‘You’re out of line’: Emails reveal rift between Holyoke mayor, longtime city councilor
HOLYOKE — "A desperate liar."
That's what City Councilor David Bartley called Mayor Joshua Garcia in an October email.
"You're the last guy I ever want to hear about being (a liar) and being a disgrace," Garcia shot back.
The two were arguing in a string of emails about a recent City Council vote tied to addressing Holyoke's serious financial disorganization, woes that were flagged by the state . The two disagreed on whether the council voted to pass an order to move money to the Mayor's Office to hire a consultant to help settle the city's books.
The consultant is expected to work with financial forecasting, capital planning and catching up on Holyoke's cash reconciliation problems. The state Division of Local Services brought serious concerns to the city in September and October letters, resulting in the commonwealth withholding millions in monthly aid payments.
In the early October email exchange, which The Republican obtained in a public record request, Garcia said he filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against Bartley over a message he sent about the disputed council vote.
He also told Bartley he had filed an ethics complaint about him, alleging he was misusing his power as a councilor to fuel his law business.
Bartley — who was voted out of office Tuesday — called the accusations baseless.
"He's weaponizing government resources to attack me," Bartley said in an interview with The Republican.
The exchange and its fallout highlight political tensions between the City Council and City Hall that have boiled over in public, such as when a routine board meeting earlier this year erupted into a screaming match , forcing a recess.
Tensions have recently been running high, particularly as the council has been discussing how to fix the city's financial problems. One councilor recently called the politicking "a nasty game," while another said the negative culture has been going on for years.
Garcia is frustrated by the situation. "It puts me in a very (confusing) position especially when you have people trying to work together to make progress on projects and initiatives, and you have this unpredictable behavior and culture at City Hall," the mayor said in an interview. "The morale starts going down."
'You should know better'
The recent emails started with a disagreement over the vote at an Oct. 7 City Council meeting. Garcia asked the council to move $137,500 from one budget line to the Mayor's Office to pay for the consultant to start reconciling the city's books.
The problem is that Bartley and the mayor disagree over what the vote meant. Garcia in his email exchanges with Bartley said the vote secured the consultant's funding; Bartley replied that the vote sent the request back to the finance committee for reconsideration.
Meanwhile, during the meeting, Garcia pleaded with councilors to support it. The vote passed, 11-1, with Bartley as the sole "no" vote. The meeting ended quickly after that.
In response to subsequent questions from City Auditor Tanya Wdowiak , Jeffery Anderson-Burgos, the City Council's administrative assistant, emailed Assistant City Solicitor Michael Bissonnette, asking him to weigh in on the results of the vote.
Bissonnette told city officials in an email he considered it "reconsidered and passed."
When that message was forwarded to Bartley, he wrote to several finance committee members and the auditor, refuting the claim that the order passed and telling the auditor she could not sign off on the transfer. The auditor sent the email to Garcia and the solicitor's office to advise her.
Garcia replied, saying the solicitor's office ruled on it, and he signed the order.
Garcia then filed an Open Meeting Law complaint over Bartley's email to finance committee members, which shared his opinion about the council matter to a majority of the subcommittee's members.
Under the law, quorums of public bodies are generally not supposed to deliberate or discuss matters before them outside of public meetings. Garcia told The Republican that the email constitutes deliberation.
Bartley said he sent the message to "friends": Carmen Ocasio, Kevin Jourdain and Michael Sullivan. All three are fellow city counselors on the finance committee, and together make up a majority of the group. Bartley himself is not a committee member.
"Bartley, you're out of line … you should know better," Garcia wrote to him in the email informing him about the Open Meeting Law complaint.
The complaint was sent to the Attorney General's Office, according to City Clerk Brenna Murphy Leary. In his complaint, Garcia suggests that Bartley should be retrained on the state's Open Meeting Law.
"Perhaps even take an ethics test if relevant," he wrote.
That's when Bartley called the mayor a "desperate liar" in an email to the auditor.
"The (assistant) city solicitor is wrong again," he said.
Garcia replied in kind, adding that Bartley was "going through some tough times, and I'm here if you ever want to talk."
"And when you're able, I'd like to get an update on the ethics violation I reported to the state regarding (your) use of public power as a councilor to support your private practice as an attorney," Garcia continued.
Public role, private practice
Last fall, Garcia filed the ethics complaint to the state, claiming that Bartley has blurred the lines between his role as a city councilor and his law practice. In one example, Bartley used his City Council campaign email address to communicate with city officials about a client he was representing.
By law, the state Ethics Commission cannot confirm or deny if it's received a complaint or is investigating, a spokesperson said. In general, when the commission finds wrongdoing, it releases that information publicly, and Bartley has not faced any public enforcement, the spokesperson said.
In an interview, Bartley said he has known he has been under an ethics investigation since last March. "(Garcia's) got a vendetta to attack me for his own reasons," he said.
He said he is not using his position on the City Council to advance his legal practice, and said that he doesn't believe he violated the Open Meeting Law.
"I believe that to be an allegation of a very small minded pathetic individual (who) was weaponizing the Law Department to attack somebody that doesn't agree with them," Bartley said. He said Open Meeting Law violations happen; when he noticed one earlier in a recent email from a councilor, he reached out and reminded them of the law, Bartley said.
Bartley said his email disputing the vote was not sent to a majority of the full council, and he was not addressing anything to do with a finance committee meeting. Garcia pointed out the order was previously voted on by the finance committee.
It's not the first time the two have sparred over email, public records show. Last spring, Bartley reached out to the city with a question about what could be done in response to a complaint about a construction project. Garcia replied via email, and Bartley insisted that the city's conservation and sustainability director and DPW director respond instead, "as they're the professionals," he wrote.
"David, the mayor gives the orders to employees, not individual councilors," Garcia wrote. "You can question efficiency or whatever you want. ... Just know, you're not in charge."
Bartley replied: "First off, never was it implied otherwise so please get over yourself. I've always contacted staff (without) mayoral intervention so that questions can be effectively answered." He asked again about the complaint. "Someone with a credential please (pretty please) reply."
Garcia said that he had instructed employees to notify him when city councilors reach out to help them.
"... Councilors can be (unnecessarily) direct or overstep their power (such as you) outside of the council body and rules where it's impacting the mental health of employees," he wrote.
"Believe it or not," Garcia wrote, "the City Council has been impacting the climate at City Hall in a negative way, and I can't afford to have low morale and/or lose employees because of it."
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