Former EMS chief decries funding, firing

WASILLA — A former ambulance service chief terminated after a union grievance was filed against him shed new light on the borough’s ambulance service this week.

The Mat-Su Borough’s Department of Emergency Services relies far too much on a 500-person, part-time and volunteer workforce, said former core services chief Brian Wallace.

Borough officials terminated Wallace shortly after the announced resignation of then-emergency services director Dennis Brodigan, as well as the resignations of Deputy Director for Emergency Services Clint Vardeman and rural ambulance service chief Gene Wiseman.

Union officials approached the borough in November 2014, alleging that “Wallace has established a continuing pattern of conduct, over a long period of time exceeding two years, of: discrimination in work assignments based on (reasons) other than merit; denigration of subordinates in public; hostile and offensive abuse of subordinates in written and verbal communications; suspected on-duty intoxication; dereliction of duties; and other offensive conduct,” according to a copy of the union grievance proved by Wallace.

In an interview Friday with the Alaska Dispatch News and the Frontiersman, Wallace called the accusations “slanderous,” and said he hadn’t yet been given an opportunity to defend himself.

“There are all sorts of slanderous accusations in there, and they don’t have anything in there to back ‘em up,” he said.

Wallace did not rule out the possibility that he would ultimately file a lawsuit against the borough.

Seven subordinates reported the original complaints, according to documents provided by Wallace. Only one of the complainants — who Wallace eventually questioned — is identified in the document.

Union officials at first declined to pursue a grievance against Wallace, on assurances from union managers their claim would be investigated. However, Wallace eventually “grilled” (Wallace called it a direct questioning) a subordinate about statements the employee made in confidence during a follow-up investigation. That led the union to ultimately file a formal grievance, culminating in Wallace’s Feb. 23 placement on administrative leave, and his March 13 termination, followed by a failed appeal attempt and termination April 2.

Wallace presented a packet in response March 25, answering most of the general accusations (he did not directly address the alleged intoxication in writing). For example, the document he referred to when confronting the employee was a summary of the investigation.

“I was never informed that this was a confidential document nor is it marked confidential,” Wallace wrote, in a letter responding to the grievance. “Instead it is marked ‘draft.’”

Wallace said he expected to receive mediation or arbitration as a result of the grievance. He was blind-sided by his termination, he said.

“I have been managing people for greater than three decades and never have had a negative evaluation,” he said. “I’ve got my own distinct style, and it primarily comes from my military background, and when you’re at that style of management, you’re responsible with what comes out of your mouth and what you do with your hands, and at EMS, there’s a lot of people that are not responsible for what came out of their mouths and not responsible for what they’re doing.”

Political friction among paramedics and EMTs accustomed to working from nearby stations also arose.

Wallace claims he was a victim of an environment created by a system struggling to make ends meet. After a state administrator ruled that borough employees working more than 29.9 hours per week were eligible for Public Employees’ Retirement System benefits, borough managers ordered the department to limit hours for part-time employees to under that number, preventing them from claiming benefits. After that decision, supervisors were placed directly into the field, manning ambulances that ultimately robbed some employees of the opportunity to pick up hours, Wallace said. That decision was made necessary by a charter requirement to transport patients from Mat-Su Regional to Anchorage, he said.

“We had used those figures by having an agreement with them to justify the last seven positions we got,” he said. “We said we’re going to make this much more in revenues by taking all these transports, which they’ve increased since that time.”

In addition, the decision to restrict full-time personnel to the borough’s busy core area caused political friction between the core chief and part-time employees in more removed areas, Wallace said.

“That turned into a long process of me and my supervisors and my assistant trying to get people to get along with each other, and it wasn’t pretty,” he said. “I had a huge attrition rate. If I wanted the people from Palmer to come over and work at 6-1, for example, they would refuse to do it.”

The borough assembly has consistently avoided hiring the numbers of full-time employees required to provide service commensurate with the borough’s size. Ultimately, this resulted in an emergency services department where 50 full-time employees, half of them administrators, manage more than 500 part-time employees.

Borough Manager John Moosey, unwilling to present the assembly with a public safety dilemma potentially requiring a mill rate increase, rejected most requests for personnel, Wallace said. As a result, response times for some satellite stations can be as high as 40 minutes to an hour, Wallace said. The dilemma was not the result of the tireless efforts of volunteers, but simply the result of a strained system, he said.

“This is not meant to insult anybody,” Wallace said. “This is just my opinion with the experience that I have.”

Capital expenditures also have been constrained, he said. His account of an aging and decrepit ambulance fleet matches recent testimony to the assembly by newly hired Department of Emergency Services Director Bill Gamble.

Borough officials have cited competition with North Slope jobs as one element making retention among first responders difficult.

Moosey declined to comment about the particulars of Wallace’s termination citing privacy

“I’m probably able, but I won’t,” he said. “It’s a personnel issue.”

Moosey rejected claims that funding levels had affected patient care. He said he rejects staffing and facilities requests every year.

“My departments don’t get to automatically suggest new hires,” Moosey said. “It comes through me.”

Complaints about funding levels are perennial, he said.

“As manager, I can tell you everything around here is underfunded,” Moosey said. “Is your home budget underfunded? Probably. We do the best we can with the dollars of assistance given us by the borough assembly. We could certainly use more money. So could everybody else.”

“It comes down to good management,” he said. “Nobody’s held accountable for opportunities they do not have. They’re held accountable for how to you take advantage of the opportunities that you do.”

The decision was ultimately a business decision, not a political one, Moosey said.

“We have to make do with our environment,” he said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.