An outside investigation into allegations of misdeeds by Fire Chief Brad Martin has cost Port Ludlow Fire & Rescue more than $16,000.

In-house legal costs of the complaints made against the chief by the firefighters union and related issues also run into the thousands of dollars, according to invoices obtained by The Leader via a public records request.

Port Ludlow fire commissioners agreed late last year to hire an outside attorney to look into allegations against the chief made by Jefferson County Professional Firefighters Local 3811, the union that represents Port Ludlow firefighters.

Attorney Tom Burke was hired to look into concerns raised by the union after it took a vote of “no confidence” in Martin and submitted multiple letters alleging misdeeds by the chief.

The investigation was finalized in February but not made public.

At a subsequent meeting of the fire commissioners’ board, commissioners voted 3-2 against firing Martin.

Martin declined to offer comment to The Leader on the controversy. 

Fire Commissioner Chairman Gene Carmody also declined an interview request.

During the most recent commissioners’ meeting, Wicus McGuffey, president of Jefferson County Professional Firefighters, said union members were disappointed that Martin would remain chief.

“I just want to take the opportunity to express the disappointment of the local in the decision of the board to retain Chief Martin as the fire chief,” McGuffey told commissioners.

“I feel like, as a group, we had legitimate and significant concerns about his leadership of the organization and its impact on firefighter safety and service delivery,” he said.

McGuffey said commissioners have not sought additional input on the allegations from firefighters.

“I appreciate the steps that the board took to initiate an investigation. However, I feel like outside of the letters of communication that the local has submitted to the board, we’ve had no engagement from the board to further expound on our concerns, those impacts to us as a stakeholder group and what we feel our mission is with Port Ludlow Fire and Rescue,” McGuffey said.

“I understand a motion was made and accepted. However, I don’t think that dissuades the concerns of the local. And we’re hoping that there’s an opportunity to engage with the board to further discuss on a more personal level the impacts that we’re feeling as a labor group and how we see those impacts to the organization,” he added.

McGuffey noted commissioners had not scheduled a labor-management meeting since the third quarter of 2020, and the union had not been invited to participate in any executive sessions with the board or outside talks about the chief.

Carmody, the board chairman, told McGuffey he would be willing to talk.

“From my lips to your ears; we will take that under advisement,” Carmody said.

Carmody promised he would personally contact McGuffy for a labor-management meeting.

“So there you are; you got it,” Carmody told him.

The vote of no confidence in the fire chief was the first ever by Local 3811 against one of their chiefs.

The union criticized Martin for a lack of strategic planning and the loss of career firefighters who have taken jobs with other departments. 

The union said the lack of planning in the department was a primary factor in the departure of five career firefighters in the past two years.

And in a second letter of allegations that stretched for five pages, union leadership set out additional claims of “Chief Martin’s failures to lead.”

McGuffey claimed the chief had failed to properly manage the department’s staffing, and recalled an aid call to assist a 100-year-old man last August.

McGuffey said other firefighters had been dispatched to other alarms, leaving only an off-duty firefighter who was on probation to respond to the aid call. McGuffey criticized Martin for not responding to the medical emergency himself, calling it a “gross failure.”

Martin was also criticized for frequently responding to emergency incidents with his family members in his command vehicle, including minor children who were left without adult supervision at emergency scenes. 

“There have been specific cases of one of his minor children being outside of the vehicle on working fires in an area that would be considered the ‘hot zone’ and where a minor child was left unsupervised in the command vehicle that was positioned on a high speed roadway in precarious conditions of limited visibility and icy road conditions,” McGuffey wrote in a letter of complaint. “This is not only a significant liability, but discredits the professionalism of PLFR in the eyes of our mutual aid partners.”

McGuffey also noted additional allegations of what he said were examples of a lack of organizational oversight and mismanagement in the department by Martin, which included staffing issues as well as the purchase of a new command vehicle, which McGuffey said exceeded by $18,600 the $75,000 that was budgeted for the vehicle and was made without fire commissioners’ approval.

Martin has not publicly addressed the complaints, and said after the vote of no confidence that he thought the allegations were without merit.

Legal invoices for the investigation were redacted in parts to remove information the fire district’s attorney said were not subject to public disclosure. Information that was removed included the names of people who were interviewed as part of the investigation against Martin.

It is not clear that Martin was interviewed as part of the probe; documents released by the fire district show that one person refused to be interviewed but that person’s name was redacted from attorney billing records.

Burke was paid $250 an hour for his work on the investigation. Billing records through March 1 show his firm was paid $16,143 for the investigation, which includes some time by a paralegal on the case.

Port Ludlow Fire & Rescue said earlier it would not release a copy of the investigation for public review.

The report, according to the fire department, was protected by attorney-client privilege, and was prepared in anticipation of litigation.

Martin is paid a salary of $125,000 a year.

His current employment contract was approved by the board in October 2018 and expires Aug. 31.