Rules Committee advances City Attorney settlement change and slate of appointments

The Rules Committee on Monday sent the full Board of Supervisors an ordinance that gives the City Attorney's office more room to settle claims and lawsuits without board approval, a change the office said would speed up routine payouts that now wait in the same queue as major cases.

The ordinance amends the Administrative Code to raise the threshold at which the City Attorney can settle a claim or lawsuit without bringing it to the board. It also raises a separate grievance-settlement authority held by the city's human resources department and reorganizes obsolete claims provisions in the code.

Supporters from the City Attorney's office, which requested the ordinance, told the committee the threshold has gone unchanged for decades and that the current process forces small, routine settlements to wait behind larger matters. Plaintiffs can wait months for payment, and judges have criticized the delay, the office said. The ordinance adds a yearly report to the board covering settlements made under the expanded authority, which the office described as a way to keep oversight in place even as fewer cases come to the full board.

No members of the public spoke on the item. The committee forwarded it to the board with a positive recommendation, without dissent.

The meeting's only contested item, and its longest stretch of public comment, was a group of appointments to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. The committee interviewed applicants for nine seats on the task force, which hears complaints about violations of the city's open-meeting and public-records laws. Most incumbents sought reappointment, and several newcomers also applied.

Public commenters, including journalism and open-government groups, urged the committee to reappoint the incumbents for continuity. One speaker accused the board of a politically motivated purge of the task force and said its backlog of complaints is growing.

Committee members disputed that account. They said the vacancies followed a voter-approved ordinance that eliminated holdover terms on the task force, not any political move, and one supervisor noted that a colleague had voted against that measure. The argument over why the seats were open took up more of the discussion than the applicants themselves.

In the end the committee forwarded seven names to the full board with a positive recommendation for the seats it identified. One seat went unfilled because no applicant appeared for it, and another was left open after the applicant withdrew. The motion carried without objection, and the committee will have to fill the remaining seats later.

The committee also forwarded the board president's appointment of Malea Chavez to the Planning Commission, with no public comment and no objections. Chavez is a longtime tenant attorney and renter who has worked on eviction prevention and community development, according to supporters who spoke for the nomination. She told the committee about her early involvement in land-use fights and her work on neighborhood planning and affordable housing.

Before sending the appointment on, the committee amended the motion to strike the option of rejecting the nomination. The appointment then went to the full board as a committee report with a positive recommendation.

The city controller's appointment of Christopher Simi to another term on the Sanitation and Streets Commission moved forward the same way. Simi, who works in local government budgeting and has served on the commission, told the committee the city's limited resources should be invested equitably and where need is greatest. A supervisor thanked him for agreeing to keep serving. No members of the public commented, and the committee voted without objection to send the appointment to the board.

The committee also forwarded an ordinance exempting members of the Residential Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board from term limits. The change corrects an earlier commission-streamlining ordinance that applied term limits to the Rent Board by mistake, members said. The task force that drafted that earlier measure had recommended keeping the Rent Board's structure without term limits, and the new ordinance restores the board's original rule. Housing advocates and a landlord association gave input on the language, and no members of the public spoke. The item moved to the board with a positive recommendation, without dissent.

All five items now go to the full Board of Supervisors, where the appointments and the two Administrative Code changes will get a second vote.