ELMIRA, N.Y. (WENY) -- At an Elmira City Council Meeting on May 19, Council Members went into executive session to discuss personnel matters involving city employees. The meeting minutes show that during that time, Council Member Nicholas Grasso presented a confidential email without disclosing the source and was censured as a result.

Weeks later, at a regular City Council Meeting on Monday, June 30, the minutes were revisited.

Council Members did disclose that the email was between Elmira's police chief and the city's attorney; however, they would not provide any additional information about the contents of the email.

Gary Brinn, Council Member for the fourth district, questioned how the document was obtained. Grasso refused to answer. Brinn then made a motion to censure Grasso, which passed.

On Monday, Brinn doubled down on his accusation that Grasso improperly obtained and distributed the document. He asked the council to amend the minutes to reflect that this was the reason for the censure.


When Council Member Grasso spoke, he agreed with Brinn that the minutes were incomplete, inaccurate, and needed to be amended.

In regards to the email, he said he obtained it from a whistleblower, and that whistleblower protections mean he does not need to disclose any more information on where it came from.

"I think the most important thing to come from this is is elected representatives, as elected leaders, you know for the outcome to be a censure, again in a closed-door executive session, instead of in a public forum, a disapproval of my behavior, my conduct for wanting to tackle some, you know, tough issues that we have here in the city," said Grasso. "I think that's more evident of my colleagues' unwillingness to have those tough conversations and to come up with the tough solutions to them."

The mayor of the city of Elmira, Dan Mandell, and other Council Members say they don't believe that Grasso obtained a copy of the email from a whistleblower.

"First off, that's a very strong and brazen allegation to make, especially when no research or investigation was done into the validity of them," said Grasso. "The communication was valid between two department heads, and again, I stress that it was obtained ethically and legally."

Mayor Mandell responded, saying, "Council Member Grasso doesn't think he did anything wrong, but you know, getting an unauthorized document, that we basically know how he got it. I'm not gonna get into detail right now, but the way he did it was underhanded and it's typical of this councilman and the way he behaves...The fact that he's saying it's a whistleblower, I can tell you right now that is not true. There is nothing here in that document that we had or that he had that would require a whistleblower type of matter here. Period."

After the initial discussion, Council Members chose to vote on the amended minutes with Grasso being the only one to vote "Nay," saying the censure is not legitimate.


Mayor Mandell says additional security measures are now being implemented in City Hall to prevent a situation like this from happening again.