After three months of grumbling among themselves, some Jackson firefighters have officially voiced concerns over Mayor Frank Melton's installation of former Jackson Fire Department Capt. Todd Chandler as interim fire chief.
"We have questions about his management ability and his education background and his acceptance by all the firefighters," said retired Division Chief Willie Owens of Chandler. "There's a lot of discord right now in the fire department because of his position as interim chief," Owens said of Chandler, who Melton installed July 27 shortly after dismissing seven-year Fire Chief Raymond McNulty.
Owens, president of a fire department union called Firefighters Limited, accused Melton of selecting Chandler because of the former captain's involvement with the firefighters union Local 87, which Owens said supported Melton's campaign for mayor.
"We don't want the mayor to just go around and pick someone from the union just because that union was responsible for him receiving a large sum of support. We want this to be fair and equitable because we have other people within the fire department a lot more qualified than Todd Chandler," said Owens, who left the department in August.
Owens complained that only current or former union members hold high command staff positions. He said he and other firefighters have sent letters to City Council members, inviting them to a Nov. 30 meeting to discuss their grievances.
The Jackson Fire Department has seen decades of racial tension. African-Americans first accused the department of promotion tactics that made it more difficult for black firefighters to move up in rank. The U.S. Justice Department issued a 1974 consent decree ordering the department to make its promotional system more fair. In 1988, plaintiffs and the Department of Justice, many of whom later migrated to the union known as Firefighters Limited, filed motions to enforce the 1974 consent decree, called a Supplemental Consent Decree.
Thereafter, several fire department employees—many of them white—were allowed to intervene, arguing that white employees and applicants might be adversely affected by the new promotional requirement outlined in the 1988 Supplemental Consent Decree. Many of the white firefighters complaining were members of another firefighter union called Local 87. Chandler has confirmed that he was a member of the group known as the "intervenors."
Owens says he is concerned that too many representatives of Local 87 have positions as department heads.
"There are no non-union members on the command staff, which we feel is discrimination because this is a right-to-work state. We have no problem with them being union members, but state laws say you do not have to be a member of a union to have the same rights and privileges," Owens said. He also complains that Chandler does not reside in the city of Jackson and should therefore not hold the position as interim chief, much less the permanent position.
Chandler argues that he has met all the residency requirements for being fire chief in the city.
"The requirements are that I'm a resident of the city of Jackson or Hinds County, and I'm a resident of Hinds and always have been," Chandler said.
Members of Firefighters Limited made mirror statements regarding the residencies of Assistant Fire Chief John Canterbury and Tony Davis, now administrative assistant fire chief.
Davis' and Canterbury's bonds with Chandler became clear in 2001 when both testified at a Civil Service Commission hearing against then-Fire Chief McNulty, after Chandler accused McNulty of stepping over him on a January 2001 eligibility list to serve as acting district chief. McNulty had testified that Chandler was skipped over for not meeting requirements on a May 9, 2000, document. Canterbury and Davis both testified that the document had not been sent to firefighters and that if it had been enforced, none of the captains on the promotion list with Chandler would have met the strict qualifications.
Chandler called the complaints recently sent to local media "personal grudges."
"If there are any issues brought up at this time, they haven't brought them up to me personally, so I think it reverts back to some of those personal agendas," Chandler said.
Melton told the Jackson City Council that he was withholding a vote on Chandler's appointment as chief due to a perceived lack of support.
"We'll be holding that until the council is ready to stop playing around," Melton told the council last month when Chandler's name was removed from a docket for confirmation.
Ward 2 councilman Leslie McLemore said he could not gauge any decision the council would make regarding the matter.
"We haven't had any formal council discussion on his nomination, so it's hard to get a beat on how the total council will go at this time but there have been some reservations expressed about his history and involvement in activities in the past," McLemore said.
"I've heard the mayor say he thinks there's some reluctance because Chandler's white, but I don't think that has anything to do with it."
McLemore added, however, that the mayor's assumption of a no-confidence vote from the council could be correct.
"The mayor may have his finger on the pulse of the council better than many of us," McLemore said. "I think it would be to the benefit of the citizens if someone was selected who was not controversial from the standpoint of being so overly identified with being of one camp or the other. I would suspect there are some outstanding men and women within the fire department that both groups could probably rally around once they stop hurling epithets from one side to the other.
"A compromise will have to be struck."
Council President Marshand Crisler said the council recently discovered that Chandler had never been confirmed as interim chief and that confirmation was a requirement.
"The attorney general has opined that his office and the state constitution does not distinguish between interim or permanent. Every person placed in a position of director, whether interim or permanent, has to be confirmed by the council," Crisler said. "We didn't know this either until recently. We've never confirmed an interim fire chief, but we asked the opinion of the A.G. so now that we're no longer ignorant we're going to have to act on this."
Crisler said he has mentioned this to the mayor's office, though there has been no formal request from the council, yet.
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