By Andrew Wellner
Anchorage Daily News
Copyright 2007 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
WASILLA, Alaska — John Duffy, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough manager, on Tuesday fired Jack Krill Jr. from his post as chief of the Central Mat-Su Fire Department.
“We’ve delivered a letter of termination to Mr. Krill, and so I can confirm that he is no longer an employee of the borough,” Duffy said shortly after 4 p.m.
Krill spent three years and nearly three months as leader of the largest and busiest fire department in the Valley, a job his father had also held. The department serves the City of Wasilla and the immediate surrounding area.
“We do not agree with the termination, and we are going to file a grievance and go through the steps,” said Krill, 31.
He was suspended with pay Nov. 27, 2006, a month after the borough human resources department started its inquiry into complaints from subordinates about his behavior on the job.
Duffy said he made the final decision to fire Krill based wholly on a list of seven allegations he said were substantiated by that inquiry.
Those allegations include employing a dictatorial, micromanaging style; allowing underage Explorers to enter live-fire training drills without informing his supervisors; interfering with an Alaska State Trooper dr ug investigation of a firefighter; becoming personally involved in a marital conflict between two staff members; behaving inappropriately with a subordinate, Paula Weiss, by asking her for a date and sending her suggestive e-mails; and allowing sexually provocative and vulgar behavior by staff, including inappropriate postings on MySpace.com.
Duffy said in December that a decision on Krill’'s status was imminent. On Tuesday, he said he didn’'t believe he had taken a long time eventually to make that decision.
“We wanted to make sure that we were not moving hastily and making sure we were making a very thorough review of the matter, and then we also wanted him to have due process,” Duffy said.
At various points the investigation was delayed to accommodate Krill, he said, such as the month Krill was out of state at the National Fire Academy and visiting family. At various points, Duffy said, he had to wait on a response from Krill.
Krill said Tuesd ay that he was not afforded due process and that three more allegations Duffy leveled at him two weeks ago should rightly have been addressed by the Wasilla-Lakes Fire Service Area Board of Supervisors but were not.
Duffy notified Krill of the three new allegations by letter March 6.
Krill said he had been accused of lying at a supervisors’’ meeting on Feb. 19 when he publicly denied that he sent suggestive e-mails to Weiss and when he said he could not access MySpace.com from borough computers. In addition, he said, he was accused of deleting information from his borough-owned laptop.
Duffy, in a phone call from Atlanta, said he believed Krill lied at the meeting.
Previously, he said Krill deleted 2.6 gigabytes of information from his borough laptop.
Krill Jr. said Tuesday that he deleted only 200 megabytes’’ worth of fire academy course materials from his laptop. He also said he’'s reviewed audio recordings of the Feb. 19 meeting and deni es lying about the e-mails to Weiss or accessing MySpace.com.
Krill Jr. said he believes he may have trouble finding work in firefi ghting because he considers that some borough statements coming from borough officials damaged his reputation.
“Fire service is a small community nationwide; it’'s not hard to search for me on the Internet and find all these articles,” Krill said.
He said he’'s now focused on his grievance and hopes the borough Assembly will listen and reinstate him.
Duffy, throughout, has stood by the allegations as sufficient grounds to fire Krill.
“There’s been great shame put on the Central fire district as well as the borough through all this,” Duffy said in an interview two weeks ago.