MIDDLETOWN — The town’s lawyer has denied local activist Antone C. Viveiros’ request for records related to former Town Administrator Gerald S. Kempen’s departure early last month.

Viveiros, who leads the Concerned Island Taxpayers Association, in a Dec. 24 letter to the town requested, under the provisions of the state’s Access to Public Records Law, “all documents, papers, letters, tapes, photographs, films, sound recordings, magnetic or other tapes, electronic data processing records, computer stored data … in connection with the termination of employment of former Middletown Town Administrator, Mr. Gerald Kempen.”

Viveiros said last week that he filed the request because he’s disturbed by assertions that Town Council members interfered with how Kempen did his job. Viveiros said he’s also troubled by Kempen’s severance pay.

“When you pay six months’ salary and benefits for [someone] doing nothing, that bothers me,” Viveiros said. “We’re the people who have to pay the bill.”

But Town Solicitor Francis S. Holbrook II denied Viveiros’ request, writing: “Without acknowledging that a termination of employment occurred, any and all records, to include all of those specifically cited in your letter of December 24, 2007, maintained by the Town relative to a Town employee are confidential employment records.”

The records Viveiros requested are “not deemed to be public records,” Holbrook wrote.

Viveiros, reached Monday, said he hadn’t received Holbrook’s denial yet, but he plans to appeal to the state’s attorney general.

Viveiros acknowledges that medical records, for example, are exempt from the public-records law. But, he said, “what the taxpayers are paying [Kempen] in order for him to leave, and why, and what he did, those are things the taxpayers have a right to know.”

The Town Council, Viveiros said, “took an oath to uphold the law and the [town] charter, and they’re not doing it.”

The circumstances revolving Kempen’s departure early last month have remained under wraps since the Town Council began a series of closed-door meetings in November with Kempen, whom the council had refused to grant a pay raise after an October performance review. Subsequent to Kempen’s evaluation, a lawyer for the administrator wrote Holbrook that Kempen had had enough and accused unnamed council members of meddling with how Kempen does his job — a violation of the council’s duties under the Town Charter.

On Dec. 9, a split Town Council in a special Sunday closed meeting approved a separation agreement with Kempen that included an undisclosed payout of more than the six-month severance package outlined in his contract. Council members have steadfastly refused to comment on the agreement, saying a confidentiality agreement bars them from divulging the pact details.

The state’s public-records law, however, requires public bodies to disclose an employee’s “name, gross salary, salary range, total cost of paid fringe benefits, gross amount received in overtime, and other remuneration,” among other employment details.

Councilman Louis P. DiPalma, who joined colleagues Edward J. Silveira and Robert J. Sylvia in voting against the termination agreement, tried at the time to convince the council to disclose the details of the board’s “alleged interference,” but he failed to draw support from anyone besides Silveira and Sylvia.

Kempen, who led the town for four years, left the job on Dec. 10. Town Finance Director Shawn J. Brown is acting as interim administrator.

mwims@projo.com