While I was out on vacation, a couple big stories dropped at other news locations. Here’s a rundown of a couple of them. We’ll have more tomorrow. —Steve Thurston
From the Daily Gazette, we have the story of the revised indemnification law. The new law attempts to clearly define when a city council member, an employee or an official volunteer working for the government on a committee or task force would expect to be reimbursed for legal fees they paid if the person must hire an attorney to help in a legal case. The new version passed the city council, 3 to 2 on Oct. 7. The old law could only indemnify those people in a civil action, not in a criminal one. (Read our coverage about that here.) It also was not clear when the city council might say no to paying for legal fees. The idea is that officials working or volunteering for the city government sometimes are drawn into lawsuits through no fault of their own, or must defend their official actions while in office or on the job. There has always been the expectation that the city would pay legal fees. (Read more about all of that here.) Then as now, legal bills accrued because of illegal activity are still not covered by the law. Mayor John Safford was joined by Commissioner of Public Works Chuck Marshall and Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll in voting for the new law. Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran and Commissioner of Finance Minita Sanghvi voted against. In the Gazette’s article, Moran said he wanted an independent, outside legal counsel to offer feedback on the law before it was approved. Sanghvi wanted to discuss ongoing litigation surrounding this law before voting. (Read more about the lawsuit that instigated the revision here.)