Bangor’s City Council voted 6-2 Monday to censure Councilor Joe Leonard over “inappropriate” accusations against a city employee in a public meeting earlier this year.
The formal statement of disapproval marks the council’s first action to punish Leonard more than three months after a budget workshop meeting where he accused former finance director David Little of lying and misallocating resources.
At the meeting in May, Leonard accused Little of not contracting with a company that answered a request for proposals another city department issued because Little didn’t like the bidder. Little resigned following the incident, and an independent investigation found that the finance department was allocating resources fairly, contrary to Leonard’s claims.
Councilors debated for weeks if or how they should punish Leonard for the outburst but struggled to settle on a solution, although most of them agreed his behavior was out of line. At least one councilor, Michael Beck, wanted to wait until the investigation concluded before deciding whether to take any action against Leonard.
Leonard expressed some regret but stood firm in his claims in Monday’s meeting, which became heated during the debate over his punishment.
“If I could go back, I would actually like to not be as bombastic and I would like to make sure that what I did do was actually going through the right and proper procedures. I don’t apologize for the things that I stated though,” Leonard said Monday.
“Councilor Leonard made inappropriate public remarks regarding a city personnel matter which deprived a city employee the right to have complaints conducted confidentially under state law,” Councilor Rick Fournier said Monday, reading from the censure order placed on the agenda by Council Chair Cara Pelletier.
“It doesn’t matter if the comments he made were accurate or inaccurate. The problem is that the employee was allowed under the laws of the state of Maine to have these comments be heard in a confidential setting,” Pelletier said.
Councilor Dan Tremble agreed, adding, “I think not to vote for this censure just sends a very disturbing message to the city staff.”
Others in attendance disagreed, with some people stating during a public comment period that they thought the punishment was unfair and could have a chilling effect on councilors’ ability to speak their minds in the future. Four members of the public spoke in support of Leonard, and two spoke against him.
Beck and Councilor Wayne Mallar voted against the censure, with Beck raising procedural questions at multiple points during the meeting. He questioned whether the time set aside during the meeting counted sufficiently as a hearing in which Leonard could defend himself, but his request to postpone the hearing to the next City Council meeting was voted down by the council 6-3.
Leonard also criticized the council’s process, claiming that his right to free speech was being violated and saying he submitted an order recently for an ethics investigation over other councilors’ text messages to each other regarding his punishment.
Pelletier tried to interject when Leonard began speaking about this concern, and when he didn’t stop, she ordered that he be removed from the council chamber. “And all of you can go with him,” she added when a group of observers started booing and heckling her as Leonard exited the room.
Leonard was referring to messages published by the Bangor Daily News that showed some councilors raising ideas such as stripping Leonard of his voting and speaking privileges and removing him from his committee assignments.
It’s unclear whether the council will take any additional action to further punish Leonard.
Beyond causing a city employee to resign, Leonard’s remarks also cost Bangor nearly $100,000 in severance pay and fees related to the investigation, according to documents obtained by the Bangor Daily News through a Freedom of Access Act request. Leonard declined to participate in an interview with those investigators, documents also show.
Little’s last day with the city was in July, and Bangor has not yet hired a new finance director to take his place.
This is the second time Leonard has been censured by his peers on the council.
In 2023, he faced the same punishment for comments he made the day he was sworn into office about fellow councilors Susan Deane and Carolyn Fish. He said the two new councilors would need to work to build trust on the council due to advertisements distributed by a political action committee ahead of their election — a campaign that Deane and Fish said they weren’t involved with.
Leonard is the only councilor to be censured in the last 12 years.
