Perhaps the most interesting part of an uninteresting hearing Thursday afternoon on the potential termination of Mary Zlotnick (it was horribly boring and horribly long), was the first 20 minutes or so, when blogger John Tighe revealed that he had been subpoenaed by the city for the hearing.

Of course he had a few things to say on his blog, Saratoga In Decline, about this. (Be warned, if you had delicate sensibilities, this is not a blog for you)

The issue came to a head when Tighe brought in his attorney, Andrew McNamara, who argued that the subpeona was invalid because it was only handed to him at 9:30 a.m. for the 10 a.m. hearing.

"The notice required makes this clearly invalid," McNamara said.

What made the issue more salient, too, was that he had to be sequestered as a witness, so he was asked to step out into the hallway during the hearing.

Both McNemara and Tighe argued that the subpeona was intended to "suppress the dissemination of information," since he would have undoubtedly blogged about it.

Hearing Officer Christopher Nicolino said "I assume the attorneys in this proceeding will act in good faith" and not practice in "underhanded tactics" and again asked him to step out of the room.

"So you expect me to wait in the hallway for the entire day?" Tighe asked.

Nicolino said he's never known a witness to like it, so "you're not alone." 

When I asked Mark McCarthy of Harris Beach representing the city about whether it was to keep Tighe from writing, he literally laughed heartily. He said he would have to subpoena all of us (Me, Dennis Yusko, Lee Coleman and Dale Willman of Saratoga Wire, who was also there) to keep the information from getting out. Still, when info comes out from us, it doesn't have quite the same... flavor... as when it comes from Tighe.

McCarthy said it was because he was going to use some of Tighe's blog as evidence of information disseminated by Zlotnick (one of the charges is she went to the media and made allegations of wrongdoing) and he wanted to make sure he could confirm the authenticity of the blog through Tighe.

As a hostile witness, too, Tighe was paid for his time.

"I guess they think my time is worth $25," Tighe said. That wouldn't have added up to much per hour if he had actually waited around. As it happens, he was told he could come back after 1 p.m., but didn't.

"I guess he didn't think much of the subpeona," McCarthy said in hour seven of the hearing at just after 5 p.m. when Tighe was still nowhere to be seen.

Of course, since he wouldn't have been called anyway and if he had come back at 1 p.m. he would have been paid roughly $5 an hour, I guess they didn't think much of his time.