MORGANTOWN – The City of Morgantown wants a circuit judge to stop a hearing regarding its decision to stop paying shift differential pay to firefighters.
The city filed the complaint against its Fire Civil Service Commission this week in Monongalia Circuit Court. The city maintains that the commission doesn’t have the authority to conduct a hearing on the issue, saying it would take control of personnel issues away from city officials.
The firefighters disagree.
Toriseva
“The City of Morgantown has now sued one of its own commissions,” attorney Teresa Toriseva told The West Virginia Record. “It has filed suit against the Fire Fighter Civil Service Commission to stop the commission from holding a hearing about the illegal and retaliatory $2,000 per year pay cut against 47 professional firefighters.”
Toriseva said the city is waging war against its own fire department.
“This new filing is nothing but a last-minute attempt to stop the Civil Service Commission from even conducting a hearing,” she said. “It is a litigation tactic to avoid accountability. The city officials act as though they answer to no one.
“They have even asserted exactly this position during the previous commission meeting -- that they can do whatever they want without review by anyone.”
The hearing is scheduled for May 12. Last month, the commission had an emergency meeting to discuss the issue. It asked the city and the firefighters to mediate the matter before that.
The emergency meeting followed a unanimous vote of no confidence by the members of the International Association of Firefighters Local 313 in Morgantown City Manager Kim Haws after the city ended a longstanding pay supplement for working evening and overnight shifts. That resulted in a salary reduction of about $2,000 per firefighter.
The city said the shift differential was taken away from firefighters because they work a 24-hour shift that starts at 8 a.m. The city’s decision to remove the shift differential was made shortly after the firefighters union nixed the latest settlement offer from the city in a 2019 lawsuit regarding holiday pay issues.
“If the city officials’ decision to cancel the shift differential only for 24-hour professional firefighters isn’t retaliation for the holiday pay lawsuit, then those officials should welcome the chance to explain what they have done,” Toriseva told The Record. “The City of Morgantown is choosing to pay lawyers instead of firefighters.
“This attack by the city is a threat to public safety. The city’s illegal department-wide pay cut has diminished existing career firefighters and will eliminate the department’s ability to recruit new members.”
The firefighters say the city never has reduced the pay for an entire department by $2,000 per year.
“Firefighting is one of the key pillars of safety for any community,” the firefighters’ filing with the commission states. “The recruitment of new firefighters and retention of existing firefighters is the most important part of firefighting.
“It is so important there are state laws in place establishing safeguards for the hiring process, the firing process, the reduction in rank and the reduction in pay for all professional firefighters who work for a municipality.
“Not only do those laws, called civil service, protect the firefighters, but more importantly those rules prevent any city from endangering the public by taking adverse employment action against the firefighters without written reasons followed by a showing of showing of good cause at a public hearing.”
State code state no paid firefighter can be removed, discharged, suspended or reduced in rank or pay without just cause and without a written statement of the reasons for the action. It also says the civil service commission must grant a public hearing within 10 days if a member demands it. There, the removing officer – Haws, in this case – must show cause for the actions.
“If this reduction in pay is permitted, the recruitment of and retention of professional firefighters in the City of Morgantown will be negatively affected, thereby endangering public safety,” the filing states. “The failure of A. Kim Haws, the ‘removing officer,’ to provide a written statement of reasons for the reduction in pay is an attempt by the removing officer to prevent the firefighters from answering the reduction in pay in front of the Civil Service Commission.”
The city says it isn't an issue of pay reduction.
"As city administration has stated previously, the personnel rules state how shift differential should be applied," Communications Director Andrew Stacy previously told The Record. "This is not an issue of pay reduction. It is applying the personnel rules fairly to all city employees."
Toriseva said firefighters can’t have pay reduced without the written statement of reasons from the Fire Civil Service Commission, a three-member panel with both the power and the duty to hold hearings and issue subpoenas for witness testimony.
“Cutting the wages of an entire department threatens public safety by making it hard to recruit and retain professional firefighters,” Toriseva told The Record. “Civil Service state law protects firefighters from the misguided whims of ever-changing appointed and elected officials. It protects fire fighters from city government making their jobs intolerable.
“Civil service protects entire departments by honoring a system of rules that promote recruitment and retention of its members. …
“The city has the burden of proof and it’s a high burden. They must show good cause. By failing to submit the required written statement to the commission and sidestepping the civil service rules, the newly hired city manager has prevented the firefighters’ right to review of this decision.”
In the civil lawsuit, the city is being represented by Ryan P. Simonton of Kay Casto & Chaney's Morgantown office.
