BERLIN – The Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors met in closed session this week to discuss the conduct of General Manager John Viola.
While a local paper claimed the meeting was to discuss Viola’s possible interference in the board’s election of officers, directors this week said there was more to it. After a heated exchange regarding the meeting and the reasons for it, the board voted unanimously to move into closed session. Some directors argued the issue had already been brought into the public eye after being referenced in a local newspaper, but Director Steve Tuttle said that was not the only thing he wanted to talk about.
“I will not discuss it in open session but there is a second issue of concern to me,” he said. “I think it affects how we move forward as a board. It’s not a witch hunt. I’ve worked with John for over 18 months. I’ve deeply appreciated the work he’s done.”
Last week, the board voted 4-3 to elect Larry Perrone as president. In the days after the decision, a local paper reported that Director Tom Janasek was unhappy with the vote. The paper also quoted text messages from Director Camilla Rogers addressing her decision to vote for Perrone as president rather than Tuttle.
As the board convened Monday, Tuttle read a motion to go into closed session to discuss the recent actions of an employee. Director Colette Horn said she didn’t see why the board needed to go into closed session when the press had already reported that the meeting was to address the general manager’s conduct. Director Frank Daly agreed. He said that based on reading the article he understood that Rogers, violating no rules, had asked Viola a question and that Viola, in violating no rules, had answered.
“This is not an issue for closed session,” Daly said. “I want this discussion out in the open.”
Rogers said she’d received numerous emails and texts in the last couple days as a result of the situation.
“It’s been very hurtful,” she said. “I can tell you I do not think we need to go into closed session.”
She said she’d printed out all of the texts between her and a friend which described how she interviewed both candidates for board president — Perrone and Tuttle — and then also reached out to Viola.
“I asked John, when I called him, I said ‘I have to talk to you about this election because I am apparently the swing vote,’” she said. “I don’t take this lightly I want to make a decision that is well thought out, that exercises my due diligence…John said to me ‘I can work with any of them. I will work with any of them. There was no undue influence. There was no undue anything…I think this is a witch hunt. I think that’s really sad. I think this is an attempt to squeeze John out for whatever other agenda exists out there. This is just sad.”
She stressed that the general manager had done nothing wrong and that while she’d considered a lawsuit, she wasn’t planning on going forward with it.
“I hired private counsel in this,” she said. “My private counsel said to me ‘you’ve got a good case in defamation.’ You know something I’m not going to do that. I’m above that. I want us to work as a team. I want to resolve this. we don’t need to go into closed session.”
Perrone said he’d agreed to the request to schedule a closed session meeting last week.
“I didn’t find out until yesterday morning when I read the Ocean Pines Progress where Director Janasek discussed with the press an alleged performance issue with an employee of the association in violation of our code of conduct and the bylaws,” Perrone said. “In addition to that, my real concern was that those comments in the press could open up Ocean Pines to, as Camilla has alluded to, to allegations of defamation whether implicit or actual against Ocean Pines by not only our general manager but another sitting director.”
He said he agreed with those who had advocated for keeping the meeting open to the public.
“There’s no need to go into closed session because director Janasek has already laid out what the closed session discussion was to be in the newspaper,” he said.
Jansek objected and said what he told the newspaper had nothing to do with Rogers’ conversation with Viola. He indicated it related to the 4-3 vote to make Perrone president.
“What I said was I was told what the vote was supposed to be and it wasn’t,” Janasek said. “Secondly, you have no idea about the issues we’re going to speak of in closed session.”
He said the issue to be raised could be something completely different.
“And it is,” he said. “So I still would like to go into closed session to discuss it. It’s not just about his conversation with Cammie zero hours before the vote for presidency.”
Perrone said that if Janasek had a concern regarding employee performance he should have brought it to the board president.
Janasek said he didn’t remember if he’d mentioned it to Director Doug Parks, who served as president until Perrone’s election.
Parks said he had no qualms about discussing the matter in open session but wanted to make sure the board did so for the right reasons.
“I’m not going to have the media dictate whether or not we go into closed session,” he said. “We’re setting a bad precedent if we let that happen.”
He added that if there was new information, as Janasek suggested, a closed meeting might be merited. Tuttle agreed.
The board voted unanimously to adjourn to closed session, and later on Monday released a statement.
“The Board of Directors of Ocean Pines met on Aug. 17, 2020, to discuss and resolve an employee issue,” the statement read. “The board of directors has complete faith and confidence in our general manager and his management of Ocean Pines. After adjournment, the board discussed matters concerning board policies and procedures.”