Fire official at center of scandal quits; mayor rebukes chief

Seattle Fire Chief Gregory Dean was formally rebuked Wednesday by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels for failing to adequately punish a fire lieutenant at the center of a recent ethics scandal.

The resignation of the lieutenant, Milt Footer, a 29-year veteran, also was announced Wednesday.

An earlier ethics investigation found Footer had abused his position by demanding backstage passes to a Hannah Montana concert and failing to bill Qwest Field for $196,000 in fire services.

Dean resisted calls to transfer or discipline Footer after his misdeeds came to light last year, instead giving him only "formal counseling." At one point, Dean tried to head off a city ethics investigation of Footer, saying the department would handle it internally.

Nickels on Wednesday released a letter of formal reprimand, admonishing Dean for mishandling the matter.

"Lieutenant Footer's actions have left a stain on the department and this matter should have been dealt with in swifter and more serious manner ... " Nickels wrote. "In the future, I expect consistent and aggressive enforcement of city and departmental policies."

In an interview, Dean said he respected the mayor's decision.

"I accept his reprimand. I should've recognized the full scope of issues and taken immediate steps to resolve them," he said.

Dean added that scrutiny of the Footer case has "improved our business practices."

Footer's resignation, effective Tuesday, came as he was facing "serious discipline," Nickels' office said. Dean refused to say whether that meant Footer was about to be fired. Footer had been on administrative leave since March.

The mayor's office on Wednesday also released the results of an investigation by an outside attorney, which revealed an additional possible ethics violation by Footer, who worked as a fire inspector at Qwest Field.

Footer had "for an extended period" accepted three free parking passes worth $30 a day from First & Goal, the Paul Allen-owned company that runs Qwest Field, according to a report by Richard Omata, an attorney with Karr Tuttle Campbell.

Footer could not be reached. He also declined to be interviewed by Omata as part of the mayor's office investigation.

Footer worked at Qwest Field for seven years in an unusual arrangement in which First & Goal paid his Fire Department salary. His job was to inspect for safety events at the stadium and attached exhibition center.

Ethics investigators said such a deal, in which Footer, with minimal supervision, regulated the company that paid his salary was a "recipe for serious problems" and conflicts of interest.

Footer's failure to bill First & Goal for the $196,000 in services wound up costing taxpayers. He failed to submit invoices for those services between 2002 and 2007.

First & Goal reached a settlement with the city last month, agreeing to pay $122,000. But the company won't have to pay the remaining $74,000. The city and the company agreed that $16,000 of that amount already had been paid. They also agreed that other bills were too old, so the company was no longer required to pay them. "We've paid everything we owe," said First & Goal spokesman David Postman. "Some of them [the bills] were not in compliance with the contract."

The Omata investigation also said Dean, as well as former Fire Marshals John Nelsen and Ken Tipler, were culpable in Footer's failure to bill First & Goal because they supervised him at the time.

Omata further criticized Dean, who has been chief since 2004, for not investigating Footer's role in the failure to bill and his demand for backstage passes.

Dean admits he should have looked more critically at Footer's demand for Hannah Montana passes. Dean told city ethics watchdogs last year that he didn't discipline Footer because he believed it was a department practice for employees sometimes to receive free passes to events.

Several subsequent city reviews have not uncovered other incidents of firefighters getting free tickets.

Dean said he initially thought Footer's failure to bill Qwest Field was "an honest mistake." Dean also believed Footer's critics were driven more by personality conflicts than facts, according to Omata's report.

The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission investigation was prompted by a whistle-blower complaint in October from Jim Woodbury, then a deputy chief in the Fire Department.

Dean demoted Woodbury to battalion chief in January, cutting his hourly pay by 22 percent. Dean attributed the demotion to budget cuts.

Woodbury, a 22-year department veteran with a spotless record, then filed a whistle-blower retaliation complaint with the mayor's office. The mayor rejected Woodbury's retaliation complaint last month.

Just before Woodbury filed his ethics complaint, Dean called Wayne Barnett, the city's top ethics watchdog, and told Barnett he'd probably get a whistle-blower complaint about the concert tickets.

Dean told Barnett not to worry about it because it had been handled, according to Woodbury. Barnett confirmed his account. Barnett then received Woodbury's complaint and began a five-month investigation.

The scandal already has led to changes in the Fire Department. Nickels' office eliminated the Qwest Field position last month and called for employees in the city's Fire Marshal's Office to be rotated in and out of assignments more frequently to reduce potential ethical problems.

The mayor also ordered more careful tracking of event passes for fire marshals, more frequent ethics training in the marshal's office and better financial accounting by the Fire Department.

Dean said the changes would be in place by June.

Kenny Stuart, president of Seattle Firefighters Union, Local 27, said the union "supports maintaining the highest ethical standards" for the department.

Footer had "a 29-year career of service to the citizens of Seattle. Unfortunately that will be tarnished by his resignation under these circumstances," Stuart said.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com