Council Rejects Move To Request Confidential Information Behind Report

Mayor Drew looks on as Council debates

The Common Council voted against resolutions that would have revealed the names, or identifying information of the people who were interviewed by Attorney Penny Mason in the recent investigation into the Mayor and the General Counsel Office regarding gender discrimination and retaliation.

Councilman Gerry Daley introduced both resolutions. One would have made a sweeping request for "access to everything that was produced or compiled in [the report's] formulation." The other would have made a request for all the supporting documentation for the billings/invoices submitted to the city.

Councilman Carl Chisem offered the same amendment to each, to request all of the information, but to take steps to keep the names confidential. Each time, those amendments failed by a vote of 5 to 6. Bob Santangelo, Gene Nocera, Gerry Daley, Carl Chisem, and Grady Faulkner voted in favor. Deb Kleckowski, Seb Giuliano, Rob Blanchard, Mary Bartolotta, Phil Pessina, and Linda Salafia voted against the amendment, several later explained that they voted "NAY" because the underlying resolution was unacceptable. 

The resolution to get sweeping information failed by a vote of 2 to 9, garnering "AYE" from only Councilmen Santangelo and Daley. The resolution about the invoices failed by a vote of 3 to 8, with Councilman Faulkner joining Santangelo and Daley in favor.

Daley set the tone of the discussion over the resolutions, bringing a passionate advocacy, coupled with attacks on the integrity of those opposed to them, "Truth, transparency, and fiscal responsibility; I never thought I would meet such resistance to this from members of this council!"

Nocera echoed this sentiment, "the matter at hand is transparency."

Santangelo argued that there would be no consequences to releasing the names, looking around the room and asking, "Who would retaliate?"

Those who voted against the resolutions did so because they did not want to have the names or identifying information released, and doubted that doing so would be constructive towards an improvement for the workers or the city. Pessina said, "I am totally, honestly, perplexed, what more [useful] information are we going to see?"

Blanchard said, "I don't want to see these names, I want to see how we can fix the culture. ... It's up to us now, we ought to look at ways to fix this."

After nearly two hours of debate, and having been roundly defeated on the first resolution, Daley said of his colleagues, "What you have here is a clear attempt to hide things, ... you know it's wrong."

Bartolotta responded with controlled fury to this last of several personal attacks, telling Daley, "You are not going to get away with intimidation or bullying me any more."

She continued, "Councilman Daley's approach this evening, ... speaks to everything that's in the report."