The #RemyFiles are here...
Council President Shannon Hardin is alleged to have said that City Council is "stuck" with the cantankerous and often-drunk realtor as a member of the legislative body.
As The Rooster exclusively reported on Oct. 29, a soon-to-be-public settlement stemming from Columbus City Councilman Emmanuel Remy’s toxic work behavior started with a notice of allegations from a lawyer representing the aggrieved aide.
Later that day, City Council denied the pertinent public records request, citing that the letter was not germane to discovery because it was at the heart of ongoing negotiations and a potential settlement.
With City Council unanimously approving the $84.7K settlement during a pre-scheduled absence from Remy, and Mayor Suburbs attaching his seal of approval, The Rooster received the fabled “#RemyFiles” on Wednesday afternoon.
Given the timeline of events, it appears the former aide, Ms. Avery Townsend went on leave on May 20th and immediately contacted a lawyer, with the notice of allegations being served on June 16.
Ms. Townsend’s lawyer sent the letter to every sitting member of Columbus Council, as well as City Attorney Zach Klein’s office.
The most interesting part, in my professional opinion, happens in the first third of that letter:
Public humiliation, yelling, and cursing to a subordinate is well in line with the open secret about Remy’s industrious alcohol consumption.
These paragraphs also exemplify the perils of going into public service as anything but “the principle.”
Ms. Townsend probably thought she was going to help craft public policy for the betterment of a major metropolitan city—instead she’s forced into being the Remy family’s nanny, and also doing pro-bono campaign work for a race in which Remy was running unopposed.
As The Rooster exclusively reported on Oct. 29, the letter also alleges that Council President Shannon Hardin claimed he would speak to Remy’s wife.
The letter also alleges that Hardin quipped that “they” were “stuck with” Remy for “the time being.”
Hardin did not broach these allegations while calling Remy to account on Monday night, shortly before his colleagues approved the settlement.
Nor did NBC4’s Colleen Marshall ask about them when she interviewed Hardin on Tuesday, despite being granted early access to the unredacted letter.
Still, it’s worth noting that everyone—from city council to city attorney Klein—stayed silent about these nasty allegations throughout Remy’s campaign, where he was also allowed to shovel at least $70,000 to Tiara Ross, who won by 1,500 votes in a race she enjoyed every institutional advantage.
Ross, it also should be noted, currently works under Klein at the city attorney’s office.
According to one source close to Ross, she was unaware of any settlement about Remy. And I believe that is true, at least until The Rooster broke the news on Oct. 27.
Seven days later, Remy appeared alongside Council President Hardin, and Councilmembers Melissa Green and Dorans at Ross’ victory party:
We’ll never know what might have happened in that race had city council or City Attorney Klein had done their duty and leaked that letter to the press.
We’ll never know what might have happened if Ross had to discuss taking $70,000 from a man who had been credibly accused of abusing his female staffer and publicly humiliating her. We’ll never know what might have happened if she had to give that $70,000 back.
We do know that Remy has been assigned “management classes,” though we don’t know who’s paying for them.
Because council can say what they want about “every settlement being different.” They can group the Remy settlement with four other payouts, with one coming from an incident in 2021, to propagandize the idea that this is a big city with big liabilities.
But I know exactly what I saw, which is important people covering for an unlikable cretin because they’re “stuck with him,” with the non-Rooster-reading public only learning these allegations two weeks after Remy’s successful re-election.
That, my friends, is the oh-so-vaunted Columbus Way.
If President Hardin is serious about ushering City Hall into a new era of transparency, then it’s clear that we’ll need to see a lot more action than sending an angry drunk to “managerial classes,” whatever the hell those might be.
…sending him to managerial classes and (horror of horrors) “talking to his wife.” I think Ross should still be asked if she should give any of that campaign money back.
Ole Shannon isn’t the brightest but I’d think he’d be smart enough to know they could have recruited a candidate to oppose Regrettable Remy.
I’ve known Shannon since he was”graduated” college. I gave him first job “out of college”actual. Not what I’d call an intellectual heavyweight that is for sure. Not to mention if he lied about his college graduation , what else will he lie about?