GAYLORD — After selecting a new board chairman and vice chairman on Tuesday, the Otsego County Board of Commissioners revisited an issue that almost cost county administrator Matt Barresi his job in December.
Commissioners selected Brett McVannel to serve as chairman and Dana Wingo as vice chairman. McVannel and Wingo were favored by six of the nine commissioners over new commissioner Christi Sortor.
Commissioner Henry Mason then introduced a motion to subpoena all of Barresi’s emails concerning the county’s failure to file a completed audit report in a timely manner last year. At the board’s last meeting in December, Barresi came within one vote of being suspended for the late paperwork.
Commissioner Jason Clement said after the December meeting he requested Barresi’s emails on the matter from Eric Seelye of Empiric Solutions, the county’s IT firm. A day later Wingo made the same request to Empiric and Barresi. After discussing the matter with Wingo, Barresi told Empiric to compile the emails and release them to Wingo.
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Otsego County Commissioner Dana Wingo
Wingo said she wasn’t aware that Clement had made the same request to Seelye.
Barresi handed over the emails to Mason. Following an extended discussion, the board eventually decided to table the subpoena motion for one month.
Barresi then decided to respond to the December action. Calling the December meeting shameful, Barresi said he was blindsided by the board’s actions, which he labeled a witch hunt. He also challenged commissioners who were unhappy with him to terminate his employment.
“When you are trying to do good government and trying to lead a team of 158 people and 33 departments you have a lot of responsibility and your day is full,” he said. “To have all of this other stuff that is obviously driven by agendas is problematic. If they have someone they would rather see here then move me aside and let them put that person in.”
“There is the personnel and finance committees where these things can be discussed at length,” Barresi added. “If there is something to do with me personally, you can always go into a closed session and do an evaluation of the administrator.”
Barresi was also upset that all of that came during the last meeting for Doug Johnson, the longest serving county commissioner in the state, as he was leaving the board after a 44-year run.
“I think that meeting was all about theater,” Barresi said. “The fact that we had dignitaries from Lansing and the press there it was one of those things where, ‘Let’s create a circus.’ We have always done some sort of farewell at the board meetings. We have done that for all kinds of people in the past.”
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Otsego County Commissioner Brett McVannel
In his remarks after being chosen as board chairman, McVannel said he wants to help the board work together on the many issues confronting county government.
“With new members on the board, we need to work together and we need to go forward. We obviously have some new issues to work on. We need to figure out our jail, the Alpine Center and our new court building. The jail is something we need to address again because the problem hasn’t gone away and that has been on our bucket list. But most importantly we need to work together,” said McVannel.
McVannel also said trying to follow Johnson’s legacy will be a challenge.
“I don’t think you can follow in Doug’s footsteps. I am so grateful that I have his number in my phone because he has done it all and seen it all. He is probably the best there ever was at this. That term the Goat (Greatest of All Time), well we had the Goat here 40 plus years. You can’t follow a Goat. You just want to do the best you can,” McVannel said.
— Contact Paul Welitzkin at pwelitzkin@gaylordheraldtimes.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Otsego County board selects new leadership team, revisits issue behind December turmoil with administrator