FLAGLER

'Board of Inquiry' to settle 'blowup' between fire, IT chiefs

Matt Bruce

matt.bruce@news-jrnl.com

PALM COAST — An ongoing feud between two top-ranking Flagler County officials that escalated during the county’s Hurricane Dorian response last month has sparked an internal inquiry.

Fire Rescue Chief Don Petito and Chief Information Officer Jarrod Shupe had what one county official described as a “blowup” during the declared emergency. Petito accused Shupe of trying to undermine his authority as one of the county’s incident commanders during the storm watch.

But records show that Shupe believes it's Petito who has been trying to discredit him, indicating the long-tme fire chief has harassed him and his employees for the past year. He claims he's become the subject of Petito's "unprofessional personal attacks."

It's the latest in a series of clashes between the two department heads that dates back at least a year, according to copies of county documents and personal emails obtained by The News-Journal.

Flagler County Administrator Jerry Cameron has convened what he called a “board of inquiry” — essentially a fact-finding panel — to get to the root of the problem. Cameron characterized the most recent flare up, which ignited as the threat of a tropical storm loomed, as an “unacceptable situation.” In a Sept. 9 memo sent to both Petito and Shupe, Cameron indicated the inquiry board would be tasked with coming up with a resolution to diffuse the tensions. That could entail a reorganization plan or possibly recommendations for a “formal disciplinary investigation.”

"I’m very disappointed when I have two people who have risen to the level of director that cannot reconcile their personal differences and are consequently hurting the operation of the county," Cameron said Friday.

The 'blowup' Flagler County officials declared a local state of emergency on Aug. 29 as Dorian slowly wobbled toward the state. That declaration, which wasn’t lifted until Sept.5, gave county officials license to reshuffle personnel to prepare for and respond to the storm. It was during that seven-day span, with the county in crisis-aversion mode, that Petito and Shupe took aim at each other.

The tensions between them reached a tipping point during a Sept. 3 encounter that spilled into the Emergency Operations Center, one which Cameron described to County Commission chair Donald O'Brien as a "blowup."

Joe King, Flagler’s deputy fire chief, had discussed a communications plan with Palm Coast and Flagler Beach fire crews, agreeing upon which radio frequencies they’d use during Dorian. Petito, who was the incident commander on duty at the time, signed off on that plan and set it in motion.

Several hours later, he contends, Shupe swooped in with an entirely new communications plan in an email to all key emergency response officials throughout the county.

Petito felt Shupe should have clued him and several others in on the new plan before scrapping the one King and company devised. He responded with an email telling Shupe he needed to notify officials in the "emergency service branch" before making such drastic changes.

"Be sure to get that plan viewed and approved by the appropriate sections before dissemination," the fire chief stated in his email.

Shupe replied that he was working on the official communications plan the county had to submit to state officials and utilize during the storm, reminding team members the "communications unit" falls under the umbrella of IT and was "responsible for the issuance of any (radio) channels.

"It appears a number of decisions and plans have been developed without coordination of the appropriate entity," he wrote in his response.

Petito claims that Shupe also mentioned, in an email, that Cameron and Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord had authorized him to "do what he wants."

But Shupe said Petito showed up to the EOC that evening and launched into a profanity-laced tirade, calling Shupe an "[expletive] liar."

It's an allegation Petito denies. Three days later, he aired out all of his frustrations with Shupe in a four-page memo submitted to Cameron.

History of friction

The internal conflict between the two high-ranking officials does not seem to be an isolated incident. It was instead a product of a fractured relationship that began festering as far back as mid-2018 under former county administrator Craig Coffey, documents and emails show.

Petito, in his Sept. 6 memo, describes their head-butting during Dorian as part of a pattern of Shupe continually making key changes to county firefighting operations without notifying top department officials. He blasted Shupe as a “control freak” with a “complete inability to be a team player” whose “Machiavellian leadership style” he feared would hamstring the fire department’s operations and jeopardize someone’s life during an emergency.

“It is my opinion that the reckless chest pounding, ‘I am in charge’ attitude displayed by this individual, on many different fronts , can no longer be tolerated as I believe that he is placing my employees in danger with his uninformed and uneducated decisions,” Petito wrote.

He detailed three run-ins his department had with Shupe dating back to August 2018, when he said battalion chief Jamey Burnsed’s access to the county’s computer-aided dispatch, or CAD, system was abruptly stripped. Fire officials were unable to dispatch units for fire and emergency medical calls during a weekend and Petito said an IT department supervisor refused to allow a specialist to fix the problem until Monday.

"The long and short of it is, without knowing the extent or nature of our problem, someone in IT decided that this problem wasn’t worth working on over the weekend," Burnsed explained in an Aug. 18, 2018 email to Petito.

Petito went on to accuse Shupe of intervening in fire department bids, disconnecting radio systems the department relied on for communication during wildfire season without notice and going behind fire officials’ backs to remove their admin privileges to vital software systems. Petito claimed it was all part of a power grab to seize more control and ensure fire officials had to get Shupe's authorization to carry out their emergency operations.

Petito stood by the accusations when contacted by The News-Journal and he provided more documentation to support his claims.

"When you have an agency from outside Fire Rescue trying to create a dangerous situation from an already inherently dangerous profession, I have to act pretty quickly to counteract that," the fire chief said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon.

Shupe fires back

Shupe has been the architect behind a number of changes to Flagler’s digital infrastructure since taking over as head of the Innovative Technology department midway through 2015. He noted in his memo that the county had burned through three IT directors within the year before he arrived.

He engineered an overhaul to the public safety emergency communications system that law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS employees and dispatchers use to communicate through two-way radios. Shupe acknowledged Petito has been an integral part of the plans for a new radio system from the get go.

The IT department is a centralized hub that provides technical support for all departments in the county government.

But in his Sept. 6 letter, Petito asked Cameron to remove the county IT team from all fire operations by hiring a third-party communications officer to oversee the radio systems that Fire Rescue uses to communicate. That’s a notion Shupe characterized as divisive in a Sept. 30 memo he gave to Cameron rebutting many of Petito’s claims.

“This complaint appears to be an attempt to break apart the centralization of IT that has been built and create a silo,” Shupe said.

That will be one of the things the board of inquiry will consider. Cameron said he’s seen other counties use different models, using communications units that aren't tied to their IT departments. Some operate independently while others fall under the umbrella of the sheriff’s office or fire department.

Shupe's memo was part of a 253-page binder of information he submitted to the county administrator to prove his side of the story.

Shupe blamed the rift with Petito on a lack of communication and claimed the longtime fire chief was “regularly working to discredit him.” He also accused Petito of harassing him and his team for the past year, noting they “regularly witness vulgarity-ridden outbursts” from Petito.

He cited the Sept. 3 dust-up as an example of the communication breakdown, claiming King and Petito failed to formally document or submit their communications plan, which they did not share with anyone "outside of their areas of responsibility," he argued.

"They were only concerned with making uninformed plans and decisions for fire services, not that of law enforcement," Shupe wrote in his memo. "(They) did not have a thorough understanding of the capabilities of the system to properly make the decision that was being provided to them. That is why these decisions are managed by the communications unit within IT."

Shupe declined to comment about the inquiry board when contacted Thursday, but he did provide a prepared written statement.

"I have worked hard over the last four-plus years of my employment at Flagler County to build not only the best networks and systems we can, but to foster relationships that are necessary for cooperation, coordination, and interoperability," he said. "We need to allow the board of inquiry to run its course for the sanctity of the process."

Putting out the fire

The "board of inquiry" is three-person panel composed of Cameron, County Attorney Al Hadeed and Finance Director John Bower. Cameron said it is an informal administrative review aimed at determining the validity of Shupe and Petito’s claims.

Cameron said he inherited their troubled relationship, which was one of the first issues he had to confront when he took over as county administrator last year.

Their dispute is the second high-profile power struggle this year involving two key county officials. The other centered on space allocations at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center and indirectly pitted Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly against Clerk of Court and Comptroller Tom Bexley.

Their battle was nowhere nearly as personal as the one between Shupe and Petito, but the two elected officials grappled for their respective agency’s footprint inside the Bunnell courthouse. The clash seemed headed toward a lawsuit as the sheriff and clerk of court dug in, but they eventually met and hashed out an agreement on the distribution of office space themselves.

Cameron, Flagler’s chief of staff, was caught in the middle of that turmoil for months as Staly and Bexley both demanded he work out a resolution.

Now he is once again forced to negotiate a resolution. Cameron, in his Sept. 9 memo to Shupe and Petito, struck an exasperated tone, saying he’d mediated some of the pair's prior conflicts and counseled them on the “necessity of team work and mutual cooperation.” He acknowledged that those attempts to get them on same page had not been fruitful. Near the end of his one-page letter, Cameron sharpened his tenor from disappointment to frustration.

“The fact that these difficulties created yet another instance of lack of cooperation in the middle of a declared emergency is unacceptable for anyone holding the position of director," he wrote.

On Friday, Cameron was even more candid in expressing his aggravation with the dispute.

"It is a shame that one or more of these individuals has felt it beneficial to prosecute their position in the media," he said. "It’s not good for the county, it’s not good for the workforce and it creates a lot of undesirable results in reaching a conclusion that works best for our organization."