After facing a year of union-spearheaded opposition, Northeast Fire Chief Angelia Elgin – the first African-American female fire chief in Missouri – has had enough.
On the evening of Nov. 29, Elgin submitted her resignation letter to the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District board.
“I appreciate the opportunity to have led, and served, among the best,” Elgin said in a statement. “I believe this decision to be the best possible way to enable Northeast to move forward, without distraction, on behalf of the citizens and businesses it serves.”
Because of her settlement agreement with the board, Elgin said she is not able to comment on what led to her decision. But preceding events point to her demise.
On Nov. 16, board chairman Derek Mays and board member Bridget Quinlisk Dailey voted to place Elgin on administrative leave while the board investigated “allegations of gross misconduct and gross neglect,” Mays said. Board member Rhea Willis abstained.
Regarding Elgin’s resignation, Willis said it is unfortunate to lose the highly-educated chief.
“Chief Elign has accomplished and introduced many extraordinary things in her eleven months as chief,” Willis said. “She was faced with many personal and political attacks in designed to character assassinate her, defame, distract, and discourage her in order to stop her from moving the district to higher standards.”
Despite the distraction, Willis said Elgin stood her ground as a strong leader.
A teaching crime
When asked about the reasons for the allegations last week, Mays said, “It’s a personnel issue that is still pending, and I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”
Sources within the district said Mays and Dailey accused Elgin of “double dipping” because she was instructing paramedic certification courses with IHM Health Studies Center.
Elgin had been teaching at the center for six years, long before she became chief at Northeast in December 2009.
Several local fire chiefs have taught courses at IHM, according to IHM administrators. Fire chiefs or fire personnel must have extensive certification to teach professional courses. Many felt that Elgin’s role as an instructor reflected well on the district.
Typically, if fire chiefs receive payment for their time, they will take vacation time for the hours that they teach, said Sherman George, former fire chief of the St. Louis Fire Department.
“If they are on their vacation time, it’s their business,” George said.
IHM paid Elgin as an instructor.
When Mays and Dailey asked if she documented her vacation time for the hours she instructed at IHM, Elgin said she had, according to sources close to the chief.
In regards to Elgin’s general practice of asking for vacation time, Mays said,
“Chief Elgin notified the board prior to taking vacation leave by email ‘reminders’ each and every time, to my knowledge.”
Mays was appointed to the board in February 2010, and he said he was not aware of Elgin’s six-year history of teaching at IHM.
“I was never informed by the chief or anyone else of whether this was the case,” he said.
In addition to IHM, Elgin also designed a diversity course for the Greater St. Louis County Fire Academy. Dave Schmalzer, the academy’s chief instructor, said he knew Elgin when she came through the academy. She went on to teach fire courses at the academy for many years.
For all those years, Schmalzer never remembers paying Elgin a dime for her time. Elgin confirmed that she was never paid.
In regards to double-dipping, Schmalzer said, “I can’t imagine that she would ever do anything like that.”
Schmalzer also confirmed that if fire personnel are paid to instruct, they take vacation time to teach.
Messy sick-leave policy
Since the district’s turbulent administration turnover in November 2009, the district has struggled to change its sick-leave practices. Elgin introduced a sick-leave policy this spring, which has not yet been approved, Mays said. She also recommended that the board make use of a free online service that enables employees to track their vacation/sick leave online.
That recommendation has been held up in constant board bickering, mainly led by Dailey. As of now, employees have no way of tracking their sick leave time accurately.
In October 2010, state Auditor Susan Montee delivered a stinging Northeast audit. She said the district currently allows employees to use sick leave excessively. As of July 2010, three employees had used more sick leave than is allowed. One employee had a negative balance of 610 hours, which equals approximately $13,036.
Elgin attempted to tackle the sick-leave problem early this year by placing restrictions on employees’ sick leave and overtime. At a March 2 board meeting, she presented graphs showing the exorbitant overtime costs the district was occurring from employees abusing sick time. Her efforts landed her a letter of no-confidence from a group of firefighters, led by Firefighters Local 2665 members, who presented the letter to the district’s board that same evening.
The opposition came just three months after Elgin became chief.
Montee said of Elgin, “She didn’t even have a chance,” regarding the letter of no-confidence.
“I would never pass any judgment on anyone who had to come into that environment and make changes,” Montee told The American.
When Elgin accepted the position in December 2009, the district was under strict financial restraints from a temporary restraining order filed on Sept. 20, 2009. The district couldn’t even buy toilet paper without the St. Louis County Circuit Court’s approval, Elgin said.
Why was Elgin punished?
So the facts are: the district’s sick leave remains miscalculated. Elgin has a history of both reporting her vacation time and teaching classes.
Why then would Mays and Dailey punish Elgin for an effort that was bringing positive attention to the district?
In an August board meeting, Dailey said Elgin had signed three contracts without board approval. One of the contracts was for information technology upgrades, which had been recommended by Montee. The system is outdated and at risk of losing administrative and patient files.
At a May 25 board meeting, the chief had presented a $9,980 binding contract for a local firm, TurnGroup, to upgrade the IT system. Two weeks later, Elgin signed the contract.
“It was discussed in a board meeting,” Elgin said Aug. 10 in open board session. “Those were high-priority items that we were trying to get accomplished, and it was my impression that it was okay to move forward.”
Dailey accused Elgin of violating a state law that requires board members to approve binding contracts.
On Aug. 24, Elgin presented a PowerPoint report to the public that documented all of the June phone calls and emails she had made to Mays and their discussion to move forward with the TurnGroup contract.
From her report, Mays appeared to share the fault in the contract being awarded without board approval. Mays said he did not know Elgin was going to report the correspondences at the meeting. When asked if he was upset about the report, he said, “I do not feel comfortable addressing these questions.”
In the months to follow, it seemed Elgin had lost Mays’ approval, which would give Dailey the majority on the three-person board.
A witch hunt
After that point, district sources said Mays began interviewing employees in groups about Elgin. The issue of her teaching at IHM came out of these meetings, some said.
Greg Wood, who led the no-confidence campaign against Elgin, declined an interview request.
At the Nov. 30 board meeting, Mays announced Elgin’s resignation. Firefighters lined the room along the back wall, awaiting the presentation of Deputy Chief Bilal Olushola, acting fire chief. Olushola proposed holiday stipends for the employees up to $30,000, which would include last year’s missed bonuses.
Wood and the others cheered when the board approved the motion.
He didn’t cheer this year for Elgin’s efforts towards a technology upgrade, cutting overtime by half or putting in place a third ambulance to better serve the citizens.
“I think they are going to regret how they treated her out here and her resignation,” said Percy Green III, a St. Louis firefighter who has followed the chief’s fight.
“It was a witch hunt. Mark my words, a lot of the people here are going to be gone – I mean the black folks. We’ll see what happens now as a result of her leaving.”
Please read online at stlamerican.com: Elgin’s Aug. 24 Powerpoint presentation and Nov. 15, 2010 court filing for “findings of fact” on the contract issue.
