Butte, MT's, Career vs. Volunteer Firefighter Feud Heats Up

Decades of animosity between paid and volunteer firefighters in Butte- Silver Bow County that became more public last fall have intensified even more and the feuding has now spilled into the legislative arena.

The latest rounds have elicited sharp words and accusations among firefighters, county officials and commissioners, and a pending long-range fire services plan and more legislative wrangling seem certain to stir more rancor.

Now the battles over authority and autonomy of fire departments are being fought in Butte and Helena, with House Bill 547 at the center of it all.

The Montana House recently approved the bill, which is backed by state Sen. Derek Harvey, D- Butte, and others. It would effectively give the chief of Butte’s paid fire department clear command over that department and the nine volunteer departments in Butte- Silver Bow County.

Harvey, a paid firefighter in Butte, says the bill is needed to clear up decades of disputes over who has final say on matters such as training requirements, response plans and chain-of-command decisions at fire scenes.

Fire Chief Zach Osborne and J.P. Gallagher, Butte-Silver Bow’s chief executive, support the bill, saying it could end 48 years of animosity and improve fire protection.

“I think it’s a positive bill for both the paid fire department and the volunteer departments because it gives clear distinction on things we have problems with, and that’s who has authority over what,” Gallagher recently told commissioners.

He and other proponents say the volunteer departments are beneficial, needed and appreciated, and the bill does not aim to diminish or eliminate them.

Opponents say the bill is a power grab that would rob volunteer departments of their independence and reduce their roles. Some volunteers would quit, they predict, and that would put residents in parts of Butte- Silver Bow County at greater fire risk.

They also contend the legislation was a surprise, resent that Harvey and Butte backers got an Anaconda lawmaker to carry the bill, and say lawmakers from all over Montana will now decide a local issue in Butte.

“If this bill passes, I’ve got a funny feeling — in just talking to the volunteers I’ve talked to — they’re not going to sit there and say, ‘I’m going to answer calls’ and have go do underneath a rule that they don’t like,” Ed Fisher, chief of the Boulevard Volunteer Fire department, told commissioners.

Acrimony already had boiled over last fall when volunteers got vocal about several issues. They were concerned about the pending fire services plan, which is due out this week, and were worried about reduced input.

They also said county officials abandoned a longtime Fire Advisory Committee that gives them a voice in fire services matters. That group met recently for the first time in a year, but the legislative fight has taken center stage.

The rub and origins of House Bill 547

The Butte- Silver Bow charter says the paid fire chief is also the director of fire services and is responsible for “the administrative coordination and combination of the paid and volunteer departments, fire prevention and code enforcement.”

That seems clear, but state lawmakers enacted a bill in 1979 that says consolidation of city and county governments in Montana can have no impact on the rights and duties of voluntary fire departments or rural districts.

There are only two city-county governments in Montana — Anaconda-Deer Lodge and Butte- Silver Bow. In Anaconda-Deer Lodge, the city and volunteer departments were not consolidated when other services were.

Prior to 1977, the paid department for Butte and the volunteer departments outside of city limits got separate tax revenue from residents in their areas. The 1977 charter kept paid and volunteer departments but created one fire district with a single tax and budget.

The 1979 state law ensured that each of the nine volunteer departments retained governing boards of five elected trustees, Harvey said, but there is still a single budget.

“So it’s unclear who has control over the volunteer departments,” Harvey said. “Is it the trustees or is it the director of fire services that’s defined in the charter?

“What’s happened is, every time the director of fire services tries to implement any type of change or the Council of Commissioners or the chief executive wants a change done, the volunteers will come back and reference the 1979 law and say, ‘We’re only to be governed by our trustees,’” he said.

House Bill 547 repeals the 1979 law, Harvey says, giving the paid fire chief clear authority over all departments on issues such as funding, training, response plans and chain-of-command.

The fire chief is not king of everything. Like other non-elected department heads, the chief answers to Butte-Silver Bow’s chief executive and the Council of Commissioners, and like the others, can be fired by them.

Harvey is among six Democrat lawmakers from Butte or Anaconda who introduced the bill, with one of them, Rep. Scott DeMarios of Anaconda, as the sponsor.

Harvey said he asked DeMarios to carry the bill because Anaconda-Deer Lodge, unlike Butte- Silver Bow, has a fire department system in a consolidated local government that works.

Others who signed on to the introduced bill are Butte Democrat state Reps. Jennifer Lynch, Donavon Hawk and Marc Lee, who is also a paid firefighter, and state Sen. Sara Novak, D- Anaconda.

A war on two fronts

House Bill 547 got its first committee hearing in late February and several supporters spoke, including Harvey, Butte-Silver Bow Fire Marshal Kelly Lee, firefighter Chad Silk, Gallagher and a member of the professional firefighter union in Butte.

Silk said the bill would allow the fire chief to implement a standardized approach to everything instead of a “complex and often disjointed decision-making process” that also involves 45 trustees who govern volunteer departments.

Osborne, the fire chief in Butte, couldn’t be at the House committee meeting but Lee, the fire marshal, read a letter on his behalf.

Many of the volunteer departments were located in rural areas in the 1940s through the 1970s, Osborne said in his letter, but several are now within urban neighborhoods.

The fire district now covers all of Butte- Silver Bow County — 719 square miles — and given current staffing levels of paid (sometimes called “career”) firefighters, participation of volunteers is essential, Osborne said.

But, he said, “It is crucial that we establish a unified command, one that addresses not only emergency response but also training and ongoing efforts like recruitment and retention.”

Gallagher said the bill would improve overall fire safety by ending a “situation that’s gone on in our county for 47 years.” Harvey said it would return a local issue to Butte- Silver Bow where it belongs.

“We’ve had 50 years of experience showing that no other cities and counties wanted to follow (this) model,” Harvey told the committee.

The bill passed the House on a 72-26 vote and is now in the Senate, where an initial Senate committee hearing is set for March 28.

How the volunteers see it

Many of Butte’s volunteers say 150 state legislators will now decide something that’s only an issue in Butte- Silver Bow — the exact opposite of local control.

And if it passes, they say, other rural, volunteer districts in Montana will get to keep their trustees and independence — for now — but that will go away here.

“This bill will eliminate the powers and duties of the district trustees of Silver Bow County that are elected by the people,” Fisher told commissioners.

Fisher said there are 130 volunteer firefighters in Butte- Silver Bow and they have served the city and county well, at times saving homes and other structures that would have burned down without them.

The system might have flaws, he said, but it still works.

“The manpower that these volunteers provide for this community for free is a great thing and somebody should appreciate it,” he told commissioners. Instead, he said, “we’re letting the Butte (legislative) delegation stab us in the back …”

Several people testified against the bill at the House committee hearing, some warning of far-reaching consequences.

“This bill poses a significant threat to the autonomy and rights of rural fire districts, particularly those in Butte- Silver Bow County, and could set a dangerous precedent for the future of rural fire districts across the state of Montana,” said Jason Willoughby, chair of trustees for the Racetrack Volunteer Fire District in Butte.

Though proponents say an amendment to the bill will protect pensions that volunteers have earned, opponents have doubts about that and suggest unions for paid firefighters are driving the issue.

And it won’t improve fire safety, they say, it will diminish it.

“We would lose any say on how our community fire protection is run,” said Doug Davison, a trustee for the Home Atherton Rural Fire District. “We would lose membership in our rural fire departments and the whole city and community would be further at risk.”

Other issues and arguments

Volunteers and their backers also contend the legislative push was orchestrated in secret and they were only told about the House committee hearing 24 hours before it was held. That gave them no time to consult and prepare, they say.

“This is what’s been going on in Butte, where everything is being done behind the scenes,” said Jerry Brothers with the Home Atherton Department.

Gallagher talked about House Bill 547 at the March 5 council meeting, the same day the House passed the bill and six days after he and County Attorney Matt Enrooth testified for it at the committee hearing.

He referenced the years of divisiveness and the flare-up last fall and said the bill would streamline operations and improve safety. But he said he had no hand in drafting the legislation and only decided shortly before the committee hearing to support it.

Commissioner Jim Fisher doesn’t believe that and said so in a scathing letter he sent to Gallagher and fellow commissioners the day after the March 5 council meeting.

In it, Fisher acknowledged that Ed Fisher, the chief of the Boulevard department, is his brother. Both sides had valid points, Jim Fisher said, but he accused Gallagher of keeping commissioners in the dark for weeks about a bill filed in November.

“This bill may or may not be good for Butte,” he said in the letter. “The process & procedure was definitely not good! It appears that our Chief Executive and his henchmen had a plan all along to do a quarterback sneak or an end around the Butte Silver Bow Commissioners.”

He also said a “small problem in a small community” is now at the state level with lawmakers “looking from the outside in.”

Gallagher sent a response letter to Fisher saying he was neither consulted nor involved in the bill’s drafting and “to suggest otherwise misrepresents the scope of my responsibilities and my actions in this instance.”

He also noted Jim Fisher’s reference to his brother in the letter and said he should “acknowledge that this relationship could be perceived as a potential source of bias or prejudice in assessing this situation …”

Gallagher told The Montana Standard last week that he and Enrooth “had not talked through our support of that bill” until a day before the committee hearing and that’s when they told Chief Osborne and commissioners they backed it.

The Standard asked Harvey if he was concerned about any perceived conflict of interest for being a paid firefighter in Butte- Silver Bow who’s backing a bill that directly affects his department and county.

He said he’s been very straightforward about that issue but doesn’t think anyone else “would have dug into it as deep.”

“I’m just tired of this 48-year battle going on,” Harvey said. “I feel there’s been lots of leadership that’s come through on all sides of this issue and nobody has taken the deepest dive that I have and has been willing to rattle the cages a little bit to finally get this solved.”

There’s more rattling to come.

At this Wednesday night’s council meeting, a consultant is scheduled to present a long-awaited analysis of firefighting resources and services in Butte- Silver Bow County with recommendations on how to improve in the coming years.

That analysis has stirred its own set of controversies and now its findings will be made public.

Meanwhile, House Bill 547 is set for a hearing before the Senate Local Government Committee at 3 p.m. on March 28 in Room 425 of the Statehouse.

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