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riental’s Town Board Tuesday night fired Town Manager Randy Cahoon, “without cause.” The vote was 3-2.

Randy Cahoon in his last meeting as Oriental Town Manager. In background, Commissioner Barbara Venturi who has led the charge to have Cahoon fired. Tuesday night, she got the three votes she needed.

Commissioner Barbara Venturi made the motion at the end of a long meeting. Commissioner Warren Johnson seconded the motion. The third vote to fire without reason was cast by Commissioner Sherrill Styron, who a day earlier told TownDock.net that he thought Randy Cahoon should be given a chance to serve in a workplace that didn’t have the strife of the past year.

None of the three gave a reason for their action.

Commissioners Jennifer Roe and Candy Bohmert voted no, with Bohmert reading a statement that suggested the wrong person had been fired.

The Oriental Town Board, in open session Tuesday night at which three members voted to fire the Town Manager, Randy Cahoon, at left. The board has been meeting in closed door session often to discuss the intraoffice strife between Cahoon and two employees.

Strife An Open Secret

It’s been an open secret in town that tensions have been simmering at Town Hall for the past year between Cahoon and the two employees in the office, Lori Wagoner and Heidi Artley. Artley had served as interim Town Manager before Cahoon was hired last March.

The contentiousness prompted numerous closed door sessions of the Town Board — both the current board and the one before it — for much of the past year. Off limits to the public and reporters, the sessions “to discuss a personnel matter” had the board weighing the complaints from both Cahoon and the support staff.

So full of strife were the “personnel matters” that the town this winter hired an attorney, Susan Ellis, who specializes in employment issues. As of May, her services had cost the town $21,000.

While the Town Board could not publicly disclose much of the “personnel matters” that they spent hours discussing, some information did emerge over the past few months.

It just took three votes – Barbara Venturi, Sherrill Styron and Warren Johnson – to fire Town Manager Randy Cahoon. They didn’t have to say why. And they didn’t.

In a letter written by Artley, which was given to commissioners (and later was sent to some media outlets) she complained of the manager swearing in the workplace. She also complained about his handling of finances. For his part, Cahoon privately complained that Artley and Wagoner didn’t do their jobs — including bookkeeping chores — as they had for his predecessor, Wyatt Cutler, and in effect sabotaged his efforts to do his job.

Last year, Cahoon and some Town Commissioners were initially perplexed that the inner-workings at Town Hall showed up — within minutes of their happening — on a blog operated by the boyfriend of Lori Wagoner. The blog struck a personal tone it its criticisms of the Town Manager, and later, a Town Commissioner who defended him.

Commissioners Jennifer Roe and Candy Bohmert after the vote to fire Randy Cahoon. The two voted against the firing. Bohmert said it gave “a pass” to others involved in the personnel strife at Oriental’s Town Hall.

Cahoon says a search of the hard drive of the computer at Wagoner’s desk eventually revealed a link; sometimes, Cahoon says, postings to the boyfriend’s blog were filed directly from her Town Hall computer, suggesting she authored postings.

During Cahoon’s tenure, Wagoner’s boyfriend sued the town to have the Town Manager provide a letter Cahoon had sent from his personal email account on his Town Hall computer. A judge sided with Cahoon and the town and against Wagoner’s boyfriend, and ruled that the letter was not a public document.

Wagoner also complained about her boss on her Facebook page.

Cahoon says that Mayor Sage told him he could not fire Wagoner.

Surreptitious Recordings

This past winter, the Town Manager says he and a commissioner were looking for the minutes of a meeting and went to Wagoner’s computer because it was her job to take the recordings of the monthly Town Board meetings and condense them in to minutes. On Wagoner’s computer, says Cahoon, they found audio recordings of a different sort: what sounded to be surreptitiously recorded conversations in the Town Hall office.

Town Hall employee Lori Wagoner who has been at odds with Town Manager Randy Cahoon. Surreptititous recordings of Town Hall conversations were found on her computer, according to Cahoon. On Tuesday night, the Town Board fired Cahoon. Wagoner remains.

Cahoon says he was not the person who made the recordings.

The recordings were brought to the Town Board’s attention, Cahoon says, at a February closed-door session. The next day when he arrived at work, he says, he found that an employee had logged on that computer hours earlier and that most of the files of the recordings were gone. Some did survive, Cahoon says.

TownDock was told that a conversation one of its reporters had with the Town Manager in his office may have been among the recordings by a third party.

Recording two people having a conversation without their knowledge is a felony under federal law and under NC General Statute 15A-287(a)(1). TownDock raised the issue at the Town Board’s May 27th agenda meeting and again Tuesday night, June 1 and asked that before the Town Board make any personnel decision, it first get to the bottom of the surreptitious recordings and have law enforcement investigate and find out who was responsible. The request was met with resistance from Mayor Bill Sage, who did most of the talking for the board on the matter.

Mayor Bill Sage. Randy Cahoon says the mayor told him he could not under any circumstances fire Lori Wagoner.

During a heated discussion Mayor Bill Sage appeared to both confirm and condone the recordings, saying some didn’t understand the “nuance” of the state law. The reporter, versed in the law, countered that the law in NC said that at least one person in the conversation had to know it was being recorded, which did not appear to be the case in this instance.

Resident Liz Cox told the board that she was troubled by allegations of covert recordings. She said that in the future when she came to Town Hall to get information, she would ask that any conversations take place “out on the sidewalk.”

Resident Pat Herlands said that regardless of it being a felony, if the board “found evidence of any kind of taping,” it would be “totally unethical.” She suggested dismissal for the person responsible.

“I can’t imagine working with someone you can’t trust not to tape your conversations,” said Herlands.

The Town Board did approve a new rule that town employees could not make covert recordings and that if a recording device were on, the employee had to notify others of that. The Town Board voted to make Oriental’s police dept exempt from that rule. The new rule would have no effect on the previous recording(s) – they still could be found to be a felony under state law.

Town Commissioner Barbara Venturi leaves Oriental Town Hall Tuesday night after firing Town Manager Randy Cahoon. With her is Police Chief Jeff Cassasa and at left resident Hugh Grady who opposed the firing.

All Hours Access To Town Hall

Leading the charge against Randy Cahoon was Commissioner Barbara Venturi, who on at least one occasion when the Town Hall office was closed, entered Cahoon’s locked chamber and rifled through his files and computer. She had been seen at Town Hall after hours on several occasions – sometimes with a town hall employee, sometimes alone and sometimes discovered by fellow commissioners.

Venturi defended her actions, saying she was allowed access to the town’s offices and to its bookkeeping computer software because she is one of two commissioners with oversight of the town’s finances.

Cahoon maintains that having another person in addition to himself and the staff with access to the bookkeeping computer software led to some confusion. Several months ago, he says, Venturi suggested thousands of dollars weren’t accounted for, and cited a September entry. That caused some alarm among some commissioners. It cast a shadow on the Town Manager, until he says, he showed that the “September” entry didn’t really exist. The software showed the entry had been made on the evening of New Years Eve, he says, when the office was closed but when Barbra Venturi was there.

Venturi’s all-hours access to Town Hall and ability to enter the books prompted different reactions among fellow commissioners. Commissioners Roe and Bohmert appeared to view it as over-stepping bounds.

Like a pendulum. On Monday, Sherrill Styron told a reporter he wanted to give Town Manager Randy Cahoon a chance to serve without the hostile environment that existed his first year. On Tuesday, Styron provided the swing vote needed to fire Cahoon.

Sherrill Styron meanwhile, told TownDock that he thought it was only “coincidence” that Commissioner Venturi and Lori Wagoner had been at the Town Hall offices at the same time, after hours. (As recently as Monday, Styron was also questioning whether there was enough evidence to link Wagoner to the almost immediate news-from-Town-Hall postings on her boyfriend’s blog.)

In the end, Styron provided the swing vote, siding with Wagoner and Artley and firing Randy Cahoon.

Before the vote, Commissioner Candy Bohmert, who with Jennifer Roe opposed Cahoon’s firing, read a statement saying “it is my belief that ending the contract for Mr. Cahoon is the wrong direction for the Town and that we are 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. This action is the easiest action to take but it does not address the underlying issues which are the cause of this upheaval.”

New Police Service: Fetching The Commissioner

While it was Commissioner Venturi who made the motion to have Randy Cahoon fired at the meeting’s end, she was a no-show at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting.

As Mayor Sage got the session started at 7:03, Venturi was not at the table. At 7:06, Police Chief Jeff Casassa could be easily overheard in his office, next to the meeting room, calling Venturi’s name in to his phone. He then left the Town Hall and at the specific request of Lori Wagoner, Casassa says, he went to find Commissioner Venturi.

New police services: At 7:12pm Tuesday evening, Oriental’s Police Chief at the home of Commissioner Barbara Venturi. Town employee Lori Wagoner had asked Chief Jeff Cassasa to find Venturi who showed up for the meeting 17 minutes late. At the end of the meeting, Venturi moved that the board fire the Town Manager who had been at odds with Wagoner.

A reporter followed the Police Chief’s vehicle which went to Venturi’s residence. The chief knocked on the door and then went in to the house and emerged a few moments later. He drove to Town Hall. Casassa says that Venturi drove herself there, arriving at 7:17p.

The Commissioner appeared to struggle to keep her eyes open on several occasions as other commissioners spoke. Oriental resident Hugh Grady asked after the meeting that, as it appeared she had driven to the meeting, a breathalyzer test be performed on the commissioner. (The police chief declined.) Asked if she had been drinking before the meeting, Venturi said she had “had 3 glasses of wine at lunch.” Before the meeting, she told TownDock, she had been “spackling”.

Sign on door off of the meeting room where a 3-2 majority voted to fire Town Manager Randy Cahoon.

No Reason Given For Firing

Asked what it was that made her want Cahoon fired, Venturi said she couldn’t say. Warren Johnson said he had not been happy with Cahoon, but declined to give one example of what made him so. He also declined to say what the urgency had been to fire Cahoon before a criminal investigation of the surreptitious recordings had been conducted. One resident suggested to Johnson that if a criminal probe were done first, it might call in to question the credibility of Cahoon’s accusers. Johnson said nothing.

Some residents in the room were happy with the board’s vote and openly cheered. Joe Valinoti pumped his arm and shouted out to the board, “Thank you for doing your job.”

Outside afterward, a small group of residents surrounded Sherrill Styron, upset by his vote to fire Cahoon. To their heated queries, Styron said that essentially, he voted that way because he wanted to.

Mayor Bill Sage watches as Randy Cahoon empties his desk moments after being fired without cause by three of Oriental’s five Town Board members.

Firing Immediate: Clearing Out Desk And Office

In the Town Hall offices, Randy Cahoon was ordered to clear out his desk immediately, with Mayor Bill Sage watching over. As a reporter took photos, the mayor declared Town Hall closed and asked the Police Chief to get people out of the building.

Heidi Artley, who had served as interim Town Manager before Cahoon was hired was tapped — in a 3-2 vote — to be interim Town Clerk Tuesday night. Lori Wagoner also remains.

Earlier in the meeting the board agreed to hire, temporarily, former town commissioner and CPA, Mona Kay Sadler to sort through the payroll and vacation figures.

Mayor Bill Sage and Police Chief Jeff Casassa block the doorway to fired Town Manager Randy Cahoon’s office as he packs up his things. The mayor declared Town Hall closed and ordered everyone from the building.

Commissioner Candy Bohmert’s statement:

After a sober assessment of the facts presented to us, it is my belief that ending the contract for Mr. Cahoon is the wrong direction for the Town and that we are 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. This action is the easiest action to take but it does not address the underlying issues which are the cause of this upheaval. Months from now we will be back in the same position. I will not vote, in good conscience to do that. For me, it is a betrayal of the citizens that I serve, the laws I swore to uphold and the principles of honesty and integrity that I hold dear.

The Town Manager’s office as Randy Cahoon was forced to clear it out Tuesday night.

Posted Wednesday June 2, 2010 by Melinda Penkava