Weeks of internal debates have left Bangor city councilors at a standstill about whether to punish one of their own for comments he made that prompted the city’s finance director to resign.
Emails and text messages sent between city councilors in the weeks following a tense budget workshop and obtained by the Bangor Daily News through a Freedom of Access Act request reveal several councilors had ideas for how Councilor Joseph Leonard could be held accountable for accusations he made of David Little, Bangor’s finance director.
Leonard accused Little of lying and misallocating resources in a May 7 council budget workshop. While Leonard later apologized, his claims led to Little’s resignation and could make the city vulnerable to legal action for violating state statute.
Some councilors reached out to Little directly in the days following the accusation to express their outrage and disapproval of Leonard’s comments. Others brainstormed what, if any, action would be appropriate to reprimand Leonard for his comments.
The communications show the latest example of inaction ostensibly caused by councilors’ inability to agree on what they should do. Text messages and emails from councilors reveal a majority of the group disapproved of Leonard’s comments, though no formal consequence has been handed down to Leonard as of June 16.
In a May 8 text message exchange between Councilor Dan Tremble and Council Chairperson Cara Pelletier, Tremble asked whether the council has the power to strip Leonard of his speaking and voting privileges.
This would be similar to the action House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, took in addition to censuring Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, for social media posts she made about a transgender Greely High School student who won an indoor track and field title earlier this year.
Tremble also suggested removing Leonard from the committees he sits on, which include the Business and Economic Development Committee, Infrastructure Committee, and Personnel Committee, according to the city’s website.
Pelletier said city code gives the council power to do both, to which Tremble responded, “I’m in.”
Councilor Carolyn Fish texted both Susan Deane and Susan Hawes separately immediately after the May 7 meeting in which Leonard made his comments to say, “Well that was bad. Unprofessional and totally out of bounds.”
Further texts between councilors in the hours and days after Leonard made his comments show a flurry of activity where councilors asked for phone calls and arranged a private meeting with David Szewczyk, Bangor’s city solicitor.
Unlike written communications, calls or in-person conversations between city councilors aren’t subject to the Freedom of Access Act, meaning there’s no record of what was said during those discussions.
The City Council held a workshop with Szewczyk on May 12 to discuss what happened in the budget meeting in which Leonard made his comments and accusations. That’s the same day Leonard apologized for his comments at the end of the council’s formal meeting.
The council’s discussion of how to respond to Leonard’s comments took place in executive session, meaning it was closed to the public and there are no public records of what councilors said in that meeting. However, the group did not take formal action or vote on anything following the meeting, according to David Warren, Bangor’s city spokesperson.
Leonard declined to comment on the situation.
Pelletier said any action to reprimand a councilor for their actions, such as censuring them or sending the issue to the city’s ethics committee, requires a majority vote of council. Because of this, no action has been taken and there has been no further discussion about what, if anything, to do about Leonard’s comments.
“Personally, I was and am in favor of something greater than an apology because I think the situation is serious enough that it warrants it, but that’s not something the council chair can do on their own,” Pelletier said.
Other councilors, such as Tremble, still believe that Leonard’s comments were “completely inappropriate,” but poor timing has stymied any discussion of reprimanding Leonard for them.
The May 7 budget workshop in which Leonard made his accusations of Little came just weeks before Debbie Laurie, Bangor’s former city manager, retired and two days before the city announced it hired a new city manager.
Councilor Michael Beck said he wants to see the results of the independent investigation into Leonard’s accusations of Little before making a decision on whether to punish Leonard.
“I want to make sure that we’re being as fair as possible to everyone involved,” Beck said.
Councilors Rick Fournier, Wayne Mallar and Deane declined to comment. Councilors Hawes and Fish didn’t return a request for comment.
Leonard has been censured once before since first being elected to City Council in 2022. It was the first censure of a Bangor city councilor in a decade.
A censure is a formal statement of disapproval and does not carry any additional punishment, such as a fine or removal from council, Szewczyk previously told the Bangor Daily News.
In late November 2023, Bangor councilors voted 7-1 to censure Leonard for the comments he made toward two new councilors, Fish and Deane, when they were sworn in alongside Leonard earlier that month.
At the time, Leonard, who had just won reelection, said the two new councilors are “responsible for building trust on the council” and they “have some work to do in the coming years” following any involvement they had in a campaign prior to the election.
Councilors said Leonard’s comments were “inappropriate, offensive and disrespectful to the two incoming councilors.” Leonard did not apologize for his statements.
In his confrontational comments on May 7, which lasted nearly 10 minutes, Leonard accused Little of not contracting with a company that answered a request for proposal another city department issued because Little didn’t like the bidder.
Leonard also accused Little of lying for months about an auditing process, among other critiques of the finance department’s work in the last fiscal year.
“What is going on in the finance department?” Leonard said. “I have massive, massive concerns with this department and I think it needs a massive, massive overhaul.”
Little did not respond to Leonard’s comments at the time, but resigned five days later. His resignation will take effect in July.
“The recent unjust personal attack and defamatory statements made against me during a public meeting have impacted my reputation and my personal well-being by questioning my professionalism, integrity and ethics,” Little wrote in his resignation letter, which the BDN obtained through a FOAA request.
Little did not return requests for comment.
Councilors Pelletier, Fish and Deane emailed Little individually in the days following the workshop to express their outrage over Leonard’s “inappropriate” and “unprofessional” comments and to thank Little for his years of work for the city, emails obtained by the BDN through a FOAA request show.
“I was quite stunned and disappointed with the way Councilor Leonard spoke to you,” Fish wrote in her May 9 email to Little. “You did not deserve that and it was unprofessional to say the least.”
In her May 13 email to Little, Deane apologized to Little for not taking action when Leonard made his “inappropriate and unfounded” comments and asked him to reconsider his resignation.
Leonard’s comments may also have violated state statute, which grants municipal employees the right to have complaints against them heard in private.
Because Leonard didn’t voice his concerns or accusations in executive session — when a meeting moves behind closed doors — that could make the city liable to legal repercussions.
On May 29, Laurie sent an email to councilors announcing the city hired Rudman Winchell, a Bangor-based law firm, to investigate the accusations Leonard made against Little. The investigation is expected to take at least six weeks.
“These are serious allegations and ensuring accountability and transparency are key components of good governance,” Laurie wrote in the May 29 email. “As with any allegation, management must investigate to ensure accuracy, maintain institutional integrity, prevent misuse of power, protect public trust and as an aid to guide future decisions.”
Bangor City Council has struggled in previous years to make swift decisions. It took city leaders two years to develop a system for how it would distribute the more than $20 million the city received in federal pandemic relief funding.
The city also didn’t hire a homelessness response manager until the summer of 2024, nearly two years after the position was first recommended in December 2022.
Past city councilors have pointed to long-term staffing shortages, frequent leadership turnover and an overreliance on public input as some of the reasons why the group is often slow to make important or uncomfortable decisions. These delays also create the opportunity for things to slip through the cracks altogether.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated David Warren’s job title. He is Bangor’s spokesperson.
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