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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.

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Posted Tuesday June 8, 2010 by Melinda Penkava