Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan’s Lock on Job to Succeed Hadeed Looks Anything But Certain

A divide over the hiring of the next county attorney is becoming clearer between Flagler County commissioners, making Deputy County Attorney Sean Moylan’s prospects to get the job, so bright a few months ago, somewhat less than a lock as two commissioners didn’t shortlist him for public interviews on July 15. They did not foreclose on his chances, either, but the shortlisted competition is not negligible.

Moylan is one of just eight applicants since the county opened the position after long-time County Attorney Al Hadeed announced in March that he would step down this summer. He will be leaving Aug. 2.

Two weeks ago commissioners appeared set to appoint Moylan the interim. They had all agreed to do so weeks earlier, and directed the administration to draft the necessary papers. When Deputy Administrator Jorge Salinas presented the papers to the commission on June 16, three of them balked, and although one of the three was eventually willing to make the appointment, Chair Andy Dance–a supporter of Moylan’s candidacy–had soured on the conditions attached to the motion. The appointment was delayed to July.

To Dance and Commissioner Greg Hansen, the Moylan hire should just be a formality–not just for the interim job, but for the permanent job. He’s been with the county for 11 years, his academic background is stellar (though one of the shortlisted candidates outshines him in that regard), he knows the county intimately, and he has Hadeed’s endorsement.

Commissioners Kim Carney, Leanne Pennington and Pam Richardson were concerned that the Moylan hire appeared too much like a done deal, and that it was discouraging applicants from throwing in their names. They asked that the application window remain open, but to proceed with interviews. Commissioners agreed to send in the names they would recommend for interviews, individually, to the administration, ahead of a June 23 workshop. Salinas tallied the nominations at that workshop, in front of the commissioners, so the process would not look like it had been done outside of a public meeting. (However, since the commissioners had sent in their nominations ahead of time, they each, theoretically, could have inquired or been told about the others’ nominations and allowed those inquiries to influence their final tally, thus tainting a process made for open meetings.)

Three candidates got no commissioners’ votes and two got just two votes, so they were eliminated. The remaining three all got three votes each: Michael Rodriguez, Scott McHenry and Moylan. All three are strong candidates, two of them with more experience than Moylan, though Moylan makes up in local experience what he lacks in his competitors’ profiles.

Pennington and Richardson did not vote for Moylan. Carney did, as did Hansen and Dance. Each commissioner was to pick three candidates. Each did so, with Dance’s exception.

“Consistent with my comments at the May 28 workshop,” Dance said in a message Salinas read to the commissioners, “I do not have any names to forward for the interview for the county attorney’s position, except for our current deputy county attorney, Sean Moylan. I will be open to interviewing the candidates that the commission agrees [to] during the workshop.” Dance was absent as he was recovering from knee surgery, and had told his colleagues that he’d be missing the meeting. Hansen was also absent from the June 23 meeting.

Carney had been under the impression that Moylan was an “automatic interview,” which was why two of her colleagues did not vote for him. But when Carney asked Pennington and Richardson whether that was the case–that they assumed Moylan was on the interview list regardless–Pennington did not answer directly: Moylan had made it onto the short list anyway.

Richardson went to greater length: “We got two different people giving us two different directions. So I can give you reasons as to why, but that’s not really important,” she said, a veiled remark that again underscores the tensions behind the attorney hire, and the rift on the commission over it. “I know Mr. Moylan, and I know that I’ll be able to speak to him on my leisure. I don’t know what the capacity is of this request to meet with them. I know him. So do I want to meet with others to for my own personal opportunities to get to know the most out of every candidate, rather than just assume.”

But it will be a formal interview, Salinas said, with one-on-one interviews between each commissioner and each candidate, and a subsequent open-session interview involving the full commission. The process is not seamless. The application window remains open, so additional names could be in the mix. There’s no end date to the application window.

“If at the end of this process, the first round of interviews, you’re not completely satisfied,” Salinas said, “we’ll continue to leave it open. So if you’re satisfied, then you can close it there and select your candidate there.” The process will include a public meet-and-greet with the shortlisted candidates the afternoon of July 15, with the actual interviews that evening at 6 p.m.

The shortlisted candidates, in alphabetical order:

Sean Moylan, a graduate of Flagler Palm Coast High School, started working at the county attorney’s office in April 2014 as the deputy county attorney under the supervision of County Attorney Al Hadeed. He had taught for three years at the American International School in Egypt for three years before that, was briefly in a solo law practice in Flagler Beach, was a teaching assistant at Florida A&M University and a math, science and social studies teacher at Indian Trails Middle School from 2003 to 2006. He got his undergraduate degree from Columbia University, a master’s in education from the University of Florida in 2005, and a law degree from Florida A&M in 2009. He passed the bar in 2010.

Scott McHenry was an assistant county attorney in orange County, Fla., for 10 years until he took a job with a Westminster, Colo., law firm, Hayashi and Macsalka Law Firm, only for the firm to close when one of the named partners became the city attorney for the firm’s biggest client, without whom the firm could not survive. He was in private practice from 1990 to 2013. He got his undergraduate degree from Princeton, a master’s in tax law from Temple, a master’s in finance from Rutgers and a law degree from Rutgers. He passed the Florida bar in 1985.

Michael Rodriguez has been since August 2023 the chief deputy city attorney in DeLand. He was Apopka’s city attorney for three years before that, and assistant county attorney in Volusia County government from 2016 to 2020. He was in private practice for many years before that. He passed the bar in October 1997, and lists the Shepard, Smith, Hand and Brackins law firm among his references–a notable reference because Drew Smith, one of the firm’s lawyers, is the Flagler Beach city attorney and has been for a couple of decades, where he has distinguished himself as one of that government’s sharpest minds. He got his undergraduate degree from Florida’s New School in 1994 and his law degree from Vermont Law School in 1997.

Candidate	Dance	Hansen	Carney	Pennington	Richardson	Totals
Adriene Treasure			X	X		2
Michael Rodriguez		X	X		X	3
Ramon Diveev						0
Richard DeVall						0
Scott McHenry		X		X	X	3
Sean Moylan	X	X	X			3
Simon Serrano						0
William Spillias				X	X	2
Additional Candidates
Jim Manfre
Keith Merritt
Marsha Segal-George