Dillon Moran and Stacy Connors-the Bosses from Hell

Have you ever wondered what it is like to work in Saratoga Springs city hall for Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran and his Deputy, Stacy Connors? A lawsuit brought by a longtime and well-respected Accounts Department employee, Lisa Ribis, gives some chilling insights.

Ribis filed her complaint on June 18, 2024, accusing Moran of “wanton, reckless, malicious, and/or intentional….actions…” which violated New York Civil Service Law. Lisa Ribis is now the second Accounts Department employee to sue the city and Moran over his treatment of employees in his department.

Among the charges Ribis makes in her suit against Moran and Connors is that she was the subject of ethnic slurs made by Moran. This is alleged to have occurred at an office meeting on September 15, 2023, at which Moran, his deputy Stacy Connors, assistant clerk Barbara Brindisi, and assistant purchasing agent Stefanie Richards were present as well as Ms. Ribis. During the course of this meeting, Moran referred to Italians as “guinea WOPS.” Ms. Ribis was the only person present of Italian heritage.

Ribis’ complaint also alleges that Moran made a number of false accusations about her. One of the more bizarre accusations Moran is said to have made is to claim that Ms. Ribis spit on activist protesters. Anyone who knows Ms. Ribis would know that this is totally unbelievable and out of character. Should there be any doubt in anyone’s mind, one need only recall the distance between the protesters and where Ms. Ribis sat when she was taking Council meeting minutes and ponder what would have been the reaction of protesters had this occurred. Are we to believe that Commissioner Moran was the only person to have noticed this miraculous act of long-distance targeted spitting at a public meeting?

As disturbing is the lawsuit’s listing of the number of times Moran told individuals that Ms. Ribis was to blame for the changes in the On-Call pay document that led to the District Attorney’s investigation and the subsequent $61,000 attorney bill submitted by Moran and Connors.

Some Background

On April 15, 2024, Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran suspended Lisa Ribis from her position as Secretary of the City Council in an attempt to terminate her. As Ms. Ribis’ job was protected under the city and state civil service laws, Moran lacked the authority to fire her. Instead, she suffered one month without pay and subsequently was barred by Moran from returning to her job while receiving full pay until a hearing can be convened before an arbitrator to judge the merits of Moran’s action.

Moran issued the first and only formal, written criticism of Ribis when he suspended her. For those not familiar with what is required to terminate an employee, barring some egregious event, there needs to be a clear and thoroughly documented record establishing that the proposed termination is based on a chronic history of violations.

It is a testament to Moran’s impetuous and inept management that he would presume that he could prevail in his effort to fire Ms. Ribis, who has no documented history of complaints about her job performance. A darker possibility is that he is willing to waste public money to indulge in reckless, vindictive behavior.

Ms. Ribis has faithfully served the city for nineteen years, during which time she has received no criticism for her work. In fact, she has enjoyed wide respect and affection from her colleagues throughout the city.

Commissioner Moran’s campaign to terminate Ms. Ribis goes back to 2022. It all began following public comments made by her husband, Joe Ribis, at the Council meeting on February 1, 2022, during which he criticized the Council. On February 15, Ms. Ribis was removed from her duties of taking Council meeting minutes. She believes this was because of the comments her husband made. By May, Moran was requiring her to check in with Deputy Commissioner Connors every morning to find out what Connors wanted her to do that day. Ribis was the only employee in the Accounts Department required to do this. As Connors did not come to work at a regular time in the morning, this made Ribis’ work day challenging, to say the least.

As apparent retribution, Moran also refused to compensate Ms. Ribis for overtime related to her role in taking the minutes of the Council meetings. Ms. Ribis had been receiving this compensation routinely for years. In January 2023, Ribis won a grievance against Moran over his refusal to allow her to accrue compensatory time that she was contractually entitled to. His arbitrary decision to deny her compensation for overtime made no sense outside of harassment.

Moran’s False Standard For Removing Ms. Ribis

Moran’s campaign to terminate Ms. Ribis was based on alleged problems with the minutes of Council meetings she took as the Council secretary. It is interesting to note that while multiple sources report Moran accusing Ribis of altering the documents related to on-call pay, this was not cited by Moran as a reason for the firing in his suspension memo.

It is also worth considering the performance of the person he replaced Ms. Ribis with.

Under the New York State Open Meetings Law, the city is required to post the minutes of meetings publicly within two weeks. During the years Ms. Ribis was responsible for this, she scrupulously met this requirement.

Before Ms. Ribis’ suspension, Moran insisted that Deputy Connors review the draft of the minutes before allowing Ribis to upload them to the city’s website. Connors frequently ignored the required timeline in returning the minutes to Ribis for posting. This tardiness resulted in the violation of the state’s two-week requirement.

The person appointed to replace Ms. Ribis no longer has her work reviewed by Deputy Connors but routinely posts the minutes late in violation of the New York State Open Meetings Law.

In fact, the quality of Ribis’ successor’s minutes has been seriously problematic. The minutes contain many errors in punctuation and incomplete sentences. Some have the wrong dates, and most refer to Supervisor Matt Veitch as Mike Veitch.

In an especially troubling incident, Ribis’ successor misrecorded a statement Lew Benton made during the Council’s public comment period. Benton’s remarks cited Moran’s mishandling of the procedures to pay his $61,000.00 legal bill, arguing that he had violated the city’s purchasing policies. This blogger recalls Moran’s body language during Benton’s remarks. He was not happy.

Somehow, Ms. Ribis’ successor inverted Benton’s remarks in the minutes. Instead of citing Moran’s failure to adhere to city requirements, her minutes had Lew supporting the manner in which the bill was to be paid.

It is hard to understand how she could have made such an egregious error. Benton wrote to Moran (see the email at the end of this post) asking that the record be corrected. Rather than having the courtesy of responding directly to Benton, Moran had Ribis’ successor email Benton, agreeing to correct the record. The minutes have never been corrected. [Revised July 26, 2024, The minutes were revised but the revision still was not correct.]

Rather than suffering Ms. Ribis’s fate for allegedly failing to properly manage the minutes of Council meetings, her successor has not only been promoted and enjoyed an increase in salary, but Moran got civil service to upgrade her position, resulting in a further rise in pay.

A List of the Allegations In Ribis Lawsuit

1. At a council meeting on February 1, 2022, Ms. Ribis’s husband, Joe, criticized the council.
2. On February 15, 2022, Ms. Ribis was removed from council meetings and “told to sit at her desk.”
3. On March 16, 2022, Ms. Ribis was told she would no longer receive accrued compensatory time or receive overtime pay after more than thirteen years of doing so.
4. The overtime she accrued for a March 15, 2022, meeting was denied.
5. A fellow employee who took over her meeting responsibilities was granted flex time and/or accrued compensatory time.
6. On May 3, 2022, Ms. Ribis was instructed to inquire every morning of Deputy Connors, what Connors wished for her to do that day. Ms. Ribis was the only employee in the accounts department required to do this.
7. In April of 2022, Moran falsely accused Ms. Ribis of spitting on activist protestors.
8. In January of 2023, Ms. Ribis prevailed in her grievance regarding her right to compensatory time that Moran had denied her.
9. According to the filing, on May 17, 2023, assistant city clerk Barbara Brandisi and another employee in the accounts department told Ms. Ribis that Moran “…was making it seem as if the plaintiff (Ribis) was to blame for various difficulties with the agenda.”
10. On January 10, 2024, Ms. Ribis received an email from Moran requesting that she provide another employee with full access to her password-protected files. On January 12, 2023, Ms. Ribis advised Moran that to do so would violate the policy she signed with the IT department.
11. Following this incident, Ms. Ribis asserts she was”shunned” by Moran and Connors, who refused to speak to her.
12. On February 16, 2024, Moran reassigned a portion of Ms. Ribis’s duties to the Mayor’s secretary.
13. On the evening of February 16,2024, Ms. Ribis received a call from a resident advising her that Moran was accusing her of altering the contents of a city resolution. Ribis responded that this was false.
14. On March 1, 2024, at a meeting convened by Moran with Connors, Executive Assistant to the Finance Commissioner Samantha Clemmy, Deputy Commissioner of Finance Heather Crofcker, and Assistant Purchasing Agency Sefanie Richards of Accounts, Moran asked Connors if the purchasing policy was added to the city council agenda. Connors responded that she “gave it to the secretary (Ribis), but she didn’t load it in time.” Moran responded that “she (Ribis) can’t even do her [expletive] job.”
15. In reference to item #14, Connors gave the document in question to Ms. Ribis at 11:57 a.m., when the cutoff to add items was 12:00 p.m. Ms. Ribis advised Connors at 12:03 p.m. that she tried loading the document, but the system had locked out at noon. Connors responded at the time that she was aware that the system closed promptly at noon.
16. On March 5, 2024, Ms. Ribis met with Mayor Safford and his assistant, Susanna Combs. During the meeting, Ms. Ribis advised the mayor that she believed Moran was accusing her of causing the “on-call” pay issue. Mayor Safford confirmed that Moran was blaming her for the change. The change would have made Connors eligible for the additional pay.
17. On March 20, 2024, Deputy Mayor Joanne Kiernan told Ribis, “you do know Commissioner Moran is blaming you for the ‘on-call’ mess.”
18. On March 21, 2024, Mayor Safford told Ms. Ribis’s husband that Moran planned to fire Ribis for forging a document. (As far as I know, this allegation was never included in the reasons officially stated for Ms. Ribis’s termination).
19. On April 1, 2024, during a pre-agenda meeting, Connors publicly stated that the March 19, 2024, meeting minutes should be pulled from the agenda because they were “hard to follow due to sentence structure, punctuation, and tense – meaning point of view is first, second, and third throughout the minutes. They require edits and adjustments for clarity and context. Once minutes are approved, they are a permanent record of the meeting. It’s important they be accurate.” Since Ms. Ribis’s employment in 2005, this is the first time that the minutes have ever been pulled from the agenda due to errors.

Final Thoughts

It is important to acknowledge that these are allegations made by Ms. Ribis’ lawyer, Philip G. Steck, and this blogger is unaware of a response from whoever is representing Moran, Connors, and the city.

Still, for some of us who have observed Moran, these accusations have the ring of authenticity.

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Lew Benton Email Re Incorrect Statement Attributed To Him In City Council Minutes

From: Lew Benton <lewbenton@gmail.com>
Date: July 1, 2024 at 12:48:55 PM EDT
To: dillion.moran@saratoga-springs.org
Cc: John Safford <john.safford@saratoga-springs.org>, Tim Coll <Tim.Coll@saratoga-springs.org>, minita.sanghvi@saratoga-springs.org, Jason Golub <jason.golub@saratoga-springs.org>
Subject: Correction to Draft June 26, 2024  City Council Meeting

Dear Commissioner Moran,

It has been brought to my attention that the draft minutes of the City Council’s Special June 26 meeting misrepresent my statement during the meeting’s Public Comment period.

The draft minutes attribute the following statement to me.

 PUBLIC COMMENT

“Lew Benton, of Saratoga Springs, commented on the proposed resolution for payment of legal services that had been planned to be presented to the City Council at the June 18, 2024 City Council Meeting and thenwithdrawn. Benton commented he could not find the resolution that enable the use of an assignment for legal liability. Benton commented he may be incorrect in the statement there were no resolutions for a legal liability assignment, and stated that he was unable tofind one. Lew Benton recommended the Council to reference Public Officer Law Section 18 regarding determination ofdefense and indemnification of officers and employees of public entities. Benton commented thatthe prerequisites to a resolution are the City Charter, City Code, and Public Officer’s Laws. Benton commented that the City Attorney’s pay attention to the issues and Benton recommended the assignment of independent council for this issue.”

I have reviewed a transcription of my comments.  I made NO such suggestion that “ …an assignment of independent counsel for this issue.” be made.  Attributing this false statement to me turns one its head the essence of my statement: i .e., that no assignment can be made unless and until a City Council approved contract with the independent counsel has been reviewed and approved.

In significant part the transcription of my remarks included the following: “Thus far I have bot been ale to discover any resolution that was previously adopted by this council that would authorize the assignment of special independent counsel to any member of the council or authorize payment.  The City Charter is clear. No such arrangement can be entered into without benefit of formal contract approved by the City Council.”

I did not recommend assignment but rather informed the Council that it was without authority to adopt the resolution on the finance commissioner’s agenda unless and until a Charter demanded contract was authorized.

Please delete the false statement in the draft minutes and insert “Thus far I have bot been ale to discover any resolution that was previously adopted by this council that would authorize the assignment of special independent counsel to any member of the council or authorize payment.  The City Charter is clear. No such arrangement can be entered into without benefit of formal contract approved by the City Council.”

Thank you.

Lew Benton 

70 Railroad Place

Saratoga Springs