Krol 'Moving On' From Money Accusations After More Charges Found
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Mayoral candidate John Krol says he is done addressing allegations of improperly spending a nonprofit cat rescue's funds after more charges against the account were discovered by The Berkshire Eagle.
Four of the charges were attempted business excise tax payments and were found in documents that Krol provided the newspaper in order to "clear his name."
"There are very powerful interests in this city that do not want me to be mayor," he said on his podcast earlier this week, later stating that he is moving on from the situation and will no longer be speaking to The Eagle about it.
On Sept. 20, The Eagle published allegations that Krol used nearly $7,000 from the Animal Dreams cat rescue account to pay off a credit card over several months. Stacey Carver, leader of nonprofit cat rescue Animal Dreams, went to paper with text messages, bank statements, and email exchanges she said showed $6,800 was taken from the nonprofit's account through five separate transfers in 2019.
The mayoral candidate served on the board from 2013 to 2018 and had been an officiary of the account.
Krol took to Facebook Live to rebut the allegations, attributing it to a "banking error" on Greylock Federal Credit Union's part for providing him with the wrong account number and called the story an "absolute unadulterated political hit piece."
He also addressed the allegation of never working off his debt to Carver's ex-husband Allan Harris, owner of Berkshire Money Management, after he cut him a check to cover the monies that were spent out of the Animal Dreams account. Krol said there was no understanding that it had to be paid back.
He provided documents that he said cleared his name and went to The Berkshire Eagle's office for a long meeting last week.
The materials that Krol shared included a sixth payment to his business account from the nonprofit and, upon further investigation, The Eagle reported it found four additional attempts from the Animal Dreams account to pay a yearly $456 business excise tax to the state Department of Revenue for the 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 tax years. The state rejected each payment because it was from the nonprofit's account and not Krol's.
This adds up to 10 transactions from or attempted from the Animal Dreams account.
Some of the documents were provided to iBerkshires last week but were incomplete and no conclusions could be drawn from them regarding any new charges. One document was an image of an email from a Greylock Federal employee responding to Krol's reference to a "business checking account" with the checking account number of the nonprofit.
Krol told The Eagle that use of the account for his excise taxes was news to him and has maintained that he did no wrongdoing, saying there was no malintent. He could not recall how his business OneEighty Media's excise taxes were paid but insisted that they were.
On his podcast that was posted to Facebook Live, he said he walked into The Eagle with good faith and was hoping to clear the air but instead, he was grilled over new information that he knew nothing about.
"They weren't payments because those payments were actually rejected," he said.
"And they were in the DOR system so year after year, they continue to glitch and that number wasn't used so there was no payment so the idea that it was for more payments is not accurate. There was not a payment made."
He could not answer why that account number was used in scheduling the payment.
Krol had originally promised documentation from his then accountant Barry Clairmont, husband of Mayor Linda Tyer, during the in-person interview but then denied permission for the paper to speak to Clairmont next day, The Eagle reported.
On his podcast, Krol said he is "moving on," claiming that there were all kinds of other accusations made during this meeting and that it "didn't seem fair at all." He had originally threatened to seek legal action for defamation after the first story was published one day after the preliminary election that secured him a place on the general election ballot.
"We are going to move forward, we are going to run our campaign, and we're moving on from this issue and there's not going to be any more communication on the issue with Berkshire Eagle," he said.
"Because I don't think people want to hear it. They want to hear about the ideas right that we have."
Krol said that under his administration, Pittsfield will be the "most transparent financial city" with a new finance director from outside of the city and an outside auditor.
"We are the campaign that is talking about fiscal transparency and I think that's exactly what people may not like because there are a lot of people who are in positions of power in this community who really like the status quo," he said.
"So when you talk about change, when you talk about real change, there seems to be consequences for that including these hit pieces from The Berkshire Eagle."
