ALTAMONT — An Altamont police officer, who has been suspended since December of 2003, is suing the village for about $48,000 in back pay and is asking for his job to be reinstated.

Altamont’s mayor, James Gaughan, said that Marc Dorsey had a four-month window after his suspension to take action. Asking for nearly two years in back pay now is unfair, said Gaughan, who was elected this spring.

Dorsey’s attorney, Stephen Coffey, said that Dorsey was suspended for an Albany stalking arrest and, since those charges were dismissed in June of 2004, he should have been given a hearing about his suspension.

Gaughan told The Enterprise that he agrees that Dorsey deserved a hearing. But, he said, it’s too late now.

The village is required to answer the charges made in the suit on Nov. 7. It will ask Supreme Court Justice Joseph C. Teresi to dismiss the suit on the technical grounds of timing, Gaughan said.
"He’s interested in getting his job back and they’re not interested in talking to him," Coffey said of Dorsey. "They owe him money."

People who live in Altamont might be upset about the lawsuit and think that an officer is trying to get money that he’s not entitled to, Coffey said.

It’s understandable that Dorsey was suspended when he was arrested, Coffey said. But, he said, when the charges were dropped and Dorsey had a good record with the Altamont department, the village should have given him his job back.
"They’re ignoring him," Coffey said. "What is their basis for not bringing him back""
Dorsey isn’t working now, his lawyer said, but he is looking for other employment. "He’s not sitting at home with a funnel through the roof waiting for the money to come from Altamont," Coffey said.

Coffey also represents Ryan Mahan, an Altamont officer who may also take legal action against the village since he was removed from the work schedule this week. (See related story.)
The Dorsey lawsuit, Gaughan said, "is just another example of what we’ve been left with from a former administration....I’m trying to help the village not get dragged down a path where it has to pay..."

The suit

In the suit, Dorsey names as defendants: the Altamont Village Board; Gaughan; former Mayor Paul DeSarbo; and the former Commissioner of Public Safety, Robert Coleman.

The Enterprise read the legal papers filed at the Albany County Courthouse. The suit states that the village violated the state’s Civil Service Law by suspending Dorsey without giving him a hearing or a list of disciplinary charges against him.

It requests that the village reinstate Dorsey as a village police officer and pay him the full-time salary he would have been paid from the time of his suspension until now.

Dorsey, 35, was appointed as a full-time officer in September of 2002, but, Gaughan said, he never actually worked full time. "It was a highly irregular appointment at the onset," Gaughan said.

Former Mayor DeSarbo, who heard of the lawsuit yesterday from The Enterprise, suggested that Dorsey and other officers only worked full-time for the police department for a short time, so they could get a full-time police job elsewhere.
Then and now, DeSarbo said of Dorsey, "He was trying to hoodwink the department and the village."

In court documents, Dorsey states that, on Dec. 2, 2003, he was arrested in Albany for stalking, a misdemeanor.

On Dec. 4, 2003, he was suspended from his village employment without pay. The court papers include a one-paragraph letter, written by then-commissioner Coleman, telling Dorsey he was suspended because of his arrest.

Coleman could not be reached for comment this week.
On June 23, 2004, the stalking charges against Dorsey were dismissed. The court documents contain a decision from Judge Thomas Keefe, an Albany City Court justice. Keefe states that the charges were dismissed because "the complainant has failed to detail the manner in which she sustained ‘material harm’ to her mental and emotional health."
The village’s decision to keep Dorsey suspended, even after the charges were dismissed, "was an abuse of discretion," the lawsuit states.
"When the charges were dropped, we wrote a letter and heard no response," Coffey told The Enterprise. "They’ve got to give him a hearing and fire him or bring him back and put him on the job."

In May of this year, Coffey wrote a letter to the village, asking that Dorsey get almost two years of full-time back pay — about $24,000 a year — and be reinstated as an officer.

The next week, village attorney E. Guy Roemer responded, in a letter to Coffey, that the village was not going to do this. Dorsey was entitled to bring forth an Article 78 lawsuit on or before the four months after he was suspended in 2003, Roemer wrote. An Article 78 suit allows citizens to challenge government actions.
"Failure to do so bars him from seeking payment," Roemer wrote.
"That’s not the case," Coffey told The Enterprise in response this week. Those four months were up while Dorsey’s charges were still pending, he said. The four months shouldn’t begin until Dorsey is refused a hearing, he said.
But, Coffey said, even if Dorsey had only four months past his suspension to take action, what the village did was wrong. Coffey suggested that the village intentionally waited the four months and then said, "Too late; tough luck."

At Tuesday’s village board meeting, after discussing the matter in executive session, the board appointed the law firm of Roemer, Wallens, and Mineaux to defend the village in the case, at the rate of $175 an hour.

James Roemer, brother of the village attorney, will handle the case, Gaughan said.
"I don’t think he deserves anything," DeSarbo told The Enterprise of Dorsey. "He didn’t follow the procedures in the time allotted."
DeSarbo declined further comment, since he hadn’t heard about the suit. "The village is keeping me in the dark," he said.
"I believe everybody who should be protected under the law should be given a hearing. He should have gotten a hearing while the other administration was in place," said Gaughan, who ousted DeSarbo in the spring election. But, Gaughan said, Dorsey took action too late.

Address discrepancy"

Dorsey, who now lives in Selkirk, is listed in court documents as living at 103 Severson Ave. in Altamont, at the time of his employment.

Dorsey’s address was the same that Officer Ryan Mahan had previously used. In 2004, allegations arose that Mahan didn’t live in Altamont, but used the address as his own.

Full-time officers must live in the village of Altamont while part-time officers can live anywhere, according to the current public safety commissioner, Anthony Salerno.

The village appoints officers who are on a Civil Service list. The applicant’s score on a Civil Service exam determines their placement on the list, Gaughan said, and the village must interview the top three candidates on the list.

Mahan, Gaughan said, was, at first, numbered on the list in the 300’s.

But, Gaughan said, applicants can get themselves higher on the list by living in the village or town they are applying to. The mayor questioned whether Mahan and Dorsey were truthful by listing Altamont as their homes, to boost their rankings on the list.

Last September, in an article about an Altamont Village Board meeting where Mahan was appointed full-time, and questions were raised about his residency, The Enterprise printed Mahan’s Altamont address: 103 Severson Ave., the same address as listed for Dorsey. Mahan was angry at the newspaper then because, he said, publishing his address put him in danger.

Through a Freedom of Information request in November of 2004, The Enterprise found that Mahan applied for a full-time job in another county, while working for Altamont full-time.

Shortly after, Mahan resigned as a full-time officer in Altamont. In a letter to the village, he wrote of his anger that a village official told The Enterprise his address. He also described a village employee reading the house’s water meter, to determine if more than one person (the landlord and Mahan) lived there.

At the time, Mahan told The Enterprise that he planned on moving to Saratoga.
Of his Altamont address and his landlord, Dan Jacobson, Mahan said, "The lease was all worked out just between me and him."
Jacobson said then, "He was broken up with a girlfriend so I let him stay with me over the winter months....It was a short time."

Since, Mahan has worked for Saratoga County full-time and Altamont part-time; he does not currently live in Altamont, according to Salerno.

Gaughan spoke of the Mahan situation and said he is investigating the address discrepancy because, if Dorsey said he lived in Altamont when he was appointed as a full-time officer, but didn’t, then he had to have lied on his application, Gaughan said.
Coffey said that Dorsey lived in Altamont in 2003. The village claimed earlier that he didn’t, Coffey said, "but that was disposed of. He had valid residency."