Bangor’s City Council will vote Monday on whether to censure Councilor Joe Leonard for “inappropriate” accusations he made this spring against a city employee, according to a meeting agenda.
The censure would be the council’s first formal reprimand of Leonard for his comments in a budget workshop meeting on May 7 that prompted Finance Director David Little to resign. In the meeting, Leonard accused Little of lying and misallocating resources — comments that he should not have made publicly against a city employee, according to the censure order placed on the agenda by Council Chair Cara Pelletier.
Councilors debated for weeks if or how they should punish Leonard for the outburst but struggled to agree on a solution, although most of them agreed his behavior was out of line.
The censure vote comes after an independent law firm concluded an investigation, spurred by Leonard’s comments, into the request for proposals process in the city’s finance department. The investigation found that the department had been overseeing this process fairly, according to documents obtained by the Bangor Daily News last week through a Freedom of Access Act request.
These documents also revealed that Leonard’s accusations cost the city nearly $100,000 in severance pay and fees related to the investigation.
The censure would officially reprimand Leonard for “inappropriate public remarks,” according to Monday’s meeting agenda. His comments “deprived a City employee the right to have complaints conducted confidentially under state law,” the order stated.
It also stated that Leonard “acted outside the scope of his authority as a City Councilor” and should have privately referred criticism of a city employee “to the appropriate City Council appointee or Human Resources Director for investigation and action if necessary.”
This would be Leonard’s second censure, and the second censure in Bangor’s City Council since 2013. Leonard was first dealt the punishment for comments he made the same day he was sworn into office in November 2023.
At the time, the council voted 7-1 to punish Leonard for comments he made about fellow incoming councilors Susan Deane and Carolyn Fish, saying 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.
A censure is a formal statement of disapproval but does not carry any other punishment besides the public statement, Bangor City Solicitor David Szewczyk has previously said.
It’s unclear whether the council will take any additional action after the censure vote.
Following Leonard’s accusations against Little, some councilors privately raised ideas including stripping Leonard of his voting and speaking privileges and removing him from his committee assignments.
Leonard declined to comment prior to Monday’s meeting.
