For the last two years, the New York State Attorney General’s Civil Rights Bureau has been investigating interactions between the City of Saratoga Springs and Black demonstrators and potential misuses of police authority. Past officials, including former Mayor Meg Kelly and former Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton, have complied with the probe, which has not yet been publicly released.
As he prepares to leave office after a two-year term, Democratic Mayor Ron Kim is preparing to share with current and incoming city councilors tonight a memorandum detailing his administration’s interactions with the AG’s office.
Kim notes in his memo that he was told by the New York State Attorney General’s Office that the investigation has concluded and that a “final report” is imminent. He also provides several specific steps that he believes could be included as part of a “consent agreement” to ensure the city is in compliance with recommendations from Attorney General Tish James' office.
In a statement after WAMC published this interview, a spokesperson for James says "We are disappointed that details from private and preliminary settlement conversations were shared without our knowledge or approval."
Former city Public Safety Commissioner Robin Dalton, who was deposed in the investigation, criticized Kim’s decision to share sensitive information.
“I think it’s wildly irresponsible to speculate or discuss something as significant as a report coming from the Attorney General’s office before it’s actually been released.”
In an exclusive interview, WAMC’s Lucas Willard spoke with the outgoing mayor about his memo…
So, when I took office, I was not fully informed about the attorney general's investigation into the former administration. So, this investigation dates back to 2020 and 2021 and actions by that city council, former mayor Meg Kelly and former Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton. When I came into office, I was not given much background on this, except I was told, at one point in time, that everything had been completed, the city had fully disclosed, worked with the AG’s office, and in fact, things were moving forward on the investigation. About a year after I was told that, and this is what my memo details, I found out that essentially, none of that was true, that the AG’s investigation had not received a lot of information that they were requiring, that they had essentially subpoenaed the city for. So, when I, you know, at the end of this term, since I'm not returning, I thought it was really important that I do two things: fully informed the city council, not only the existing city council who will remain, but also the successors, the new mayor and the new Commissioner of Public Safety, because obviously, they are also going to be very much implicated in this. So, this, this memo is an attempt to basically establish continuity to give people background, not only the city councilors, but also our public, because the other part of this, is that this consumed an enormous amount of our administration's time in terms of attorneys time, in terms of the mayor's office who supervises the attorney's office, and I thought it was important that they understand where we are in this investigation.
Unfortunately, we had anticipated that there would be something definitive from the New York State Attorney General's office, there is not anything definitive. But what this memo does is lays out what our administration did to not only meet the requests of the attorney general's office, but also it lays out what we were told would be perhaps their corrective, their recommendations as to corrective measures. What happens after January 1? I don't know. But I'm going to make sure that the mayor is fully, the new mayor is fully informed, the new Commissioner of Public Safety are fully informed as to what we did, and then I’ll hand off the ball to them.
So the Attorney General's Office has not asked you to formally agree to any corrective steps at this time, is that correct?
No. They have…the information that I'm going to be providing to city council in the memorandum that I've put together for this basically discloses that we had several meetings with them over the course of approximately 18 to 20 months. During those meetings, they discussed with us several problems. They saw some challenges as to both how we were dealing with the subpoenas in the first place, but also how, you know, what their investigation was revealing, but they have not firmly, firmly said to us, ‘Here's what we believe you should do.’ And of course, that could be something that the city disputes and decides not to follow, but you know, that would be more of a judicial process. I took the approach of saying, ‘If there's a way that the city could work together with the AG’s office to resolve this, I think that's better.’ We've already spent almost $100,000 in outside attorney’s fees that was not budgeted in our either our 2023 or 2024 budgets to do this. So, to me, the best way is if we can resolve this without continuing to pay attorneys, but we haven't gotten any final order or recommendation from them.
Mayor Kim, your memo outlines the city is compliance with subpoenas from the AG’s office, and those continued into 2023. The investigation began in 2021. Do you have any thoughts as to why the AG’s office continued to request information from the city?
I think there were maybe two things. One was, as my memo details, there were deficiencies in our responses. One of the realities of our government, which is somewhat strange to others, that municipal governments, is that we have really five separate governments each with their own prerogatives, their own commissioner who runs the place. And so, for instance, we have to rely on them to provide requested documents from the New York AG’s office. The mayor is not telling the Commissioner of Public Safety, ‘You must provide this.’ He's not telling the Commissioner of Accounts, ‘You must provide this.’ He's providing all the resources for them to get us the information, make sure they understand that there's a subpoena out there that demands it, and understands what the ramifications are if we don't comply, but it's still up to them. So, one of the I think, reasons that we had so many meetings with them, was they frankly, came to us several times and said, ‘You're not doing the job. You're not providing the documents.’ And it seemed clear to me that they, in their own investigations, were seeing big gaps and I pointed that in the memo. The other reason I think that they may have continued to ask for information well into our administration, was that, of course, as you know, there were a few instances in our city council meetings, I tried to prevent these, where unfortunately, individuals were arrested. And one of the specific concerns they had was that people who are attending our meetings should not, simply because they're speaking to the city council addressing them exercising their First Amendment rights, should be arrested. So, I do think that that continuing action that occurred during our city council meetings, even though I tried to prevent it, was one of the other reasons that they continue to ask for information in our administration.
Your office, responding to a FOIL request from WAMC, and as I understand from other outlets, did release text messages and other exchanges that may have been subpoenaed or provided to the attorney general's office following a request for regarding city officials ongoing, past interactions regarding BLM protesters. Why do you find it a duty to release this memo ahead of the release of the AG’s report?
Because I only have a certain more amount of time left and I really felt it was important that if the AG wasn't going to be acting in 2023, that I had to make sure the public was aware, one, what we spent resources on, both time and monetary resources, and then, as you can see from our timeline in the memorandum, we spent a lot of time on it. This was not an insignificant amount of time that the city attorney's and the mayor's office, who oversees the city attorney's office, spent to basically do what they could to comply with this and also, we actually took some of the preliminary steps that the AG’s office was recommending. So, for instance, one of the things they identified that we took to heart, was that our city has no routine way of collecting, for instance, text messages and phone records off of cellular phones issued by the city that are used by various personnel working for the city. We have now acquired software that will do that. It has not, unfortunately, been implemented, because in our sort of crazy form of government, the IT department has to do that and we don't direct them. But we have made it clear to the Commissioner of Finance, that this is something that we think should be a priority as soon as it can to be implemented. So those are the kinds of, so we did, you know, even implement, start implementing some of the things that we thought made sense that would help do this job better in the future. There are other things that we should be doing. But those will, we'll have to wait until a formal recommendation from the AG’s office occurs.
Are there any steps that you think that the city should take before the next city council comes in? Is there anything that you will be pushing for? There's tonight's meeting, and then there's also the final meeting of the year, that’s scheduled for next week. Is it your wish to possibly introduce or discuss any other reforms for the way the city operates in regards to free speech, protests, or the police department?
I am probably going to leave most of that to the next administration, because there really are so few, there's so little time left. I certainly have my ideas. There were things that we did during our administration, whether it be the Restorative Justice Panel, or asking, I asked the Commissioner of Public Safety for a specific report on how we complied with the Police Reform Task Force recommendations. So, we did a lot of that during my term. But there are clearly more steps that I think we need to do. And, but, I don't think we will have time, a lot of those other recommendations beyond, you know, purchasing software, changing a few procedures here and there, are going to take some time.
Attorney General Memorandum by WAMC News on Scribd
