Filling DPW Vacancy Part 2: A Special Election in 2024? Not So Fast: Moran and Sanghvi Operate In Alternative Universe

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.