By George P. Hassett

Somerville citizens who go to City Hall looking for their aldermen’s ethics reports will still be looking at a lot of black ink. The state’s Supervisor of Records issued a ruling last week upholding most of the city’s decision to redact personal and private information from the reports.

Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records Alan N. Cote ruled that city lawyers should not withhold property information and the names of spouses from publicly released ethics reports as they had been doing. The ruling came in response to a petition from The Somerville Journal appealing the city’s decision to redact much of the information contained in the reports, which all candidates for office are required to submit.

However on the other six categories of information, Cote concluded “that the City has properly redacted information.”

Four aldermen have already asked that city lawyers not redact any information from their reports. Alderman-at-Large William A. White, who released his report without redactions, has said the details of ethics reports were never blacked out until the current administration.

In his 1997 state of the city address, former Mayor Michael E. Capuano said strengthening the ethics law would “allow citizens of Somerville to know how the elected officials make their living, who their wife works for and their children, how they are financially and personally connected to someone who gets a city license, a zoning variance, or a city contract.”

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone, an alderman at the time, said the ordinance did not go far enough: ‚ÄúI would like to see more included, but now we have an ordinance, and I’m a proponent of accountability.‚Äù

But, under Curtatone’s administration, the forms given to local newspapers and citizens by the city withheld most of the information Capuano hoped to make available to the public – information such as business associations of immediate family members, employment information of spouses, annual income from private employment, securities and investment information, credit obligations, the address and value of property interests, and the names of the candidate’s spouse and children living in the household.

City lawyers said Cote’s ruling confirms their decision to protect that information.

‚ÄúWe will continue to comply with the letter and the spirit of the state’s public records laws. This ruling confirms that we can do that while also safeguarding the legitimate privacy rights of city workers, officials and candidates.‚Äù