PARIS — Following a three-hour hearing Thursday night into the alleged misuse of the Oxford County E-911 database for a new mass-notification system, county commissioners postponed a decision on whether to fire the county’s EMA director.
Emergency Management Agency Director Scott Parker was recently accused by County Administrator Scott Cole of violating federal and state law by copying and disseminating confidential names, addresses and phone numbers from the database to officials in five towns.
Cole has also accused Parker of violating a license agreement with FairPoint Communications, from which the information came; failing to heed repeated concerns from co-workers; and failure to heed Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant’s instructions to refrain from accessing the E-911 database information.
In two previous executive sessions, Cole has asked the commissioners to fire Parker, he said Thursday night in the open-session hearing he requested.
Parker and his attorney, Daniel L. Cummings of Norman Hanson and DeTroy of Portland, contend that Parker did not violate any law or breech the FairPoint contract.
Commissioners took sworn testimony from those involved, which included three of Parker’s employees, Gallant, Cole, Parker and Cummings. They asked questions of each, and then entered a second executive session at 8:30 p.m.
Commissioners Dave Duguay and Steven Merrill and the commissioners’ lawyer, Bryan Dench, entered executive session five minutes after starting the 6 p.m. meeting to wait for Commissioner Caldwell Jackson to arrive and to get instructions from Dench on how to proceed with the personnel issue.
Twenty minutes later, they began to take testimony.
The second closed-door session lasted 30 minutes, after which they decided to reconvene the hearing at 6 p.m. Monday, July 11, to process Thursday night’s information.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.