Finance Committee Page 7
July 20, 2016
possibly be. Then you throw a name into that and it’s quite obvious what that person does. We don’t want to
get rid of the account, we don’t want to get rid of the money because people should be able to see what
account it came from and how much it was. But the officer's name, in my opinion, in that case, his safety or
her safety completely outweighs the fact to have the name to go with those other two components. | think that
certainly meets the criteria. But absolutely, | would be in favor of that for the police portion. We're always
willing to justify anything we ask for.
Alderman Wilshire
| would be okay with the legislation be amended to do that. | think that works, especially in the climate that we
have today. It’s just not safe out there as it is. Anything that we can do to help our police, we should do.
Alderman O’Brien
Do you use any employee numbers or identification that the public does not have access to? | think we
definitely want to see where the numbers are, where the account is going and if it is legitimate and question if it
is not legitimate. But we really don’t need the name of the officer. Is there an identifying number, other than a
badge number that somebody can come out and take a look at, that the police department has in their file?
Would that be a better way of tracking it?
Chief Lavoie
We have that for scheduling purposes through TeleStaff. Everybody has an employee number. But again,
whether it’s a name or a number, to me, I’d feel safer just redacting it completely.
Alderman Cookson
Two points. With CFO Griff in the audience, | would certainly tend to lean to him for a suggestion on a way
that we might be able to do this. And to Alderman O’Brien’s suggestion, whether it be a name or number, and
don’t know if the mechanics actually exists to be able to do that. | would ask CFO Griffin if there is an
alternative to the way that we currently report our Record of Expenditures.
Mr. Griffin
Practically speaking, the check is going to be made out to the officer because we’re paying the officer for the
training. We're going to be paying a leasing company. What | would recommend is the police commission or
chief's request of Karen Smith, the business manager, she would ask or request Rose Evans, Accounting
Manager, to simply put “training.” If it’s training, put training. If it's leasing, put leasing. That way there the
officer or the vendor doesn’t get named. What happens now the other part of the ordinance, which | think they
tried to capture some of the things that happen now, if we have a wage assignment where it’s duly noted in the
Record of Expenditures, for example the CFO got paid $1,000 a week, | may have to direct that to someone
other than me. The wage assignments are liabilities to the city. When we pay the IRS or a third party, it simply
says “wage assignment.” Workers’ comp is tied up with some HIPA regulations so we simply put “workers’
comp payment.” We don’t name the payees. If | could use that same logic, that might work. It would be the
police department. | looked at the editorials. It was happening when | came back from vacation. | didn’t want
to be the redactor in chief. | couldn’t agree more with safety. It’s absolutely paramount. | wouldn’t feel at all
good if | put Record of Expenditures in front of you folks and something tragic happened. That wouldn’t be
good either. |’m in full support as well.
Mayor Donchess
| think we have the three examples that we want to redact: the things that are already being done, wage
garnishments and workers’ comp payments, and the payments that the chief is talking about with respect to
