Controversy is brewing in the Saratoga County town of Clifton Park over supposed sexual harassment complaints against Clifton Park’s town attorney. The tensions reflect larger political debates in the municipality, the region, and the entire country.
Sam Dingman spoke with WAMC's Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine to get us up to speed on the political scuffle.
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: So, on September 15, in a regular town council meeting during the public comment period, Anthony Morelli, who was a former deputy supervisor and current candidate for town supervisor, a Republican, brought up two sexual harassment complaints against Town Attorney Kevin Dailey. Kevin Dailey turned around and called that slanderous and unfounded, having had apparently no knowledge of those complaints even existing. Phil Barrett, who is the current and for the past 30 years supervisor of the town, he's a Republican, said that the board had known about those complaints since August. The council had previously voted no to go into executive session again. It's kind of important to note that right now you've got two Republicans and three Democrats, so there had been a bit of a stall to even get apparently this conversation rolling. Some people seeing it as a non-issue, and then the Republicans on the board having pursued a conversation about this unsuccessfully, supposedly causing this Republican candidate who is not in the employ of the town currently to speak out about it and bring that to the fore during a public hearing.
Dingman: And the current town attorney against whom these accusations have been made, Kevin Dailey, is he a Democrat?
Shellow-Lavine: He is a Democrat. Yeah, and he was appointed, elected in part to serve in that role by the three Democrats who are currently on the board earlier this year.
Dingman: The town eventually, as I understand it, retained outside counsel to investigate this. What did that investigation find?
Shellow-Lavine: So only after again these this these complaints were brought up and discussed publicly instead of in an executive session. A local attorney was hired to investigate the alleged complaints. There's two of them, and then another firm was also appointed by the town council to look into whether anybody within the town had released that confidential information about you know these complaints. A town employee overheard Dailey having a conversation that they assumed was with a healthcare provider. Brought it up to Dailey, said, "Hey, you know, close your door next time you're having that kind of conversation." Dailey appeared surprised and then very briefly discussed a possible medical condition that happens quote when you get older. So maybe not an appropriate thing to be talking about in the workplace, but again, the attorney who investigated it said, you know, they found it to be nothing more than an offensive work utterance. So, Dailey called a couple of members of the press to the Clifton Park Town Hall yesterday, pretty much to lay out his version of things, and had this to say:
Kevin Dailey: The matter was confidential, but Mr. Morelli stated that he was not bound by that confidentiality. If Mr. Morelli was not acquainted with the so-called charges and still made them, he was stupid. If in fact he was familiar with the charges and still made them public, he was lying to the public. So, what are you, Mr. Morelli? Are you stupid or are you a liar?
Shellow-Lavine: And so, for the other investigation into how Morelli obtained the information about the complaints, Phil Barrett, again the longtime Republican leader of the town apparently blocked that firm from getting access to the town's emails, saying, "I will not authorize an open-ended witch hunt against town employees. No information has been shared with me about this process. This is simply a false narrative constructed to divert attention from the real issue, we have asked Morelli for comment on his response to what Kevin Dailey said about him, and also just to see if he wants to share how he heard of these complaints. And as of right now, as we are recording this, we = have not heard back from him.
Dingman: Well, Aaron, I mean this kind of boiling over of political tension, obviously, it's not exactly a new thing, just in general, and also not a new thing on your beat, the Saratoga Springs beat.
Shellow-Lavine: Yeah, I mean, within the recent number of years, both I and the immutable Lucas Willard can talk to the fact that Saratoga Springs politics can get very messy, especially within City Hall, there were a number of public displays of sort of you know feuds. There are videos being posted to Facebook of very raucous Clifton Park town board meetings now. So I sat down with Skidmore political science professor Bob Turner. He sees three distinct things happening.
Bob Turner: The Republicans have controlled Clifton Park with a you know an absolute or near absolute majority since 1992, and so much of the conflict that would have happened happened in house behind closed doors, and there wasn't the sort of. Political conflict, or there rather there weren't other challengers who were raised those things to another issue.
Shellow-Lavine: He also said, at least as number two, this is a good example of what folks in his field call politics by other means. So think Watergate, essentially electoral politics being replaced with media leaks and investigations, scandals and judicial proceedings as the way politicians can discredit their opponent, and then third but not least is that you know presidents really set the tone for a political era. This is not necessarily a coincidence that we're seeing this happen at a local level, and then also it shouldn't be unfamiliar to anybody paying attention to how politics are unfolding at the national scene.
Turner: I think the hallmark of the Trump era has been a pugnacious, adversarial, take no prisoners political style. Your opponents don't just have the wrong views on issue where you disagree on those policy issues. You know they are your enemies? They are to be opposed. Media is a institution to be distrusted, and one should use all means necessary to try to vanquish and destroy your opponent.
Dingman: This is obviously, as you said, a very messy situation, Aaron. What are your takeaways, having looked into all of this and had this conversation with Professor Turner?
Shellow-Lavine: I think at least you know locally the impact of it will still is yet to be seen. We've got an election next Tuesday. I mean, I've heard Anthony Morelli could be leading the town board, you know, in the near future. So that certainly could play out in an interesting way, but we're also waiting on another investigation into again that second apparent sexual harassment complaint. So we we will of course have to wait for that for further updates. Reporting on this is taking a lot of of untangling. So we will we will keep our attention there for the time being.
