Board of Aldermen 09-22-2020 Page 26
is, itis a violation of an attorney’s disciplinary rules, meaning we could get barred if we address her on
something she is represented by an attorney on without copying that attomey. So we err on the side of
caution, when in doubt, the lawyer who is representing her on a great many things gets a copy. If she
doesn’t want him to spend time, if she doesn’t want to be charged, she can tell him not to open it, not to
read it, not to look atit. But it is absolutely untrue that we have forced her to be represented or prevented
her from being represented or failed to respond to her request for documents. That is categorically untrue.
President Wilshire
Anyone else? The Motion before us is for final passage of Resolution 20-064. Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Lopez
Yeah, | was on Page 3 sorry and there’s a lot of little squares going on here. So first | want to ask a quick
question to Alderman Clemons just to be clear. There were two speakers that sounded really upset, were
you speaking, | think one was Laurie Ortolano, but the other was another Laurie? Which one were you
referring to?
Alderman Clemons
Definitely Laurie Ortolano.
Alderman Lopez
OK so! wasn’t clear on that. And then the second thing is Attorney Bolton just did a pretty good job of
demonstrating part of what | was about to say. With regards to the Right to Know Requests, everybody's
job in any kind of a serious administrative position is going to be how to communicate with people and how
to communicate with the public and then the different regulations that are involved in whatever field you are
in; whether it's FERPA for education or HIPAA for healthcare or Right to Knowwhen dealing with the
public. But there’s definitely deeper levels of nuances that it’s not fair for people who are hired for one job
(overlapping conversation) — it’s not fair for someone who is hired to do a specific job like be an Assessor
or a City Clerk or DMV or whatever to also be expected to know that sophisticated level of detail. So |
appreciate that the Legal Department has taken that role on and | think it’s largely a reason why Nashua
has been winning all the cases that are brought againstthem. They are very careful and very meticulous
with how they attend to that. | think by expecting all of our staff to dedicate their time and professional
effort to this element or this area, | think that’s going to take away from City Services. | think we already
stretched very thin, we are already having a number of struggles just keeping things operating with City
Hall having to open or close or change whole procedures, | don’t this is really a good time for a huge
number of Right to Know Requests.
Now that being said, they have the right to ask those wnenever they want. That's guaranteed by law, so
we have to respect it. So! think we have to be adaptable and we have to look at creating a role that meets
the evident need for these requests. | think the complications involved and the nuances that are appearing
throughout the course of this are an opportunity for that position to also provide guidance to other city staff
and say, “Ok these are best practices for these questions through myself or through Legal”. | think we can
get better at it at both dividing the responsibilities so that it’s not taking away from full responsibilities of City
Staff. And | think that we can get more specific with how to create a system that’s more efficient and easier
for the public to access. | think it’s important that we look at this because there’s a large number of people
that are involved in generating documents that are subject to Right to Know that are not City Staff. They
may be Committee Chairs or participants or even Aldermen, nobody here went to school for howto be a
legislator. So we all have to go through training at the beginning of what not to do and don’t reply to all and
don’t share your opinions you know off the record with too many other Aldermen and accidentally create a
quorum. There are areas that we all have to be trained to do and | think it’s important for the City to
recognize it’s vulnerability as well as its strength and say that it is going to provide a resource for people
who may not have that background.
