Author: John Kaufmann

Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi have continued to insist that they will not agree to move forward to appoint someone to fill the vacancy created when Commissioner of Public Works Jason Golub resigned until the city establishes a date for a special election. Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll have expressed concerns that setting a date and organizing an election are not simple tasks and have argued plans to make a temporary appointment can and should move forward while election issues are being addressed.

Moran and Sanghvi have repeatedly rejected proposals by Safford to begin interviewing the six candidates who have expressed interest in being appointed to fill the vacancy. The two instead continued to accuse Coll and Safford of using their concerns about the propriety of some of the proposed election plans as an excuse to block a special election despite both Coll and Safford repeatedly stating their support for one as long as it was legal.

In the meantime, as proof of the relevance of Coll’s and Safford’s reservations, Moran has called for six different dates for a special election over the last month and a half as he has bumbled his way forward. He has proposed various dates in November, as well as in December and January including November 5, the date of the Presidential election. This was clearly illegal given the date of Golub’s resignation, but Moran didn’t bother to confirm this before pushing for it (as did ill-informed members of the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee who turned up at public comment to support the November 5 date) . Moran has never explained his rationale for choosing these various dates nor has he discussed his reasons for continually abandoning one date and moving on to another.

In frustration, Safford and Coll presented a resolution at the Council’s October 11 pre-agenda meeting that stated the entire Council supported a special election and granted Moran, as Commissioner of Accounts, full authority to take whatever actions were required to hold one.

Here is the resolution:

So, having gotten a resolution establishing his authority over selecting a date and organizing the election, what did Moran do? He announced he would vote against the resolution.

When you watch the video below of the meeting, remember that Moran carries on lengthy attacks on Mayor Safford and airs other grievances despite the fact that the proposed resolution would give him full authority to shepherd to fruition the special election he claimed to be seeking.

Among his many grievances, Moran claimed the Saratoga County Republican Commissioner of Elections (the county appoints one Democrat and one Republican Commissioner) had already stated publicly that he will not approve a special election for Saratoga Springs. Moran did not indicate where he had gotten this information, and there is no record of the Saratoga County Republican Commissioner of Elections, Joe Suhrada, opposing the election either in the media or in any correspondence with the city before the pre-agenda meeting.

Moran consistently opposes anything Mayor Safford proposes no matter what the substance. His ploy this time to avoid supporting Safford’s resolution was to insist he would only vote for it if the resolution were amended to add that the city would sue the county if Suhrada blocked the special election. This was, to say the least, an unusual demand since the city obviously cannot pass a resolution authorizing a lawsuit before any offensive action has actually been taken.

Not surprisingly, Moran’s intemperate remarks about the Republican Saratoga County Election Commissioner prompted an equally intemperate response from Suhrada later that week. Moran pointed out that Suhrada is also the chair of the Saratoga County Republican Party, but up until recently, Moran was the vice chair of the Saratoga County Democratic Committee. His name as vice chair is still on the county website, but he told the Council he no longer held that title. Long time Democratic Election Commissioner Bill Fruci was the County Democratic Committee treasurer during his time in office and the current Democratic Commissioner Cassy Bagramian was a member of the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee.

An Excerpt From The Pre-Agenda Meeting

Dillon Moran: “I have a target on my back.”

At the regular meeting of October 15, 2024, the Council took up the Mayor’s resolution. Moran voted against the resolution again, but this time for a different reason.

Gone was the demand that the resolution contain a declaration that the city would sue the county. Moran now claimed that giving him the authority to pursue the election would, in his words, “put a target on my back.” He claimed that, somehow, this would allow “the Mayor’s friends” to sue him.

Moran chose the opportunity of this discussion to oddly wander into an attack on those criticizing him for hiring a lawyer at $1,250.00 an hour.

Commissioner Sanghvi asked City Attorney Tony Izzo to come to the microphone. She asked him whether this resolution would make Moran individually vulnerable to a lawsuit. Izzo responded that if there were lawsuits, they would be directed to the entire Council as it was a Council decision.

Despite this, Moran voted against the resolution. In a rare split between Moran and Sanghvi, Sanghvi voted along with Safford and Coll to adopt the resolution which passed

Video Excerpt Of Discussion And Vote For Mayor’s Resolution

Politicians Behaving Badly

In the October 17, 2024, edition of the Times Union, Saratoga County Republican Commissioner of the Board of Elections Joe Suhrada threw down the gauntlet in response to the city’s proposal to have a special election on January 28. In language reminiscent of Moran, he called the idea of having an election in late January a “horrible idea.”

In a wandering statement, again reminiscent of Moran, he cited multiple reasons for refusing to allow an election. He vigorously asserted that having an election in late January would discourage participation, whereas having the election in November of 2025 would draw more people.

He then told the TU that the city should seek clarification from the New York State Attorney General as they had been directed to do by the NY State Board of Elections weeks ago.

In a further bizarre twist, the New York State Board of Elections refused to comment on the debacle, asserting that it was a local matter.

The original letter to the city from the state Board of Elections claimed that a special election was impossible. It referred the city to the New York State Attorney General’s Office regarding the city’s authority in the matter as stated in the city charter. The city has reached out to the Attorney General’s office but has yet to receive a reply.

According to David Harper, the city attorney, the state Board of Elections told him in a phone call that the letter they had sent was in error and that the city could hold an election. So, for the state Board of Elections to now refuse to comment to the Times Union on the local conflict was particularly strange.

Can The Adults Please Step In

It should be clear now that Mayor Safford and Commissioner Coll’s concern that the city proceed cautiously and cooperatively with the county in pursuing a special election was merited.

The Council has made it clear that it wants a special election. The question is what is the way forward? Moran and Suhrada seem unfortunately to share some common character traits that will make putting an election together challenging.

In a previous post, I wrote that Joe O’Neill, the Deputy Commissioner of Public Works, had resigned.

At the October 15, 2024, council meeting, O’Neill was seated with the other deputies. Dillon Moran made a show of his presence, telling those present that a certain blogger had misreported O’Neill’s resignation.

Moran apparently was unaware of O’Neill’s situation.

O’Neill had been in a civil service position when he became deputy commissioner of public works. To protect himself if a different commissioner did not want him as deputy, he worked out a deal by returning to his civil service job at intervals; if a new commissioner didn’t want him as deputy, he could return to his civil service job.

Things Did Not Work Out

Following the allegations of abuse at public works and the police investigation, O’Neill attempted to resign as deputy and return to his civil service job. The city’s HR (human resources) advised him and confirmed by civil service that he was no longer eligible to return to his previous civil service position.

O’Neill gave up on the change and returned to deputy.

Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran never seizes to amaze.

1. In his proposed 2025 department budget, Moran has included over $6,000.00 in on-call pay for his Deputy, Stacey Connors. One would think that the ongoing criminal investigation into him and his Deputy on this issue would have made him cautious. Instead, he seems to have just doubled down.
2. Reliable sources tell me that he has generated another $12,000.00 in bills with his downstate attorney over the on-call scandal on top of the $60,000.00 plus approved by Jason Golub, Minita Sanghvi, and Moran (a clear conflict of interest). He has not submitted the new bills for payment yet. The city is currently enjoined from paying the original bill pending a decision by Judge Freestone. I assume he is waiting for her final decision before submitting this additional bill he has accrued to the Council.
3. In the October 4, 2024, edition of the Saratogian, Dillon Moran is quoted making the following false statement about Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll and particularly Mayor John Safford:

They (Mayor Safford and Commissioner Coll) don’t want to have the election,” Moran said following the meeting. “The mayor has told me, to my face, he does not want an election. Maybe he forgets, I don’t know, but literally I had conversations with him today that he completely either forgot or ignored or refuses to acknowledge.

This is false as anyone who followed what passed for a discussion at the Council table knows. In fact, earlier in the same article, the paper reports that Mayor Safford was for the election. It is grotesque but not out of character that he would try to slander the Mayor by inventing the alleged conversation.

It is hard to report on Dillon Moran without appearing shrill because his behavior is extraordinarily dishonest and manipulative, even by today’s dreadful standards of politics.

I used to speak to Moran, but over a year ago, I stopped. Routinely, he would promise to send me documents supporting his statements and then not do so. He frequently told me things that were clearly false. As anyone who has dealt with Moran on the phone knows, it is hard to politely end the conversation. I was forced to advise him that anything he wanted to say to me, he should put in writing. He has never sent me an email or responded to an emailed question since then.

Dr. Pushi Prasad contacted me about an upcoming lecture at Skidmore College. Dr. Prasad is the Zankel Chair Professor in Management for Liberal Arts Students at the college and is an interesting thinker. Any recommendation from her is well worth considering.

I know that many of the people who follow this blog are supporters of Donald Trump, but I also know that many are intellectually curious and willing to engage with people who may not share their views.

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“Entrepreneurship versus Democracy: American Business Culture and the Road to Trump” 

“American business culture prizes little else as highly as entrepreneurship, which seems like a synonym for prosperity, innovation, and even freedom itself. But our celebration of entrepreneurship has a dark side. As our speaker will argue, efforts to promote entrepreneurship have often encouraged deference to charismatic leadership and suspicion of collective action, laying the groundwork for our current crisis of democracy.” 

There is a point at which meaningless repetition takes on a comic theatre of the absurd dimension. Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran reached that threshold at the October 1, 2024, City Council meeting.

At this meeting Moran once again tried to get his fellow Council members to hire what would essentially amount to a personal attorney for his department.

Council members have repeatedly told Moran that the city already has an attorney and he cannot have his own. Even former Mayor Ron Kim rejected a similar request Moran made under the previous administration.

Fearless and oblivious to the absurdity of his fruitless demands, at the October 1, 2024, City Council meeting, Moran yet again submitted a contract for approval of an attorney on his agenda. This time, he added language about the attorney helping to review contracts, apparently hoping that no one on the Council would notice that the contract still also contained the original broad authority for attorneys to assist with “general legal matters.”

In the video, Moran waves a handful of papers, reminiscent of Joe McCarthy’s lists of alleged communists. Moran’s fist full of papers were allegedly city contracts that he said hadn’t been reviewed by the city attorneys. He did this knowing that his fellow Council members had been advised in the following email that every request he made to the city attorneys regarding contract review had been responded to on a timely basis.

His colleagues on the Council were clearly done taking his demands seriously. Their body language says it all. Even his loyal ally Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi failed to second his motion and pretended to be unaware of the vote as she shuffled her papers with her head down and failed to respond to the Mayor’s request for yeas and nays. Moran’s motion failed once again with his vote the only one in favor.

At one point, Dillon noticed that David Harper, the City Attorney, sitting in the audience, was chuckling. Harper is the nameless target of Moran’s fury in this video.

My wife Jane Weihe and I knew Tom McTygue for more than fifty years and in spite of our differences over the years were always quite fond of him and admired and respected his many accomplishments that contributed so much to Saratoga Springs.

In the mid 1980s, Jane and Tom ran competing slates for the Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee’s seats. Jane’s slate prevailed.

Their campaigns were prompted by differences over a proposed development at Exit 14. Tom supported it, and Jane opposed it.

Jane and Tom went on to run together on the Democratic slate in the city elections the following year. Tom’s response to the committee defeat was emblematic of the man and stands in sharp contrast to the toxic divisive world of politics on today’s Council.

“Our differences were over issues and never personal ,” Jane observes. “In contrast to the current Democratic Committee, there was room for our disagreements over the years. As long as I was direct with Tom about our differences, I felt there was never any acrimony.”

Tom was a doer who dedicated his life to improving the city through the many projects that are the foundation of Saratoga’s prosperity today. One of his crowning achievements was the restoration of the Canfield Casino. This was an enormously difficult and challenging project, but Tom loved the challenge. He immersed himself in the historical details and worked with the craftsmen who created today’s gem.

This was just one of many other projects, which included everything from organizing a team of young people who used an old fire truck called “Flower Power” in the summer to move throughout the city to water and maintain the many flower beds that McTygue added to the city landscape, to the more technical problems of resolving the city’s many drainage issues.

Tom did not have time for prolonged feuds because he always needed his opponents’ support for the next enterprise to improve the city that he loved.

Jane and I send our deepest condolences to his wife, Sandy, and family.

Jane and I will miss him.

I expect that the readers of this blog are as tired as I am of the chronicles documenting Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi’s misrepresentations, badgering, and false statements.

This most recent Saratoga Springs City Council meeting on September 17, 2024, was particularly disturbing. Moran and Sanghvi simply used this meeting, as they have done regularly, to spread false information and berate and try to humiliate Mayor John Safford. The meeting included patently untrue statements by them, but because the Mayor’s and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll’s responses are quietly civil, these two men are drowned out by Moran and Sanghvi.

Once again, the issue was filling the vacancy created when Jason Golub resigned his position as Commissioner of Public Safety. As described in the previous post, both Sanghvi and Moran had submitted badly flawed resolutions at the September 3 Council meeting that did not pass, calling for a special election in 2024. Moran had placed his defeated motion on the agenda (twice!) for the September 17 meeting.

Given the document from the New York State Board of Elections that was in the hands of all the Council members, why did Moran bother to reintroduce his resolution that had failed twice at the previous meeting, and why did the contentious discussion of a special election consume so much of the Council’s time and energy?

The State Board of Elections Letter

The Council had asked City Attorney Tony Izzo to seek an opinion from the New York State Board of Elections regarding the viability of holding a special election to fill Golub’s vacancy . The following was the Board’s response, which indicates, as I read it, that the special election pushed for by Moran and Sanghvi for this year cannot take place. The letter states, “Under state law, a vacancy that occurs after that date (August 5, 2024) would be on the ballot to fill the vacancy in November of 2025.” In spite of pressure from the city Democratic Committee, Golub left his position after this date.

Here is the letter:

Commissioner Coll and Mayor John Safford have repeatedly stated that they were in full support of holding a special election to fill this vacancy, but they wanted to make sure that such an election would be legal. Sanghvi and Moran have repeatedly characterized their position incorrectly as being opposed to holding an election to fill Golub’s vacancy.

This letter was circulated to all the Council members and their deputies. Despite Commissioner Coll’s interjection of its existence during the Council’s deliberations, neither Moran nor Sanghvi acknowledged it, nor did the press when it covered this meeting.

The letter does decline to address anything in the city’s charter related to elections and suggests that such questions should be directed to the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

So the language in the letter from the New York State Board of Elections can be read two ways.

Their declaration that there can be no special election until 2025 can be seen as unequivocal on the one hand. On the other hand, the letter declined to address the language in the local charter. This blogger considers it a stretch to believe that the letter allowed for the possibility that the language of the city’s charter superseded state law. Still, an argument can be made to that effect.

In an earlier post, I explored this issue of the contradictory language regarding special elections in the city charter.

What appears crystal clear to this blogger is that the legality of holding a special election is, at a minimum, unclear. Coll and Safford were more than reasonable in asking our city’s attorneys to rigorously resolve the outstanding legal issues before proceeding.

A Resolution on a Special Election Passes

In the end the resolution put forward originally by Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi and then modified by Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran at the September 3 Council meeting was passed unanimously, but only after a significant friendly amendment offered by Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll was accepted requiring an opinion from the City Attorney that the election being requested by Moran was lawful.

Moran and the media focused on the original part of the resolution, proclaiming that an election to fill Golub’s seat before the end of the year would now be held. A careful look at the amendment to the resolution, coupled with the document from the New York State Board of Elections presented at the meeting, indicates that the legality of holding a special election in 2024 is, at a minimum, unclear.

Nevertheless, when the amended resolution passed unanimously, Moran proclaimed, “We’re having an election, people.”

Every major media outlet covering the meeting had headlines trumpeting Moran’s statement that with the adoption of this resolution, a special election will be held this year. More rigorous reporters would have taken note of the significance of Coll’s amendment.

It should be noted that reporters are not the authors of the headlines for their stories. However, it is reasonable to argue that the poverty of their reporting prompted these headlines.

Headlines In Local Media

Saratogian Newspaper

‘We’re having an election people’:Saratoga Springs City Council can start process on filling empty Public Works Commissioner seat’

Daily Gazette

Saratoga Springs to hold special DPW commissioner election by end of year

Times Union

Special election for council seat called in Saratoga Springs

WAMC

Saratoga Springs City Council begins moving to fill DPW vacancy

Saratoga Today

Musical Chairs: City Moves to Fill Vacant Council Seat 

The Position of Mayor Safford and Commissioner Coll

Coll and Safford could have killed the resolution by simply voting no. This blogger views their response as both thoughtful and generous. They agreed to Moran and Sanghvi’s resolution as long as it included language requiring that the city’s attorneys determine the legality of the special election.

The part of the resolution directing the request for a special election to the board of elections will be meaningless if it is determined that the special election would be illegal.

I understood why Safford and Coll agreed to the compromise. They simply wanted to resolve the legality issue and end the toxic and pointless arguments.

It was especially ungracious that the last word in the discussion was Moran announcing triumphantly, “People, we will have an election.” Regrettably, he successfully got an uncritical press to publish headlines as though the issue were resolved. For thoughtful people, that “victory” is very much in doubt.

Filling The DPW Vacancy-Sanghvi and Moran have a plan but is it legal?

At the Saratoga Springs City Council meeting on September 3, 2024, Finance Commissioners Minita Sanghvi and Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran both tried to pass resolutions setting a date for a special election to fill the Commissioner of Public Works vacancy created when Jason Golub vacated the position. Notwithstanding their claims that their resolutions were based on alleged research and that they were following the city charter, both Sanghvi’s resolution and the modified one presented later by Moran were seriously flawed. Both resolutions failed. The issue was raised again at the September 17 meeting. More on that in the next post. For now-here is Round 1.

Sanghvi’s Resolution

Here is the resolution Commissioner Sanghvi put on her agenda for the September 3 City Council meeting:

A casual reading reveals the first problem with Commissioner Sanghvi’s resolution. It requests a special election, but there is no indication of who this request is being directed to. It’s kind of like “to whom it may concern.” As it turns out, there was confusion between Sanghvi and Moran as who this resolution was supposed to go to.

During the two discussions (more on that later), Moran and Sanghvi offered several explanations as to whom their request for an election would be directed. At one point, it was to the Saratoga County Board of Elections (Sanghvi), and at another, it was to the Governor (Moran), sometimes it was the Attorney General, sometimes it was the New York State Board of Elections.

Sanghvi’s resolution also set the date for the special election to coincide with the upcoming November 5 general election. She argued that doing so would save money and that, as it was a national election, it would draw the most voters.

While her arguments were valid, she seemed to have conveniently forgotten or chose just to ignore that the November 5 option had been off the table for some time. Jason Golub would have had to leave office by August 5 to allow for the 90-day window required to schedule a special election on November 5. I am told the city Democrats put considerable pressure on Golub to leave office by that date but were unsuccessful. Sanghvi had to be aware of all this.

Mayor John Safford and Public Safety Commissioner Tim Coll explained that to adopt a resolution like this that sets a specific date for a special election, the city attorneys would first need to properly research the law and provide the Council with a clarifying memorandum to ensure that they would be requesting an election that was indeed legally allowable.

Sanghvi claimed that David Harper, the City Attorney, had approved her resolution and that sending this resolution to the Saratoga County Board of Elections would somehow initiate the election. Sanghvi asserted that it was the only way to determine what procedure should be followed. Why someone couldn’t just pick up the phone and ask this question without passing a resolution requesting an election be held on a particular date was never explained by Sanghvi.

Harper was called to the microphone and told the Council members that he had simply approved the resolution’s format, not its content. He told the Council he had no expertise in election law to determine whether the resolution was consistent with city and state law. He observed that further research should be initiated.

A Pointless And Acrimonious Deliberation

It was crystal clear that neither Coll nor Safford would support a resolution adopting a date for a special election without further clarification as to the legality of the request. This did not restrain Moran and Sanghvi from offering contradictory arguments or scurrilously and falsely implying and, at times, stating outright that Coll and Safford opposed holding any election to fill the vacancy.

Commissioner Coll responded to Sanghvi by noting that he had contacted the Saratoga County Board of Elections and was told that any date selected for a special election would, at a minimum, have to allow at least a ninety-day window so that members of the armed forces could receive ballots and return them. Coll noted that an election on November 5 would not allow for this, and so while he supported having an election, this date was a non-starter for him, and he could not vote for her resolution.

Sanghvi had repeatedly justified her resolution by stating that the city charter required a special election be held to fill a vacancy when it occurs on the Council.

While section 2.4 of the charter does call for a special election to fill a vacancy under certain circumstances, Coll noted to Sanghvi that her citations from the city charter did not include Section 12.2, which requires the city to adhere to state election law. Coll argued that while he supported having a special election, it was precipitous to schedule one before the city’s attorneys could properly research state election law and advise the Council on what the legal options were.

What Does the City Charter Say About Special Elections?

The charter has conflicting sections on elections. At one point, it authorizes the Council to set a date and to run special elections to fill vacancies. In another section, it says that state election law establishes the terms the city must adhere to.

City Attorney Izzo explained to the Council that the conflict arose due to the city’s history. In 1915, the city held its own elections, including the design of ballots and the timing of all elections.

Subsequently, the New York State legislature established the terms and conditions of elections. Commissioner Sanghvi chose to focus on the language from the old charter and ignored the revision related to state election law.

City attorney Tony Izzo had informed the council that state law supersedes the section of the law continually referenced by Sanghvi and Moran, but the two simply ignored his admonishment.

This is the key section from the charter she did not cite. It reads:

12.2Primaries and municipal elections.

Provisions of the Election Law of the State of New York shall apply to all municipal elections and special elections of the City of Saratoga Springs and shall guide in all matters not provided in the Charter.

A primary election shall be held in accordance with Election Law of the State of New York in each odd-numbered year during the hours 12:00 noon until 9:00 p.m.

City Charter

The general municipal election shall be held on Tuesday succeeding the first Monday in each odd-numbered year, in accordance with Election Law of the State of New York.

Commissioner Coll Promotes Having The City Attorneys Research The Laws Before Any Action

Sanghvi And Moran Ignore Coll And Insist On A Vote (It Fails)

Sanghvi and Moran insisted that the Council adopt her resolution. As the discussion devolves, it becomes clear that the resolution has been crafted without the required research.

Sanghvi Agrees To Have The City Attorneys Research The Law And Advise The Council

Moran Insists His Colleagues Pass A Revised Resolution

Moran has somehow appropriated the authority to present the Department of Public Works agenda to the Council in the absence of a DPW Commissioner.

Despite Sanghvi’s resolution’s failure, he tweaked it, changed the date from November 5 to December 31 (New Year’s Eve), and moved to add this new version to the DPW agenda.

This was an outrageous abuse of the dubious role he had adopted in presenting the DPW business, and I am sorry the mayor did not rule him out of order.

Moran attacked Coll and Safford and insisted on a vote. Despite Sanghvi’s earlier agreement to accept having the City Attorneys research the issue, she seconded Moran’s motion.

His resolution was also defeated, and Sanghvi reverted back to supporting the City Attorneys’ research on the issue.

Moran Never Gives Up

It is worth noting that the agenda for the next Council meeting on September 16 included the exact same resolution by Moran for setting a date for a special election by December 31 twice. It appeared as part of his Accounts Department agenda and part of the DPW agenda. The next blog will explore what happened with his resolution.

Good Government Process

This dispute is the most recent unpleasant occurrence at the Council table arising from Dillon Moran’s repeated introduction of resolutions he knows will not pass.

There is a history of how governments effectively function.

An elected official who wants to pass legislation first engages his/her colleagues in private discussions, seeking their support. This is not backroom dealing, as the body must adopt legislation in a public process. If the official cannot gather a majority to support a resolution, the general course of events is that they accept that it cannot be passed and desist from pursuing it.

There are four good reasons for this.

• If a member has questions or reservations, the proponent can respond directly to the concerns or agree to find answers to the questions raised.
• If the legislation is doomed, it avoids unnecessary conflict at the table.
• If it is doomed, it avoids wasting the time of his/her colleagues by not unnecessarily prolonging their meeting.
• It has the courtesy of not prompting citizens who may oppose or support the legislation from wasting their time attending the meeting and voicing their concerns.

Of course, there are legitimate exceptions. A legislator may believe raising a doomed resolution will help inform the public. This should, however, be the exception. To chronically submit doomed legislation will, as we have observed over the last two and a half years, contribute to a toxic atmosphere that places performance over substance.

In Moran’s case, the purpose of many of his resolutions is not that they are passed but that they serve as foils for conflict and drama at the Council table.

[Lew Benton, former Commissioner of Public Safety, documents the extensive violations at the heart of the On-Call scandal]