City of Oakland*

The Oakland City Clerk's Office is not meeting the minimum requirements of the Filing Officer under the Political Reform Act. The issues of non-compliance with the rules regarding Form 700s are long standing and structural, resulting from inadequate funding. An inefficient system of communication of critical information to the filing Officer and limited staffing. City Response: The City agrees with this finding. City Explanation: The Office of the City Clerk (Sometimes referred to as the "Office") agrees that the issues of noncompliance with respect to Form 700 responsibilities are due to inadequate funding and staffing. Throughout the entire pandemic up to April 2022, the Office of the City Clerk has been severely understaffed resulting in the suboptimal oversight of form 700 filings and the Office struggling to complete other mandated duties. These reductions and delays have had and continue to significantly impact the department. Since 2020, up until February 2022, the office has operated with 47% of its administrative staff vacant. In addition to their own roles and responsibilities, staff within the Clerk's Office have performed the work of numerous vacant positions. In the 2021-2023 budget cycle, due to mandated reductions, this Office was required to cut the positions of Receptionist and Records Manager and add those duties to the already full-time workloads of the remaining funded positions. The Office of the City Clerk has established a plan to begin addressing the issue of non- compliance with Form 700 filings. In February 2022, the City authorized the Office of the Clerk to fill 3 of 4 vacant positions enabling the office to strengthen its organizational capacity to perform mandated duties. Prior to the Grand Jury's request, the Office of the City clerk had established a corrective action plan. Before the Grand Jury had concluded its inquiry the Office had: 1) Identified all non-filers that were not referred to the FPPC; 2) Initiated the process of To: Edward D. Reiskin, City Administrator Subject: City's Response to Alameda County Grand Jury Report on Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), Form 700 Filing Procedures November 15, 2022 transferring all non-filers to the FPPC; and 3) Began clearing the backlog to re-establish the first and most critical tiers of compliance and are well into this work as well as other

A transfer of the Form 700 filing duties from the Oakland City Clerk's office to the Public Ethics Commission would require hiring an additional employee; an amendment of the City Ethics Act to identify the Public Ethics Commission as the Filing Officer for Form 700s; and the transfer of function and payment of the City's contract with the online filing provider, NetFile, from the City Clerk's office to the Public Ethic Commission. City Response: The City disagrees with the finding. City Explanation: The Office of the City Clerk remains committed, as exemplified by the tremendous amount of work our office has done to address the errors and strategically strengthen support for this work. Form 700 filing coordination should be maintained by the Office of the City Clerk with adequate staffing to ensure continuous support. Consistent with the finding of the Grand Jury and the budget reductions to this office, the

Grant funding has been used to fund staffing to support critical services in the City of Oakland. City Response: The City agrees with the finding. City Explanation: The City has applied for and received funding for City services. Funds received are allocated and appropriated via Council Resolution. Grand Jury

The City of Oakland's shared electronic Human Resources platform is not used in the Form 700 process but could be customized to assist in the sharing of information between departments. City Response: The City agrees with the finding. City Explanation: The City Clerk proposed this idea to the Grand Jury after discussions with Human Resources. Neo-Gov ("Human Resources platform") can match new hires to the Conflict-of-Interest Code to provide early identification of new employees and employee promotions to ensure filing timely filing within the 30 day start period as well as provide notification of employee separation for leaving office filings. Making Form 700 a mandatory part of the employee onboarding and separation checklist ensures timeliness and puts the city ahead of the current manual processes. The Office of the City Clerk had proactively initiated this collaborative process with Human Resources, prior to the Grand Jury Report. Grand Jury

The city of Oakland's new employee checklist does not include Form 700 filing requirements to the employee. City Response: The City agrees with the finding. City Explanation: Currently there is no universal onboarding standard. Instead, each department determines its own onboarding process. This issue could be solved once Neo-Gov is used as the onboarding and separation standard for all staff within the organization. Grand Jury