home

O

riental’s Town Board asked this winter that District Attorney Scott Thomas investigate five alleged issues of wrongdoing at Oriental’s Town Hall.

The five allegations listed in the February 25th letter are related to the year of strife in the Town Hall offices.

The five allegations listed in the Town of Oriental’s February 25 letter to DA Scott Thomas. (To read the entire letter, click here.)

A review of the letter to the District Attorney in New Bern reveals that none of the five allegations are linked to Randy Cahoon, the Town Manager who was fired ‘without cause’ by a 3-2 vote of the Town Board on June 1.

The allegations outlined in the letter to the DA appear to be linked instead to several people who sought Cahoon’s firing.

Oriental’s Town Board, from left, Commissioners Barbara Venturi, Sherrill Styron, Jennifer Roe, Mayor Bill Sage, Commissioners Candy Bohmert and Warren Johnson. Johnson, Venturi and Styron voted to fire Town Manager Randy Cahoon on June 1. (File Photo: February 10, 2010)

Hostile Work Environment

The workplace strife at Town Hall initially involved three people on staff: Town Manager Randy Cahoon, who was hired in March of 2009, and administrative assistants Lori Wagoner and Heidi Artley. In time, a fourth player emerged, Town Board Commissioner Barbara Venturi who sought to have Cahoon fired.

The Town Board held numerous closed door sessions to discuss the “personnel matters.” In late February, some aspects of the hostile work environment prompted the board to send the letter to the DA.

But rather than convey a sense of urgency, the letter spoke of “the Town’s hope” that the allegations were “nothing more than misunderstandings and miscommunications.”

The Five Allegations

In italics below, are the allegations as listed in the February letter to District Attorney Scott Thomas. In regular type is a reporter’s account of what each pertains to.

1. Allegations that someone without authority accessed the Town’s electronic email accounts.

Some information sent to commissioners’ Town Hall email accounts in recent years was appearing quickly on a blog written by the boyfriend of Town Hall administrative assistant Lori Wagoner. Former Town Commissioner David Cox, who served from 2007-2009, recalls one email sent from the Town Attorney to commissioners; before any commissioner had opened his or her email, Cox says, the info in it appeared on the blog. Cox says he made inquiries of Wagoner and then Town Manager Wyatt Cutler. “I never got an answer,” says Cox.

Town Board member Barbara Venturi, who championed the cause of two Town Hall employees who wanted their boss, Town Manager Randy Cahoon, fired.(File photo: February 10, 2010.)

Cox confirms that Town Commissioner Barbara Venturi set up the Town Hall email system years earlier when she put the town’s website in place. In the ensuing years, Cox says, Venturi remained the “superuser”, a status that gives access to the email accounts. Other sources say that was the conduit by which Lori Wagoner and/or her boyfriend could access the information with such speed.

2. Allegations that someone without authority used one or more computers in the Town Hall offices to publish Town information on a private website.

The former Town Manager Randy Cahoon says there were indications that some of the postings on Lori Wagoner’s boyfriend’s blog came directly from the computer at Wagoner’s desk in Town Hall.

3. Allegations that a public official or Town employee released a copy of a personnel record without authority to do so.

This, sources say, refers to a letter that town employee Heidi Artley wrote in January, in which she outlined her grievances against Town Manager Randy Cahoon. Artley says she gave her letter to Commissioners Jennifer Roe and Barbara Venturi. Such a letter would be part of the town’s personnel files, and therefore off limits to readers beyond the Town Board. The letter was sent to selected media outlets, which caused several news organizations to write their first stories about Oriental’s Town Hall strife. Town Manager Cahoon delayed defending himself against the grievances, because he said he could not publicly address personnel matters.

Town employee Heidi Artley who complained about Town Manager Randy Cahoon and since his firing, is again the Interim Town Manager. Sitting nearby is Cahoon’s predecessor, former Town Manager Wyatt Cutler. Both were in the audience during the open portion of the February 10 meeting after the Town Board met for two hours behind closed doors to discuss the strife in the Town Hall workplace.

4. Claims by Tony Tharp, the owner of a local news website, that he received an audio and video recording of a closed Town meeting that was called to discuss sensitive personnel matters. This matter now appears to be a hoax, but given the seriousness of the claims, and the public policy concerns raised by the claims, the Town believes that the only way to ensure the privacy of closed Town meetings is to investigate this matter.

When Lori Wagoner’s boyfriend claimed on his blog that he had a recording, a question emerged: Was the recording made by one of the participants in the February 10th closed door meeting — at which 5 town board members and the Mayor were present — or by someone else who arranged for such a recording device to be present in the room? Amid the speculation, one thing was not in question: that making a surreptitious recording of a closed-door session was illegal. After that, silence ensued and the recording never appeared on the blog. The subsequent account from the Mayor and majority of the Town Board was that it had all been a “hoax.”

Oriental’s Town Board and at left, Town Manager Randy Cahoon, on February 10. Moments earlier the five town board members and Mayor Bill Sage had been in a closed session. There was a claim made after this meeting that someone had surreptitiously recorded the closed session and that it would be posted on a blog critical of the Town Manager.

5. Allegations that someone without authority caused a computer located in the Town Hall offices to record the ambient sound and any conversations in the office for prolonged periods of time, and that the recordings are presently archived on a Town computer.

In February, sources say, numerous recordings of conversations in the Town Hall office were discovered on the computer of Town Hall employee Lori Wagoner. (TownDock.net came to understand that a conversation between one of its reporters and the Town Manager in his office this winter may have been among the surreptitious recordings made by a third party. Such third-party recordings are a Class H Felony in North Carolina and a violation of Federal wiretap law.)

Town Hall employee Lori Wagoner at the June 1 meeting of Oriental’s Town Board where her boss, Town Manager Randy Cahoon, was fired. The town’s letter to the District Attorney asked for an investigation in to recordings found on her desktop computer at Town Hall and in to claims by her boyfriend that someone gave him a recording of a closed-door Town Board meeting.

In a closed-door session in February, the full Town Board was told of the discovery of the surreptitious recordings. A day later, sources say, many of the recordings were deleted from the desk top computer, before the Town Hall offices opened for the day.

[page]

Surreptitious Recordings Strike Nerve

At the June 1 Town Board meeting, several residents told the Town Board that they were disturbed by the idea of their visits to Town Hall being recorded. TownDock.net asked why the Town Board wasn’t first getting to the bottom of an illegal act before making a personnel decision regarding the Town Manager, who himself had been surreptitiously recorded. After some questioning from the public, Mayor Bill Sage said that the town had asked for an investigation.

Town Asked For Probe, Gently

A day after the June 1 firing of Randy Cahoon, Town Hall released the February 25th letter to the District Attorney, confirming that the Town asked him to investigate.

However, the final paragraph of the letter appears to soften the request and make light of the matter:

Town Board member Candy Bohmert said this week that the Town Board did not follow up with the District Attorney after sending him the letter in February.

Instead, Bohmert says, the Town Board hired New Bern attorney Susan Ellis to take a different approach. Ellis’s expertise is not in criminal prosecutions but in employment and workplace issues. Bohmert says Ellis’s job was to sort through the “he-said, she-said” aspects of the Town Hall strife.

Rather Than District Attorney, Town Paid Private Attorney $21,000

Ellis charged the town $150 an hour. Between late February and mid-May, the private attorney’s work cost the town of Oriental $20,962.50. (Click here to download PDF of Susan Ellis’s invoice to the Town.)

Attorney Ellis presented the report of her investigation to the Town Board in May. It has been described as a one-inch thick binder. Town residents curious about the findings may not be able to review some or even all of the $21,000 report, given that the contents pertained to “personnel issues”.

Public Demand For Investigation

While the Town Board may have known of the surreptitious tapings (amid other allegations) for months, they were news to many citizens of Oriental this past week. In the week since Randy Cahoon’s firing, a number of residents have questioned why the Town Board didn’t push harder for an investigation in to what, on the surface, appear to have been wrongful actions – such as surreptitious recordings – by others involved in the personnel dispute.

Oriental Town Hall. A year of workplace strife led to the firing of the Town Manager on June 1. Still questions remain about the actions of his adversaries. The DA has been asked to investigate.

Commissioner Candy Bohmert, who voted against firing Cahoon last week, says she will propose at an upcoming meeting that the Town Board press for the DA to fully investigate the five allegations in the February letter. Bohmert added, “If I thought things were not going where they need to go, I would go to the Attorney General,” which is the next level of jurisdiction beyond the DA’s office.

When she voted against firing Cahoon on June 1, Bohmert said that booting the Town Manager was “giving a pass to those whose behaviors and actions so concerned us that we were ready to request a criminal investigation, of which Mr. Cahoon was not a part.”

Fellow Commissioner Jennifer Roe, who also opposed Cahoon’s firing, said that whether the actions cited in the letter are found to be “legal or illegal” there were “ethical issues” at stake.

Two Business Owners Press For Investigation.

Larry Gwaltney has a similar concern. The Oriental resident and realtor said this week that he found Randy Cahoon knowledgeable and helpful as Town Manager. Further, Gwaltney says, Cahoon’s “firing does not address the cause of all the upheaval at Town Hall.”

Gwaltney said he also wanted the investigation to proceed, “until the Town government is purged” of what he characterized as “the real troublemaker.”

“Because of the problems at Town Hall that were out of the control of the Town Manager,” Gwaltney said, “I question whether he was ever really given the opportunity to do his job.”

Meanwhile, local innkeeper, Hugh Grady, who operates the Inn at Oriental just across the street from Town Hall, is anxious that the allegations not be brushed aside. Grady says he’s planning to personally ask — as a citizen — that the District Attorney investigate. Grady says he’s prepared to ask the State Bureau of Investigation as well.

Hugh Grady and his wife Marie in the kitchen of their inn. Grady says he’s prepared to go to the SBI as well as the DA to get the allegations in the February 25th letter investigated.

The innkeeper says he is “concerned about potential criminal acts” at Town Hall being “deliberately buried by the Town Board.” Not pushing for a rigorous investigation, Grady says, did damage not only to Randy Cahoon, but “to the Town of Oriental” because it still can’t focus on other issues, such as economic development.

Posted Tuesday June 8, 2010 by Melinda Penkava