Mount Vernon residents are not dealing with rumors. We are watching what looks like a cover-up unfold in real time.
Here is what just happened.
A Resident Asked a Simple Question. The City’s Answer Was a Lie.
In November, a Mount Vernon resident filed a lawful FOIL request with the City. FOIL — the Freedom of Information Law — is a New York State law that gives every resident the right to access government records. It’s one of the most basic tools of democratic accountability: you ask your government for public records, and they are legally required to hand them over.
The request asked for Records of Activities (ROAs) — essentially, the timesheets that elected officials are required to file with the State to document their work and qualify for their taxpayer-funded pensions. The request also asked for related worksheets and any emails showing those records had been sent to NYSLRS, the New York State and Local Retirement System — the agency that manages public pensions in Albany.
After months of delay, the City responded in writing on January 27, 2026:
“No responsive records were located.”
Full stop. Categorical. Unqualified.
Separately, in an earlier email about a different part of the request, the City told the requester that resolutions are publicly available on the City’s website and directed her to the Agenda Center. That part is true — resolutions are public.
But that is not what the FOIL request was about.
Resolutions are only the end product — the final vote. They do not show how officials actually documented their time, what they submitted, or whether anything was ever transmitted to the State. The request sought the underlying records: the ROA logs, worksheets, templates, and emails to NYSLRS — the very records that should exist if officials had been filing them as required.
Those records were not produced.
Thirteen Days Later, the Records Magically Appeared
On February 9, the City Council suddenly placed a resolution on its agenda listing detailed ROA figures for the Mayor, Comptroller, and six Council Members covering multi-year terms.
Think about that. The City told a resident on January 27 that no records exist. Thirteen days later, detailed figures appear on the Council agenda. If no records existed on January 27, those figures could only have been assembled after the FOIL request — not from records kept in the ordinary course, as the law requires.
In plain terms: it looks like the City got caught, and then scrambled to create records that should have existed all along.
The February 10 Council Meeting Made It Even Clearer
City Clerk Nicole Bonilla told the Council that NYSLRS had notified her that the State had no ROAs on file for the Mayor, the Comptroller, or any of the five sitting Council Members. She said she “does not have access” to her predecessor’s files, could not locate prior records, and was therefore re-collecting and resubmitting ROAs retroactively based on what officials sent her only recently.
Council Member Cathlin Gleason suggested that the ROAs had been completed in real time and that the issue was simply a former Clerk who failed to transmit them.
But the Clerk’s own testimony does not support that. If ROAs had truly been completed and submitted years ago, there should have been some trace of them inside City Hall: completed templates, internal copies, email confirmations. None of that was produced in response to the FOIL request. None of it.
The Excuses Don’t Pass the Smell Test
The claim that a sitting City Clerk cannot access records created by a former City Clerk is, frankly, absurd. Those files are City records, not personal files. If the Clerk truly lacked access to prior records, the office could not perform even routine archival or certification functions. This is the office that maintains the City’s official records — that’s the whole point.
Making it worse: the former City Clerk – who no longer works at City Hall – was able to locate several prior ROA-resolutions online, indicating that supporting materials exist. In fact, she is adamant that they do.
Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard told the Council that her office had submitted ROAs in 2020 and again in 2024 and insisted the administration had been “in compliance.” If that were accurate, there should be a paper trail. The City could not produce one.
Then They Shut Down the Clerk’s Office
Just hours after these concerns were raised in writing to state oversight bodies, the City abruptly closed the City Clerk’s Office — the very department responsible for these records — for “vault maintenance.”
Maybe that is coincidence.
But in Mount Vernon, we have seen too many “coincidences” involving missing records, late-night activity at City Hall, and documents that conveniently disappear when scrutiny arrives. Sometimes even filing cabinets in the Building Department go up in flames after somebody calls in a bomb threat.
Why Every Resident Should Care
This is not a story about timesheets and pension paperwork. This is a story about whether your government will tell you the truth when you ask a direct question.
FOIL exists so that you — the residents and taxpayers of Mount Vernon — can hold your government accountable. When you file a FOIL request, the law says the City must produce the records or explain why it can’t. What the City cannot do is tell you the records don’t exist, and then turn around thirteen days later and produce them. That is not a clerical error. That is a violation of state law.
And if the underlying records were never kept in the first place — if elected officials were claiming pensions without ever filing the documentation required by the State — then the problem is much bigger than a FOIL violation. It’s a question of whether public money was disbursed based on records that didn’t exist.
What We’re Doing About It
We are asking for real oversight from the New York State Comptroller and the Committee on Open Government.
Residents should not have to chase basic truth about how their government operates — or whether officials are following the rules that determine their own pensions.
Mount Vernon deserves a government that tells the truth the first time — not one that rewrites history after being caught.