Month: December 2025

I have catalogued Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi’s record of arrogance, mismanagement, and recklessness extensively during her four years in office. Yet even I was not prepared for her performance at the December 29, 2025, special end-of-year City Council meeting, her last.

Interestingly, according to the evaluations by her Skidmore students included in the second part of this post, her behavior in the classroom is no better.

Blogger’s Bizarre Exchange With Sanghvi

I attended the December 29, 2025, City Council meeting and spoke during the public comment period. My remarks were in response to comments Commissioner Sanghvi had made to the press regarding her colleagues, Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll.

Just as a reminder, here is what Sanghvi said to the Daily Gazette about Mayor Safford in the December 17 edition:

“It was a transparent process. [Safford] voted for it,” Sanghvi said. “And I don’t know what to think about, except that, you know, I have sympathies for cognitive declines with age.”

As for Coll, she told Wendy Liberatore at the Times Union (12/27/25) that his department had excessive overtime expenses, which he needs to get under control, but that “he doesn’t seem to care.” Sanghvi fails to identify which overtime costs she considers excessive and unwarranted.

Here are my remarks and her response.

Sanghvi’s bizarre response.

How can her performance be explained?

One possibility is that her mind automatically shifts into denial when confronted by unflattering revelations. Readers may recall that she recently denied having told Commissioner Coll that “absolutely” the 2026 budget would not include her participatory budgeting program, even though her comment, recorded on video, promised it would be removed.

The other, and more likely, explanation is that she was unwilling to apologize for her indefensible attack on Mayor Safford, so she pretended she had not followed the blogger’s three-minute remarks.

To fully appreciate her behavior at the December 29 meeting, these close-up clips are more revealing.

Overwhelmingly Devastating Evaluations of Minita Sanghvi As Skidmore Professor

There is a website where students can post evaluations of their professors. I have excerpted some of the evaluations of Minita Sanghvi. According to the website, 74 students posted evaluations. For the full evaluation, go to the link above.

Seven (10%) rated her “awesome.”

Six (8%) rated her as “Ok.”

Sixty-one (82%) rated her as “awful.”

I have screenshot the beginning of the evaluations and am including a smattering of other comments from her evaluations.

These are more from the site.

Lacks basic human decency (or empathy for others)

She’s extremely mean and offers zero support.

Extremely pretentious + rude.

It’s very odd to me that she’s still employed. Her utter disregard for the boundaries and feelings of others is truly appalling.

Take this class and you’ll be met with belittling comments, resistance, unnecessary stress, and a negative demeanor that isn’t conducive to learning.

She has a God complex and truly thinks she is better than everyone else. Very strange.

Possibly the most disliked professor at Skidmore and for good reason. She has zero intention of helping others & certainly does not want to see them go onto to be more successful than she is

From the way she treated me, you’d think she was being forced to teach the course for free.

She was extremely rude to our class,

A narcissist who seems to think that only herself (and the people she likes or agrees with) deserve to thrive or even exist in this world.

She really does not like people and shouldn’t be working with them.

She truly takes joy in putting other people down.

She wants more opportunities to put people beneath her so she can feel superior.

There are several attendance policy posts which is funny because she has a horrible attendance record for City Council meetings. For instance:

Her obsession with attendance and not being even a minute late is odd and speak to her controlling personality.

These are only back to March 2025. I skipped some negative ones.

She holds very clear hostility towards women who don’t agree with her viewpoints

Her unkind demeanor and lack of basic social skills was off-putting

She isn’t very kind

Minita Sanghvi acted extremely smug throughout the entire course

So terrible it’s almost funny. It’s abundantly obvious at this point that Skidmore keeps her around for reasons other than teaching abilities or people skills.

I haven’t met even one person who felt comfortable around her.

Minita is an unethical personal all-around.

she struck me as quite the terrible human being

Has an inflated sense of ego

she’s blatantly rude

basic interactions with this teacher will quickly reveal her inflated sense of self-importance

Minita is horrible. She is super liberal and tries to make people fail

Given the abundance of these very telling reviews for Prof. Sanghvi, it is clear that staff disciplinary action should have been taken against her within Skidmore long ago

Incredibly insensitive, controlling, and judgmental.

Professor Sanghvi was overtly condescending and dismissive

When 18-year old students are acting with more compassion and maturity than the professor, you know there’s a problem.

Poor communicator and very intense which can make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. She’s narcissistic with a God Complex

The New York Coalition for Open Government, a highly respected not-for-profit group that advocates for better transparency in government, has issued awards at its annual meeting. In the case of Saratoga Springs, we received two awards. Both were well deserved.

These awards would, under normal circumstances, be an enormous embarrassment to the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee, which has uncritically promoted Moran and has been disturbingly silent about the events that prompted the awards. It is yet another confirmation of how oblivious the Committee is to the profound importance of the New York State Open Meetings Law and the best traditions of democracy.

Press Release

Mike Brandi Honored on New York Coalition for Open Government’s Annual “Nice List” for Leadership in Government Transparency

Saratoga Springs, NY — Mike Brandi has been honored with inclusion on the New York Coalition for Open Government’s annual “Nice List,” recognizing individuals and organizations who have demonstrated a strong commitment to transparency and open government across New York State.

The New York Coalition for Open Government is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting open, honest, and accountable government at all levels throughout New York State. At a press conference held today, the Coalition announced its annual “Naughty and Nice List,” which highlights individuals who have either advanced—or undermined—the principles of open government over the past year.

Brandi was recognized for his role in exposing and pursuing unlawful conduct that obstructed public access to government records. His actions were central to bringing to light the conduct of outgoing Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran, who issued multiple false certifications in an effort to conceal public records maintained on his personal email account and social media.

In a landmark case, the Saratoga Springs City Court found Moran guilty after trial on three counts of unlawful obstruction of public access to records. As a result of that conduct, Moran was one of ten individuals statewide named to the New York Coalition for Open Government’s “Naughty List” for acting against the public’s right to know and unlawfully obstructing transparency.

“Open government laws only matter if they are enforced,” Brandi said. “This recognition underscores the importance of holding public officials accountable when they attempt to hide public records or evade transparency requirements.”

Under Saratoga Springs Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi, the city has continually run deficits with no apparent concern from the Commissioner or warning to the Council until this October, when the hole she had been digging for her four years in office could no longer be hidden.

The city’s 2024 financial audit revealed even more weaknesses in Sanghvi’s management of the city’s finances. What is particularly embarrassing is that some of the “exceptions” (mismanaged items) that were cited in the 2023 audit were never corrected. The 2024 audit should have been available to the public no later than November 1, according to the city’s charter. As these criticisms would have been quite damaging had they been revealed before she was elected Supervisor, it was convenient for Sanghvi that she missed the required date and only showed the public the audit after the election.

In addition, her 2026 budget continues her pattern of overestimating revenues and underestimating expenses to create the illusion of a balanced budget.

Her promotion of “Participatory Budgeting” (PB) in the face of these deficits is also problematic. These budget items result from individuals and groups submitting funding proposals. As the excerpts later in this post show, she initially claimed that, to produce a “realistic” budget, she had eliminated Participatory Budgeting along with her other cuts.

As it turns out, she reneged on this promise.

Laudable as the projects proposed for funding are, it is a legitimate question to ask: in light of the city’s other needs and the documented problems with her previous budgets, how confident can we be that the financial condition of the city can support the critical programs of the city, let alone participatory budgeting projects? It is interesting how focused Sanghvi is on PB and how oblivious she appears to be regarding the intricate details that comprise the rest of the city budget.

An Utter Failure To Control Costs During Sanghvi’s Tenure As Commissioner Places the City’s Finances On Edge

In October, Commissioner Sanghvi announced that the city was financially in a hole. She called for draconian cuts, yet she dismissed raising taxes above the 2% cap set by the state to address the shortfall.

As reported previously on this blog, this involved zeroing out funds for the homeless, the senior citizens’ center, and the money to pay crossing guards to protect schoolchildren, among other items. Only after Mayor Safford, Public Works Commissioner Chuck Marshall, and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll pushed back and insisted on raising more taxes to support these programs did Sanghvi agree to restore the non-profit funding.

This shocking revelation should be no surprise in hindsight. In fact, Sanghvi has been running deficits for years without any apparent concern that would have required her to deliver stern warnings to her colleagues on the Council about the need to restrain spending or raise taxes.

As just one example, readers may recall that this blogger expressed alarm about accepting a grant to pay for 16 firefighters for 3 years, which would require the city to maintain these positions for another 2 years.

Making matters worse, former Mayor Ron Kim negotiated a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the firefighters’ union that requires the city to continue paying these firefighters in perpetuity, as the MOU commits the city to maintain four-person crews on engines. Kim had been urged by the city’s labor lawyer to include a sunset clause, but Kim ignored this warning, and the then-sitting Council, including Sanghvi, approved the agreement.

The cost of these additional firefighters to the city is well over $1.5 million a year. Here is a link to an earlier published blog piece.

There is a strong argument that, for safety reasons, having four fighters on a truck is a good policy. On the other hand, the cost for this is onerous. The cities of Troy and Schenectady use three on a truck because of the enormous expense. Michele Madigan, who preceded Sanghvi as Finance Commissioner, strongly supported the smaller crews given the cost.

Sanghvi ignored these concerns and, as Finance Commissioner, helped pass the MOU. Sanghvi assured her colleagues and the public that she could set aside sufficient funds to handle this. This was the kind of magical thinking that has marked her terms as Commissioner.

Sanghvi’s Unenviable Legacy Of Deficit Spending:

For The Year Ending December 31, 2023, The City Ran A Deficit Of $3,501,005.00

For The Year Ending December 31, 2024, The City Ran A Deficit Of $1,732,851.00.

For The Current Year (2025), Sanghvi Estimated The Deficit Will Be Approximately $3,500,000.00

Sanghvi continues to overspend. This number will not be final until the books are closed, but one of Sanghvi’s emails projected a loss of $3,500,000.00 that will have to be covered by the city’s dwindling reserves.

Sanghvi Overestimates City’s Financial Reserves

As Sanghvi has been continually dipping into the city’s reserves to cover the deficits she has been running, it is particularly concerning that the auditors have warned that Sanghvi overestimated the unassigned fund balance (reserves) at the end of 2024 by $1,000,000.00.

This year is not over. The exact numbers will not be available until the books are closed and the 2025 audit is completed.

The Participatory Budgeting Conundrum

In light of the city’s emerging financial difficulties, Sanghvi’s zealous advocacy for participatory budgeting reflects the arbitrariness of her decisions.

In this clip from the November 14, 2024, budget workshop, Sanghvi assures Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll that, in light of the city’s fiscal problems, she is removing the funding for Participatory Budgeting.

Sanghvi’s attempt to spin away from her earlier commitment.

I am sympathetic to the ideas put forward by the community for Participatory Budgeting.

The problem is that, given Commissioner Sanghvi’s record of arbitrary decisions and her unwillingness to be granular in analyzing and prioritizing the city’s finances, I have no confidence in her 2026 budget. Only after the auditors have met publicly with this year’s or next year’s incoming Council to discuss the city’s finances and after incoming Commissioner of Finance JoAnne Kiernan, who has worked as a certified public accountant, has been able to go through the books, should the city decide on the viability of continuing Sanghvi’s PB program.

The Auditor’s Report For 2024

This is the complete audit.

This is an excerpt from the auditor’s findings, which include two items identified in 2023 that remain unresolved a year later.

These are Sanghvi’s assurances that they will be fixed. Note that some of them project the fix date as 12/31/2026, meaning it will be her successor who will have to clean up her mess.