Last week, Bob Lee, president of the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District board, resigned.
In three sentences or less, Lee’s abbreviated story is this: Years ago, Lee was a Northeast fire board member who took a job with St. Louis County, which is considered double-dipping by state law. He was told to remove himself by then board members; however he went to court and won his case, arguing that those board members ousted him wrongfully. He got back on the board, but then a month ago the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney asked Lee to vacate his seat on the board within two weeks or face the court’s removal.
That was really hard to get it in three sentences, and there might have been a grammatically incorrect modifier in there to cheat it.
Even at its basic form, Lee’s story is complicated. But the dramatic tango behind the story is extraordinary.
The EYE wrote about this case in June 2010. You may remember this excerpt:
In Missouri, fire protection district directors are never employed by a State agency. Why? Because it’s against the law.
The Missouri Revised Statutes Chapter 321, Section 15, states, ‘When any fire protection district director accepts any office or employment under this state or any political subdivision thereof, his office shall thereby be vacated.’
Judge Stephen Goldman of St. Louis County Circuit Court has an opportunity to make history by disregarding that.
Goldman has the power to decide whether Robert Lee, a former Northeast Fire Protection District director, has the right to serve as a director and keep his desk at the St. Louis County government office.
Goldman chose to let him keep his desk and position as director. It was a historic decision that meant he could have his cake and eat it too.
Union tango
Northeast is a fire protection district and for years, it was aligned with the firefighters’ union, the Local 2665.
It’s said the union controls a district when the fire chief and fire board majority align with the union. And for a long time, this was the way for Northeast.
Yet, after changes in the board majority initially engineered by African-American attorney and political strategist Elbert Walton, the district started moving away from union control. And it started hiring minorities and even promoting minorities to high-ranking positions. It became a district where blacks and women could get hired, which has long been a struggle for both groups in a white-male dominated field that is organized into unions with political clout.
The biggest slap in the face was when Angelia Elgin, a black female, became fire chief in late November 2009. The first thing Chief Elgin did was tell the district employees that there would be no more overtime or sick leave abuse, as she documented at an eye-opening public meeting.
Elgin was the first black female fire chief in the state, and had more credentials than any neighboring fire chief; a few don’t have high school diplomas.
The position of the chief, relative to the union and the union’s influence over the board, explains much about Lee’s actions.
At the time of Lee’s case, many suspected that Lee’s seat next to Bridget Quinlisk-Dailey, a union-tied board member, would tilt the balance and enable the board to do what the union has wanted to do since Elgin received her position: oust her.
So was it a coincidence that Lee decided to try and get back on the board about the same time Elgin was hired?
Robert Lee is black, but he was thought to be a more reliable voice on the board for the union’s agenda than Rhea Willis, the board member who came on after Lee took his government position and “vacated” his board spot, as the law states.
Like Elgin, Willis blazed a trail in this field. Willis was the first black female fire district board member in St. Louis County, and she’s an independent thinker. So guess who got ousted when Lee goes back to the board?
Bench coach
The Northeast fire district has been politicized nearly beyond recognition of its statutory duties of protecting public safety in recent years.
The Post-Dispatch began to show relentless interest in the district once Walton’s board majority had decision-making power. Though brilliant, Elbert Walton is also a strongly opinionated black man who has made many enemies over the years. Anyone with a clue could see that powerful elements in the news and editorial departments at the Post appear to hold an active grudge against Walton.
Without doubt, once told to dig, Post reporters found dirt on Walton’s era of the district. We heard a great deal about the generous fees the new board majority paid Walton as its counsel.
However, fire district insiders sympathetic to Walton said the Post was finding contracting and bookkeeping anomalies that predated their effective takeover of the district. They suspected the old guard in the district was relaying tips to Post editors and reporters and telling them where to dig – in effect, helping nail the new black-dominated district with evidence of the old white-dominated district’s malfeasance.
Be that as it may, this is all deep insider grudge-dealing that did not reach Ma and Pa reading their Sunday Post. It may not have reached Judge Goldman, who may have the mistaken idea that social justice is on the side of the old guard. Not really, at this point. Thanks largely to the Post, who can definitely count a scalp on this story, Walton and his influence are gone from the district.
Then stepped in Chief Elgin with all her credentials that checked out.
So Goldman didn’t really break new ground with his ruling when he let the rules be bent to make way for Local 2665’s agenda. That is very old hat in local fire district politics. Goldman actually would have made history by giving the Northeast district, which represents a largely African-American community, the chance to do its job without 1,800 largely white firefighters scaring it into submission with the help of an activist majority press.
On March 2, 2010 employees of the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District presented a “letter of no confidence” regarding Fire Chief Angelia Elgin.
The signature collectors told firefighters that Robert Lee was going to get back on the board, and there were going to be some changes in the district – including ousting Chief Elgin.
Lee didn’t get a chance to prove them right or wrong because Elgin resigned after constant and relentless political attacks.
The Twist
In April 2011, the EYE wrote “That leaves it up to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch to ensure that a state employee is not “double-dipping” by serving on a fire board.
McCulloch did not return the American’s email.”
McCulloch sat silent for more than a year. Perhaps he was waiting for the right cue. When Lee got back on the board, he proved himself an independent thinker and did not always vote in the ways the union would have liked him to. In fact, with him on the board, various people from the African-American community informed the EYE that he helped bring stability to the district and was beloved by the black community. You know how the story ends.
