Spa City worker threatens to sue

Safety director alleges hostile work environment

By WENDY LIBERATORE

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Alleging she endured “a discriminatory and hostile work environment,” the city’s risk and safety director has filed a legal claim announcing she intends to sue three of the city’s top elected officials.

As first reported by the Foothills Business Daily, Marilyn Rivers points an accusatory finger at Commissioner of Accounts Dillon Moran, Mayor Ron Kim and Commissioner of Public Safety James Montagnino in her Sept. 27 notice of claim, in which she seeks undisclosed damages for being “continually violated by the public airing of malicious and false accusations” over an insurance settlement with a former city employee.

While Rivers indicates in court papers that she had issues with the city officials since they took office in January 2022. Her problems became public in May when Kim tried to move her position out of Moran’s department into his own in a dispute over a $100,000 insurance settlement with a Moran political ally, fired city engineer Tim Wales.

A notice of claim is to notify all parties involved that a court case might be imminent.

Court papers allege that leading up to that, Moran repeatedly told Rivers, who handles insurance claims, “that the City Council members were out to get you,” that “Kim was setting her up to be fired” and that Kim was “intent on firing her and/or defunding her.” Moran also allegedly told her Montagnino wanted her fired, too.

While she wasn’t transferred, at least not immediately, nor fired, Rivers’ name came up in an Aug. 2 City Council meeting where a $25,000 insurance deductible for the settlement with Wales was buried in a laundry list of payments to city vendors.

Wales, a former city engineer, said he was wrongfully fired in 2019 for supporting Moran over the late Commissioner of Public Works Anthony “Skip” Scirocco. Wales eventually settled the case for $100,000.

At the August meeting, Kim asserted city officials did not know the city was settling the case, which he said had no merit.

Kim said the City Council only learned of the Wales settlement when they discovered an insurance deductible payment allegedly camouflaged on Page 52 in a long list of $1.16 million in payments to city vendors.

Kim demanded the removal of the $25,000 deductible payment to Travelers Insurance and said he suspected “someone purposely hid” the payment because the settlement was never approved by the City Council. He didn’t mention Rivers, a review of a recording of the meeting shows, but she alleged in the claim that he accused her of hiding it.

Meeting minutes suggest Moran implicated her, saying the buried payment “wasn’t me.” When asked where the payment originated, he said “the director of risk and safety.”

Kim praised Rivers at that meeting saying, the minutes show, Rivers “had been very capable” and that he “had no intention of firing anyone.”

After that, Rivers was transferred to work in the mayor’s office, which she described in the claim as “retaliatory.”

“Commissioner Moran continued and perpetuated the negative political discourse surrounding the move of risk and safety to the mayor’s office perpetuating physical and emotional anguish for Ms. Rivers for his own political advantage,” court papers indicated.

Moran said he wouldn’t comment on the claim.

Rivers, when reached by the Times Union, hung up the phone without speaking. The veteran city employee, who is expected to retire in the spring, also did not answer follow-up questions sent by text.

The mayor said he “vehemently denies creating any hostile environment.”

“I stand by my record, employing women (when I was) a commissioner of public safety and now as mayor,” Kim said.

The court papers alleged Montagnino accused her of “reprehensible” action and “pulling a fast one” at the Aug. 2 meeting. The recording of the meeting shows he said not knowing about the settlement was reprehensible and that he needed to look through the pages of payments “to just make sure someone is not pulling a fast one and slipping something by us.”

Among the list of other accusations in the court filing, Rivers alleges Montagnino screamed at her and Kim knew of the settlement with Wales.

All this, her claim noted, “created a hostile work environment, defamation and slander, negligence, violation of due process and other statutory and constitutional rights” and as a result, she has suffered “psychological and reputational harm, both of which have permanent effects, the nature of which is not yet known to her.”

Rivers’ attorney, Benjamin Hall, did not respond to a Times Union request for comment.