By Adam Pagnucco.
The heat is definitely getting cranked in County Executive Marc Elrich’s increasingly troubled relationship with his long-time ally, the International Association of Fire Fighters Local Union 1664. After union president Jeffrey Buddle blasted the county executive over his failed fire chief nomination of Division Chief Charles Bailey this morning, Elrich was questioned about it at his press briefing today. Get out the fire extinguishers folks, because this baby is gonna burn!
Elrich was first asked about Bailey by DC News Now reporter Kevon Dupree. Here is the exchange from the county’s video.
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Dupree: Good afternoon, thank you very much. To begin, can you please talk about the decision to withdraw support of Charles Bailey for the fire chief position?
Elrich: Can I talk about what? Our decision?
Dupree: The decision to withdraw support of Charles Bailey for the fire chief position.
Elrich: It’s pretty straightforward. We have a process where the executive sends over to the council, you know, a candidate and assuming that we… then after the council individually ponders this, that we bring the candidate, continue to bring the candidate forward. And knowing that we did not have the votes on the council, there was no point in putting it back out there.
Dupree: Thank you very much for sharing that. And so the decision had nothing to do with the inspector general’s report about misconduct from a senior official in Montgomery County fire?
Elrich: I can’t talk about personnel issues. I think you guys know that. But obviously, I was ready to put him forward again.
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Next up was WTOP reporter Kate Ryan, who specifically asked about Buddle’s email blasting Elrich. Here is that exchange.
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Ryan: I hate to keep going after this, but on the fire chief, I did have a note from the IAFF union president who said on half a dozen occasions, and he goes – they raised concerns…
Elrich: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The county executive chuckles at Ryan’s question.
Ryan: Going November 28th, June 28th, July 31st, August 8th, August 17th and most lately in November of 23, that they said look, we’ve raised these with you before, and they feel that they were simply ignored. Can you…?
Elrich: They actually weren’t ignored. We, you know, what we did was the normal thing. We went back to HR and the reporting process was in the department. Not a single thing that they listed appeared in any record of having been ever raised with personnel or raised with the fire chief. Ever.
And so it’s very interesting that these suddenly pop up. I’ll point out that at the same time they’re doing this, they’re trying to push me to hire a fire chief who’s running a five-station department that was a former union president for eleven years. So I would say that, you know, their motivations were pretty much trying to knock off one candidate and make room for another candidate. And it really bothers me.
He talks about a letter he wrote. He never mentioned anybody’s name but the past fire chief. And he asked me to fire him, which we weren’t going to do because we knew he was going to be leaving because he was in the DROP [pension program] and we were preparing for what we were going to do to bring in another fire chief. I asked him verbally about the candidates.
I mentioned Charles’s name and he said he could work with him. He actually at one point when he was dissatisfied with the way the previous chief had handled discipline issues, said he would prefer that Charles handle those issues. We did that.
So I would say this is very complicated. But you’re not seeing everything to this and, you know, I am not interested in belaboring this. The union succeeded in getting what they wanted at least in terms of not getting this chief. I still feel, and I know that most of the people who did the interviews feel this is the best, certainly the best qualified candidate we had. Absolutely.
Ryan: Got it. And when you’re referring to “he,” we’re talking about Jeffrey Buddle, president of IAFF.
Elrich: Yep, yep.
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Has Elrich burned his bridge with the fire fighters union? We may find out in the next election.