Management failed to control overtime abuse, 15-month investigation finds
By Jodi Andes
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
Fire inspectors missed some inspections and took overtime for more hours than they worked, a city investigation found.
But after spending 15 months and nearly $100,000 to examine the Fire Prevention Bureau, city officials say no one there committed a crime.
“It didn’t rise to that level,” Columbus Safety Director Mitchell Brown said.
Brown sent the report, compiled by attorney Pam Krivda, to Fire Chief Ned Pettus yesterday. It is up to Pettus to decide whether the findings merit discipline and whether changes are necessary within the division, Brown said.
Krivda’s report cited management problems, but said none affected fire-safety inspections at Columbus buildings.
“At no time was there any concern about the safety to citizens,” Brown said.
Brown did fire Battalion Chief Wesley Fullen yesterday for insubordination because he refused a direct order from Pettus to cooperate with the investigation.
Fullen refused to be interviewed by Krivda about his time as a captain in the bureau, but he granted an interview days later.
Krivda’s report details 38 incidents in which inspectors collected more overtime than their contract allows. The report repeatedly questions how Battalion Chief Yolanda Arnold managed the bureau.
“Chief Arnold’s interpersonal approach and management style in many cases terrorized some lieutenants and other officers,” Krivda wrote.
Krivda’s report lists 25 cases of “backtiming,” a term Krivda uses to describe a practice in which inspectors said they started earlier than they did when they had inspections before the regular start of the workday.
For example, on Jan. 27, 2003, Inspector Virgil Moore started an inspection at 6:30 a.m., half an hour before his shift began. But he put in for four hours of overtime, Krivda noted, reporting that he started at 3 a.m.
On 13 other occasions, inspectors claimed more hours than they worked when they stayed late for inspections.
Under their union contract, firefighters get a minimum four hours of overtime for being called back into work after their shift has ended.
Krivda said some inspectors translated that to mean that any overtime, whether they started an hour early or worked an hour after their shift, merited four hours.
The erroneous overtime sheets were then approved in most cases by Arnold, the bureau’s supervisor.
Not all in the bureau, though, claimed additional overtime.
Moore and Inspector Robert Alexander were cited most often in the report. Each had nine instances of claiming more overtime than they worked.
Inspectors told Krivda they were instructed to list their overtime in four-hour blocks.
“No one could give me the name of whoever told them that,” Krivda said. And “what the inspectors turned in was being signed off on all the way up the line.”
Deputy Safety Director Barb Seckler said safety officials knew criminal charges would be unlikely because of a legal principle created by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 “Garrity” decision.
Garrity prohibits criminal prosecutors from using statements employees make in an administrative investigation set up by their employer, Deputy Safety Director George Speaks said.
“There is not any question, though, that someone could be disciplined” for wrongdoing revealed in those statements, Speaks said.
Krivda’s investigation marks the fourth time the Fire Prevention Bureau has been investigated. This was the first time an outside investigator was hired.
The bureau was investigated in 1989 when inspectors were suspected of taking cash that wasn’t tracked, doing inspections their supervisors didn’t know about, and in some cases, taking payment and not doing work. No one was charged.
In 2005, Assistant Fire Chief Greg Paxton called for another investigation after hearing from building inspectors that fire inspectors missed inspections.
The claims were investigated by the Fire Division, then Columbus police, and no wrongdoing was found. Subsequent stories by The Dispatch and WBNS-TV (Channel 10) cited 22 cases in which inspectors were paid for more overtime than they earned.
The news reports also listed a dozen cases in which inspectors missed inspections entirely or showed up but did not work.
Krivda said she started by examining a list of 41 cases in which building inspectors complained about their counterparts in Fire Prevention. They detailed 30 cases in which inspections were missed and 11 in which there were other problems, including a case in which the building inspector suspected the fire inspector was drunk.
Five of the inspections weren’t actually missed, Krivda said. Communication problems caused fire inspectors to miss the rest, she said.
She said the other 11 cases were outside the scope of her investigation.
Pettus and Assistant Chief Karry Ellis later improved communication between Building Services and Fire Prevention. Missed inspections are no longer a problem, Ellis said.
Krivda said proving or disproving some allegations was difficult because paperwork filed by inspectors after inspections was missing.
“It was very difficult to come to a conclusion because we didn’t have everything,” Krivda said.
Her report was welcome news to fire union president Jack Reall, who said it vindicates the inspectors.
“Most of these allegations have been unjustified and unproved,” said Reall, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 67.
“Well, I hope they quit spending money looking into the past and start spending money looking into the future,” Reall said yesterday, referring to the $97,592 that was paid for Krivda’s investigation.
In addition to claims of unearned overtime, Krivda investigated claims that the bureau, in which a majority of firefighters are black, faced racial discrimination.
Arnold said she was discriminated against by Paxton, her supervisor at the time. Krivda dismissed the notion, citing statements from white and black firefighters who worked in the bureau and who were critical of Arnold.