For all the outrage that accompanied Woodstock Town Supervisor Bill McKenna’s success in rehiring a convicted sex offender, the dispute at this stage comes down to a simple question: Is Michael Innello’s employment protected by his union?

Residents already seething over McKenna’s decision to hire Innello without informing the town board or Woodstock police got a moment of relief Aug. 4 when two board members filed paperwork with the county to terminate Innello’s employment. That glee turned to anger four days later, when McKenna filed his own paperwork to reinstate the Level 3 offender.

McKenna says he acted after Local 1120 of the Communications Workers of America filed a grievance, saying that Innello’s termination wasn’t justified because the town can’t fire union employees without cause. Board member Anula Courtis, the Democratic nominee for supervisor, said she hasn’t been shown the grievance form and that in any case, a supervisor can’t override decisions made by the board.

The town supervisor, in other words, is seizing on a procedural issue to push forward a deeply unpopular hiring decision that has spawned at least two petition drives seeking to fire Innello and hold McKenna accountable. The dispute underscores the tension between a supervisor’s operational authority and a board’s policymaking power—whether the union contract or the Town Board has the final word.

McKenna’s approach doesn’t hold much water for Courtis, who is likely to succeed him when his term runs out at the end of this year. For one thing, the board, which voted 3-0 in July to terminate Innello, has been required in the past to approve the creation or filling of a position.

“A supervisor is not a mayor,” she said. “There’s a distinct difference between those two roles. The supervisor is one vote and should not override the quorum of a board.”

In an email reviewed by The Overlook, McKenna said the board may have violated Innello’s civil rights. He wrote in a text to the Overlook that the union contract supersedes town actions and didn’t respond to further attempts to reach him for comment.

Left unsaid in the back-and-forth volleys of paperwork this week is the actual reason that word of Innello’s background kicked off such a firestorm of protest. It wasn’t his history itself—Woodstock has long had a policy that criminal pasts aren’t an automatic barrier to employment. Instead, it was the fact that McKenna concealed that background when he presented Innello as a candidate for his maintenance worker position. The board voted twice to hire him before his history was disclosed in early July.

None of McKenna’s critics argue that Innello has performed below expectations in his maintenance role, the most common explanation from companies and governments when firing people for cause. That’s the case even though the main reason residents are upset is that his job puts him in a position where he could interact with children.

New York State law is both specific and maddeningly vague about whether the board or the supervisor holds ultimate authority.

“The town board of a suburban town shall be the legislative, appropriating, governing and policy determining body of the town,” it reads. The board “shall have and exercise all such powers and duties as are conferred or imposed upon it or are necessarily incidental thereto which are consistent with the provisions of this article.”

The law goes on to say, “Whenever a vacancy shall occur or exist in any town office, the town board or a majority of the members thereof, may appoint a qualified person to fill the vacancy.”

Those passages seem to confirm the position held by Courtis—that the board, not the supervisor, is in charge. Yet that law doesn’t specify what happens when a board’s power may be circumscribed by other contracts. 

The issue becomes slightly clearer in a passage from Woodstock’s 2023 Compensation and Benefits Handbook. Any union member “is not covered by or eligible for” provisions set forth in the handbook, it reads, suggesting that the union contract takes precedence. At the same time, though, the handbook states plainly that any local laws are subject to state and national ones. If any provision conflicts with federal, state, or local laws or regulations, those laws take precedence.

The Town Board “alone” authorizes payment and thus has final say on hiring, said Bennet Ratcliff, who filed the termination paperwork with Courtis. McKenna reinstated someone “expressly terminated for this very position” and “superseded the board’s will with his own,” he said.

For now, neither side is budging from their positions. Innello is back on the town’s roster unless the board or an arbitrator intervenes. The board could seek arbitration under the union contract, file its own grievance, or even try to block payroll vouchers, a step considered unlikely for budgeted positions.

In the meantime, invective by transfixed residents is boiling over on social media and the town’s government has entered a state akin to suspended animation. Just ask Jackie Earley, the longtime town clerk, who was so frustrated by the board’s inability to approve basic resolutions that she walked midway through the Aug. 12 board meeting.

“This is ridiculous,” she said.

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.