Fire chief of tiny district to lose job but get $300,000 severance

As North Highline fire chief, Scott LaVielle oversees two stations and 35 employees and last year earned more than Gov. Chris Gregoire.

LaVielle's pay of $186,370 even outpaced the salary of Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean, who made $173,709 for managing 32 stations and 1,155 employees.

Now, as LaVielle prepares to leave the job, he is set to receive more than $300,000 under a severance package that includes one year's pay plus about $115,880 for unused sick leave, vacation and compensatory time.

David Lawson, a former North Highline fire commissioner and now chief financial officer of Federal Way-based South King Fire & Rescue, calls the chief's pay "outrageously high."

This small district, serving White Center, Boulevard Park and other communities between Seattle and Burien, has a history of paying its fire chiefs extraordinary salaries. But as the economy tanked and the size of the district shrank, officials have been scrambling to cut back.

The North Highline Fire Department's three commissioners voted to abolish the chief's position, effective the end of this month. They also reduced LaVielle's salary by $2,000 a month for his final two months and began negotiations to turn his duties over to the chief of the neighboring Burien/Normandy Park Fire Department.

Laying off the chief saved several firefighters' jobs, said Ron Malaspino, who chaired the board at the time but didn't run for re-election. "The name of the game is how many firefighters are on the street, how many boots are on the ground. ... We couldn't justify Scott's salary anymore. So therefore we had to let him go," Malaspino said, adding that he spoke only for himself.

Commissioners also froze firefighters' pay, laid off a secretary, clamped down on overtime and filled firefighter vacancies by putting a training officer and an inspector back on the fire engines.

Some residents wonder how such a small, financially challenged fire district believed it could afford such high salaries and benefits in the first place.

Liz Giba, a White Center resident who once served on North Highline's unincorporated area council, describes LaVielle's salary and severance package as "outlandish" and says, "I would love to see Chief LaVielle say, 'You know what? I love this community and I understand it can't afford to pay me this level of severance,' and revise it himself."

LaVielle, 51, has no plans to return any of his pay, noting that his early departure will reduce his retirement earnings while saving the Fire Department nearly $250,000 over two years in salary and medical benefits.

"I think to leave was the right thing to do to save jobs," he said. "We were able to save all the firefighter jobs."

The Fire Department, also known as King County Fire District 11, is at a crossroads.

Burien, which took over nearly one-third of the district's territory when it became a city in the 1990s, is preparing to annex a similar-size chunk April 1. Burien has its own Fire Department, as does Seattle, which may ask residents of the North Highline district in November if they want to become part of Seattle.

At some point, the North Highline Fire Department is likely to disappear altogether as surrounding cities grow.

The more immediate problem, which forced the elimination of the chief's job, is the result of declining home prices. The fire district's property-tax collections will drop by nearly 13 percent this year.

LaVielle grew up in the Park Lake Homes public-housing project in White Center and played for the New York Mets' Grays Harbor farm team for two years before he signed on as a volunteer North Highline firefighter and then, in 1982, as a paid firefighter.

LaVielle's severance package was consistent with his five-year contract and district policies on cash buyouts of unused benefits.

His pay was set under policies adopted in 2006 when commissioners gave his predecessor, Russ Pritchard, a raise of $72,336 three months before he retired. Pritchard earned a $198,000 annual salary in his final months on the job.

Two of the three commissioners who voted for Pritchard's raise said it reflected the chief's broad duties — he has no assistant chief or public-information officer — and was intended to lift his pay above what battalion chiefs earned with overtime.

The state Department of Retirement Systems at the time questioned whether Pritchard's raise constituted severance pay that shouldn't be used to calculate his pension.

The Fire Department's lawyer responded that the raise was based on a new formula that would apply to future chiefs: pegging pay to years of experience and assuring the chief would make more than his subordinates.

The retirement agency was satisfied with the lawyer's explanation, an agency spokeswoman said.

Wayne Alishokis, a retired North Highline firefighter and current board chairman, said the board wanted to replace Pritchard with LaVielle, who had taken more classes in firefighting and administration.

Of letting Pritchard go, Alishokis said, "He had a long career with the Fire Department. I didn't want to be one to screw him over for anything. I wanted to see him taken care of fairly."

Was Pritchard's raise intended to increase his pension payments?

"If I told you that was not taken into consideration, I'd be lying to you," Alishokis said. "It was a little bit of this and a little bit of that." Alishokis said he was speaking for himself, not the board.

Alishokis, who was appointed and then elected to the board after his wife, Sharon, was hired as a training secretary, did not participate in the board's decision to lay her off at the end of December and give her seven months of severance pay.

There was no district policy preventing Fire Commissioner Malaspino from voting on Pritchard's pay over a period of years while Pritchard — as a commissioner of Water District 20 — had a role in setting Malaspino's pay as general manager of the water district.

Commissioners for both districts said no one viewed the men's roles as each other's supervisor as a conflict of interest.

"It never became a problem," Malaspino said. "It was not ever, 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch your back.' ... There's two other commissioners."

The fire district's attorney, Brian Snure, said Malaspino and Pritchard's supervisory oversight of each other didn't constitute a conflict of interest under state law. Whether it constitutes an appearance of a conflict, he said, is "a political more than a legal issue."

Malaspino's salary as water manager rose incrementally from $80,374 in 2000 to $103,070 in 2005, the year he retired.

Commissioners of the North Highline and Burien/Normandy Park fire departments are negotiating for Burien Chief Mike Marrs to also serve as North Highline's chief, and it is possible the two fire districts will merge eventually. For now, Marrs said, his district can't take on the liabilities of its financially shaky neighbor.

"Each individual district makes choices, and sometimes those choices put them in financial peril, and I believe that may be what occurred here," Marrs said.

As for his $143,737 salary, Marrs said, "I'm very well compensated for what I do."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com