After a five-hour hearing on July 1 and a day-long continuation of the same hearing Friday–seven and a half hours, no lunch break–the name-clearing hearing and appeal of former Flagler Beach Fire Chief Stephen Cox’s firing still isn’t over. At least one more day will be scheduled.
It had been going very well for Cox. Until it didn’t.
The signal difference Friday: the measured, forbearing and devastating testimony of the Fire Department’s former Lt. Morgan Rainey, who made Cox seem like a well-intentioned man out of his depth, too enamored of “pomp and circumstance,” too detached from the ranks in a department that could not afford that distance, and too disconnected from the consequences of an impersonal, dismissive leadership style.
Cox, the father of two with a third child on the way, is only 42. He was still learning his new role in an environment short on mentors and rich in institutional dysfunction. City Manager Dale Martin had quickly come to believe that he could keep Cox and lose the entire Fire Department, or fire Cox and save the department.
He chose the latter. It may have been a simplistic and overly catastrophic conclusion, especially since many of those draining away from the department could blame Cox but had other reasons to leave. Rainey herself last month. But Rainey’s testimony buttressed Martin’s conclusion, however driven more by gut instinct than methodical process or fairness.
Martin wanted to act fast and did, creating a mess that, by last Friday, appeared cleaned up: the department is now fully staffed but for a chief and a deputy chief.
The witnesses who testified on July 1 and for much of the day on Friday, under the at-times brutalizing questions of Cox’s attorney, Gary Wilson, did not help the city’s case. Martin had been defensive, Jennifer Fiveash, the former deputy fire chief, could not hide her personal animus for Cox and seemed at times more abrasively point-scoring than coolly analytical. Liz Mathis, the city’s human resources director, honest to a fault, showed how unusual was Martin’s style. And Greg Evans, a lieutenant in the Fire Department then and still and the revealed author of a no-confidence letter at the center of Cox’s firing, was all bombast and contradictions.
Cox himself testified at length Friday. He left no doubt about his fixation on style and chain of command. He referred to the department as a “paramilitary organization,” which is technically correct but absurd in the context of a 12-member department in a beach town where cops wear shorts and firefighters help kitties out of gutters. He more than once referred to his duties beyond the department, meeting with county brass and such. But those were minor character traits compared to a nearly spotless 16-year career and unquestioned service to the city, or his obvious if at times less guided devotion to the department and the community. What became apparent as he testified was that he had to operate alone, without guidance or support, in an environment as if besieged by limitations such as low pay, poor morale, vacancies and uncertainties.
Twice Cox was emotionally overcome: at the beginning, when he referred to his family, and after Martin had sent him home to think things over, before his firing, when Cox was trying to figure out where the attacks were coming from and why. “I can’t get one person to call me back,” he said.
“I was invested in this community. I loved this community. I moved my whole family for this community,” Cox said. “The deputy fire chief was not here for the long run. That was a temporary.” He blamed Fiveash for orchestrating his downfall. “If I truly was the individual painted in that letter, there would have been some type, something minute, anything that would have popped up in my 16 years of service. But it never did because it is not true.”
Had the hearing ended before Rainey in early afternoon, the Personnel Review Board, a City Commission-appointed panel of five, could have conceivably recommended that the firing should be overturned.
Rainey’s testimony, the first and possibly only witness for the city manager’s side, will make that much more difficult.
The day ended with the completion of the city’s direct examination of Rainey, with Cox’s attorney yet to cross-examine her (the proceedings are very similar to a trial). That will begin the next and presumably final session, which has not yet been scheduled.
Martin fired Cox on May 11 after Cox had been chief barely a year. He did so without cause, but cited a loss of confidence in Cox’s leadership after several members of the 12-member department resigned and an undated no-confidence letter seven current and former members of the department signed, though its authorship and origin remained a mystery until Friday’s hearing.
Cox rested his case on Friday after his attorney, Gary Wilson, put on a strong and convincing case that Cox’s firing, ending a 16-year, almost spotless career at the city, had been hasty, haphazard, cabal-like and in violation of the spirit–though not the letter–of city policies. It had also disenfranchised him of “millions” in accrued retirement and other benefits.
No matter how unorthodox, roughshod or unjustified, Martin still had the authority to fire Cox in any manner he wished. Every time a policy appeared to have been violated, either he or Liz Mathis, the city’s human resources director for almost a quarter century, said employment policies are guidelines, not edicts.
“Under the personnel policies themselves,” Jeff Mandel, the attorney representing the city, asked the human resources director, “was Mr. Martin within his right to say, I’m not going to follow some of the provisions in Article Eight and Article 10 regarding discipline?”
“Yes,” Mathis said.
In the nearly 16 years of Cox’s service with the city,Wilson asked Mathis, “have you ever had any personal issues with him, any problems that you could identify and tell us about?”
“No,” Mathis said.
Members of the Fire Department had alleged that Cox, who is big on chain of command, had forbidden them from going to Mathis or to Martin. Had he done so, it would not have been unusual, at least regarding the city manager: public or private employees of any organization are generally discouraged or barred from approaching top executives with grievances without first going through the appropriate ladder of authority. But apparently Cox had issued no such formal prohibition.
“Do you have any reason or any evidence you can point us to or tell us about that Chief Cox forbade members of the fire department to come to see you or the city manager?” Wilson asked Mathis.
“I have no direct evidence,” Mathis said.
“In fact, isn’t it true that not a single fire member, fire department employee, ever came and told you that?”
“Someone did tell me,” Mathis said. “I can’t tell you if it was Morgan Rainey, Jennifer Fiveash, one of the employees. I got that impression.”
“That was after he was terminated, though,” Wilson said.
“Correct,” Mathis said. Cox hired Fiveash away from the Palm Coast Fire Department to be his deputy fire chief. The ranks loved her. He did not. The ranks found that Fiveash was in their corner and was a workhorse, doing whatever was necessary. There was a whispering campaign accusing Cox of rarely hopping on fire trucks when necessary. Cox found Fiveash to be incessantly questioning, if not insubordinate, and undermining of his authority.
The clash came to a head over an occasion when Fiveash wanted to take the city’s sole fire engine out of service because of lack of personnel and Cox refused, as he did not want to leave the city unprotected (though mutual aid agreements with Palm Coast and the county would have ensured that that would never happen). Fiveash actually placed the engine out of service on an internal schedule, which Cox reversed. That happened soon before her resignation and the department’s unraveling.
Never had such a firing taken place without Mathis’s involvement. There’d been no internal investigation beyond Martin’s informal meetings with the fire department’s ranks, and not all the ranks. He kept no notes, no recordings, no documentation of those meetings, and until a spate of resignations washed over the Fire Department last April, he had been unaware of any issues regarding Cox.
Martin had written Cox a glowing evaluation in September, possibly Cox’s best yet. He did not apply the progressive discipline standards that apply to all other employees whose performance is questioned. He never gave Cox a chance to defend himself against the allegations in the no-confidence letter. Even after the firing, Martin said Cox had done nothing wrong, violated no policy, broken neither rules nor laws.
The Review Board’s members–despite what crabbiness would have clouded their judgment by foregoing a lunch break– would have had a difficult time not looking like Martin toadies had at least some of them sided with Cox, had testimony ended early Friday afternoon, before Rainey.
But as Mandel questioned her on direct examination–and allowed her to read or mostly read a long set of notes she’d written ahead of the hearing–it all changed. It wasn’t anything specific. Rainey, too, could not accuse Cox of misconduct, though a few people might have cringed–or should have cringed–when she described him nicknaming women firefighters “earmuffs,” and his old-school way of looking past the ranks’ aches and pains placed him, despite his young age, at a divide with a new generation’s expectations.
“I’ve had good experiences with him as well, but I’ve had significant challenges,” Rainey testified.
“He didn’t step up on any shifts although he was able,” in contrast with Fiveash, who was constantly filling shifts. “Chief Cox rarely stepped on the truck.” She continued: “This is a time where you step up and you help, but it almost feels like everyone’s doing all the work of running the department while somebody is sitting at the top saying harder, faster, and and out shaking hands and drinking lemonades and going on vacations whenever you want. So that did hurt morale a lot.”
“Does he do some good things? Yes. Like you have a good laugh with him, and yes, you can,” Rainey said. “But his ability to lead, especially in this department being so small, I have significant concerns that I haven’t really touched on all of it by any means. I don’t really know where to begin, but I had hoped that this would be a new start.”
“Your best interest isn’t there,” she said. “I believe there’s a lot of pomp and circumstance, and that is good for a political position, but it can’t end there.”
In one of her most devastating blows, spoken with the magnanimity of a friend, Rainey said Cox lacked maturity, an assessment that perhaps best summed up the two days of hearing, both for what Cox lacked in ability, but also in what he could easily gain and build on, maturity being anybody’s defect at one point or another. Cox had been the fire chief just over a year. A measure of immaturity in the job was almost inevitable. Nothing Rainey described isn’t easily unlearned or improved with time and training.
In a certain environment–a more progressively disciplined environment–he might have been afforded the chance to grow, especially in a small department. To Martin, there seemed to have been no time, and he put the department’s size, and the disproportion of a few firefighters’ discontent, against Cox.
When the hearing resumes, Wilson, Cox’s attorney, will cross-examine Rainey.
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