After refusing to answer questions from the News Journal and Inweekly, Pensacola City Administrator Eric Olson went on a local morning show to discuss why Fire Chief Matt Schmitt and Deputy Chief Joe Glover had been placed on administrative leave.
On News Radio 1620, the city administrator tried to decouple the investigation concerning Schmitt and Glover from the changes made in the city’s disciplinary appeal process.
“If I can take you back, we obviously have two people placed on administrative leave,†said Olson. “At the same time, we have changed out HR manual. “
While he admitted that the timing of the two incidents appears “interesting,†they are not connected. He said, “They are linked in time, but they are not linked by any substantive or deliberative process that these two issues should somehow go together.â€
He said that last October the city had an employee going through the appeals process and realized that the personnel board listed in the manual hadn’t been established.
“The personnel board was never established,†said Olson. “In order to get that to meet the right of this person to go before a personnel board, we had to establish one. That meant we had to get people nominated, you had to have a vote of the employees, all before this other individual could make it through the final step of the appeals process.â€
Nominations were received from the employees, and the election of the board members was to be Dec. 2, according to the city administrator.
“As we were going through the process of establishing the personnel board, the original complaint was settled in late November,†he said. The city cancelled the board election on Dec. 1.
Olson said the decision was then made to do away with the personnel board.
“We looked back and said, ‘Well why did we have a personnel board to begin with? Why is that in the HR manual?’ It’s really a legacy from the old civil service,†he recalled.
“Civil service went away under the new charter,†said Olson. “What we had was this legacy HR procedure that we felt we don’t need, and we can address the same concerns in a different more streamlined fashion and still give what we want to give every employee—which is a fair, equitable hearing if they’ve got an appeal.â€
Editor’s note: The personnel board was not a “legacy HR procedure.†It was a commitment the city made to the Florida Legislature when it agreed to repeal the city’s civil service board in 2013, a few months before Olson was hired.
In regards to the investigation, the city administrator said it concerns the EEOC complaints against him and the Chief Human Resources Officer Ed Sisson by Schmitt and Olson.
“Anytime the city receives an EEOC complaint our insurance carrier is notified,†said Olson. “When our insurance carrier is notified, our insurance carrier then takes one of the attorneys that it has on retainer to check into the matter. In this case, it happened to be Rob Larkin from Allen, Norton & Blue.”
He said that Larkin advised that the fire chief and deputy chief be placed on administrative leave and the city retain an outside counsel to conduct an investigation. Olson and Sisson were allowed to continue at work.
Olson did not explain why Schmitt and Glover weren’t told the subject of the investigation. He repeated that the administrative leave was done on the advice of legal counsel.
“There is no punishment intended, it’s just for the benefit of the investigation for all parties involved,†he said. “To preserve the integrity of the investigation, that’s the step that’s taken.â€
Will the fire chief and deputy chief be reinstated once the investigation is complete?
Olson said, “I think that’s correct. That’s the purpose. We separate everybody from the situation, we conduct a thorough investigation, and based on the results of that investigation and the recommendations that fall out of it … That may be the ultimate outcome.â€
The city administrator denied that race played any part in the decision to place the chiefs on administrative leave.