Finance Committee Page 6
July 20, 2016
Telegraph is concerned, | found it curious that they had never really seen a Record of Expenditures so didn’t
realize that there was already information that was redacted. | think it was part of their education when |
described what’s in the Record of Expenditures and how it works. Hopefully we won't see that type of editorial,
but they can write whatever they want. It doesn’t influence my opinion. The bigger problem | have with the
way this is structured mechanically is a different problem | think other people have considered. Imagine a
situation where we have a mayor hostile to the police department. Now it is up to the CFO or COO of the City
to redact information. That person serves strictly at the whim of the mayor. It puts that person, in this case,
Mr. Griffin, fortunately we don’t have that situation with the current mayor but we certainly can imagine
situations where that may occur, he’s in a difficult, if not impossible position. His job is effectively dependent
on whether or not he will follow orders which might get somebody injured or killed or something bad could
happen. We never want to have that be the case. That was my initial concern that | had with this, separate
from the scope of it. It was different than a privacy issue. It’s actually forcing somebody to reveal information
or refusing to redact information otherwise requested by the police department. Within the way this is
structured, that can happen. | can definitely imagine situations where that is possible, and that’s all | am going
to say on that particular item. | believe that we can restructure this such that we make it that the police
department is allowed to supply a redacted name, again the account information is available, and that that
redacted name goes on the expense report to the finance committee. In non-public session, the finance
committee can review that expense and vote, by majority vote, to unredact it, if required. | would assume
under those circumstances the police department would be duly notified and would be able to give whatever
reasoning is required. | wouldn’t expect this would be something that we do very often, but it gives a
mechanism by which the public has access to information, yet it is protected from general view unless there's a
clear decision where we say something is weird here. We need an explanation. That’s what | would like to
see. By giving the police department the ability to send it through already redacted then we don’t have an
issue where the police department is under the thumb potentially of a hostile entity. We've set our police up,
and part of the reason our police department is really, really excellent is we have a completely independent
police commission overseeing a completely independent police department. If something is going on in the
executive branch, they don’t have to worry about reprisal. | would hate to have a mechanism by which that
would be violated. Those are my thoughts about this legislation.
Mayor Donchess
The process you are suggesting is that the police department could ask for redactions subject to?
Alderman Siegel
The police department would submit the expense already redacted.
Mayor Donchess
If the finance committee didn’t agree with that or wanted to question it, they could?
Alderman Siegel
In non-public session.
Mayor Donchess
What do you think about that Chief?
Chief Lavoie
As always, we welcome any opportunity to justify anything we do. We'd be more than happy to do that. I’m
sure you’ve read the expense reports. The accounts that | am talking about are as self-describing as they can
