PA City to Investigate FFs' Attempt Oust Fire Chief

It appears discord in the Latrobe Fire Department isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon.

After several months of strife within the department, city officials agreed to look into an attempt by some firefighters to oust John Brasile as fire chief.

Mayor Rosie Wolford said a committee of council members would investigate any written documentation firefighters can produce that might establish a “just cause” for removing Brasile from the office.

Nico Giovannagelo, a captain in the department’s Goodwill Hose Company No. 1, claims he can produce such evidence.

The exchange between Giovannagelo and the mayor came to a head at a recent council meeting, several days after a reported March 5 vote by firefighters to name Giovannagelo as new chief — an election the city deemed invalid.

Solicitor John Greiner said firefighters informed the city that they’d re-elected Brasile to a new two-year term as chief in December. Following that recommendation, council reappointed him as chief by including his annual compensation of $5,969 in the 2020 budget, Greiner said.

“Once he’s reappointed for a two-year term, he can’t be replaced unless he’s removed for cause or resigns,” the solicitor said. “The fact that they had another election, it’s not the right time for that, according to the city code.”

Greiner added that the fire chief “is not an at-will employee. He can’t be dismissed at any time unless there is cause shown.” Such cause, he said, would amount to “conduct that is inappropriate and not befitting the office and is detrimental to the city.”

Brasile, who noted he is recovering from knee surgery, has not attended council meetings for several months. While he’s been absent from those public sessions, he said, others have lashed out with personal attacks against him.

“They can charge me with anything they want. I’ve done nothing wrong,” Brasile told the Tribune-Review.

Wolford said council’s investigation of any allegations against Brasile should include “asking other people what they know about this, including (Brasile). He has the right to tell his side of the story.”

She noted that a potential cause for removing the fire chief would be “a violation of his oath of office that would hurt the city, not necessarily a disagreement with other people in the fire department.”

Brasile charged that the March 5 vote for chief was “illegal” and occurred at a meeting that was stacked with Giovannagelo’s supporters. “It was null and void,” Brasile said of the vote. “They made their own ballot up.”

“I still would have won that election if you took my entire company out of the mix,” Giovannagelo said of the March 5 vote, which he said occurred at the department’s regular monthly meeting after being authorized at the February meeting.

Goodwill Hose is one of five companies that make up the fire department.

At the Jan. 6 council meeting, Goodwill Hose members questioned a decision by department officials to temporarily lock down the company in December and to suspend seven of its firefighters, including Giovannagelo, which prevented them from participating in the initial voting for fire chief. The firefighters noted they have since been reinstated.

Wolford said the lockdown resulted from “discrepancies in some reporting procedures surrounding federal grants.”

She said figures were altered for the number of fire calls individual Company 1 members responded to in January through March 2019. Those figures help determine which firefighters have responded to at least 15% of their company’s annual emergency calls to become eligible for a $550 stipend under a federal SAFER (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) grant program.

Giovannagelo has said that fire response figures for the first three months of 2019 had to be entered several months after the fact because he’d initially lacked access to fire company software.

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