Just cause or retaliation?

Termination letter and board division reveal new clues in Debbie Mausolf firing

Town of Greenport, NY, October 2nd — We have obtained a copy of the termination letter that Debbie Mausolf received after she was relieved from her position of confidential secretary. We want to take this opportunity to revisit what happened back in May and also answer a question that has been on Greenport residents' minds since Debbie was let go on May 19: Why did Debbie never publicly state why she was fired?

It's a misconception that Debbie didn't talk about it. She made the following statement to the Register Star which was published on June 15 in the newspaper's article on the upcoming Town Board special meeting in June:

“Monday I worked and did payroll," Mausolf said, describing her firing during the June meeting. "I come in on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. She [Eldridge] calls me in. She gives me a slip of paper and says ‘your services are no longer needed,’ turns her back to me and never looks at me again.”

When we reached out to Debbie, she remained adamant that Supervisor Kathy Eldridge never gave her a reason for the firing nor listed any particular wrongdoing that she was allegedly guilty of.

The termination letter that was sent to Debbie is reproduced below. It contains a bunch of legalese and is otherwise full of boilerplate passages. It is remarkably devoid of any personalizations which one might normally expect when a person is let go after an eight year employment:

Town board members are taking different sides

We asked every member on the town board if Kathy explained her action to them with the exception of Guy Apicella, who we were unable to reach and who hasn't responded to the message we left with him.

Frank Iaccino, who later that year in August resigned from the town board, stated that he had learned why Debbie was let go in an executive session in July and couldn't share it for that reason.

Jim Dolan confirmed that much and likewise declined to provide specifics of the Eldridge accusations towards Debbie.

Where Dolan and Iaccino differ is in their assessment of the veracity of these allegations: While Iaccino believes Kathy's side of the story and thinks that Debbie's firing was justified, Jim strongly believes that Kathy's allegations were unsubstantiated and a deliberate fabrication two months after the supervisor fired Debbie.

When asked to comment on Iaccino's trust in Kathy Eldridge, Jim scoffed: "His comment says it all. He is probably the only resident in Greenport who has any trust in Kathy and how she conducts town business".

Clayton Clark meanwhile declined to comment, even when asked if he had approached Kathy and asked for a reason why Debbie was let go. At the August town board meeting, around a month after the executive session when Kathy Eldridge stated her reasons for terminating Debbie's employment, Clayton made a statement in support of appointing Debbie Mausolf as Town Clerk and said: "I feel we need to revisit Debbie Mausolf, bringing her back to the town clerk position. At this point, nothing substantial has been brought up out to us. It is in my mind what makes the most sense for the Town of Greenport".

What then was the real reason that Debbie got fired?

Kathy Eldridge never publicly stated why she decided to relieve Debbie of her duties as confidential secretary on May 19. Town Attorney Rob Fitzsimmons declared at the June town board meeting that the confidential secretary serves at the pleasure of the supervisor and that Kathy therefore had no obligation to state a reason.

Debbie claims she has not been given a reason either and whatever reason Kathy brought up during the executive session in July convinced neither Jim Dolan nor Clayton Clark given that the latter gave up his opposition to appointing Debbie as town clerk in the August board meeting.

An itemized invoice from the town's labor attorney Elena DeFio Keane suggests that Kathy Eldridge had been inquiring about the legal status of her confidential secretary and whether Debbie had civil service protection as early as January of this year.

This would have been shortly after Jim Dolan took office on the town board and after he had started making internal accusations against the supervisor of having accepted illegal pay-offs from Hudson Valley Fisheries.

For that reason, both Debbie and Jim Dolan maintain that Eldridge's actions in May were purely retaliatory because in their minds, Eldridge suspected that Debbie Mausolf had told Jim Dolan about the supervisor's involvement with HVF.

There may well be some merit in this belief considering that Supervisor Eldridge has also been attempting to impede the work of Debbie's husband, Highway Superintendent John Mausolf. We have written about that in a previous article.