The news director at Nassau Community College’s radio station has been let go days after publicly raising issues regarding possible conflicts of interest regarding the hiring of the station’s new program director.

Ray Bertolino served as news director, a part-time job, at WHPC Radio/90.3 FM for seven years, leading the station’s news coverage and hosting a show.

He was let go earlier this week after raising concerns internally at the school, before sending an email to media as well as school officials, regarding the recent hiring of the station’s new program director.

Bertolino focused not on the qualifications of Shawn Novatt, so much as on a relationship he said exists between Novatt and the person leading the hiring process.

He said he learned that Novatt was a high school classmate of Joy DeDonato, the executive director of the Nassau Community College Foundation who headed the WHPC program director job search.

Bertolino said he was told he was let go for creating a “hostile work environment,” although he said he was acting as a whistleblower, by attracting attention to problems with a job search. The school didn’t return calls seeking information.

“I have no comment,” Novatt said in a phone call to the marine radios station. “All I can do is confirm he was let go.”

Novatt had been an executive producer at Cox Media Group of Dana and Jayson in the Morning, after working at Barnstable Broadcasting and Buckley Broadcasting.

Bertolino’s firing comes just days after the Middle States Commission on Higher Education put NCC on probation, citing many issues, including governance. The new president, W. Hubert Keen, starts August 1.

Jim Green, program director and leader of the station for more than four decades, decided to retire, leading the school to look for a new program director. He also declined to comment.

But John LeBoutillier, a former Congressman who until roughly five years ago had been vice chairman of the school’s board of trustees, said he’s concerned the job search may have been improper.

“The point is the search was corrupted,” LeBoutillier said. “And there are rules for these things, the same as the bidding process.”

LeBoutillier, who had helped Bertolino obtain his position at the station and appeared as a guest on his show, believes Bertolino’s concerns are well founded.

“He’s been a very good employee at the college and a good member of the staff. He’s aghast at what he saw in this search,” LeBoutillier continued. “He’s a whistleblower. He’s telling the truth and getting punished for telling the truth.”

After graduating from Harvard, where he was an editor at the Harvard Crimson, Bertolino went on to work on shows with hosts such as Dick Cavett and Barry Farber before volunteering at and soon becoming news director at WHPC.

“We’re non-commercial,” Bertolino said of the school station, which provides music, talk and news. “We don’t have to sell ads.”

When Green said he’d step down as program director, Janet Caruso, the school’s assistant vice president for workplace development and lifelong learning, set up a search committee led by Joy DeDonato, executive director of the Nassau Community College Foundation.

Kim Nadler, who has provided technical assistance at the station for 25 years, applied. She says she was told that because she didn’t have an undergraduate degree in communications, although she has a master’s degree in teaching, she wouldn’t be considered.

“I spent 25 years working in the business. I have a master’s degree,” Nadler said. “I thought I should have got an interview.”

Nadler wrote to NCC President Thomas Dolan, saying she believed her 25 years of experience and master’s degree warranted serious consideration. His response promised “transparency” and “accountability” regarding the search.

After the selection was announced, though, Bertolino found postings on Facebook that made him think the new program director and leader of the search committee knew each other.

He first saw a post DeDonato made on Novatt’s Facebook page, congratulating him on his hiring, saying “NCC is so lucky to have the best of the best.” That’s not particularly unusual, but then he found more posts.

Bertolino soon found roughly a dozen likes on Novatt’s posts going back to December, before finding out the two had been classmates at John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview Old Bethpage.

“They had known each other quite a while, going back to high school,” Bertolino said.

He voiced concerns, confirming the connection and questioning whether the failure to disclose that connection could compromise the job search.

“I was raising the question. I was pointing this out,” Bertolino said. “Other people were talking to people and saying, ‘What’s going on?’ I was a whistleblower.”

LeBoutillier said a failure to disclose a relationship between someone involved in, and especially leading, a search and a candidate can distort the whole process.

“The person chairing the search committee knew the candidate they ended up selecting and hid that fact,” he said. “She should have recused herself.”

Bertolino initially spoke and sent emails to school officials raising concerns, including school president Thomas Dolan. When no action was taken, he sent emails to media as well as school officials.

“I was all set to do the news,” Bertolino said of the moment he was told he was let go. “I was doing the afternoon newscast.”

LeBoutillier and Nadler both believe SUNY should at a minimum examine the search to see whether it violated standards.

“It’s retaliation,” Nadler said of Bertolino’s firing. “I believe it’s retaliation for being a whistleblower.”

Bertolino said he enjoyed working at the station, where he prepared news casts and produced his own show titled “Conversations” with a wide range of guests, including many who were well known including Chuck Dolan, Jimmy Webb, Nelson DeMille, Al D’Amato, John Stossel, Jackie Mason, Charles Grodin and Tony Danza.

People sometimes asked him how he got such well-known guests. His years working in the industry, though, helped.

During a decade at the station, Bertolino became very much a part of it, although he didn’t expect his time there to end as it did.

“I enjoyed being there,” he said, looking back on ten years spent at the school’s station, “working with the students.”