2010-09-10 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MS. NICHOLSON: Any other discussion? MS. WONG: Yes. Continuing on to the quite good, compared to previous years, is this comparable or better than previous years? MS. NICHOLSON: Much better at least from last time. I can’t speak to the first Cost of Government Commission. MS. PROVALENKO: And you have to understand that we didn’t go out to the individual employees last time. We only went to the departments. MS. NICHOLSON: If we did, we didn’t do it through the pay stub method. It went as a Notice to Supervisors. MS. PROVALENKO: I think we reached them in much more direct manner this time. MS. WONG: I’d like to say too, that I’ve been approached a couple of times by people that have responded out in the public, and I thought Sunshine Law. What do I have to remember? And so I let them speak and I just said, did you respond to the pay stub. The two people that approached me, one said is anything going to be done with this? And I bring this up because I want to disclose I’m concerned about the Sunshine Law. I don’t think anything was against the Sunshine Law happened, but I’d like to disclose it. And the other person was very grateful that employees got a chance to give input. So, I was pleased about that and I didn’t venture any information or anything, but I said everything is public so if you want to comment don’t be afraid. MS. GARSON: And it’s not a Sunshine Law for someone from the public that is not a board member to talk to you. However, I would encourage them to come and make a statement at a meeting otherwise it’s not part of the record. So either encourage them to send something in writing and it can be anonymous. Or have them come to the meeting. If you receive individually an email, maybe because they just know you and they emailed you, please give that email then to the board secretary so that it can be given a communication number and be part of the record. So, a communication to you that is related to board business should be considered a public statement. And what we’ve been doing is if the communication came in, and that was identifying information, we want to be sure that the person had a choice as to whether or not they wanted to remain anonymous. So, Sandy or Emarie would have contacted them and said, did you want to be anonymous? And if they said yes, we redacted the identifying information even an email or a name. We were going to just assume that if they signed it that it was okay that it wasn’t going to be anonymous. But if there is any identifying information on it we did contact them. And the vast majority said oh no, I want to be anonymous. I’m not sure that they realized it was all going to be a public record. So then that would be the only thing. If you do get an email from somebody, you might just want to check with them, did you want this to be anonymous? And just let us know and we’ll be sure to take their name out. 4