GREENFIELD — New documents obtained by The Shoestring show that former Greenfield mayor Roxann Wedegartner hoped to use COVID-era municipal-relief money to fund big raises she negotiated with the city’s top cops in the last days of her administration. And when new Mayor Virginia “Ginny” Desorgher didn’t use those funds to pay for the raises, the recently retired police chief suggested he might take legal action against the city.
Those revelations, contained in recent letters between Desorgher and former police chief Robert Haigh, are the latest in a saga that landed on the new mayor’s plate her first day in office. Just a week before Wedegartner lost an election in which scandals at the police department were a central issue, she agreed to give raises of 20% and 25%, respectively, to Haigh and Deputy Chief William Gordon, who were already some of the city’s most highly paid employees. Those pay bumps, which were structured as educational incentives for higher-education degrees, went into effect the day before Desorgher was sworn in.
The raises, which were first reported by The Shoestring, caused a stir in city government after they became public. Haigh’s base pay would have jumped $33,902 and Gordon’s would have increased by $35,255, according to city estimates. Haigh was the city’s second-highest earner in 2022, making $171,180, according to MassLive. That same year, Gordon made $147,663, making him the city’s fourth highest-paid employee.
But on Wednesday, the Greenfield City Council voted unanimously to reject them.
Now, new records The Shoestring has obtained via a public records request — as well as an interview with Wedegartner — shed further light on how Wedegartner initially intended to fund the raises and why Desorgher has been tight-lipped about the affair since taking office.
In particular, The Shoestring has obtained a Jan. 31 letter that Haigh sent to City Hall, demanding that Desorgher fund his raise. In his letter, Haigh said that after consulting with his lawyers from the Massachusetts Police Association and the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, he believed Desorgher had broken state wage laws and would owe him back wages as well as legal fees if he brought a case against the city over the issue. Haigh said that Wedegartner had already made “provisions” for his raise to be funded for the final six months of fiscal year 2024.
In a Feb. 1 response, Desorgher said that the city’s legal opinion was that the contract Wedegartner signed with Haigh was “likely void” due to a state law that can invalidate contracts that municipal officials make “in circumstances indicating an unconscionable effort to bind a successor board or officer.” Desorgher noted that the contract was signed “on the eve of last year’s election” and went into effect on Wedegartner’s last day in office, despite the fact that under ordinary circumstances, Haigh’s contract would have come up for consideration during Desorgher’s term as mayor.
However, Desorgher said that “in spite of the legal opinion” she received, she would seek funding from the City Council for the pay increase.
“You claim in your letter that the former Mayor made provision for another source of funding for the Addendum’s salary increase and new benefit,” Desorgher wrote. “It appears that what you are referring to are [American Rescue Plan Act] monies that former Mayor Wedegartner wanted to allocate to fund both your Contract Addendum and a Memorandum of Agreement seeking similar pay increases and benefits for the Deputy Chief also signed shortly before the election last Year. In my opinion, use of ARPA monies in this fashion is not appropriate.”
Desorgher went on to say that Haigh’s contract stipulates that his compensation and benefits are subject to appropriation and that she intended to adhere to that clause. That’s what she did, bringing an order before the City Council to pay for the increases using the city’s reserves — funding that city councilors rejected on Wednesday.
Desorgher’s office did not make her available for an interview on Thursday and did not answer questions emailed that afternoon.
Speaking to the City Council ahead of their vote on funding the raises for Haigh and Gordon, Desorgher said little. She explained that she was being “very careful” with her words and that she had been advised not to read aloud the city lawyer’s six-page legal opinion on the matter. She told councilors that they could decide whether or not to appropriate money for the agreements, given that they weren’t part of the budget the City Council had approved for this fiscal year.
“If I were the mayor at this time, I would not have negotiated this,” Desorgher said.
In a phone interview Thursday, Wedegartner disputed the notion that using ARPA funds for police pay raises was “inappropriate,” noting that “public safety” is one of the categories municipalities can spend ARPA money on, in addition to everything from water infrastructure to broadband. (Greenfield is hardly the only municipality to spend ARPA funds on policing; in Holyoke, as one example, the mayor granted the police department’s request to buy Tasers with ARPA funds.)
Mayors across the state have the authority to hand out their respective communities’ ARPA money. Wedegartner said that early in Greenfield’s process, she devoted some of the city’s ARPA funds to go to public-safety salaries, particularly after the City Council cut $400,000 from the police department’s budget in 2022 after a jury found that Haigh discriminated against a Black officer in the department. Following that decision, Wedegartner reinstated Haigh as police chief and the city is currently appealing the $1 million verdict in the case.
Wedegartner said that those initial ARPA funds were “so that we did not have to fire or let go of any police officers.” She said she intended to use those same funds to pay Haigh’s and Gordon’s raises until a new fiscal year began in July 2024.
“That line item for public-safety salaries was in that budget from the time I put … the ARPA funding together,” Wedegartner said. She said that Desourgher would have seen that line item, given that she was on the City Council at the time. “She didn’t question it back then.”
Just last week, Haigh suddenly retired from his position. In a Feb. 15 retirement letter, Haigh alleged that he was “forced to say goodbye” because of Desorgher’s “refusal to support this department and your Chief.” Gordon initially took over as acting police chief, but on Wednesday, Desorgher named Lt. Todd Dodge to that role.
During Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Precinct 6 City Councilor Sheila Gilmour asked about the search for a permanent chief. Desorgher said that before the city begins a search, City Hall is working with state lawmakers to remove the police chief position from under the protection of state civil service laws — a system that dictates how police departments and other government agencies can hire, promote, or discipline employees.
“I also know that it has been a very challenging time for the men and women in this department, and that was something that Chief Dodge is very concerned about,” Desorgher said. “A period of healing and stability has begun.”
Later in the meeting, councilors voted to reject a transfer of $54,904 from the city’s reserve fund to pay for the first-year costs of the pay bumps Wedegartner had negotiated with Haigh and Gordon. Some of the councilors expressed frustration with the fact that Wedegartner didn’t bring the new contracts with Haigh and Gordon before the City Council in the two months between when she signed them and when she left office.
“To me this particular deal was just dirty and underhanded and the intentions were not coming from a good place,” Precinct 2 Councilor Rachel Gordon said. “We’ve certainly heard resoundingly from the community that they want us to vote it down.”
Precinct 5 Councilor Marianne Bullock said that the timing of the agreements, the circumstances under which they were signed, and the amounts of the raises were concerning.
“We’re talking about here what would pay for multiple teachers in the school department,” Bullock said.
Wedegartner, however, characterized the deals as her simply doing the day-to-day work of being mayor until she left office.
“Nothing was done in secret,” she said.
It is the mayor who negotiates contracts with non-union department heads, Wedegartner said, and both Haigh and Gordon wanted to receive educational incentives similar to what Greenfield’s patrol officers already receive as part of their union contract. In order to grant that “equity” with the patrol officers, Wedegartner increased Haigh’s base pay for having a bachelor’s degree and Gordon’s for having a master’s degree. The two also received $750 yearly as part of a “physical fitness incentive program” for the city’s officers.
“It seemed like a perfectly reasonable and fair reason for why they wanted to have these put in their contracts,” she said. The agreement with Gordon also gave him greater protections against firing, such as the right to “progressive discipline” and the right to appeal through arbitration any discipline, discharge, or non-reappointment.
As for Desorgher’s suggestion that Haigh’s contract was “likely void” because it was negotiated so close to the election and went into effect at the end of Wedegartner’s term, Wedegartner said that she too received that advice from the city’s employment lawyer. However, she said she “personally viewed it differently.”
“I didn’t view it that way and so I went ahead and did it,” she said. “I don’t think I did anything wrong. I’m mayor until I’m not.”
Dusty Christensen is an independent investigative reporter based in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at dusty.christensen@protonmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dustyc123 or on Instagram @dustycreports.
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