5 Firefighters Receive Termination Notices : Investigation: Westminster officials say they will institute changes in overtime and other policies to prevent any future abuse.

Five firefighters face dismissal after a recent independent report found what city officials called a widespread abuse of overtime pay.

In addition, policy changes affecting overtime, vacation and sick leave will be instituted in the Fire Department, officials said Friday.

“We will not let the effort go to waste,” Mayor Charles V. Smith said Friday, following a three-hour special council session to discuss the report’s findings.

The six-month review of Fire Department payroll practices by the auditing firm of KPMG Peat Marwick concluded that loopholes in the system, including lax reporting policies, allowed department employees to incur $4.8 million in overtime pay over a seven-year period, beginning in 1986.

Officials did not release the names of the employees facing termination, but a lawyer for the firefighters union said that Fire Capt. Mike Garrison was among those who received termination notices Thursday.

The notice from Fire Chief John T. DeMonaco Jr. ordered Garrison and four other employees to appear before Assistant City Manager Don Anderson April 25 and 26 to answer the allegations against them.

Citing policy, however, DeMonaco did not say what the allegations were.

But Alan C. Davis, the firefighters’ attorney, said that Garrison is accused of failing to provide documentation for leaves he took between 1990 and 1992.

Garrison, a 19-year veteran and union director, was suspended in January for alleging publicly that cuts in the Fire Department were responsible for a fatal fire early this year.

“This is a continuation of the vicious effort to slander outstanding members of the Westminster Fire Department,” Davis said. He added that city officials are retaliating for the firefighters’ support of a recall drive against Smith and three other council members.

Paul Gilbrook, the union president, was fired after city officials said he drove a firetruck while his driver’s license was suspended and improperly used sick leave. He has appealed the firing.

Last month, Garrison appeared before a city panel doing a separate investigation into the sick leave, vacation leave and holiday pay billings in the Fire Department. The three-person panel headed by labor relations consultant Alan Atlas also questioned seven other employees, including three battalion chiefs. That panel has not yet issued its report.

Smith said that more firefighters are likely to be investigated and disciplined.

“We will take all disciplinary action based on the report,” the mayor said.

Smith said the auditors found that from 1986 to 1993, (complete records were not available for 1988), the firefighters charged 21,000 hours of overtime without city-required documentation.

Under a practice called “double shift trades,” 5,000 hours of overtime were paid to Fire Department employees who worked someone else’s shift--for overtime--but not their own shift, according to the auditors.

Davis responded in a letter to the City Council that the practice is common in fire departments across the state.

But Councilwoman Charmayne S. Bohman said: “All reasonable people will realize that what has been going on for many years was wrong.”

Bohman and Councilmen Tony Lam and Craig Schweisinger also are the targets of a June 7 recall vote.

But Davis said that the auditors’ report was “replete with false statements and innuendoes with conclusions that are built upon false statements.”

He said that except for DeMonaco and the employee who keeps records in the Fire Department, the auditors did not talk to the employees while preparing the report.

City Atty. Richard Jones said that the city would probably wait for the results of an investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office before deciding whether to file a civil lawsuit against the firefighters to recover money.

He said that if the district attorney files criminal charges against the firefighters that result in a conviction, the judge could order the money to be paid back to the city.

“If the D.A. does not file charges, the city has the option to file a civil lawsuit,” Jones said.

The firefighters union has filed a civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court against several city officials, and Davis said the dismissal notices will become a part of that suit.