Spokane City Council rejects medical director plan

A scuttled deal between the region’s two largest fire departments has led Spokane Mayor David Condon to accuse the Spokane City Council of playing politics with public safety.

Condon said he was “surprised” when the council voted against an agreement on Monday that he said would have put the city and Spokane Valley at the forefront of emergency medicine by allowing the departments to share a medical director and integrated emergency medicine coordinator, moving the region toward a “collaborative medical ecosystem.”

Council members say they were not only unconvinced the contract was sound, but that one of the two people specifically mentioned in the agreement was hired inappropriately.

Condon said he heard no protest against the agreement until the council’s vote, but council members signaled they had problems with the deal at last month’s Public Safety Committee meeting. It also follows years of political gamesmanship stemming from the Condon administration’s attempt to create more nonunion positions at the city to be filled with mayoral appointees.

One such appointment went to Mike Lopez, the city’s assistant director of integrated medical services, whose position would have been split between the fire departments if the agreement had been approved.

Lopez has been at the center of political debates before, most recently when his position was defunded by the council during its budget deliberations last month. The lack of funding for Lopez’s position was cited by Councilwoman Candace Mumm as a reason for turning down the agreement.

“I don’t think we can commit to the contract when the position isn’t funded,” she said at the meeting.

Councilman Mike Allen, the sole council member to vote in favor of the agreement, took aim at Mumm’s logic, pointing out that she had been the one to recommend defunding the position during the previous week’s 2015 annual budget vote.

“I’m a bit troubled by the argument that we defund it and then say we can’t address this right because the position’s been defunded,” Allen said, calling it “a little bit … wag the dog.”

Mumm said Wednesday that her lack of support “was more about the contract itself. … Lopez was not a tipping point for me.” She said she was concerned that the contract could only end with unanimous consent from both parties and there was no provision to deal with conflicts between the fire departments.

Mumm’s underlying concern, she said, was that the contract was “rushed.”

At last month’s Public Safety meeting, Assistant Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer introduced the proposal, calling it “an incredibly powerful agreement that we’ve been working on for a long time.”

Councilman Jon Snyder, who chairs the committee, told Schaeffer the council would postpone a vote on the proposal, originally scheduled for the same day, because it was the first they had heard about it.

Schaeffer, visibly frustrated, grabbed his coat and walked out. The room emptied as a dozen men followed him. Fire Chief Bobby Williams remained at the committee table as Snyder continued discussing the proposal.

On its face, regional collaboration has the support of most elected officials at the city.

Together, Spokane and Spokane Valley account for 63 percent of the county’s population, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data. About 80 percent of the incidents the Spokane Fire Department responds to are medical emergencies.

A lack of cooperation has stymied some innovation in emergency response.

For instance, Spokane tracks “high volume users” of the emergency medical system, but the Valley doesn’t. If the agreement had been approved, the Valley would’ve taken on Spokane’s tracking system and identified what patients need alternative attention, such as preventive care for their ailments.

Some collaboration has been around for a while, and Bryan Collins, the Valley’s fire chief, said agreements between fire departments are “very common,” citing contracts dealing with mutual aid, technical rescue and water rescue, among others.

Other cooperative efforts are in the works. For instance, Spokane fire engines currently don’t cross into the Valley on an emergency call, even if they are closer to the incident than a Valley engine. Collins said that will change this spring.

“To have that seamlessness just makes sense to me,” Condon said. “The need is there. There is a validated plan to get there. Why are we not doing this?”

Collins, who was supportive of the scuttled agreement, said fire departments “are really the patients’ gateway into the medical system.” Regional collaboration, Collins said, makes sense, and for that reason he expected the agreement to be enacted soon enough.

“It’s good government. It’s what people expect us to do: share and utilize resources,” he said. “Where there’s good government at work, things work themselves out.”

Council President Ben Stuckart, who agreed with the need for fire collaboration, said it was what he considered the lack of good government during Lopez’s hire that led to the council voting the agreement down.

“That position was defunded because we never were shown a need for this position. It was hired outside of the civil service. It was hired four days before a judge called the hire ludicrous. It wasn’t done in collaboration with the firefighters. It wasn’t done in collaboration with the council,” he said. “He gets hired to run a department of one. They’re using language to subvert the rules.”

Don Waller, president of Local 29, echoed Stuckart’s concerns.

“I don’t believe the position was put in right. It didn’t go through the proper channels,” Waller said. “Now they’re trying to justify it.”

Condon said the decision to defund Lopez’s position was “unprecedented,” but said his administration was working to get the position “classified” and represented by a union, either Local 29 or M&P. Still, he said the council should have worked to resolve the issue before voting it down.

“These are votes of statement, not substance,” Condon said. “It’s an unfortunate step they’re taking but I’m working with them on how to work through this. We’ve got to get to a solution on this.”