Nashua aldermen should think hard when considering a bill that would allow the city’s finance director to black out names of those receiving payments from the city.

The bill, which was requested by Nashua Police Chief Andrew Lavoie, starts out with the noble purpose of seeking to keep undercover police officers safe by shielding their names from public view when they receive payments for activities like specialized training and vehicle rentals.

City ordinance currently requires the city’s chief financial officer to keep a record of expenditures detailing the amount and date of every account or claim the city paid, along with the name of the person or organization who received the money. The aldermen’s Finance Committee examines and audits the expense record.

The current ordinance is written the way it is to promote transparency and allow the public and their representatives to see who is being paid how much, and why. It is through such transparency that government is accountable to taxpayers.

The bill, sponsored by Alderman Lori Wilshire, would amend the existing ordinance so that "the name of the person or entity to whom the account or claim was allowed may be redacted if that information should be kept confidential for privacy or safety reasons."

We see a couple of problems with the legislation.

The first is who gets to decide what information "should" be blacked out.

The bill would leave it up to the city’s finance director, who is an unelected political appointee. Not even the aldermen – the public’s elected representatives – would be privy to the names of those receiving payment without asking for it. That is the antithesis of accountability.

The second problem is that the bill seeks to lump legitimate concerns about police officer safety with vague "privacy" considerations by relying on loopholes carved out over the years in the state’s misnamed "Right-to-Know Law."

They include "personnel, medical, welfare, library user, videotape sale or rental, and other files whose disclosure would constitute an invasion of privacy."

"Our current law in the city requires the record of expenditures to contain information that may be subject to nondisclosure under (the Right-to-Know Law)," said city attorney Steve Bolton added. "There’s nothing on the books now that allows this information to be left out of the record of expenditure."

Good.

Just because some fools in Concord have seen fit to neuter the state’s transparency law doesn’t mean Nashua should follow their lead. And just because state law allows the city to broaden the things that are kept secret doesn’t mean it should. At the rate the state is going, we can foresee the day coming when the Right-to-Know Law is used to shield even salary information from the public in the name of a vague concept called "privacy."

Cutting the public out of the accountability process should be a last resort, and it’s not clear that alternatives have been considered that would allow aldermen to see the information without having to ask for it. The police department’s $20.3 million budget affords ample areas where overtime, training, equipment and other costs could be paid out without specifically disclosing the name of an officer or the type of a vehicle being bought or rented.

The bill before the Board of Aldermen is well-
intended but overly broad and would make it harder for the public and their representatives to keep track of certain kinds of government spending. If it is considered at all, it should be with a much narrower scope and safeguards that entail something besides keeping taxpayers in the dark. After all, it’s their money.