Will Toole responds

In my last post I invited Wil Toole to respond to the TL story rehashing his overtime controversy when he was Pittston's city clerk/administrator. He responded with an email and left a comment on the post. Being a fair and balanced blogger I decided to put both on the front page.

From the inbox:


I was surprised to read it. When I appeared before the Editorial Board, it was discussed in detail and I thought they understood the situation.

The hours I worked were all documented and NEVER questioned by the administration I worked for. The dispute was brought to a resolve and the payback was a result of a settlement reached in a law suit I had with the city's new administration. It is a complicated two year story but basically, the judge held a conference with my attorney and me at which time he proposed a retirement figure which I accepted. I had been two years without income and with living expenses and legal expenses I had depleted all of my financial resources. I had to resolve my pension issue as quickly as possible. Therefore, I accepted the proposed settlement.

The city has a defined pension plan which is locked into the employee's final pay. For the settled upon figure to be obtained, my final payout had to be adjusted so that the pension amount conformed with the formula. I did not repay $19,000 in cash. The City's auditing firm did the calculations and after all possible deductions and credits, I was left with a total cash payback of $4,600. The payback number never had anything to do with the hours I worked, it was a settlement.

It is worth noting that before I worked at the city, there was absolutely no administrative record of employee time off. Each office or department had a record controlled and kept by that supervisor who was a member of that particular union. The first thing I did was to create time sheets that were submitted with each payroll period and was signed by the employee and his immediate supervisor and then kept in the City's payroll department. I also required myself to have a time sheet and it was approved by the council member who served as the Director of Accounts and Finance.

I would be happy to invite you to lunch at which time we can discuss this entire situation in detail. As I mentioned, it was complicated and it was political and I suffered terrible character assassination during the Walsh Administration's final election. Beginning with my military service, I spent my entire life working for and in my community. While in the Coast Guard, I was stationed aboard a ship that did patrols in the North Atlantic. When we were in port in Staten Island, I attended boy scout meetings and taught knot tying to the scouts. From that point right up to my retirement, I served my community in many ways. You can read my community efforts on my campaign web site, I am not a single issue community activist. All of my life, I did what I thought was the right thing.

Thanks for asking without first jumping on the bandwagon of character assassination.

Thanks,
Wil Toole


His comment on my last post:


Gort,

I have no problem stating who the judge was that dismissed the charges and I did discuss the entire situation during the TL interview.

The fact is that half of the charges were dismissed at the magistrate's level. Carmen Maffei was the magistrate and he said afterward that he had confusion on some of the charges but if he understood the entire situation at the time, he would have dismissed all of them. The original magistrate was Fred Pierantoni but he removed himself because of perceived conflict of interest by working in the same building with me.

The truth was that most of the judges excused themselves because they knew me personally. Judge Conahan did agree to take the case. The thing that Conahan knew and bothered me was that when he defeated Judge Musto in his election to the Bench, I was a strong supporter of Judge Musto and absolutely did not support Conahan. That's a fact! Now with that situation facing me, I thought I would be in real trouble with Conahan but there was nothing I could do about which judge was left to hear my case. He did dismiss the remainder of the charges and commented as to how could they have gotten that far? The charges were absurd.

As for the question of Conahan being a friend of mine when all this happened can be answered in the fact that it was Judge Conahan who worked out my pension law suit and the deciding factor in my accepting the proposed settlement was that my attorney and I thought that I was awarded health insurance for life. We thought it was designed the same as state pensions at the time. I mention this because it was also Judge Conahan who canceled my heath insurance coverage last year. Does that sound like he did me a favor?

Joe Valenti claims to be the only one questioning my background but the fact that I filed a defamation law suit against him may have something to do with his obsession to continue his character assassination of me.

The history of my work in my community is contained within my web site, www.BestControllerCandidate.com. At the age of 66, I wake every morning and I'm proud of the man in the mirror. I have made many efforts and spent countless hours doing what I could to improve the quality of life in my community. If voters take the time to read about my work history and my public works and then choose to base their opinion on character assassination and false charges over 10 years old then that's their right to do so. Apparently, it is the headlines that matter, not the ultimate disposition of those headlines.

This all boils down to comparing what I have done with my life, the work experience I have accumulated and the ability I have to be a good County Controller. By the way, my "Rodney King" point when interviewed was based on what I see as county officials spending more time looking to lay blame than working together to solve problems. If I'm wrong and working together is a bad objective then there are two other candidates to choose from. This is still America and as a veteran of 4 years of active duty, I will defend your right to choose. And, as a veteran I will exercise my right to defend myself when challenged.