To the Editor:
I am writing in response to Pete Buchardt’s letter last week, “Poisoned Ink.” He accuses me of  “…constantly harassing the town board in Berne.” He goes on to say: “Why tear down and split a town apart when you can put your efforts toward solving problems in concert with other board members?”

Pete feels I am the one harassing the other members of the board? I have been relentlessly harassed by the superintendent of highways / Berne GOP chairman and his town board disciples for many years. This includes Sean Lyons, Dennis Palow, and Mat Harris.

Unlike Pete, I have provided all the necessary documentation of these ridiculous, nasty attacks that go back to 2015. Does Pete even offer one example of any incidents where I didn’t work in concert with the other board members? I don’t cooperate with their ridiculous politically motivated stunts or where I know they create documented hazards through negligence, maladministration, and lies, but I do work objectively and cooperatively on most town business. Review the meeting recordings, Pete.

It is not possible to mention all the documented harassment I have endured with the 1,000-word limit to these letters, Pete. I won’t go back to 2015 — I’ll start with my announcement that I was running for office in 2017 and mention only the highlights since.  

Mr. [Randy] Bashwinger falsely reported that I was harassing his employees on Aug. 3, 2017 and had a sheriff’s car at my house, lights flashing; that’s pure harassment. I had no interaction with any employees that day.

My father-in-law said the deputy advised him that I would be charged with a violation for taking photos of the town’s work zone. There is no law against that. Mr. Bashwinger brags about that false report on Facebook. I have been reported to police at the state and county levels numerous times by these people. It’s documented.

Also in late summer 2017, Mr. Bashwinger made multiple false allegations of my misconduct in the workplace, the state’s Department of Transportation. He knew this would initiate a mandated investigation (because I was a public officer).

The NYSDOT Internal Investigations Bureau interviewed many of the people I worked with at the time. A year’s worth of my time-keeping was scrutinized, and all my emails were printed out for a year and carefully reviewed. I.T. technicians scrubbed my office computer for evidence, and I was interrogated at work.

Pete, think about going to work every day for months with everyone knowing you are being investigated for something. The investigation eventually determined there was no merit to the allegations.  

Well, if that was not enough political retribution, they also filed a federal complaint, accusing me of running for office in violation of the Hatch act. Filing that complaint initiated another mandated investigation of me at my workplace, but at the federal level.

Why not just ask the DOT about this? Because that would not result in another harassing, mandated investigation.

That investigation also determined there was no merit to the false allegation. These state and federal investigations cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. Pete, do two expensive workplace investigations based on false allegations, one at the state and one at the federal level, constitute harassment?

It didn’t stop there. It is well documented that I and the other Democratic board members were subjected to multiple, long-running, bogus investigations of violation of the town employee handbook (by a lawyer who was hired with no town board approval or process).  In an attempt to keep me under constant investigation, these very long-running probes picked up where the workplace investigations left off.  

The employee manual does not apply to elected representatives. That was noted when the very first investigation was completed, yet this lawyer engaged in several more such illegitimate investigations.

None of these investigations determined there was a single violation anyway. All were pure harassment and political retribution. It is well documented that these bogus, political attacks were paid for by the taxpayer!

Taxpayers pay for the GOP’s political operations in Berne. At one point, a Freedom of Information Law request indicated $15,000 had been spent.  

I was harassed and intimidated in a series of illegal, unrecorded “executive sessions.” Review The Enterprise online, Pete. The state’s Committee on Open Government determined these sessions were illegal, not me. Mr. Palow advised me to move away in one of these meetings in early 2018.  

I endured his politically motivated attacks in these illegal, secret meetings until I made a motion that executive sessions be recorded, and it passed. They can no longer harass and intimidate me in these meetings and lie about it. It’s not a coincidence that they haven’t called a single executive session since that motion required recordings.  

Last year, I was falsely declared guilty of workplace discrimination in an illegal executive session (based on one of these bogus investigations that coincidently found no violation). This one was a Zoom meeting last April that was recorded at my insistence. It was posted online.

I consulted a couple lawyers before and after as the rumor was that they were having me removed from office. I advised the board that, if they were going into executive session to harass and intimidate a board member, they needed to say that. Instead, they illegally went into that executive session to harass, threaten, and intimidate me saying it was a “personnel matter.”

A lawyer advised me it was all illegitimate nonsense designed to intimidate me and they could not remove me from office. He said they would probably try to convince me they could and would have me removed from office.

But, if I didn’t believe them, they would bring the attorney in to explain they could not and back off. That is exactly what happened. But in the process, they went into an illegal meeting and secretly agreed to have me removed from office based on an illegitimate investigation.  

What I write is factual and well documented to the best of my ability. I cooperate objectively in matters of legitimate town business. If it looks like hate to some out of towners, so be it.

Joel Willsey

Berne Town Board