Month: April 2025

Lisa Ribis Was the Best of Saratoga- Dillon Moran is the Worst

Lisa Ribis, who served the city of Saratoga Springs for twenty years and enjoyed the love and respect of her colleagues, passed away on April 4, 2025, shortly after her retirement. Sadly her boss in City Hall, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran, persisted in tormenting and abusing her during her final two years working under him, finally forcing her out of her job pending a hearing on his dubious charges

A Fitting Tribute to Lisa Ribis

At the April 15, 2025, City Council meeting, the room and the hall were packed with Lisa Ribis’ many friends and colleagues. Mayor John Safford offered the following memorial to her. Those gathered applauded.

Former Accounts Commissioner John Franck’s Remembrances Of Lisa Ribis Are a Testimony to What An Asset She Was to the City

Lisa began working for the city in 2005 at the Department of Public Works where she remained until 2008, when she moved to the Accounts Department. As part of her work in the Accounts Department, she took the minutes at City Council meetings.

Lisa began her tenure in the Accounts Department when John Franck was the Commissioner.

I texted him about Lisa, and he wrote back.

“She was extremely smart and knowledgeable. I can’t tell you how many times she would whisper behind, saying they need to redo the motion, it’s not correct, or they need a 4/5ths vote, and she was always spot on.”

“She was everything a civil servant should be. I found her just kind and down to earth.”

John Franck

He also sent me a picture of him and Lisa. She is sitting behind him, taking the minutes.

Drawing Dillon Moran’s Ire

Sadly, the atmosphere within the Accounts Department and at the City Council table changed dramatically when Moran replaced Franck as Accounts Commissioner.

Lisa’s problems with Commissioner Moran began on February 1, 2022, when her husband, Joe Ribis, spoke during the public comment period at a Council meeting. He harshly criticized the Council for its failure to confront the local Black Lives Matter group that had been regularly disrupting City Council meetings.

On February 15, 2022, Moran informed Lisa that she would no longer be taking minutes as the Council’s secretary. In her lawsuit (below), Lisa attributed Moran’s behavior to Joe Ribis’ public remarks.

A Campaign Of Harassment

The following are some of the tactics Moran used to try to harass Lisa into quitting.

On March 15, 2022, Lisa again took minutes for the Council meeting. The following day, Moran told her she would not receive compensatory time or overtime pay for her work the previous night. For the thirteen years before this, Lisa had routinely received this benefit.

This was an act of petty harassment. Moran had to know that his action would not survive a grievance by Lisa, but he did it anyway to create a hostile environment that he hoped would force her to quit. Not surprisingly, in January of 2023, an arbitrator found that Lisa had been improperly denied compensation for her evening work at the Council meeting. She was vindicated as expected.

In April of 2022, Moran falsely accused Lisa of spitting on BLM demonstrators. This gratuitous attack was again meant to humiliate Lisa. On April 6, 2022, Lisa filed a complaint with the city’s Human Resources Department, challenging Moran’s allegation.

Lisa was quiet, soft spoken, and thoughtful. I know that it would have been very painful for her to have such sordid behavior attributed to her. Anyone familiar with Moran knows that he often resorts to boasts and falsehoods like this, which are recklessly meant to hurt or confuse. This accusation was particularly bizarre, not only because it was unimaginable that Lisa would do anything like this, but given the layout of the Music Hall, where the meetings were taking place, it was also physically impossible.

In May, Moran told Lisa that from now on, she was to report to his Deputy, Stacy Connors, every morning and ask her what her work would be for the day. She was the only employee in the department required to do this. Lisa had been in the Accounts Department for many years, whereas Moran and Connors were new to the Department. Nevertheless, Lisa faithfully carried out the directive. As an interesting aside, Lisa told me that Stacy rarely appeared before 10:00 a.m. and frequently arrived after 11:00 a.m. For her own amusement, Lisa kept a log of Connor’s tardy appearances.

On September 13, 2023, at an Accounts Department staff meeting, Moran referred to Italians as “guinea-wops.” Lisa was the only Italian person present. Moran also referred to her as “the queen of grievances” at the meeting.

In February 2024, Moran began falsely telling people in City Hall, including members of the Mayor’s office and the Human Resources Department, that Lisa had altered the city resolution establishing the scandal-plagued on-call status.

In another petty move, Moran also began to arbitrarily delay Lisa’s requests to use her earned compensatory time.

There are many more petty actions taken by Moran and his Deputy, Stacy Connors, to undermine Lisa’s credibility. Her lawsuit, included with this post, documents all of them.

Notice of Removal RibisDownload

This Is Dillon Moran

For many months, Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran hounded and tried to humiliate Ms. Ribis in an attempt to get rid of her. He finally brought charges that led to her dismissal. He had her pack up her things and go on paid leave.

Lisa had two avenues to fight her termination. Public employees have a right to an administrative hearing to defend themselves in what is referred to as an Article 75. The other was a lawsuit against the city for her treatment, which she had begun. Sadly, as her health declined, she decided that both the Article 75 and the lawsuit were unnecessary distractions and she dropped both. In January 2025, having reached her retirement age, she retired. She died four months later.

This blog has chronicled the corrosive behavior of Dillon Moran. Most of his behavior has involved other elected officials who should be strong enough to shrug off his intemperate attacks.

In the case of Lisa Ribis, his abuse descended to a new low. As a manager, the people who report to you are vulnerable humans who are entrusted to your supervision. There is only one way to describe what he did to Lisa: shameless.

Wendy Watch: Moran Court Case Goes to Trial

Over the years, I have posted many “Wendy Watches” – blogs looking at the many inaccuracies and misrepresentations often found in Times Union reporter Wendy Liberatore’s articles, especially those covering Saratoga Springs political issues. One of her more recent articles, this one supposedly about Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran’s most recent appearance in City Court, made me wonder, yet again, whether Ms. Liberatore is incompetent and unable to get her facts straight or malicious and uses her platform at the Albany paper to deliberately try to hurt and anger people.

Ms. Liberatore’s April 10, 2025 article, headlined “Saratoga Springs Commissioner Rejects Deal, Will Head To Trial in FOIA Case” begins as a fairly straightforward account of, as the headline indicates, Democratic Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran rejecting a plea deal and opting for a bench trial on charges he prevented access to public records in violation of the Freedom of Information Act. For the first few paragraphs, Ms. Liberatore’s coverage is pretty similar to the Daily Gazette story about the same events. The Gazette story is a fairly simple, straightforward account of Moran’s hearing.

In contrast, however, Ms. Liberatore’s report soon veers off into a litany of past debunked accusations and mischaracterizations of issues surrounding the case against a different Democratic City Council member -former Public Works Commissioner Jason Golub.

Consider this excerpt from the Liberatore account:

Moran’s case joins other investigations and charges levied against Democrats in the city. Former Commissioner of Public Works Jason Golub was charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor, by city police at the direction of Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Coll, who is allied with the city’s Republicans. That charge relates to a city plumber’s 10-minute visit to Golub’s home to pour a drain-clearing substance down his kitchen sink.

Let’s start with a basic fact check.

  • Liberatore asserts that Golub was charged for his misuse of employees at the “direction” of Commissioner Coll. Coll has consistently stated that the investigation involved a coordinated process between the police command staff and the Saratoga County District Attorney. Ms. Liberatore has made this allegation about Coll before and has yet to provide supporting evidence.
  • Liberatore asserts that Coll is “allied” with the city’s Republicans. Allied is a very loaded word, as Ms. Liberatore knows well, and it is hard to discern what exactly Ms. Liberatore means by this as, again, she gives no examples. She chooses to ignore the fact that Coll, a registered Democrat, has now been endorsed by the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee as well as the Republican committee and the non-partisan One Saratoga. These endorsements indicate the very opposite of what Liberatore implies. Coll’s record shows a consistent pattern of evaluating and supporting measures based on their merits, not partisanship. Would the Democratic Committee have endorsed Coll if he was simply an “ally” of the Republican Party?
  • In addition to her attacks on Coll, Liberatore mischaracterizes the crime Golub is charged with as “…a city plumber’s 10-minute visit to Golub’s home to pour a drain-clearing substance down his sink.” In fact, two city employees, not one, did work at Golub’s house, and there was not one visit but two.

So, where do these false claims about Coll and the misinformation about the Golub incident she uses in her article come from? Here is an excerpt from a WAMC report where Golub’s attorney, Karl Sleight, is quoted.

“Well, the preliminary disclosures by the District Attorney’s office suggest that Commissioner Coll was intimately involved in this manner. The more we look at this, the real question here is, what was the motivation for charges (emphasis added)? As I’ve said from the beginning, this case involved eight minutes, a jug of Drano, a clogged sink. My question is, what motivated someone to try to charge an attorney of the stature of my client months after the event with this charge? We’ll get to the bottom of it, and it starts today,” said Sleight.

Karl Sleight to WAMC November 26, 2024

It’s understandable that Sleight would play fast and loose with the facts in explaining Golub’s charges to the press. He is being paid to defend his client in any way he can. What is less understandable is why Ms. Liberatore uncritically repeats Sleight’s narrative as if it were fact, never attributing her statements to Golub’s attorney.

Sleight’s narrative is designed to take attention away from the central question of Golub’s use of city employees and materials to work on his private property and to instead focus public attention on a narrative that casts Coll as some kind of boogeyman who, for mysterious reasons (“what was the motivation?”), is driven to persecute Golub (the subtext being racism, ignoring that charges were also brought against Joe O’Neil, a white Republican). What Sleight is hoping is that no one (certainly not Wendy) will realize that even if this false narrative were true, it is irrelevant to the question of whether Golub is guilty of the actions he is charged with.

One has to ask whether Ms. Liberatore’s parroting of Sleight reflects a profound sloppiness or whether she knows better and is simply juicing up the story.

Liberatore’s story then spirals into a recitation of Saratoga Springs Republican Chair Mike Brandi’s lawsuits against Democratic elected officials, furthering a narrative that focuses on partisanship rather than the crimes and improprieties that Brandi’s consistently successful lawsuits have revealed.

Liberatore then ends her story with an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the current accusations against Moran with a misleading characterization of information she got from the Committee on Open Government:

However, Moran’s ticketing for allegedly concealing public records is unique: The deputy counsel at the state Committee on Open Government, Kristin O’Neill, said she has never heard of anyone being ticketed for not fulfilling a Freedom of Information Law request.

This was more than a simple instance of a FOIL request not being fulfilled. Moran filed three notarized statements stating falsely that he did not have the documents being sought.

Liberatore’s spin on a story about a FOIL violation is particularly curious as FOIL is the lifeblood of proper reporting. It allows responsible reporters to check on what our government is doing and inform the public. Delays, if not absolute falsifications like Moran’s, routinely undermine this.

Liberatore was happy to write a story full of partisan spin and misinformation. Her time would have been better spent researching what and why Moran was charged.

An Interesting Skidmore Talk On The Limits of International Law

[I received this release from Dr. Prasad, Professor of Management for Liberal Arts Students, regarding an upcoming talk at Skidmore]

THE INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS PROGRAM & THE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE PRESENTS:

HOLDING NATIONS ACCOUNTABLE THROUGH INTERNATIONAL LAW? A CONVERSATION ON THE GLOBAL JUSTICE SYSTEM WITH PROFESSOR WILLIAM BURKE-WHITE

APRIL 9 (5PM) DAVIS AUDITORIUM

Criminal Actions by Governments all over the world are policed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the intent of keeping the world safe for humanity. Recent high-profile cases involving countries like Russia, Israel, South Africa, Myanmar, Iran and others have drawn attention to the courts’ jurisdiction, legitimacy and overall efficacy. Professor Burke-White will be engaging in a focused conversation with Professor Pushkala Prasad (MB & IA) where he will lay out the foundations of the international legal system and discuss its continuing relevance while alluding to specific recent cases.

William Burke-White has a JD from Harvard Law and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Cambridge University. He is currently a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania Law School where he teaches courses on international law, human rights and global legal governance. His research is at the intersection of international law and international relations and his focus has increasingly been on the international courts and tribunals. He has published widely in various law journals and is currently working on a book “The New Geography of Global Governance”.

Professor Burke-White has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a non-resident Fellow at Brookings Institute. He is also the founder and inaugural director of the Perry World House, an interdisciplinary policy think tank at UPenn. He served under the Obama Administration as a member of the Policy Planning Staff to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. He has also worked in various capacities with the International Criminal Court and was an active participant in the Rwandan Genocide case that was presented to the court.

Please circulate this among students and anyone likely to be interested in this topic. This vent is being sponsored by the President’s Office.

We look forward to seeing you at the event.

Pushkala Prasad

Zankel Chair Professor of Management for Liberal Arts Students