Finance Committee Page 9
July 20, 2016
Chief Lavoie
It could. With the new fiscal year, there was just a large payment a couple of weeks ago. My business
manager is telling me about a dozen times a year. About once a month, something like this comes up. It’s
certainly not an everyday type of thing. Again, this doesn’t include salaries from those accounts. Salaries
come out of the general fund. Just the salary coming with a name is not going to identify anybody.
Mayor Donchess
Here’s why | ask the question. A couple of points have come up. | could get legal to prepare amendments that
would match the comments which we would forward to you for your comment but to do that we would have to
bring it back to the committee next time which is in two weeks. Would that be a problem in terms of revealing
anything?
Chief Lavoie
| believe it comes out every two weeks.
Mayor Donchess
| would say if we take that approach and if there is a payment in the category that you have discussed then just
don’t put it on the record until we deal with ordinance. | don’t think it would actually result in delay because the
full Board can’t pass this until August anyway. | would propose that | take the comments, my own and
Alderman Siegel’s and Mr. Griffin and come up with a revised version that would accomplish the goals that we
have described while at the same time not creating this kind of fear that we are going to use some broad
category to start hiding a bunch of other stuff. Does that seem reasonable?
Alderman Wilshire
It does to me.
Alderman Siegel
There is a Finance Committee meeting before the next Board of Aldermen so we are fine there. The other
thing is | just wanted to make sure that all of our comments are properly captured so when legal actually does
do this that they will get something that reflects our thinking going forward. | made an initial suggestion but
then we sort of went in a slightly different direction, maybe we did and maybe we didn't, | don’t know but we
really didn’t discuss the type of language that should be in here explicitly. For example, if we look at the
ordinance itself in section B, the new part, | would change it to say “notwithstanding the foregoing for the
following reasons, person or entities, a counter claim may be redacted.” That gets rid of the wishy washy.
Then name in parts one, two and three “wage garnishments, worker’s compensation” and then the third one
“names connected to payment whose identity if disclosed could endanger or compromise police department
personnel.” That way there is explicitly three items called out, the first two we are required to do anyway and
the third one is the one that we are talking about now and there isn’t any other wiggle room, that’s it and if we
need to we can put another ordinance in if we find another example. That gets rid of all of the hand waving
stuff and | think there is general consensus to get rid of that. | just tried to put real concrete meat on that so
when legal goes to do this they have got something there. Then we need another section with is E which
describes the mechanics by which the redacted information can be reviewed in a non-public session by the
Finance Committee and by an affirmative vote of the majority of the Finance Committee can be un-redacted
and made available for public view so just add a section C to that affect and | believe that captures in its
entirety all that we have been talking about.
