AUBURN – Saying City Councilor Bob Mennealy broke with council tradition and policy, Mayor Norm Guay and three colleagues urged Mennealy to step down from his at-large seat.

“If I were prepared, I’d call for impeachment right now,” Councilor Joe DeFilipp said at the end of Monday’s City Council meeting.

Mennealy defended his call for the state attorney general to investigate City Manager Pat Finnigan and said he had no intention of resigning from the council. That announcement was met with hearty applause from the 20 Auburn police officers attending the meeting, which provoked an angry reaction from Councilor Rich Livingston.

“Stop that clapping! Stop this interruption,” Livingston yelled at the officers. “Stop clapping now!”

Mennealy filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday alleging that Finnigan has verbally abused her staff for giving him public information. He also blames increases in taxes and service cuts on fiscal mismanagement.

Mennealy notified the Sun Journal of his complaint on Thursday, but didn’t notify Finnigan, Guay or his council colleagues. Guay said he first learned of the complaint when he was contacted by the Sun Journal Thursday afternoon.

“The problem, Bob, is that nobody was made aware of your problem before you went public,” Guay said. “We have a policy and a protocol for handling these matters.”

Guay said Mennealy’s complaint amounted to a personnel matter concerning Finnigan, a city employee. Personnel matters must be discussed in executive session with the council by law, he said.

“We have a protocol and a policy for dealing with personnel concerns,” Guay said.

DeFilipp, Livingston and Councilor Kelly Matzen said Mennealy’s actions amounted to character assassination. All three compared his allegations to those made by anti-Communist Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s Army-McCarthy hearings. Matzen went so far as to paraphrase one famous quote leveled at the Wisconsin senator.

“Have you no sense of decency, councilor?” Matzen said. “At long last, have you no sense of decency?”

Livingston said councilors must act as a group, not as a collection of private citizens. Mennealy acted more like someone who was not on the council, he said.

“If you want to function as a private citizen, be my guest,” Livingston said.

Only Councilor Belinda Gerry spoke in Mennealy’s defense. Gerry said she disagreed with this method, but understood his reasoning.

“I agree that these issues should be brought up,” Gerry said. “I believe that he felt that he would be stonewalled if he brought it into executive session.”

Matzen said councilors investigate the city manager annually, during her performance review. That would have been the appropriate time to bring this up, he said.

“That’s true,” Gerry said. “But when allegations like these come up, I think it’s appropriate to discuss them.”

Guay said he would not open the matter to discussion by the audience because the issue was a council matter and ended the meeting quickly.

staylor@sunjournal.com