GRAY –– Former Gray Town Manager Michael Foley was accused last week by the town council of financial reporting errors and mishandling his town-issued laptop.
Foley, in a written statement, denied the allegations.
“During my tenure, I always worked diligently to manage town finances, and I was always transparent with the town council and public,” said Foley, who resigned as manager in November 2025.
Gray Town Council Chair Michael Johnson on Jan. 6 said officials had discovered reporting mistakes regarding the purchase of a fire truck for the town and thousands of dollars in ambulance fees.
Foley, according to Johnson, purchased the truck in February 2025 for about $1.25 million. Johnson said Foley believed he was using about $1.5 million in funding that was made available following a 2019 audit to pay for the truck.
However, Johnson said, those funds had already been spent before Foley purchased the truck, and that no one discovered the error until June 2025.
“The board was not informed of this at the time,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the council also discovered a series of bills for ambulance service totaling “more than $140,000” that Foley did not report to the council.
Finally, Johnson accused Foley of wiping all data from his town-issued laptop computer and resetting it to factory settings before leaving office. Johnson said two forensic computer technicians were unable to recover anything that had been deleted.
Foley, in a written Jan. 8 statement posted to his LinkedIn account, denied any wrongdoing. He said at the time of the fire truck purchase, “funds were identified as available,” and that he disclosed the ambulance fees as part of the Fiscal 2026 budget process.
Regarding his computer, Foley said it was an Apple laptop that was encrypted.
“Prior to my departure, and recognizing that these security measures could prevent access by other staff, the computer was restored to factory settings so it could be reused,” he said.
Foley added that he uploaded the laptop’s contents to town-owned servers first, and informed town officials.
“I did not, nor did I ever intend to, conceal or destroy information,” he said.
Johnson said officials are still trying to resolve the discrepancy regarding the purchase of the truck, but that Interim Town Manager Denise Clavette had already collected enough funds to pay off a portion of the balance due on the ambulance fees.
Johnson told the public that town officials are working to prevent such errors from happening again, including potentially outsourcing financial management to a third-party company.
“We are researching best practices and expect to implement changes within the next month,” he said.
Also on Jan. 6, Johnson issued a seemingly unrelated statement about how someone had defrauded the town of Gray of about $104,000. He did not name Foley, saying only that “a fraudster” broke into the systems of the neighboring Town of New Gloucester, and issued a legitimate invoice to the Town of Gray, but the invoice contained a different account number for payment.
Johnson said the Town of Gray paid the invoice, inadvertently giving the money to the fraudster in question.
Foley, in his statement, said that incident happened after he had stepped down as manager. The town of New Gloucester issued a statement of its own last week, saying in part, “The Town of New Gloucester would like to make clear that it was not breached in this incident, and no Town or resident data has been compromised.”
Johnson said the town would decline to answer further questions about any of the incidents, but said, “We are working closely with law enforcement, and are actively investigating several matters.” He did not say exactly which matters the council and law enforcement were investigating.
Foley was a longtime Westbrook City Councilor before taking office as mayor in 2019. He resigned as mayor in February 2024 to take the Gray Town Manager job. Clavette served as economic development director in Gray from November of 2024 before being named interim town manager following Foley’s departure.