[T]wo days before the Rutland Herald announced that it had entered into an agreement to sell the business, a former employee put a lien on the company’s property in downtown Rutland for unpaid back wages.

Carlene Kenney, a multi-media sales executive who left the Herald in May, filed a complaint with the Department of Labor earlier this summer alleging she is owed more than $1,600 in unpaid commissions on ad sales.

Monday evening she used the claim filed with the Labor department to put a lien on the Herald’s offices at 27 Wales St. A lien is a legal mechanism that puts a hold on property owned by another person until that person pays off debts owed to the individual making the claim. Typically, owners of property have to meet those payments before a sale can be completed.

“The building cannot be sold until the sum [lien] is taken care of,” Kenney said. She was a real estate agent in California before moving back to Rutland three years ago.

According to a story in the Herald posted online late Wednesday night, the Mitchell family has entered into an agreement to sell the Herald and the Times Argus in Barre to Maine newspaper publisher Reade Brower and his business partner Chip Harris, president of Upper Valley Press Inc. in New Hampshire. The article did not state if the sale of the papers would also include the Herald’s property and office space in Rutland.

Brower said he was not aware of the lien, but he said it would not be an impediment to the sale. “She [Kenney] may benefit from the sale,” Brower said, “even though she may or may not be right.”

“It’s not significant enough for me to back away from the deal,” he added.

The Department of Labor confirmed that they have received four claims from Herald employees and that those claims have been resolved.

A fifth claim on commissions was still pending, according to Commissioner Annie Noonan. Noonan said they’d called Herald President John Mitchell to discuss the matter.

Mitchell and Publisher Catherine Nelson did not respond to requests for comment.

Last Friday the Herald published a story in its own pages detailing financial troubles at the paper and management’s refusal to address the matter to the satisfaction of employees. At least five full-time employees reported having checks bounce in July and several freelancers had not been paid at all. Later that day news editor Alan Keays was fired for pursuing a second story on the same subject. That story never ran.

Kenney, who was born in Rutland and served in the U.S. Army, started working at the Herald in July 2015. Ad sales executives at the Herald are paid an hourly rate as well as a commission. According to Kenney, when she started she was told not to worry about calculating her own commissions even though it was something the other sales executives did.

Kenney said that Herald publisher Catherine Nelson told her “not to worry about that. Accounting will do that for you.”

When Kenney went to accounting and asked them if they did the calculations she was told no. According to Kenney they said, “We just cut the check.”

Kenney quickly learned from the other sales executives how to calculate commissions, which are included on the sale of digital and print ads in the Herald and Times Argus, as well as special sections and inserts. Percentages are determined by the type of ad and it is a time-consuming process, says Kenney.

Kenney soon discovered that her commissions were being incorrectly calculated and that she was owed back wages. According to the claim filed with the Department of Labor, Kenney says she is owed a total of $1,181.75 from September 2015 to March 2016. In addition Kenney is claiming another $509.10 for April commissions.

Kenney said she quit her job at the Herald in mid-May after the working environment became untenable. She said there was a culture of fear that pervaded the business office — employees often communicated by sticky note or text message when they discussed commissions because of fear of reprisals from management.

She said being in the Army was a “cakewalk” compared to working at the Herald.

“People were afraid to talk,” said Kenney. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”