Ledyard - Mayor Fred Allyn gave Zoning and Wetlands Official R. Scott Duffus a 15-day unpaid suspension after a predisciplinary hearing held in his office on Monday morning.

The suspension begins today.

"The reasons for your suspension are that you failed to properly record and work your required time on June 4, 2009 (falsification of time record); and failed to follow the June 19, 2009 directive from me and Chairman Geer regarding issuance of Certificates of Compliance," Allyn wrote in a letter e-mailed to Duffus following the hearing. Bill Geer is the chairman of the Zoning Commission.

Duffus, Allyn, Attorney Dave Ryan and town tax assessor Paul Hopkins, the supervisor's union representative, attended the hearing, Duffus said, adding that he found out about it via a letter that arrived in his New London home on Saturday.

He has been on paid administrative leave since July 13.

"I got the impression that everything was predetermined before I even walked in the room," he said, "(as though) they discussed all this stuff and it didn't really matter what I said or what I did."

Still, Duffus submitted a lengthy letter addressed to the mayor in his defense at the hearing, detailing a long list of hardships he alleged the mayor and Zoning Commission forced upon him in past months, including prior suspensions, punishments for following state statutes and directives not to attend his own commission meetings.

"Let's be honest with one another," Duffus wrote. "This 'paid administrative leave' has been a way of locking me out of my office and finding fault with my work performance in an effort to terminate my employment with the Town."

Allyn called the accusation that his decision was decided in advance "absolutely not true."

"There would be no way that I could defend that. If we wound up in arbitration, which we could, there would be no way that I would defend that," he said.

The suspension letter instructs Duffus to return to work Sept. 8. In the meantime, former zoning office administrative assistant Lisa Littlefield, whose position was eliminated from the budget and who is now program director at the senior center, spends about five hours a week helping to keep the office running. She is paid at a regular, not an overtime, rate, human resources director Karen Morton said, because her official job is part-time.

k.goldenberg@theday.com