertise language access resources and

Community organization relationships um there was some

discussion about timing of meetings so that they should be accessible and convenient to the

public um there are stipulations in the fair Maps act uh and uh new enhancements

in AB 764 that indicates some meetings must be on weekends some meetings must be on uh

in the evening so uh uh so the section relevant section is

2160 uh is the section of the elections code that was just amended by the

passage of ab 764 it requires a detailed public Outreach

plan uh and so the uh rationale of course is that San Francisco has a very diverse population including

underrepresented communities that are difficult to reach and uh obviously to

the extent possible the IRC should piggy back off existing resources uh since we are a city who is

used to dealing with our very diverse population and that the RC again because

they're an independent body they should be trusted to engage with the public to determine the best meeting times and

places to maximize participation but we might want to consider some of the language

um in uh 21 160b

now what I understood from DCA Flores is that this does apply to

us um so there are requirements in here for CH for cities and

counties um so this may not be necessary to put in the

charter if we have to comply with the state law so we can make a note of that

um but

yeah so I think we are not Exempted from this um so her comment was we did one

anyway um so but probably not to the specificity that's that's in the new

elections code

and again the plan may have been good but the implementation was

challenged so back to being resourced so that's a funding comment again the

interdependency um well I think [Music]

um yeah of course they'll they'll they'll know um you know because they'll be advised that they have to comply with

AB 674 or 764 sorry um but I think the key thing is that resource because when

we hear about the kinds of um challenges that the last task force talked about and we're very frustrated about and the

community was frustrated about were like the language access and you know and things like what related to the Outreach

consultant so you know um the recommendation you've listed here adequately resourced like that's the key

that's the that's the interdependence with the the one above with the funding item is that it does need to be resourced and and leverage these things

that you're talking about um but also so I think

um maybe worth calling out here in response to the last task force was they

need to have they need to be able to have that early relationship with the consultants in determining the scope of work so however we want to word that is

that they they are helping they are Partners in creating a plan if there is a

consultant hired right then they need to be partners in determining that scope of work because they are the body

in

uh so fortunately we had staff that knew the state process so in the same way they

should be supported by agencies that know the city process for hiring consultants and you know help them with

the administration but as commissioner perker said they need to they need to have a say at least final approval of

the scope of work so that they don't have these disagreements after everything's been signed

already next

okay um the next one that seemed relevant was transparency so of course in San

Francisco we have the sunshine ordinance and of course the brown act um but there's no explicit ban on discussing

redistricting matters outside of a public meeting so our preliminary

recommendation was um consistent with State legislation which is a ban on experte communication and requiring

disclosure um 7-Day Advance

posting uh of of the maps um before final adoption this could be under

timing as well so this is an interdependence because it's also to

improve transparency um something we discuss is that comment should all be posted on the website so um we have trouble with that

even with the elections commission getting all comments posted so requiring that comments be posted uh required uh

written rationale for the final distress against rank criteria so all of these are transparency items and some of them

are in other other elements so um so I

defer to you whether you want to just put them in the other elements or feel like you need to call this out explicitly I do think the ban on expart

day communication and required disclosure is not in anything other part so um but some of these others are are

in other parts so

uh the rdf members of course asked to be shielded from inappropriate political

influence um another part of the rationale is that the public should know about discussions that might be

influencing lines and the IRC must be able to explain their compliance with rank criteria for every District in an

accessible format uh in other words you shouldn't have to watch you know 100 hours of video record recordings to

figure this out it should be in a report that's written that someone could just read um so this is consistent with State

legislation uh AB 764 affected elections code um

21130 f mandating a final report explaining any splits um DCA Flores said

that that is something that uh would affect us um but not much because

previous rdfs have always done reports I pointed out to her they have always voluntarily published reports but have

not provided that detail rationale for the districts they have not explained

why neighborhoods or communities of Interest were split uh so this is a

higher standard for written report that is also no longer a voluntary thing it's a mandate now under elections code 21

130f um

see uh and then and then um 21 160g and

H require posting comments on the website both written comments as well as video and audio comments to be posted on

the website so so this may be um covered by the changes that were enacted with uh

AB 764 at least the final report and the posting on the

website um I don't know that the ban on expart day communication and required disclosure is

part of it but the 7-Day advance notice is is also um part of part of the

new new law maybe in

[Music] um maybe we can be more clear in the recommendation of what recommendation

what and what would have been recommendations that are now would or wouldn't have been included but are now included in man mated you know so that

um so it's a little bit more obvious and perhaps only the one above this too

where there was the requirement like 7-Day Advance no posting of of maps right I think we need that that two

extra words of maps um is just saying like for instance like well that's actually required now so um it it's a it

would have been a recommendation but in kind of it doesn't matter a little bit you know like that's now a requirement

um or whatever and so just have like a list of these are these are recommendations outside of the new mandates with AB 764 and here are some

of the ones that we think are worth highlighting from 764 um and just just a note on kind of

the intersection we are lucky we've had redistricting task forces who have taken the time to write really comprehensive

reports um including this last one and they did have rationale for some of their lines but they also didn't have

line drawing criteria to to to compare against and so while there was was

rationale I think when you add um a certain type of criteria it just allows

for a bit more clearer consistent it you know that it may not have been intentionally trying to hide why they

did a certain District a certain way it's just it's not it wasn't there were no rules there were not requirements on the criteria so this just allows a

little bit more consistency in reporting the rationale because they did they did write rationale in many of those

sections um and I think they put together a pretty good report um but I think it's just the intersection of and

the ranking yeah right I mean just it'll help you know to just be and how they're

able to talk about the rationale if there's that line District yeah no I mean I like I commend all of the

previous rdfs have voluntarily written final reports it was not a requirement uh but now it will be and

it's now very clear uh what they have to explain so for example I noticed uh in

the most recent reports that they would indic indicate the population deviation but they did not indicate explicitly

which communities were split they would indicate um often some neighborhoods

there were neighborhoods that were cited but not communities of Interest didn't go to down down to that level of detail

and that wasn't defined so ited done it right so it's so uh so I think I I like

your idea of like calling out things that have been like already taken care of with the new Fair Maps act that uh

that actually do apply to San Francisco um it would be good to check with DCA uh Flores on those before we

post um all

right anything else that um needs to be called out in the

rationale um for transparency Y

no okay's move on to the next one I just want to make sure we're giving you

enough commissioner Parker since you volunteered to put the slides together

good uh and this is all recorded all right moving on to voting and decision

making uh right now it's a simple majority it's five out of nine uh our recommend s is that it be a

super majority which would be N Out of 14 that's obviously a dependency on the size and

composition and as we discussed we didn't think nine was not a very onerous super majority uh it's just one more

than a simple majority uh the larger body and the super majority lessens the possibility

of a majority faction dominating and it allows for Dissent but promotes

collaboration and that again is also consistent with what was in AB 1248 and

we concurred okay we're almost we're plowing through

this um all right the miss deadline okay so this was where there was some some

good news and clarification from from the city attorney so of course it was

very unclear what should happen the City attorney wrote a long memo that I had posted

uh reposted for the elections commission to review uh basically the registering task

force ended up negotiating directly with the Department of Elections to try to buy more time uh so the preliminary

recommendation we came up with is what many other irc's use at the local level which is to refer to the superior court

and authorize it to hire a special Master to draw the districts if the final map is not produced on time so I

will tell you knowing that someone else is just going to take over after you've been slogging through all the work for

months and going to all these hearings is a huge incentive for you to finish your maps on time I can speak to it from

personal experience um and so the idea is that you need an acceptable fail safe that

creates that incentive uh so the good news is that uh

the DCA told me that the remedy in AB 764 does apply to San Francisco

oh so that's elections code 21180 and specifically it is because our

Charter is completely silent on this issue it does not say here's what happens if you miss the deadline there's

just nothing in the charter about it does not imagine it and as a result it applies to us so this is the

one time we didn't have something special in our Charter that allowed the city to exempt itself so this will apply

to us us um and more importantly something that

wasn't clear before is that it does not require us to adopt the state deadline so before we thought it was

because we had our own special deadline but it's actually because the charter is silent on the issue of missing any

deadline so we could have the

remedy and then the the issue of whether we want to adopt the deadline I think should be under timing

because that would give extra time um which is something that I think we should talk a little bit

about uh but I wanted to make it clear that I think this one's taken care

of uh I think that it's worth listing in the recommendation box that I don't know

if we I need to say na like not applicable but there's some kind of a note like covered by a this is yeah this

is now required ired by new legislation um and it would be our recommendation

you know something like that it's I think on these I think there's now like three things that are covered or that

are now required by AB 764 um or that apply to San Francisco it's worth noting those in the

recommendation so it's clear like this is a recommendation but it's actually in some ways na na like it's

not like it's already it's already um going to be a change um I also think that this is opportunity to um in

perhaps in the comments to not the interdependence where there might be some who get angst angst about this um

you know the the possibility of the special Master but if we are able to change the um the the timing and the

deadlines so that they have enough time that it's Associated not with the census but with the um map deadlines that we

making sure that the ordinance to create the body and to P you know authorize funding and all of that is intended to

happen like two years prior you know that that there's less worry about this happening you know because we're trying

inter dependent things with the the timeline as well to give them time to do their jobs well so feels worth

mentioning that interdependence I I think I think it's very tied up with the timing piece and then the other thing is

you don't want to punt it to the superior court and who by the way has not gone

through all the community hearings and everything I mean they'll have the information from the process but they haven't personally gone through it

themselves uh you know and then they have to hire

special master and you know how long it takes to hire in the city of s so you want to make sure there's enough time

that the fail safe is actually a reasonable and realistic implementable solution

otherwise it's not a practical remedy okay

so I do think this whether we adopt the state deadline or not goes under timing and I we haven't we had talked about it

last time because because it would give us this remedy and now it turns out we have the remedy without changing it

so but I personally think we need to make the deadline earlier to accommodate

this to allow for the fail safe to

work so here we are in timing and I think um this is the last

slide so we are powering through this uh so the big thing is that the registering

task force in our Charter the seating is tied to the census uh draft maps are not

required there's no mention of it and only the non-standard our own special

San Francisco deadline uh is stipulated so our recommendation is that

the ordinance establishing the IRC should be passed 18 to 24 months prior to the to the map deadline this was

actually based on the city clerk's recommendation uh and then we had

discussed that whatever that should be that whatever needs to happen to make

sure that the IRC gets at least a full 12 months before the final map deadline

so tying it to the map deadline not to the establishment of the census which is

currently in the charter so that would have to that language would have to be replaced um

and that adraft map there's no mention of right now would be required at least two months

before the final map and then a 7-Day public comment period before the map

adoption and that consider adopting the earlier map

deadline which is set by the state which I think makes it in March early

March uh so the rationals the board of supervisor would need to pass an or

ordinance significantly in advance of seeding the IRC due to the addition of this extensive um Outreach and

recruitment process needed so again if you if you don't have a long Outreach and recruitment process then you don't

need to seat them very early but if you do have it you have to allow time for that to build this uh large diverse pool

of candidates as well as any time needed to to vet and select them and to to come

up with the 40 most qualified um we thought that San Francisco size and

complexity warranted a full year to allow the IRC to get trained organized

itself so lit Community input create draft maps to catalyze collaborative

problem solving and refinement of a final map and as we've discussed tying it to a

potentially delayed census was really problematic and there was a lack of

official draft Maps uh way too late for the public to

understand reflect react to it that made it difficult to engage in the map drawing

process uh and of course noting that our special map deadline is beyond the state

one later than the state one so the longer timeline is um consistent with

the state legislation but actually longer uh the 1248 had specified a

minimum I think of 20 it's either 240 or 250 days yeah which we thought was not

quite long enough um so I wanted to note that past task force have always

exceeded the minimum number of public hearings before the mapping but not after mapping which of course is the

critical time um so this is now

stipulated in due to AB 764 and elections code 2150 D1 which requires at

least two public hearings before the mapping again not a problem for past three districting task forces who

usually try to have at least one per district and D2 this is the critical one

at least three public hearings after a draft map before a final map can be adopted notably we would have failed on

this this last time right because they didn't start mapping till 3 weeks before the deadline

so also elections code 216f one requires 7-Day posting or at

least 72 hours if you're within 28 days of the final map deadline so these are

um part of the elections code now due to AB 764 apply to San Francisco it would

apply to San Francisco according to DCA Flores so uh now I

think they should aspire to do more than three but they didn't I think they did one after the draft Maps the Infamous

one that uh meeting where they went into the we hours of the morning so they had

trouble getting meetings at the end um so I know that they had trouble even

scheduling them and finding finding a room in City Hall which were familiar

with so by making it at least two months before the final map deadline

with a draft map it will give them that opportunity to have that minimum of three

so I tried to put the the code number so you can easily refer to it but

yeah um I think that it would be useful to just mention in the rational um

references to the city clerk's recommendations because some of these are tied to that yes absolutely just

mentioned that that was a recommendation I uh yes and that's how I believe we came up with 18 to 24 months was based

on the city clerk's recommendation for passing an ordinance right and then same comment as before if

we can separate a little bit in the recommendations here's what's now newly required you know maybe that's the term

to use is newly required um by state legislation or by by just by saying just

say by the by ab7 64 yeah it's going to be the fair it's now called the fair

Maps Act of 2023 but it's it it specifically um modified certain

election code so so yeah newly required and applicable to San Francisco whatever

it is there's something about that that says like this is this is brand new y um a new section in your slides perhaps um

and so it there I mean we could do we could do that but it also could be just a little section of the recommendations

is just just to note there are upcoming changes already that we have nothing to do with right you know that's a really

good point yeah nothing to do with but consistent with what we were talking about anyway yeah but you know just

noting those in these sections because they are part of these right and I think to your point it'll be really important

to to make that distinction that these are things that are outside of our recommendation and that are now new

state law so so as I promis some minor but

important impacts from 764 that will make the process [Music]

better um curiosity um because the the recent

task force did some live mapping sessions correct they did where do those

fit into draft mapping and final mapping how does that all so usually

live mapping happens when you're doing refinement um so when you've done your

draft maps and you've gotten a lot of input and you're you're in that Final Phase to

to adopt a final map and then people say it needs to be

three blocks over for this reason and then you go back and you check and you're like okay that's within the

population equality it's you know you go back and check your rank criteria and make sure you can accommodate that you

know it doesn't screw up the population in the next adjoining districts right I

mean it seems a very um you know our most recent task force did it it seems like a very inclusive and transparent

way to interact with the community like I appreciate that and I have not seen it mentioned at all in any of these recommendations we've been reading and I

find that interesting because it does seem it seems both complicated but it also seems transparent and inclusive of

the community to do those kinds of sessions so I appreciate that our task force did that but I I wonder if there's

I think they did I'm not totally sure because I didn't observe it myself I'm pretty sure I don't know how many

sessions but I know that they did some yeah yeah I mean so we did that um we

would do that the CCRC did what we call visualizations

Early in the process to to make sure we captured the community of interest and

what the actual boundaries were so part of that was to build our koi database so that we knew where they were when we

were actually trying to draw and then we did live map drawing in the refinement

process um to to get to the final map I don't know if there's value in

necessarily noting that but I'm just as I'm thinking and reflecting on these different types of mapping requirements

and things that do want to acknowledge good things you know that do happen here and that you know maybe it is

complicated but it does seem it might be something worth mentioning in a comment section in the transparency section yeah

um or somewhere that just says you know inclusive practices inclusive or transparent practices such as live

mapping that past task forces have done oh here we go so this was something that

Long Beach they talked about as as part of their transparency they did live so it seems maybe worth mentioning in our I

mean I'm kind of going back up a few but in the transparency may be worth mentioning like those are good practices

to continue that our task force has already done that aren't mentioned required in a lot of places yet maybe

it's an Innovative thing that we're doing um let's encourage that Innovation that's already started maybe

right uh okay anything else for commissioner

Parker to to include in the final report we are

I think happy to trust you with um I can see your detailed notes Here

here of of again um just been taking copious notes yeah adding the detail um

you know helping people parse this trying to anticipate questions they may have as to how we came

to uh some of these conclusions so again you know I went

through this at the commission meeting verbally uh I sent out a note so they

have this document they know that we posted this for this meeting so that can they can start absorbing it and then

we'll put it in a nice format uh with some more detail based on our discussion

today that hopefully addresses any questions they have okay I think we can unless there's

anything else we can open it up I I actually do think there's a little bit more we should talk about okay um and

that is uh I mean we could talk about this after public comment but I think maybe it's worth just bringing up now in

general thinking about because I presume after public comment we'll do some sort of a vote on where we've landed with

some of these but um just thinking about what it is we want to actually recommend

before public comment what is it that we want to recommend to the commission and what does it look like and if we in that

recommendation if we're going to forward something to the if that includes forwarding something to the Board of Supervisors should the commission agree

um what should be included in that recommendation and so some things that I have been thinking about is um like that

that deck we used to review at our last couple of meetings that that would be like an appendix this chart that you've put together would be an appendix all of

the reports and things that we've referred to you know they're already included in that prior deck but you know that's an appendix for reference because

we would be handing this off you know I think we've agreed as a commission once we get past uh the end of this calendar

year this is moving off our plate our Focus needs to be on running good um supporting the Department of Elections

to run good elections and this moves off of our plate it is now in the hands of a different body um if again if that is

the direction the commission decides to move um and and just a little bit of language and maybe it's worth talking

about Chris um sorry um commissioner jonx um note we haven't talked about

that yet um you know that like I would say in some of the introduction um both

to the commission and a Board of Supervisors um should note that they should um carefully consider what needs

to be in a charter Amendment as opposed to being done by ordinance you know administratively those kinds of things

and and choose carefully you know what goes because it's a lot to put something in front of the voters and so what's

appropriate um and it also makes future changes more difficult and some with

some of these things being Nimble is really useful to to react to what the needs are of of the city um so those are

a few things that I think would need to be in an introduction in addition to

perhaps um more of a narrative form of why are we here and you

know why you know something something like that so I would suggest that um we

plan to use the redistricting initiative project plan for that which already has that narrative um and it already has

kind of the history of how we started this and why we started it uh it and it

has links to all of the educational sessions and the reports

so um you know when I added all of those links I attempted to basically intended

to be a substitute for uh for a website that we haven't had time to put together

yet um as far as I know there's still planed to put a page together so it's

more accessible and easier to find uh directly from our website that's

something that I think we can still do uh so that it becomes a repository and

and captures the um all of the richness of the material that we have um

considered all the expert testimony um and all of the other

resources so so I think the package will include a future online version of this

but I do think it's useful to look at a select number of documents

so so I would propose the redistricting project plan the resing initiative

project plan which I said like has all that narrative has all the links as a starting

point um I think the summary deck the discussion

deck and

um we can include I mean there are many tables uh we can certainly um so maybe

linked or we could link it here yeah we can we could add it to the final deck

right so yeah we could I I would that's that's probably more appropriate it's linked to this as the foundation for the

deck so so the discussion deck and then what will be the final report from

fierce to the full commission and in fact it might be

useful to go ahead and um share that format really

quickly um just so everyone can take a quick

look at it um it's organized very similarly to to the table but probably

is a little more readable in a in a deck form

so we're going to throw that up

there so is there anything else that's kind of critical because I feel like uh

the project plan has links to most of the other

resources

so thank you commissioner Parker this is uh yeah I'm just it's it's very it's

very brief but generally the format um just leaving a lot more space for text

um at the top of the first slide would um describe the component that we talking about and the the kind of the

key question that we were asking and trying to answer and then the recommendation below you can see I added

that here's kind of a general thought behind the recommendations that first bullet point um and this is just based

on not on our discussion we just had obviously but it was based on the draft deck that commissioner Dy put together

um and uh and then the current San Francisco requirements um per the

charter not what necessarily actually happened in in task forces um first not

for this one this is obviously a specific Charter but some of the other ones were this is what's required by the

charter as opposed to what may have happened in task forces right and then the second slide being rationale in

additional notes and comments um that I U formatted obviously in bullet points as opposed to a

paragraph to make it a little easier for scanning and right and uh understanding

so where would you um put the interdependencies um well I can either

uh I I have a feeling that the the first area was not as long as some of the other areas I some of these might have

to go to three slides and so if we were to add a section for interdependencies I would just start another slide or if

there's room but I would say it would probably need to be between two and three slides for each area just depending

on the amount of content that has to be shared but generally of just a simple

simple format okay with headers and bulleted lists as opposed to paragraphs

we trust you to make it beautiful so um and also this is a mo sorry this

is this is a mock yeah this is a mock um if I could just maybe a little bit

more space between the different sections okay to just make it a little bit more easy to read to read I think

it's okay to take more slides yeah to make it readable I mean you did a great

job in this last deck of like adding a color block and you know spacing it out

so you know I think you know if you take a few more pages it's it's it's fine it's long as

it helps people absorb the material I can also I could just do one

topic per slide you know if you want to make it very simple it ends up being a very long deck if we do it that way but

we can if you want to keep it very simple and just keep it one slide per well no I just I think if the space has

happen I think you might get four slides as opposed to I don't think it would be more than that

yeah I doubt it would be more than four yeah I doubt it would be more than four but it could take us to that especially

if we were to do kind of one section per slide but but happy to give more Whit space I hear you saying more Whit space

yeah right thank you readability so I like the fact that it it starts with a recommendation that I

think you know we we want to be really clear this is what we're saying so I think that's great and then

contrasting with what is current the current status and then the detailed uh

recommendations so I like the organization of this uh so we had talked

about just adding interdependencies and then just a separate section on newly newly required you know new leave

required law no say it was the impact of the new

legislation um I could always do that for every single component so that it's clear

which ones you know not just that it's seems maybe selective that it said that but just actually have a note that says

there are no new requirements by law in this area and here there are you know so

it's a little bit clearer where there is and where there isn't I think that would be a good idea and make it clear how the

new legislation impacts it impacts you know the

recommendation run past the DCA just to make sure we got it right like I said I had a quick conversation with DCA Flores

verbally so I'm sure she'll want to take a quick look at it in

writing uh yeah but I I I think this is good

uh yeah we we defer to you to to capture this

conversation thank you commissioner Parker and then why don't we while you're at it let's pull up um vice

president jordon's uh comment I want to make sure we discuss it um and his

suggestion was really for the Preamble and I was trying to look and see if

we had noted that we allude to it

um we allude to it in the in the uh introduction to the redistricting

initiative project plan uh which I have here

somewhere uh I'll just read it really quickly it

says presently each San Francisco district is represented by a single supervisor the purpose of San

Francisco's redistricting process is to ensure Fair supervisorial representation for all San Francisco

voters the rdf must here uh let's see to the US Constitution the

federal voting TR and the San Francisco

Charter okay it's not very specific so one thought was that we could update the

actual redistributing initiative narrative there to

incorporate the the commentary because if if we look at his suggestion here um

it's really to talk about about what we decided not to address in this process

and I also alluded to this in the very

first table I did way back in June of

2022 where um where I note that the goal of

redistricting reform is to eliminate Jerry mandering and ensure a fair and transparent process that strengthens

democracy election reforms like San Francisco go instant runoff voting a form of rank Choice voting in

multi-member districts are also known to improve Democrat Democratic

outcomes uh so San Francisco was on the Vanguard

when it established the registrating Task Force at the same time that Arizona's independent registrating

commission was for but has since been surpassed with process Improvement so so one possibility is to use some

combination of commissioner d ICS suggested language and what has already been um

posted since June of 2022 um and incorporate that into an

updated narrative for the redistricting uh initiative project

plan there may be other things that we may we haven't updated

that since of course the state legislation has

uh been signed and not signed into law or

uh or the fact that you know that it's not going to be on the March 2024 valid

at this point so that was one

thought that would be some work or we could just leave it just include this in

the in the deck and uh you can use some of this language to refer

to to that that as a as guidance as well of what's already

been accepted by the commission because I I feel like this

is what we didn't do um but he does have a specific

suggestion in here about convening an independent elections task

force but I feel like that's something that the whole commission probably would need to

approve what I do think we've acknowledge is what we didn't do which is consider something outside of

districts District based elections and and and redistricting for

those

so so kind of up to the point where he proposes an independent elections task

force which I think we have not discussed

well there's um I think there's probably a couple things in um his suggested text

that kind of um implies that we have a general consensus about things that should be considered um both the

proportional rank Choice voting and you know in elections task force and um and

so I think I appreciate that he took I really appreciate that he took the time to

write this um and I'm wondering you know if there's just some slight change in language that would allow it to be just

a the general message being we had a very specific scope of of work for this

recent initiative and there are some other things that could be this that could be worth the city considering

these might include these we do not have a position on these things you know but it is a these are the kinds of things

that the city could consider you know um for example there's this you know some

evidence says this could do a a better job but you know we're not taking a position on this we're just saying that this is is this is the range of things

that you might consider in in general

um and and like I said this this was you know essentially

approved and accepted by the commission you know for over a year now

so I think taking some of the language that you know everyone was comfortable

with um and then adding some tweaks like that I think would be

fine in general I think um given the timeline

that we have um been tasked with um you know which is essentially providing a

draft to the full commission in a week y um to review so that they all have time

to review and be prepared for discussion at our November meeting and that we are definitely not talking about this after

December um because of that timeline I don't know if it makes sense for you to

redo the redistricting project plan that's that's a lot of updating to do in fact I would think that it fits more as

an appendix as a historical document um and that instead there's an introduction

that might include some reference to this like you might wonder what the scope was and why it was in other things and it's just because we had to limit

our scope you know and and so it it could reference something like this you know and it has been approved in other

language but that that I would I would suggest that just having some kind of a narrative introducing

what this is what you'll see why is the scope we've already have a lot of that in other places I have put it in that last deck that we already worked on

so that would be my suggestion given the timeline that we have um that would be good introduction

for the Board of Supervisors who hasn't been paying as close attention to this and and it it just

acknowledges time I won't keep repeating it no I I think that's um an excellent

point uh uh and that's why I was suggesting going with language that they've already seen uh and then maybe

adding a couple of other sentences uh and in fact it may be

worth um repeating some of the intro and then just adding

that to the to the beginning of rather than just launching into to recommendations yeah and Mak okay I'm

happy to to defer to commissioner Parker to figure out which of the slides to

repeat and then incorporate this absolutely okay

so let's see why don't we take some public

comment a question before we do that did we um vote to approve the

minutes it was cons it was General consensus General consensus okay just want to make sure

thanks for asking okay [Music] um so my thinking is that we probably

just present this report with our recommendations and indicate what we think should be included in the package

that we we hand over to the board right and then

uh I'd like to take some public comment and then uh we can see if we want to

talk it all about you had mentioned like how

we vote on this uh or how we suggest the full

commission vote on this I think we're pretty comfortable with this but

um from my screen yeah we can do that just switch to live

feed all right so with that uh why don't we go ahead and open it up for public

comment uh We've covered a lot of material

um all right three minutes three

minutes uh okay uh so I um uh you guys

are very diligent and you've worked very hard I want to acknowledge that and um I'm going to have some harsh things to say sorry about that um but I just have

to comment on what commissioner Parker just said that sounds like a great idea and a great way to incorporate chonic uh

comments and but that's a way to introduce the whole report is to put it

uh as a uh something to consider and that you're not taking a

position on those are are you know how you just characterize how you'd frame that narrative around jonx comments and

I think that's how this report should be um characterized um but uh moving on here I

listened carefully also to the caller earlier M jarden from the league of women's voters and um I noticed that she

likes having unelected bodies welding power and why wouldn't she she's been very successful with influence elected

bureaucrats at our elections commission and not so much uh luck recently influenced

electeds Mr jarden commented a few moments ago about how having elected

politicians involved in redistricting is outdated and not in keeping with current best practices I suggest Mr Jordan

carefully read a paper written recently by Nicholas hydorn and commissioned by together SF the main overarching point

of hay Dorn's work here is that San Francisco would be better off with more

control by elected people and less control by appointed

bureaucrats now despite 76 Pages devoted to these uh to supporting these

overarching points there were two paragraphs that were really oddly out of

place and they referred to redistricting did haor add those two

tiny paragraphs at the request of his friends at the league of women's voters

the answer to that seems quite obvious so I'm not at all surprised that miss

jarden is a fan of control by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats they're easier

to control she proved it back in April of 22 when this body of election

Commissioners who at that time and at the urging of the league of women's

voters substituted their judgment of the appointed and sworn

members of the districting task force substituted their judgment uh and we have here the tool

used by the league of women's voters the Asian law caucus and common cause pretending that we have a lack of public

trust in our redistricting because of our current process and not because of

what she orchestrated together with her political advocacy sponsors back in

April of 22 thank you thank you all right

um

and we have public comment online go ahead Mr

ardan hello

huh we're not hearing

you

see that's she's

unmuted let's try again let's try

again Mr Arden you hear me yes canar oh wonderful sorry about that no worries

it's a Monday um so yes Lauren gerarden with the

League of Women Voters of San Francisco um thank you for this great discussion I

was uh furiously taking notes um about so many of the things that you've

discussed and shared um and really appreciate uh that you all shared

updates from the city attorney's office about what is applicable in San

Francisco from Ab 764 it's great to see that there are some things that the state law will um

immediately improve um in in San Francisco for redistricting and that you

know that means that we still have work to do but uh maybe a few less things on the list um one uh one piece of the

recommendations that we would uh enhance would be mentioning when we shouldn't be

adding something to the Charter so in those places is where say for example 764

applies to not add something to the Charter to create a conflict um or for

example to say something where that we should defer to state law and our

Charter could add things that are in addition to but not replacing um because

you know we may still improve redistricting at the state level in the

years to come and updating our Charter isn't something we want to have to do every time that happens um and you know

just in general people deserve to have the power in redistricting San

franciscans deserve to have the power in redistricting and your recommendations

are going to be so important I they should be clear they should be strong uh and it's because San

franciscans need Clarity the Border supervisors need Clarity and the future redistricting task force or independent

redistricting Commission of San Francisco that are also going to need that Clarity too and you're doing really

great groundwork for that so thanks so much from the League of Women Voters thank you Mr

ardan all right is there anyone

else okay seeing none I'm going to close public comment on this

item uh is there anything else that we need to discuss before we

vote on accepting the these recommendations as we have discussed

tonight just to clarify the the vote will be um the recommendations as we've

agreed through this discussion in addition to all of those kind of introductory types of pieces um right

and additional information that will clarify and educate excuse me I'm

losing my voice the commission on our process the full commission process uh

and also the uh the items that we discussed passing the package to the board of of

of Supervisors so that would include this Fierce committee kind of final report the previous discussion

deck um the redistricting project plan version seven no

updates um and an on online you know web

page to be be created at some point in the future I think that's still on the plan when I can get some time from vice

president jonic just to make it more accessible even though all of it's linked to in the

in the registering initiative project plan so I think those are the three things that we discussed and then you

were going to add some links and additional resources in the final

[Music] report so it's voting on the package that we recommend sending on to the

board of mhm supervisors I mean obviously we can decide as a commission

whether whether the first committee authors a letter whether it comes from president stone and you know how we sign

on that that we can discuss at the commission level but this is the Affairs committee passing this package on to the

full elections body which is what our Charter

was okay so um can I

um entertain a motion to uh

vote uh to pass on this final report including our

preliminary recommendations and the recommended package to the Board of

Supervisors as as discussed tonight

second okay so I guess I made the

motion all right see commissioner laosi seconded

it uh all right

um so uh commissioner laosi how do you vote I vote to pass the these

recommendations on to the complete commission okay and

commissioner Parker yes vote is yes on the motion and uh I vote I as well

so with all of us in concurrence we will go ahead and pass along this

package um do you want to discuss uh any

recommendations to the full commission on how to take the vote um

we had started that discussion at the last elections Commission meeting you had commissioner parner you had suggested some kind of consent

agenda do we want to give the full commission any guidance on that I think

part of the part of the um thing that we have discussed is the

interdependence of a lot of these reforms so it's it's hard to kind of cherry-pick certain things are you

just I'm clear you asking guidance on whether they should vote for the entire report versus

pieces of the report or removing pieces of of not I think recommendations

president Stone's pretty clear she wants people to vote on the whole thing okay um but um if there is disagreement on

aspects of this uh it's hard to pull you know not all pieces can be pulled out

um so I think one of the things that came up in the full commission meeting was

um perhaps that if people have you know one way and we discussed this so I would imagine I would imagine that President

soon has actually thought a lot about this already um but that it might look like a we're we're um sharing this list

of considerations recommendations um you know to the full um to the Board of

Supervisors and we want to note where there are you know a few areas where

there was a lot of discussion and not a unanimous consent and you know and what

that variet what that range of opinions was so that it still it could still be a package but acknowledge that you know

some people felt different ways about certain areas and we just know which those are like that's what I would suggest it doesn't end up getting like a

full um you know up or down but it still allows for there's there's a range it

allows for descent but it Al just allows allows for a range of opinions I mean we have not said exactly the way certain

some things need to be we've said that some things the Board of Supervisors if they choose to move this forward like

they should be doing the the work to figure out what those things should look like um so I just think that that kind

of a recommendation would allow for that while still stating like we think it's worth we think it's worth um reforming

our district our redistricting work in the city and this this is these are

recommendations that we've come up with after a lot of invested time 17 months

um and that we believe it will support

and help the work that the Board of

Supervisors wants to do we're not influencing them we are recommending

based on the new legislation based on what occurred the last redistricting process here here are our

recommendations on how you could proceed with a legislation that would create a

independent Rising process I mean I don't I think it after that it's up to

them and then the chips will fall where they may so um I did want to

share that um I did get a call from supervisor melgar's legislative Aid last

week uh to tell me that she wanted to focus on her reelection in November

2024 uh but would consider taking this up as an issue after that so it's a

little disappointing but not terribly surprising because she had originally expressed her preference to do this in

March for exactly the same reason and uh had started the drafting process and was

working actively on it but I have a feeling they just ran out of time so I haven't had a chance to have a

conversation with President peskin yet uh as he's pretty busy with measures for the March 2024 ballot so probably makes

sense to to reach out after the elections commission has taken action um

right and the board gets through this next month which all the deadlines for March are happening basically this this

coming month so um we need to go through our own process anyway so uh we'll give

them some space to work on the March ballot um so we do have some time

because as you know noted in the U redistricting initiative project plan

the second deadline for November is that it would have to be introduced sometime in May so there's a bit of

time uh but either way the commission will have done its part we can contribute all of the work that we have

done up until this point which will be 17 or 18 or 19 months by the time we're

done um to the Board of Supervisors but by by year

end and then they will take and it could be that once they see a full package they have a better idea of what they

want to do and whether that's in 24 or whether that is in 26 you know like whatever they choose they will6 will be

fight for San Francisco we don't have to troll over it but if we can give them a a good set of

uh a thoughtful set of recommendations then they can they can how they how they

choose yeah and that is our contribution as as the elections commission as to um

to review and study this and O opine on it and uh and we'll see uh what the full

commission does okay um all right

and I think we have item five we're closing item four now item five is

simply uh agenda items for next meeting and I'm hoping this is our last meeting

it's possible that uh that um can we before I was gonna say before he leaves

I just wanted to say thanks for coming

oh um it's possible this will this it's possible that the full commission will

ask us to meet again I'm hoping not um hopefully this is enough and they just

need to you know read it and then hopefully we can take a vote uh if not

in November at our next meeting then in December

uh so right now I have nothing planned for agenda

items um anyone else have any thoughts on why

we might need to meet again I don't think so because once we bring it to the full commission I'm

assuming that President Stone will also like disband the committee and that it allows us also so if we need to do any

final coordinating on documents or whatever that we will be able to because we won't have a committee and be worrying about Quorum any longer um

right that that's what I would guess is is just moving it Forward okay well with

that let me uh open it up to public comment and see if there are any

commenters on future

meetings and I'm not seeing any hands so click closing out agenda item five and

we are before we actually fully fully close I do just I mean I wish that Mr Bell was

still in the room but um I just really appreciate members of the public who

continue to come to these over and over like it's a lot of time and paying attention online to you know in detail

to these things and we've had a handful of people do that kind of meeting after meeting and and even if we don't

move forward with some of their recommendations or you know it's I just really appreciate it them showing it

right I would also like to thank um both you commissioner D and Parker for being a

part of this process it has been um a thorough process and I really

appreciate the way we have engaged in informing the public and and going

through all of it step by step um and so I'm really um looking forward to see

what happens and also appreciate the members of the public who showed up time and time again and um those who we asked

to come and give us insight and information about the process and other

jurisdictions that was also extremely helpful so yeah we had the participation

of of a lot of expert test um a lot of people lent us their time uh

and expertise so definitely and I want to express my personal thanks to the two

of you who really you know dug in and read a lot of stuff and um try to make

sense of all of this this is uh as you you know appreciate a very complicated

topic um and there's a lot of information to absorb and um I really

thank the two you for hanging in there with me and and grinding through all of

these detailed reforms and I um I hope we will be able to uh answer all the

questions and anticipate all the questions our fellow Commissioners may have in in this final report and with

that I would like to adjourn the meeting at 9:30 thank you all for coming

tonight

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