A series of Warren County board member emails related to a potential winter storm, and whether County Supervisor Andrea Hogan was treated fairly in them, has boiled over as a tempest that either shook Hogan to her core and forced her to resign, pushed the Glens Falls Democratic committee to censure one of their own — Ward 2 Supervisor Peter McDevitt — or created a tempest in a teapot, as McDevitt says, brought on by people who have never held office.
[Read a clarification to this story, here.]
Discussions over the mid-December emails were first reported by the Post-Star last month.
McDevitt sent County Board emails, which are public records, to June Maxam of the North Country Gazette in an attempt, officials wrote in their censure of McDevitt, to stir up controversy for his fellow Democrat and Supervisor Andrea Hogan of Johnsburg.
“The Committee found that McDevitt knowingly used his official Warren County government email account to forward an email to a blog writer with the intent of causing personal and professional harm to that Supervisor,” a press release about the censure said.
McDevitt sees the censure, which carries little legal weight, as having more to do with the angry nature of current politics than with the facts on the ground.
“Over the last two years the Warren County Board of Supervisors has been nothing short of a zoo,” McDevitt wrote in a statement released Friday after the censure. He did not respond to further requests for comment from FoothillsBusinessDaily.com. “The employees and staff have been A Plus and doing a great job. It is how certain elected officials talk to others, it’s beyond the scope of decency…The Committee and its actions are out of line.”
Glens Falls Democratic Committee Chair Margaret Farrell, who has been an elected official in Glens Falls, said that McDevitt’s behavior went beyond releasing the emails. She accused him in an interview Monday of releasing not just public emails but internal Democratic Party minutes to outside sources. She admitted that was harder to prove.
Glens Falls Ward 3 Supervisor Claudia Braymer said freely releasing the emails was enough, though she agreed that McDevitt likely has released other information.
“It’s [the emails are] about the weather. There’s not like county secrets in there,” Braymer said in an interview Monday. “It's not like you're trying to give her [June Maxam] really important scoop on county information, it's because you know she attacks Andrea Hogan every minute about every little thing."
Braymer, who ran for chair of the county board and lost in part because McDevitt and other Democrats did not support her, said she was frustrated that a county board member used the county email system to disseminate information simply hoping it would be used to smear a colleague.
At the first meeting of the new year, a near-distraught and frustrated Hogan pleaded with other board members to take action on the harassment issue, going as far as to call for McDevitt’s expulsion from his seat. Hogan also expressed her concern about the board’s diversity, and its lack of female representation.
“I’m afraid that this kind of harassment further discourages other women from running for public office,” said Hogan, as she held back tears at the early-January meeting.
Supervisor Claudia Braymer vehemently supported Hogan’s motion.
Hogan’s motion was flatly rejected, with the other male members on the Board of Supervisors protecting McDevitt from his expulsion.
After the meeting, members of the public confronted McDevitt in the stairwell and told him to resign. He remained silent as he exited the building.
Earlier this month, Hogan announced her resignation. She is expected to step down in February.
“I was very upset that Supervisor Hogan found it necessary to resign, but I can understand why,” said Chairwoman Margaret Farrell.
As part of this discussion is the question of where Hogan and Rachel Seeber, the Queensbury Supervisor who resigned earlier today, are living.
Without naming them, McDevitt said in his statement that "two supervisors who for the last several months have not resided in the town’s they were elected to serve and continue to collect paychecks. I have a problem with this. Supervisor John Strough and I brought this forward, and nothing has happened."
Again Braymer said this was a non-issue as people spend time out of their districts visiting family and friends. They take jobs outside their districts as well. Hogan has taken work in Maine.
Hogan did not respond to a request for comment.
The full Warren County Democratic Committee is expected to take up this issue. Their next meeting is in February.