City and County of San
Francisco
Elections Commission
Approved:
March 17, 2010
Minutes of the Meeting
at City Hall Room 408
February 17, 2010
- President
Joseph Pair called the meeting to order
at 6:03 pm.
- ROLL CALL. PRESENT. Commissioners Rosabella Safont, Gerard Gleason,
Joseph Phair, Winnie Yu (arrived at 6:05), Derek Turner, Arnold
Townsend, Richard P. Matthews, Deputy City Attorney Mollie Lee, and
Director of Elections John Arntz.
- Announcements. President Phair announced that he has re-established the
membership of the Budget and Oversight of Public Elections Committee
(BOPEC) to include Commissioner Richard P. Matthews as chairperson, and
Commissioners Gerard Gleason and Derek Turner.
President Phair reminded all Commissioners that they are welcome to
attend the BOPEC meetings but are not allowed to participate.
Commissioner Matthews announced that he had been notified by Roger
Donaldson, chair of the Voting Systems Task Force, that the Task Force
is requesting public comment on their recommendations.
Commissioner Matthews sent a link to those recommendations to the
Commission Secretary who will forward it to all Commissioners. For the purpose of these minutes, that link is http://www.sfgov.org/site/vstf_index.asp.
President Phair noted that he requested the Commission Secretary to
prepare information regarding Commissioner filing and training
obligations and due dates. That information has
been distributed to all members at this meeting.
He reminded members that the Ethics Training is every other year, and
the SEI or Form 700 and the Sunshine Ordinance Training are annually.
- Discussion and possible action to approve the
minutes of the January 20, 2010 Elections Commission Meeting. Commissioner Matthews MOVED and Commissioner Safont
SECONDED this item.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to approve the minutes.
5. Director’s Report
Division Updates:
Ballot Distribution has
learned that there will be a Health Services Board Election in May with
four candidates. Preparations for this are under
way, as well as for the June election. Part of
this preparation involves routes for the Sheriffs to pick up ballots,
working with vendors regarding the vote-by-mail ballots, parking and
budgeting for the next fiscal year.
Budget and Personnel,
working with the Director, presented the budget that will be forwarded
to the Mayor’s office. This budget is essentially
the same and the one presented in January, but has fine tuning
accomplished after quotes from vendors and further input from managers. The biggest change has been the work orders which
have been dropped by $1.2 million since the last meeting.
Currently the Department has a $110,000 deficit with work orders going
out to other City departments, but previously it was $700,000. This has been lowered because the DoE was reimbursed
for the elections run for BART, Community College District, Retirement
Board, and SF School District.
The DoE needs to defund unfilled positions in this budget
cycle. There has been a drop in the temporary
salaries as well. The Director said that his primary goal is to not
incur any layoffs. His staff is knowledgeable and
has the experience of many elections. The next
fiscal year‘s budget will have three elections, November, February and
June and will be a challenge because this will require 25% more funding
when considering the Mayor’s requirement that Departments reduce ongoing
budgets by 10%.
This budget has been seen by the Mayor’s Budget Office and
now goes to the Controller’s Office. The next big
step is when it goes to the Board of Supervisors and the Board’s Budget
Analyst.
President Phair asked Deputy City Attorney when the
Commission needs to approve the budget. Deputy
City Attorney Lee said that she would check and notify the Commission.
Commissioner Matthews congratulated and thanked the
Director for finding the new cuts in an already cut-to-the-bone budget.
Campaign Services Division yesterday began handling nominations for
all offices. The Division held a ballot argument
workshop for all legislative aides in City Hall.
There will be two Superior Court seats (6 and 15) on the ballot, and if
no majority is reached in June, there will be a runoff in November. There are sixty candidates, who have taken out
declarations of intent, for the Board of Supervisors.
A petition to recall one of the Supervisors failed because it didn’t
meet the requirement for the number of valid signatures.
Outreach Division has been working on its plan for the June
election, and has begun developing an accessible voting brochure. The brochure is funded by HAVA funds from the state. Currently, the front counter at the Department is not
easily accessible, and finally the Department is able to go forward
with its plan to make a section of that counter HAVA compliant.
Poll Locating and ADA
Division is sending out
availability letters to determine if past sites will be available for
the June election. At the last election, we
needed 409 polling locations, in June we will need at least 561. The return of the availability letters will be very
important. The division will be seeking
recertification for the state’s accessibility requirements for polling
locations in mid-March.
Pollworker Division is assembling
it’s pollworker assignment plan based on language assistance at polling
sites and other factors. Staff is putting
together the Pollworker Manual and materials to assist with the primary
in June. The Division’s availability letters to
past workers will be sent next month. High
School’s are being contacted for volunteers for the June election, but
this is difficult because students have finals and/or plan to go on
vacations.
Technology Division is putting together several databases
including the logic and accuracy base, warehouse data base for tracking
of materials and the VoteCal base which is a statewide database of all
registered voters.
Voter Services Division mailed out its “Declined to State”
postcards to the 51,000 permanent vote-by-mail precinct voters
yesterday. The card states that the voter is a
non-partisan voter for this election and can vote any party. Recently the staff had been occupied with checking the
validity of the signatures on the recent recall petitions. Voter file maintenance is always ongoing in the
Division.
Commissioner Gleason commended the
Department and Director on the “Election Connection Newsletter” for its
thorough, concise and easily understood explanation of the Census and
its importance to elections. He said that the
letter from the Director that appears in the front of the Voter
Information Pamphlet (VIP) regarding the open modified primary was, to
him, better than the explanation offered by the Secretary of State’s
Office (SoS). Commissioner Gleason said that the
information is so well explained that it should also be on the
Department’s website. Director Arntz thanked the
Commissioner and said that the information would be in the VIP, in the
pollworker manual, and available for the phone bank.
6. Commissioner’s Reports
Commissioner Townsend reported that he had
numerous calls regarding the failed recall, but people were convinced of
the results and that the Department had thoroughly checked for the
validity of voters signatures, especially after receiving Director
Arntz’s letter which very clearly explained the procedures that led to
the rejected petition.
- President
Phair reported that the meeting, called by the Mayor, highlighted what
had already been in the papers regarding the significant revenue
weakness these past two years. Highlights were
labor and retirement expenses of over $100M, loss of federal
stimulus/rainy day funds from the previous year, property taxes in the
commercial areas are down, payroll taxes down due to less employment. The total revenue shortfall projected for 2011 is
$290.7 M. Expenditures are expected to increase
and result in a net deficit of between $522.2 and $542.2 million
dollars. The reason for the span is not knowing
what the increase in the costs will be.
Adding to this, the Mayor doesn’t know how much the state will be asking
from the City. It could be as much as $100 M.
The Mayor proposed cuts of 20% in the budgets of all departments and the
general fund. The reductions from last year
still haven’t been implemented because the Board of Supervisors has not
acted on them, which exacerbates the problem.
Commissioners Townsend, Matthews and Phair said that they were
disappointed that the SFMTA was taking away the free parking, which is
no cost to the City, for Commissioners who volunteer their time for the
City.
- (Chairperson Matthews)
Commissioner
Matthews reported that Deputy Director Nataliya Kuzina represented the
Director at the meeting and pointed out that the draft presented to the
Commission in January was $10.5 M and this amount was before the
recovery of $720,000 from running the elections for other City
departments.
9. Old Business
(a) Report regarding a review of the performance of the DRE
(Direct Recording Equipment) used during the November 3, 2009 General
Municipal Election. (Commissioner Matthews)
Commissioner Matthews explained that he has hit a road block in his
research and asked if the Director could assist him with locating how
many precinct votes there were on any given election day (distinguished
from vote-by-mail or early voting). The Director
said that the information could be pulled from the website under
“archive” and the information would be there for election day, not the
votes the Commissioner wants to avoid.
Commissioner Matthews said that he would check the site again, and
apologized for not having his report completed for this meeting. It will be presented at the March meeting.
President Phair asked if the Commissioner had so far found any issue or
problems with the DRE’s functions. Commissioner
Matthews said he hadn’t but that we’re trying to balance two different
concerns: Full accessibility without stigmatization or singling out, and
pollworkers tacitly suggesting voters to use the DRE, although this
seems to be diminishing.
This item will be CONTINUED to the March meeting.
(b) Update regarding action on the Elections
Commission’s resolution on voter profile information, approved at the
Commission’s November 18, 2009 meeting and sent to the State Legislation
Committee for the City & County of San Francisco.
Discussion and possible action. (Commissioner Gleason)
President Phair reminded the Commission that it sent a
letter to the State Legislation Committee in December and has not
received a response formally or informally.
Commissioner Gleason asked that the Commission send a second follow up
to the State Legislation Committee for the City and County of San
Francisco and schedule a resolution and any further action on the agenda
of the next Commission meeting depending on whether we get a response. The State Legislation Committee meets on the third
Thursday of the month, but that meeting has been cancelled for February. Commissioner Gleason added that he would like to have
the second letter hand delivered to the offices of the State
Legislation Committee. Commissioner Gleason MOVED
and Commissioner Matthews SECONDED that the follow up letter, to be
composed by the Commission Secretary, accompany a second copy of the
original letter and be hand delivered to the State Legislation
Committee’s Office.
The Roll Call Vote Was: Turner – Yes, Townsend –
No, Safont – Yes, Matthews – Yes, Gleason – Yes, Yu – Yes, Phair – Yes.
THE VOTE WAS 6 YES, 1 NO. THE MOTION PASSED.
Follow up to this item is carried over to the next Commission Meeting.
10. New Business
(a) Discussion
and possible action regarding process for the Commission
to be made aware of pending legislation that impacts the City’s elections. (Commissioner Gleason)
Commissioner Gleason said that he was concerned because the Commission
was recently informed, by the newspaper clipping sent by the Commission
Secretary to members, of a legislative action regarding elections after
the fact. Although the Commission may not be able
to act on legislation, it should be aware of laws pending. The Commissioner asked that the Commission authorize
him to give a brief report, under Item 6 of the Commission’s agenda
item, “Commissioner Reports”, of City and state legislation bearing on
our elections for the remainder of this calendar year.
Commissioner Gleason gave several examples of legislation currently
pending and how they could affect San Francisco.
Commissioner Matthews thanked Commissioner Gleason for volunteering to
monitor this subject.
Director Arntz said that he would send the list of legislation pending
that he gets from CACEO, the California
Association of Code Enforcement Officers, about twice a month to the
Elections Commission Secretary to forward to the Commissioners.
Commissioner Gleason MOVED and Commissioner Matthews SECONDED.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to approve this item.
(b) Director report and briefing, and discussion and
possible action by the Commission, regarding Department of Elections and
election-related functions historically (over the past three years)
performed by the Department of Elections which are now contracted to
outside vendors or being considered for contracting to outside vendors.
(Commissioner Matthews)
Commissioner Matthews acknowledged that the
information on this topic was received earlier today and he asked that
the item be CARRIED OVER to the next Commission Meeting.
President Phair said that the one page summary provided by the Director
was very helpful.
This Item is CARRIED OVER to the March meeting.
11.
CLOSED SESSION
(a) Discussion and possible action
regarding whether to hold closed session for attorney-client
communication on matters of pending litigation, held pursuant to Ralph
Brown Act, section 54956.9 and Sunshine Ordnance Section 67.10(d)
(b) Closed Session for
attorney-client communication regarding Dudum et al. v.
Arntz et al., Northern District of California, case No. C 10-00504
SI (filed February 4, 2010). Discussion and
possible action.
Commissioner Matthews MOVED that the
Commission go to CLOSED SESSION, Commissioner Safont SECONDED.
The Roll Call Vote was UNANIMOUS to go into CLOSED SESSION.
CLOSED SESSION began at 7:07 pm.
CLOSED SESSION ended at 7:37 pm.
12.
Discussion and vote regarding closed
session deliberations or actions.
(a) Discussion and vote pursuant to Brown Act section 54957.1
and Sunshine Ordinance section 67.12 on whether to disclose any closed
session deliberations or actions regarding Dudum et al. v.
Arntz et al., Northern District of California, case No. C 10-00504
SI (filed February 4, 2010).
MOTION: The Elections Commission
finds that it is in the best interests of the public not to disclose its
closed session deliberations or actions regarding Dudum et
al. v. Arntz et al., Northern District of California, case No. C
10-00504 SI (filed February 4, 2010).
Commissioner Matthews MOVED and
Commissioner Safont SECONDED.
The Roll Call Vote was
UNANIMOUS to not disclose the closed session deliberations or actions.
ADJOURNMENT @ 7:41 pm