CRESTVIEW — By a 3-1 vote, with Councilman Joe Blocker voting “nay,” the City Council approved having an outside vendor offer identity theft protection services to city employees.
During the Tuesday evening council meeting, Legal Shield representative Bob Hollingshead said it can take identity theft victims as much as 200 hours over six months to recover their identity and clear their credit ratings.
Hollingshead offered employees a discounted rate of $5.98 per pay period for the service, which workers would contract for directly with Hollingshead.
The service would not cost city taxpayers anything, Hollingshead said.
He said offering the service “reduces absenteeism and increases productivity” because workers who have had their identity stolen would not need to take time off to address the resultant legal and financial difficulties.
“It decreases employee stress because they now have access to an attorney,” Hollingshead said.
The contract would not allow employees to institute legal proceedings against the city.
When Councilman Tom Gordon’s motion to allow Legal Shield to give 15-minute presentations to city employees failed to garner a second, Council President Shannon Hayes passed the gavel to vice president Mickey Rytman and made the second.
The motion passed, with Blocker voting against it because he wanted department heads to first assess their employees’ feelings toward the service before giving approval to make the offer.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: City employees offered Legal Shield