More Information Concealed from the People‏

                           MORE INFORMATION CONCEALED FROM THE PEOPLE!
 

 Lisbon Town Engineer E. Ryan Leighton

A former employee of the Town of Lisbon filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission and on April 1, 2014 and this complaint was settled out of court.  The Maine Human Rights Commission filed a complaint against E. Ryan Leighton, Town Engineer and the Town of Lisbon. 

The complaint alleged that Respondents Town of Lisbon and Ryan Leighton subjected the former employee to unlawful discrimination in the terms and conditions of employment due to his disability when it classified his vacation as medical leave, threatened termination of his employment and ordered him to submit to a medical examination.  The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that the Complaint ant was subjected to disability discrimination when the Town of Lisbon and Ryan Leighton required him to undergo an independent medical examination.

Our Interim Town Manager, Dale Olmstead, negotiated an out of court settlement.  The terms of the agreement are that neither the Town of Lisbon nor Ryan Leighton is admitting to doing any wrong doing.  However, the town agreed to provide the Commission Compliance Manager with a copy of the current policies relating to disability discrimination, medical inquiries and medical examinations, and any proposed changes to those policies.

Within 120 days of the effective date of the agreement, the town will provide mandatory training for all of its employees, managers and supervisors regarding the requirements of the revised policies related to disability discrimination, medical inquires and medical requests.  The dates when the training was performed, an overview of the training provided and the name and credentials of the trainers will be provided to the Commission Compliance Manager.

Not part of the agreement, the Town Insurance Company agreed to pay and indeed did pay our former employee $16,500.00 to drop the Maine Human Rights Complaint and any further legal action.  This does not include legal fees for the town.

Once again, monies are being paid to settle yet another suit on behalf of Ryan Leighton.  This time the taxpayers did not have to suffer directly but will when our insurance premiums go up because of Mr. Leighton’s total lack of managerial skills and his inability to deal with people.  This is the second time Mr. Leighton’s incompetency has been identified.  The first was when the Department of Environmental Protection agency fined the town $22,307.00 for violations.  Mr. Leighton is neither a qualified Licensed Professional Engineer, qualified as the Superintendent of Sewer (only Grade 2 and should be Grade 4) nor qualified to manage people.  Keep in mind that Mr. Leighton cannot sign documents/reports required by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection agency and yet he receives a salary close to $80,000.00 of our tax dollars. 

Talk about fraud, waste and abuse of our tax dollars.

Larry Fillmore