I really hope Mo Green does a great job for Gboro. But the hagiography from the Uptown paper of record today is unbelievable.

Green did his principle job well. That job was to serve as a conduit between CMS, the county commission, and the local legal community. That’s it. He was more a lobbyist than a general counsel, a role he continued when Pete Gorman named him his right-hand man.

His actual legal counsel? Let’s look at the charter school debacle. To oversimplify CMS was clearly shorting county charters the funds state law directed to them. Repeated attempts to were made to avoid a legal battle. CMS went to court instead. Lost at the trial court on the question of K-12 money. You’d think that would be the end of it. No, instead CMS and Green appealed that decision to the NC Appeals court which says, guess what, not only do you owe K-12 money, you owe Bright Beginnings money as well. A stunning rebuke by any measure. The Uptown paper mentions none of this, an amazing lapse.

Meanwhile, the business side continues to fall off a cliff. Last night frequent commenter johnnyhazard posted some startling claims about the Observer’s situation that I’m pointing everyone to again to make sure they are seen.

Among the claims are that a bucket of legal complaints from ex-employees are floating around in process. I checked into this and, sure enough, federal court records indicate that the former publisher of the paper’s SouthPark magazine sued the Observer two weeks ago charging discrimination and sexual harassment.

Theresa Graham first complained to the EEOC in December 2005, which could not substantiate any of the claims. Graham was fired in July 2006. Funny, I don’t recall any of this being reported anywhere. In documents filed with the court Graham claims that the then and current general manager of the magazine, Darrell Myers, harrassed her.

“Mr. Myers asked me what I am wearing under my clothes. He also stated he couldn’t tell if I was a real blonde unless he could see between my legs,” Graham’s hand-written filing claims.

Man, if this sort of stuff were aired regarding a poultry processing plant, it would be front page news.

The wheels are coming off, folks. Corporate is of no help and will only continue to demand cost cuts right through the end of the year. Local management, although it hardly seems possible, is even more inept, failing to fix the news product while dismantling the capacity to sell and produce local ads.

But, hey, we’ve got the big re-launch of the paper’s Web site tomorrow. That should be, uh, something.