Midway council reviews draft AI-use ordinance and policy requiring human oversight

Lawmaker Corva introduced a draft ordinance, a supporting administrative policy and a proposed resolution aimed at regulating Midway City’s use of artificial intelligence, saying the goal is to “use AI in a way where we are not making decisions or letting AI make the decisions for us.”

The proposal lists authorized functions — drafting preliminary meeting minutes from recordings, summarizing documents and reports, assisting with document organization and preparing non‑final internal correspondence — and expressly prohibits using AI as the official repository for city records or relying on AI output without human review. Corva highlighted legal and privacy concerns, noting a recent Delaware decision that, in some circumstances, can subject content sent to public chatbots to subpoena and remove attorney‑client privilege protections.

Several council members pushed for mandatory disclosure when AI assists in producing published city materials. One member argued "these minutes were generated with the assistance of such-and-such tool, and then were reviewed by some staff member," and urged that published outputs carry a clear notice. Corva and others said disclosure might not be feasible for purely internal drafts but should be required for any public-facing product.

Security and procurement were central to the discussion. The draft recommends the city use only approved enterprise AI systems with encryption, role-based access, audit logging and contractual assurances that city data will not be used to train external models without authorization. Brad, during the discussion, noted the need for legal and IT review of vendor contracts and suggested enterprise accounts that prevent city data from entering general training datasets.

Councilmembers also discussed operational steps: staff training, a small technology committee to steward policy and a requirement that AI‑generated minutes or documents be reviewed and approved in accordance with state records laws. No formal ordinance vote was taken; councilmembers asked staff to refine the draft and return with recommended procurement language and disclosure options.

The council assigned follow-up: staff will research secure enterprise options, draft procurement clauses for legal review and return at a future meeting with an implementation plan and training schedule.