WESTMINSTER : Fates of Firefighters to Be Decided Soon

City officials said Wednesday they will decide next week whether to dismiss two battalion chiefs, two captains and a paramedic for alleged payroll abuses in the Fire Department.

Another battalion chief is facing suspension in the wake of an independent auditors’ report released this month that city officials say indicated widespread payroll abuses in the Fire Department over the past seven years.

But fire union officials insist that the firefighters have done nothing wrong and that the allegations against them are in retaliation for their support for a recall drive against Mayor Charles V. Smith and three other members of the council.

“These are serious allegations,” said Assistant City Manager Don Anderson, who conducted the dismissal hearings Monday and Tuesday. “It will take some time to review all the materials and come up with a decision.”

Anderson declined to name the employees, citing city policy. But officials said high-ranking Fire Department officials are involved. Two are directors of the firefighters union.

The only identified employee so far is Mike Garrison, a fire captain and director of Westminster Firefighters Local 2425, who said this week that he received a termination notice from Fire Chief John T. DeMonaco.

His lawyer, Alan C. Davis, said Garrison is facing termination for helping issue a press release Jan. 28, charging that cuts in the Fire Department were partly responsible for the death of a mentally disabled man during a fire earlier this year.

Garrison has been suspended since January for what city officials said was “unprofessional conduct” by publicly commenting on the fire that was under investigation.

In addition, Davis said, city officials are charging Garrison with failure to provide required documentation on 18 different occasions that he has taken sick leave and other time off from work since 1986.

But Davis said that during his dismissal hearing this week, Garrison provided pay stubs that indicated deductions were made on his salary for every occasion that he was on sick leave and other Fire Department-approved leaves.

DeMonaco issued the termination notices April 14, two days after the city released a KPMG Peat Marwick report of Fire Department payroll practices since 1986.

The auditors found, among other things, that in more than 1,400 instances, Fire Department employees failed to submit so-called transaction slips that are required when employees come back from sick leave.

City officials said that because sick leave records were not available, firefighters received sick leave pay, vacation pay and other compensation fraudulently.