Last night, I reviewed Exhibit VII that supports the section of Russell Van Sickles’ report regarding the first of six complaints that Chief Human Resource Officer Ed Sisson filed in late January against the recently terminated Fire Chief Matt Schmitt and Deputy Fire Chief Joe Glover.
The complaint was: “Schmitt and Glover intentionally and deceptively deviated from hiring protocol for the recent firefighter hiring round in late January 2016.”
The particular protocol that was the last straw that promoted Sisson to file his complaint that led to the investigation was not using an interview panel of three firefighters to interview the applicants. Instead Chief Schmitt made the decision that he and Glover would interview the eight applicants.
The hiring protocols for firefighters are not written. There is not written policy that mandates an interview panel. Furthermore, the investigator failed to prove Glover had anything to do with the decision to forgo the panel, and that either man acted “deceptively.” And Glover passed all eight applicants.
The person in charge of the hiring process for the Pensacola Fire Department is Battalion Chief Brock Jester. From the transcript of his interview, I learned that January 2016 was the first hiring round that Jester and Chief Schmitt handled without HR. Prior to that, HR handled the interview panel, with some help from PFD who told HR would had the hours to do it.
Jester was asked who at PFD helped him with the names for the panel back then. He first said it was Glover, but then corrected himself, “It was probably Chief Schmitt instead.”
Glover told Inweekly that he had never been involved with interview panel selection.
HR handed over the process to Jester in March/April 2015. Before the January hiring round, Jester said, “All the communication to the applicants was all done through HR. I had never I didn’t see an applicant until I got there that day and I said your name is #1 on my list and I am testing you next.”
He said, “Now this last round completely on me. That was I mean I had never – hey look I don’t – never done this before. I have never typed up an email to send out to somebody and they were like well it’s on you. I said ok so I can take it, I can do it if you need me to do it – I can do it.”
So HR handed over the hiring process to Jester without giving him written procedures to follow. From April 2015 to January 2016, no written protocols were sent to him. There appears HR gave him no training either. All are normal procedures for when there is a hand-off of an important process like hiring.
When Sisson learned that Chief Schmitt did not use the interview panel, he suspended the hiring. Rather than sit down with Schmitt and Jester to walk through the protocols he believe should have been followed, he wrote a complaint against Schmitt, included Glover who wasn’t part of the decision, and excluded Jester who was responsible for the hiring process.
As I wrote yesterday, this dispute over an unwritten protocol could have been settled by putting the procedures in writing and have Mayor Hayward approve them. Then HR should have provided training to persons in charge of the hiring process.
None of that happened and the attorney failed to mention it in his report.
We have requested interviews with Assistant City Administrator Keith Wilkins, Sisson and Mayor Hayward. Wilkins and Sisson refused to do interviews. The mayor has yet to reply.
There doesn’t look like the mayor will hold a press conference. We will continue our review of the report and will try again to get someone in city hall to respond.
Mayor Hayward did speak with WUWF. He said he ordered the investigation of the fire chiefs because his department heads insisted:
“You have input from your department heads, you know they were asking me to do an investigation of the fire department. So I said ‘If this is what everyone feels [then] let’s do it, let’s have a third party do it. Let’s make sure we’re covering everything.’ That’s exactly what we did.”
This is different from the version Eric Olson gave the media, but that’s par for the course for the city administrator.
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Note: Ed Sisson was never approved by the Pensacola City Council to head the Human Resources department, even though the charter states the mayor is “to appoint the head of each department, with the consent of the City Council by an affirmative vote of a majority of City Council Members.”
Hayward apparently avoided any public and council review of Sisson’s qualifications and job experience by giving him the title “Chief Human Resources Officer.” I’m not sure who were the ‘department heads’ that requested the mayor do the investigation.
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Note: Van Sickle’s interviews with Glover, Schmitt and Jester were recorded and transcribed. Sisson’s conversations with the attorney were not – or at least the transcripts were not released.
