from The Buffalo News
An accountant resigned from her $42,000-a-year part-time job as West Seneca’s comptroller two months ago after employees accused her and an aide of using a tape recorder to secretly record their workplace conversations.
Town officials confirmed that two town employees made complaints against Jean M. Nihill, 57, about a month before she resigned from her job as the town’s top finance officer on May 12. Nihill, a certified public accountant, is the business partner of one of the town’s most politically powerful individuals – town Democratic Party leader Paul T. Clark, who served as town supervisor for 16 years.
The employees also alleged that former deputy comptroller Linda Kauderer took part in the bugging. Kauderer retired from her town job May 20. Police investigated the complaints and verified that a tape recorder was used to record the employees while they were working in town offices, Police Chief Daniel M. Denz confirmed.
Authorities decided not to file criminal charges after police consulted with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, Denz said. He added that a union grievance was filed over the bugging, but said he does not know the status of the grievance. “The DA felt this did not rise to the level of something that should be criminally prosecuted, and that it should be handled by the town as an administrative matter,” Denz said. “We agreed with them.”
According to New York State laws on surveillance and recording of conversations, it is not illegal for an individual to secretly tape-record a telephone or face-to-face conversation, as long as the individual who is doing the taping is part of the conversation. But a person in New York State cannot legally tape conversations that he or she is not part of, according to state law.
According to Denz, police are aware of only one incident – on April 1 – in which finance workers were recorded by someone who was not in the room, and not involved in the conversation. Denz added that employees in the finance office also alleged that one of their bosses accessed one worker’s computer information while the employee was out of her office. The police chief said that did happen, but said there was nothing illegal or improper about it.
Both Nihill and Kauderer admitted that they had tape-recorded their employees without the employees’ knowledge, and both women said they thought there was nothing wrong with it, Town Supervisor Sheila Meegan said.