SARANAC LAKE — The village board has agreed to release a summary of an independent workplace violence investigation into an altercation between Mayor Jimmy Williams and former village Manager Erik Stender last summer, which led to Stender’s resignation.

More than a year after the altercation, and two months after the full report was delivered to the village board, the public will be able to see a summary of what the investigators found, likely sometime this week, according to village officials.

On July 11, 2023, Williams allegedly grabbed Stender by the throat and “slammed” him against a wall during an argument, according to a statement Stender gave to village police in a report leaked to the Enterprise last summer.

Williams has consistently declined to comment on the allegations and accounts in the report, saying they had a “personal interaction” and initially denied that it turned physical.

Last August, the board voted to commission the Albany-based law firm Roemer Wallens Gold and Mineaux to review the allegations.

Deputy Mayor Matt Scollin was the point-person on the board for this investigation, along with village Manager Bachana Tsiklauri. The report was completed in mid-May; the Enterprise filed a Freedom of Information Law request for it on May 23. After two months of discussion on what to do with the document among the board and the village attorney, the board voted 4-1 on Monday to release a summary of the report. Williams himself voted “no” on the resolution, while the rest of the board voted “yes.”

On Tuesday, Tsiklauri said he was waiting on approval from the attorney to honor this records request from the Enterprise and release the report summary with the redactions of personal employee information.

The investigation took months, in part because scheduling witnesses to talk for the law firm’s investigation took a long time, according to Scollin. Because their personal information was leaked to the press last year and published unredacted by North Country Public Radio, he said that made some of them hesitant to participate in this process, concerned it would happen again. The police report leaked last summer was unredacted, with names, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers and other information included. The Enterprise did not publish the report in full, to protect the identity of innocent eyewitnesses.

Scollin said board members have not had any formal or informal discussions among the board about the content of the report. Personally, he wanted to wait until the public had access to the executive summary. He said he does not know of any plans to discuss it currently.

The Enterprise requested for the report in full, with only the necessary sensitive information redacted, but the village is releasing the executive summary of the report instead. Scollin said they chose to do this to keep information confidential and to not release a report with large portions of blacked-out redactions.

“I talked about releasing the investigative report, and the suggestion that came back from legal was that the executive summary would be much more appropriate,” he said.

State Committee on Open Government Assistant Director Kristin O’Neill said earlier this month she was concerned with the FOIL request going through the board initially. The board is where appeals go to, she said, and it’s uncommon for the board to vote on an initial request. The board took a similar vote on honoring the FOIL request for the initial police report after it was leaked last year.

Scollin said the village attorney told them to take a vote on the release, showing it is an active decision by the board, and not any one person.

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Mayor votes against release

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Trustee Aurora White told Williams he should recuse himself from the vote on the report because he is one of the parties investigated in the report.

Williams said the village attorney told him there’s no legal reason he shouldn’t get his vote.

Williams said he wasn’t voting no for “self-preservation” reasons. He assumed it would pass. He said he voted no because village policy demands employee information be kept “to the utmost confidence,” and he didn’t want to set precedent for releasing documents “just because there’s public pressure.”

Rich Shapiro, a former village trustee, said it was “embarrassing” for Williams to not recuse himself and accused Williams of believing he is above the law.

“That’s an obvious conflict of interest,” Shapiro said. “You should know better than that.”

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Public release

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Shapiro asked the board to put the report on its website, instead of just responding to FOIL requests. Since it’s public information, he said it should be easily publicly accessible.

Scollin said they were advised to just respond to the FOIL request.

“That’s the most restrictive way,” Shapiro said. “You guys can release it any way you want.”

“The village board of trustees believes it is in the public interest to release the conclusions of the independent investigation in a manner that respects and protects the privacy of any and all individuals named in the independent investigation,” the resolution reads.

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The altercation

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Stender’s allegation was conflicted by other eyewitness reports, which said Williams was acting defensively. But the eyewitness accounts also conflict with each other. One eyewitness said Williams pushed Stender away after Stender punched the wall. The other said Stender shoved the mayor. Saranac Lake Police Chief Darin Perrotte chalked this up to the unreliability of memory in his initial report and concluded that it was unclear to him exactly who initiated the physical escalation.

“I think we raised our voices for a second, but nothing serious,” Williams said last year.

From the start, Williams has indicated that he feels this whole thing was blown out of proportion. It was two people letting off steam and shouting, he says.

Stender was appointed to the village manager position by Williams in April 2022 after Williams came into office. He said resigning was a hard decision, but one he made immediately after the altercation.

“I’m not going to incur violence from the mayor. I’m not sticking around for that. That’s crossing a line that you can’t come back from,” Stender said at the time. “How can I sit up there at a board meeting and sit next to him and think that we’re on the same team?”

To read more about the content and conclusions of the initial police report, go to tinyurl.com/4h22x8nc.

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FOIL

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The Enterprise filed a FOIL request for the initial police report, which the village initially denied. The Enterprise requested a redacted version, which was not provided. As the Enterprise prepared an appeal, the village told the Enterprise “there is no need for you to file an appeal,” and that the village clerk and village attorney would discuss the request. Before the village released it, the report was leaked.

The village board condemned, but did not investigate this leak.

When the Enterprise filed a FOIL request for the results of the investigation this spring, the village acknowledged the request within the five days required, but O’Neill with the state Committee on Open Government said it should have given the Enterprise an approximate date when it expected to respond to the request — generally within 20 business days. Any more than 20 days, and the village should have given a reason for the delay and the expected date.

As of press time Tuesday — 61 days after the request was filed — the report had not been released.

The Enterprise will report on the content of the executive summary when it is released.