Fort Knox board seeks legal advice Bangor firm hired to help with issues stemming from director’s termination

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PROSPECT – After a marathon session on Tuesday night, the Friends of Fort Knox board voted to hire a Bangor law firm to advise them in several matters, including a Maine Human Rights Commission discrimination complaint and a petition from Friends members.

Both issues, and a potential civil suit in Superior Court, stem from the board’s decision last month to remove executive director Leon Seymour from his post.

Seymour has said he will fight to get his job back and has filed the discrimination complaint. Board members also learned that they could face a civil suit in Superior Court stemming from that decision.

The board dealt with three major issues during the five-hour session: hiring an attorney, rehiring Seymour and addressing the petition.

The board unanimously approved the hiring of the firm of Russell, Silver and Silverstein instead of an individual attorney in order to be able to discuss the various issues facing the board.

The petition, submitted by Friends member Michael Celli and signed by 60 members of the organization, he said, called for a special meeting of members on Sept. 20 to rehire Seymour, remove any or all of the 13 board members and elect new members to replace them.

Celli had urged the board to be “good diplomats” and to “reinstate Leon Seymour with a two-year contract retroactive to the date of his forced removal.”

Board member Mary Campbell made such a motion, arguing that the petition came from members of the organization.

“These are the people we represent,” Campbell said. “They elected us. We can’t ignore them.”

Other board members, however, expressed concern about taking such an action without discussing it and suggested that since it was a personnel issue, any discussion of which should be in executive session.

They agreed to table that issue and also tabled a motion to hire Richard Silver to represent them in current and future litigation.

Some members were concerned that they had not had the opportunity to meet with Silver prior to the vote – although the executive committee had met with the attorney prior to the start of the meeting.

Although the board had accepted the petition with the intent of verifying the signatures, the three issues became intertwined.

Board members Campbell and Ed Youngblood, who had not been at the meeting when Seymour was dismissed, did not want to vote on rehiring him until they heard more about the reasons for that decision.

Board members also wanted advice on how to handle the request for a special meeting, particularly how to meet any notification requirements to the membership, since the petition had included a specific date for that meeting. Those discussions, Youngblood said, would require legal advice.

But the board had tabled a motion to hire Richard Silver, described as a specialist in labor law. Some expressed concern that an attorney with that specialty might not be prepared to advise them on matters relating to the nonprofit corporation.

Vice President Joe Brooks suggested hiring the law firm, which would have varied expertise and could handle all of the board’s needs or refer them to another attorney. The board approved the hiring by a vote of 8-3 with two abstentions.

Jane Cirillo pressed to get a response from the attorneys on the issue of the special meeting within 24-48 hours.

“If they have complied with the letter of the law, we have 10 days to respond,” she said. “I don’t want to appear like we’re stonewalling this. If we act reasonably, no one will have a problem with it.”

The attorney will have to look at the organization’s by-laws and determine what requirements there are for a special meeting, including notification to members and eligibility issues.

The board agreed to send the issue to the attorney with the response to go to the executive committee.

Board members also voted to table discussion of reinstating Seymour until a meeting can be scheduled with the attorney and agreed that session should happen quickly.

They agreed to waive the board notification requirements in order to expedite that session.

Board member Bonnie Brooks expressed concern that board members could face some liability if information discussed in executive sessions was not kept confidential.

She indicated that some information already had been discussed outside of the board and that such a “breach of confidentiality could compromise the board’s ability to defend itself.”

Campbell indicated that if board members were satisfied that the meetings were legitimate executive sessions, confidentiality would not be a problem.

The issue of confidentiality will be the first thing the board discusses with the attorney.

Although Celli said he was pleased that the board was dealing with the petition, he indicated that he was disappointed that the issue had gone that far. He indicated he had hoped the board would act favorably on the motion to rehire Seymour.

“I gave them the opportunity to stop this foolishness,” he said. “They chose not to and now have put themselves in a corner; it’s a no-win situation. Now, they either have to lose face or fight to the death – and it will be to the death.”

About two dozen Seymour supporters turned out to urge the board to reconsider their decision, praising the former executive and the work he has done for the fort.

Some longtime members of the Friends tempered their compliments, noting that others had a hand in helping to preserve the fort. They said that much work had been completed before Seymour was hired in 1999.

“To say Leon did it all is ludicrous,” former board member Brian Clough said. “But he did a lot.”

During regular reports, board members raised some concerns about administrative and financial record keeping, some of which reflected on Seymour’s actions as executive director.

Bonnie Brooks read a long list of what she said were failures to file required state forms and reports in a timely manner and to maintain adequate employee records.

Acting treasurer Randy Poulton pointed to several spending issues, including checks that Seymour had written to himself and a debit card expenditure.

Seymour said little during the session, but argued that the issues raised a smoke screen. Although he acknowledged that in a small organization, some things “fall through the cracks,” he said he would match the Friends’ performance with any organization of the same size.

Those issues, he said, were an attempt by the board “to cover a bad decision on their part.”