Mayor London N. Breed announced the Health Officer of the City and County of San Francisco has issued a Public Health Order.

This order requires residents to remain in place, with the only exception being for essential needs.

This measure is necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The Public Health Order is effective as of midnight on Tuesday, March 17 until April 7, unless amended or extended.

The physical offices of the ethics commission will be closed for the duration of the Public Health Order until April 7, unless otherwise noticed.

The regular monthly meeting scheduled for Friday, March 20, has been canceled.

However, the ethics commission remains open for business through its telework policy and technology.

Staff will continue to assist with filing guidance, online disclosure tools and resources, advice, and compliance assistance, among its other duties.

Filing deadlines established by law applying during this period remain in effect and have not been extended.

This does not affect lobbyist reporting.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission will hold its next regular meeting on May 29.

The commission will consider and possibly act on a set of proposed regulation changes to the Campaign and Governmental Conduct Code.

These changes include electronic filing, filing of contribution disclosures no later than 14 days following the contribution, and updating filing forms.

The proposed changes are intended to provide clarity regarding code sections created by the Anti-Corruption and Accountability Ordinance and update the regulations to match other recent changes to the code.

Changes additionally provide clarity about various provisions of the Campaign Finance Reform Ordinance.

Opportunity for public comment will be provided at the meeting.

At its November 27 meeting, the San Francisco Ethics Commission gave final approval to recommend and transmit to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors its Anti-Corruption and Accountability Ordinance.

The ordinance would create or expand certain pay-to-play prohibitions on political contributions, institute new disclosure requirements, create local rules for reporting behested payments, and create new rules regarding conflicts of interest.

The Commission will transmit its recommendations to the Board of Supervisors, where at least eight votes will be required to adopt the proposal.

At its November 27 meeting, the San Francisco Ethics Commission gave final approval to recommend and transmit to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors its Anti-Corruption and Accountability Ordinance.

The ordinance would create or expand certain pay-to-play prohibitions on political contributions, institute new disclosure requirements, create local rules for reporting behested payments, and create new rules regarding conflicts of interest.

The Commission will transmit its recommendations to the Board of Supervisors, where at least eight votes will be required to adopt the proposal.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission has proposed to place strict limits on behested payments.

A behested payment is when a public official asks a person or group to donate to a civic or charitable cause instead of directly to the public official, and the proposal would ban these requests. The penalty for officials could be $5,000 for each violation, but there would be no penalty for the donor.

If this proposal becomes an ordinance, the city’s Board of Supervisors would have to approve it. The commission could also put the changes on a ballot, which would be decided by voters in June of 2018.

Beginning January 2016, LeeAnn Pelham will be the new executive director of the San Francisco Ethics Commission.

Pelham previously served as the director of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and is expected to use her prior experience to shape ethics and enforcement policy in the city.

The Ethics Commission’s website is currently inaccessible due to repeated DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on the commission’s website hosting vendor.

The Commission’s electronic filing systems remain accessible here.

Status updates regarding the commission’s website are available here.

The Ethics Commission has announced a scheduled maintenance for the lobbying and campaign finance electronic filing systems.

The filing systems and public access websites will be down between 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 24, 2013 and 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 25, 2013.

The commission has advised campaign finance entities to plan accordingly if required to file 24-hour expenditure or contribution reports.

The Ethics Commission has announced a system upgrade to the electronic filing system for campaign committees, available here. The San Francisco Electronic Disclosure System (SFEDS) now offers additional features including streamlined data entry, page help for every form, and an easier amendment process.

Committees will need to create a new user account, which will link to the existing committee filer account. The new user account will act as a gateway to access all accounts of multiple committee filers. The next filing deadline for committees is January 31, 2013.

Assistance is available by contacting the commission at 415-252-3100 or by e-mail.

Lobbyist disclosure statements are now accessible by the public on the San Francisco Ethics Commission website. You can search lobbyists, lobbyist clients, lobbying firms, reported public officials, and lobbying subjects of concern.

According to the site:

This site contains information about lobbying activities for all lobbyist who are registered with the Commission. The Commission requires these lobbyists to submit monthly statements of their lobbying activities including: Activity Expenses, Political Contributions, Contacts of Public Officials, and Payments Promised by Clients.

The Ethics Commission is also offering an API (Application Programming Interface) for programmers to take the raw data from lobbyist reports and create mashups and aggregate reports of their own.

For news coverage, read “San Francisco Publishes New Tool To Interpret Local Lobbying Information” by Sarah Lai Stirland on techPresident.