Springwater Supervisor Defends Absence from County Meetings

SPRINGWATER – Thursday night, Town Supervisor Deborah Babbitt-Henry defended her absence from more than half of County meetings.

The Supervisor said that her full-time job is the reason that she has missed more than half of the County’s Board of Supervisors meetings and all of her Human Services Committee meetings this year. Capitalization, bolding and underlining is from Babbitt-Henry’s email:

“I work a FULL TIME job in addition to my duties to my TOWN and am unable to take multiple days off each and every month for county business. This was disclosed to the board at the start. I alerted them that if there was a critical issue or an issue directly affecting my TOWN I would strive to attend.

‘I am sure there are more important issues that you could report on. Seems fishy that this suddenly became an issue.”

Babbitt-Henry did not return phone requests for comment Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon or an email request for comment Thursday afternoon. The above comment came about two hours after our initial story, available here, on her poor attendance record.

After beating two other candidates for the job, she missed 9 of 12 Human Services meetings and 14 of 24 Board of Supervisors Meetings in 2015. The Supervisor has missed all of the Human Services Committee meetings and 17 of 21 Board of Supervisor’s meetings in 2016.

Babbitt-Henry was first elected in 2012. She won a contentious race against James Bowers and Norbert Buckley in 2015. According to SeeThroughNY.com, she makes $15,510 per year.