Mo. Chief, Deputy Chief Placed on Leave Following Flap with City

O'FALLON, Mo. -- Two top fire officials who filed suit alleging that O'Fallon Fire Protection District breached their employment contracts have been placed on paid administrative leave.

The action against Chief Mike Ballmann and Deputy Chief Randy Sanders took place during a special emergency meeting of the fire board Monday night.

"We are discussing with them the terms and conditions under which they might part ways with the district," said district attorney Neil Bruntrager.

Chief Mike Ballmann and Division Chief Randy Sanders were among 10 officers offered buyouts last fall in an effort to trim an organization that Bruntrager said was too top heavy. The goal was to cut three of the 10 positions by Dec. 31.

Five of the 10 officials who were targeted answered the board's request with a lawsuit in early December that asked a judge to ensure they'd get severance pay if they were fired in a cost-cutting move.

Two of the three reductions were met -- one of the spots in the fire prevention bureau was reduced through attrition, and Chief Administrative Officer Scott Avery took the chief's position with the Olivette Fire Department.

That left one position to eliminate, Bruntrager said, and the board recently decided on Sanders'.

Ballmann is being asked to leave because of "a decision to go in a different direction," Bruntrager said. The chief's position would be refilled.

The two officials have until May 12 to make a decision on a termination offer. Bruntrager declined to provide details about it, but Ballmann, 58, said it was basically the same buyout offer as before only it included two years of insurance for his 17-year-old son. If he doesn't take the offer and resign, he will be fired, Ballmann said.

Ballmann, who has been the fire chief for 14 years and with the district since 1973, said he was disappointed that his career was ending this way. He has been on light duty since falling on the ice behind the fire station in January and breaking his arm.

He said ever since the buyout offer, the board has been chipping away at policies designed to protect administrators, items like firing for just cause and reducing the workforce based on seniority.

"They say they want to go in a different direction, which I find kind of odd because we're the first accredited department in the state of Missouri," he said.

In addition, the district passed a $10 million bond issue for a new fire stations and new equipment two years ago and was working to get a better insurance rating in the rural parts of the district by buying a tanker truck.

"Those all seems like positive directions to me," he said.

Instead, Ballmann said his and Sanders' terminations were driven by the firefighter's union, Local 2557, in an effort to get officials more favorable to their agenda.

"The fire service in our county has gotten to where they're more concerned about the people working for them than the people they're protecting, and that's the wrong balance to have," he said.

Steve Koslovsky, the attorney for Ballmann, Sanders and the other three officers who filed suit, said he viewed the action as a retaliatory act by the board because of the lawsuit.

"It appears now that this board is racheting up the dispute even more by going forward and doing what they did last night," he said.

He said the employments contracts -- which the board terminated Dec. 31 -- had dated back to Jan 1, 2004. They were a move to protect the longtime employees in the event of a politically motivated firing.

"Unfortunately this is exactly what the prior board anticipated might happen if and when a board that was more friendly to the firefighter's union came into power," he said.

Bruntrager described the situation as a difficult one that the board wanted to avoid.

"We tried to do this on a volunteer basis, and we hoped someone would take us up on it," he said. "This is an effort to make sure the district is a good steward of taxpayer money."

Susan Weich is a reporter at the Post-Dispatch. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

Copyright 2014 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch