In the latest salvo in the battle between some Marmet residents and Mayor Bill Pauley, residents filed a petition Monday morning accusing the 87-year-old mayor of misconduct and asking that he be removed from office.
The petition filed in Kanawha Circuit Court includes the signatures of 99 registered Marmet voters and asks that a three-judge panel be appointed to consider removing Pauley as mayor.
Pauley, "by his own admission, encouraged ineligible voters to cast votes during early voting despite the fact that they were not residents of the Town of Marmet, but were in fact residents of towns other than Marmet," the complaint states.
The petition accuses Pauley of "official misconduct, malfeasance in office, incompetence, neglect of duty and gross immorality," and states that whether Pauley is ever prosecuted by a state or federal prosecutor, he is guilty of false swearing and deceiving voters.
The 99 signatures is enough to meet what state law requires in order to attempt to remove an elected official, according to the complaint. The signatures include at least 40 voters in the previous election, and the number is more than 1 percent of the total number of voters in the city, the petition states.
The complaint filed by residents includes a copy of an agreement Pauley made with the state Ethics Commission on Sept. 29. Pauley entered into a conciliation agreement on two counts of violating the state Ethics Act for using public office for private gain.
A conciliation agreement is the equivalent of a plea bargain, in which a person admits to the findings of the Ethics Commission's Probable Cause Review Board and accepts the penalties and reprimands spelled out in the agreement.
In the deal Pauley took, he admitted to voter registration improprieties involving his 2013 re-election bid. The agreement dropped allegations that Pauley had the town's software vendor remotely log on to the town's computer to print him a check for $6,120.
Pauley, who has served as Marmet's mayor for 37 years, said Monday afternoon he plans to fight to finish out his term, which ends in 2017. He said he doesn't plan to run for re-election.
Pauley told the Gazette-Mail that he admitted to the ethics charges to get the case over with.
"I know that it looks bad what I agreed to, but I said that to get the thing settled, to get it out of court. My wife's sick, I need to take care of her," the mayor said from his desk at City Hall. "The only thing I regret is being here on Election Day because they can make something up on you that ain't true."
As part of the deal with the Ethics Commission, Pauley admitted to driving people who weren't registered to vote and/or weren't Marmet residents to Marmet's Town Hall for early voting between May 29 and June 8, 2013. The mayor also admitted that he met with those people in his office and provided them with and helped them fill out voter registration forms, even though the deadline to register to vote for the June 11, 2013 election had passed.
Pauley provided the people sample ballots that had already been completed and gave them lists of his preferred candidates to use when they voted. He told poll workers that the people were properly registered to vote and that their votes should be accepted and counted.
He also contacted the county's voters' registration office on June 14, 2013, to ask that 10 to 12 votes that had been accepted by poll workers on a provisional basis be counted as valid votes, the complaint states.
Pauley said the petition is being fueled by a disagreement that's gone on more than a year over how much to pay Street Commissioner Johnny Walker.
Over Pauley's objections, council members hired Walker in 2013 to oversee the town's streets and refuse collection. Walker was to be paid $60,000 a year. But Pauley has long said he doesn't think the city could afford to pay that much. The mayor believes Walker should be paid $18 an hour plus overtime - the same as the chief of police and the fire chief.
"I'll do what I can to stay in office," said Pauley. "I'd like to finish my term up for the people."
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.