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Guest Column

Fire chief not taken to task

By JOHN R. LEE
Published August 14, 2006

The Clearwater fire department's problem is fire Chief Jamie Geer's demonstrated lack of competent leadership. Competent leadership is critical for the effective operation of a paramilitary organization. Fire and rescue employees working in dangerous situations to protect the lives and property of others must have the trust and confidence to follow orders without question.

Fire chiefs must make good decisions to maintain that confidence. Chief Geer has failed to make good decisions. That failure has resulted in a majority of fire and rescue employees having and voting "no confidence" in him.

What bad decisions have employees witnessed? Shortly after Geer was hired, he ordered Clearwater's first known shutdown of emergency operations. There were no excessive winds in Clearwater and all other Pinellas County fire departments continued to respond to emergency calls. Chief Geer made this decision against the advice of his chief officers and despite impassioned pleas for assistance by citizens in severe distress. Sadly, there was no response to approximately 60 calls to 911, and a patient died.

Not surprisingly, many long-term managerial employees in whom our employees had confidence began to resign, including Emergency Medical Services Chief James Fogarty, Operations Chief Randy Bacher and Fire Marshal Joel Gray. And Geer eliminated our six district chief positions.

Who did Geer hire to replace our long-term chief officers? Many underqualified white males from Chief Geer's and his deputy chief's former fire departments. Despite the diverse and well-qualified women and minorities in our fire department, Geer created a 14-member management team of white men. As of December 2005, Geer had hired or promoted approximately 47 men and no women.

These divisive decisions by Geer are consistent with his unjustified firing of three veteran African-American fire and rescue employees (one of whom had just won arbitration over a promotional grievance against the fire department), his ban on female firefighters entering burning buildings (based on his allegation of a threat for which there is no documentation and which the Police Department readily dismissed), and refusal to promote rescue Lt. Wendy Cason. And several Hispanic employees have been moved and demoted.

Interestingly, at Geer's last job, seven African-American firefighters complained they were passed over for promotion though they had scored higher on the tests than the white firefighters promoted.

Then, there are Geer's poor decisions to hold press conferences and make unfounded, derisive public accusations against the men and women in our fire department.

This includes Geer's allegations of wrongdoing against individual firefighters and their union. Maybe these statements are made to deflect scrutiny of Geer's own competence.

Whatever the reason, Geer's decisions to make such public statements were wrong and worsened employees' and citizens' lack of confidence in his leadership.

Regardless of whether city management will ever hold Chief Geer accountable, the employees and the union will. We have proved and will continue to prove that Chief Geer has repeatedly exercised poor judgment and made unlawful decisions that affect employees and our citizens.

So far, we have won three unfair labor practices charges and settled a fourth. We have lost none. These charges were decided by neutral administrative law judges who found Chief Geer, our leader, not credible. Instead, the judges credited the testimony of our union leadership and rank-and-file firefighters.

Chief Geer's and City Manager William Horne's threats of job loss, efforts to silence employees' opposition to Chief Geer's continued reign, and efforts to break the union have been found unlawful.

As the number of valid grievances continues to grow, who else will hold fire Chief Geer accountable?

[Last modified August 14, 2006, 05:47:24]