Charles Diamond testifies on PII release concerns and administration absence

I'll begin, Chair, if that's okay.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Chair Lee, Chair Brewer, the entire council.

My name is Charles Diamond.

I worked for the city for nearly a decade, including probably close to a dozen implementations of state law changes into local law.

I'm here today to speak in my personal capacity.

I don't even own a home, but I'm so disturbed by this process that I felt the need to kind of point out what I saw and to really thank the council for refusing to abridge its responsibilities during a time like this and holding this hearing.

Regardless of one's thoughts on the underlying policy, the release of personally identifying information by the city, like names and addresses, is usually a torturous process on purpose.

Talk about all of the different times when we released PII, and there are reasons why this takes a long time.

In this case, over 98% of the PII that was released are of people who are palpably not subject to that tax.

That kind of over-inclusion of PII should be extremely concerning to us all.

If it was in furtherance of a PR objective, that should be even more concerning.

I found it very disturbing, the argument of the finance commissioner in his written testimony.

that this information is otherwise publicly available.

That's not usually the standard.

When the government collates and releases and publishes information in a different way, it carries its own risk.

Chair, you and I have spoken about this in a previous time with procurement.

Talk about the cautions list, a list of people who have gotten poor performance reviews.

The city has refused to ever publish one list like that because of the use of the phrase I think someone else used, it would be a scarlet letter and could be used in negative ways and give a negative implication.

That's about contractors who choose to contract with the city.

Yet for some reason that normal analysis, that normal cautious analysis didn't happen here.

And we need to ask why.

So thank you for doing that.

What is even more disturbing and more important is the fact that no one from the administration is here to testify today.

It is unacceptable to use the idea of pending litigation as a reason not to testify in an oversight hearing.

Almost every city action is subject to some potential litigation.

I myself have sat here during the asylum response hearings and there have been individual questions when I said, you know what, I cannot answer that question due to litigation or pending actions, but here's what I can talk about.

Here's how it generally works.

That's how it's supposed to work.

In fact, what this really reminds me of is an incident in the last administration when the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs read their testimony in, stood up and walked out.

The entire council at that time was unanimous in their condemnation of the administration.

In this instance, they didn't even show up.

It was bizarre, Chair, to hear you read in a commissioner's testimony into the record.

It is utterly...

Utterly bizarre.

So in that sense, I urge the council to condemn the actions of the administration in this instance, when it may be less politically convenient, because they've shown through their actions that they do not consider the council as an equal

partner in government, contrary to many of their assertions before getting here.

So thank you to the council.

Thank you.

Next.