Electric car contract released; access counselor questions redactions

In response to transparency concerns raised by the City-County Council, Vision Fleet on Thursday evening released an unredacted version of its $32 million contract to provide 425 electric cars to the city of Indianapolis.

Michael Brylawski, the company's chief operating officer, described the redactions as a precaution to keep competitors from swiping a business model that his company worked for years to build from the ground up.

"But to me, eradicating any perceptions of being non-transparent trumps disclosing some of our 'secret sauce,'" Brylawski wrote in an email to the council. "We absolutely do not want any issues around perceived lack of transparency."

His disclosure will likely solve some — though certainly not all — of the backlash to the contract, which has been in effect since February 2014 and only recently became controversial.

But it remains unclear why the city redacted some portions of the contract in the first place.

Council members earlier this week railed against the heavily redacted document, likening it — mockingly — to a closely held secret of the CIA. The city's Office of Corporation Counsel, however, defended the redactions as "trade secrets," which can be kept confidential under the state public records law.

And, city attorneys insisted, the state's public access counselor signed off on the redactions.

But in an interview with The Indianapolis Star on Friday, state Public Access Counselor Luke Britt said that while he told the city that certain trade secrets and financial information could remain confidential, some of the redactions should not have been allowed.

The oddest among them was contact information for the California-based Vision Fleet, which has a local office at 111 Monument Circle, Suite 1800, as well as the Department of Public Works, a government agency.

"That's stuff's not confidential at all," said Luke Britt, the public access counselor. "I wouldn't have signed off on something like that."

Britt says the vast majority of allowable "trade secret" redactions should be financial in nature, whether they're actual numbers or narrative descriptions of formulas used. Government agencies, he said, should redact no more than what they have to.

"What I tell agencies is to be precise to a fault," Britt said. "When it comes to trade secrets and confidential information, (almost) everything you're going to be redacting are numbers."

But other, seemingly innocuous details were omitted as well.

One redacted sentence read: "Vision will be responsible for ensuring all components are maintained preserved, kept in good reapir, working order, and condition."

Another said "Vision will be responsible for overseeing all preventative, routine and warranty-based maintenance" — something that the city has made clear in public statements about the deal.

Samantha DeWester, deputy corporation counsel for the city, on Friday defended the redactions, saying they were "done under the letter of the law."

Corporation Counsel Andy Seiwert attributed the redacted contact information to human error — "I don't think anyone would argue that is a trade secret."

But he said he could see how maintenance obligations could be considered a part of the company's proprietary model.

"I defer to (Vision Fleet)," Seiwert said. "I'm not calling (the redacted sections) a trade secret. They are."

In an interview Friday with the Indianapolis Star, Brylawski lamented that transparency questions now cloud a contract that he says is performing above expectations.

"I heard the issue was transparency, and (the company's mantra) is quite the opposite," Brylawski said. "We really want to get in front of people and show them the data."

On Thursday, he sent the council a project update showing that the city has saved 18,000 gallons of fuel since the first cars were deployed in October. He promised to work with the council and the city to allay their concerns — particularly that of some police officers who say they can't properly secure their guns in the vehicles.

"Now that we understand some of the issues — most of us are engineers. Engineers are problem solvers," he said. "There are solutions to these problems."

City officials, meanwhile, have suggested that some of the opposition is rooted in politics rather than policy.

Council members were invited to sign confidentiality agreements and view the documents themselves before they were released. Many declined.

"The frustrating part there, frankly, is every member of the City-County Council and their staff have had the opportunity to see the unredacted version of the contract, and some elected to, and some did not," said Jeremiah Shirk, chief of staff for the Department of Public Works.

The city made the offer again at a committee hearing this week. No one jumped at the opportunity.

"I'm not signing a confidentiality agreement when it's taxpayer money," said Councilman Joe Simpson, a Democrat.

Call Star reporter Brian Eason at (317) 444-6129. Follow him on Twitter: @brianeason.