LBFD Lieutenant Calls for City Manager's Removal

Jay Gusler, a lieutenant with Long Beach Fire Department, will call to remove Charles Theofan from his position as city manager at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

In a letter dated Oct. 25 and addressed to the council, Gusler wrote that Theofan violated his oath of office, specifically provisions of the Taylor Law in state civil service law.  

The letter asked the council to place on the agenda for its Nov. 1 meeting “a resolution immediately suspending Mr. Theofan from the performance of the duties of the position of city manager pending the required steps to effectuate his permanent removal from office.”

As of Tuesday morning, the council agenda posted on the City of Long Beach’s website only lists a single item: a resolution authorizing the city manager to purchase the 2012 City of Long Beach Calendar.

Gusler wrote that Theofan was recently found guilty of violating state civil service law that pertains to assigning employees to work out-of-title and interfering with or disrupting the internal workings of an employee organization that involved Long Beach firefighters.

“Both violations relate directly to the discharge of Mr. Theofan’s duties as City Manager,” Gusler wrote, citing the Employees’ Oath of Office provision in the city’s charter.

Gusler’s letter compared Theofan’s case to that of former Civil Service Commissioner Leary Wade, who Theofan had asked to resign in August 2010. Theofan held that Wade pled guilty in City Court to violating building codes pertaining to an illegal occupancy in his home at East Market Street and an illegal kitchen at a property he owns at East Hudson Street. By doing so, Theofan contended, Wade violated his oath to support the city charter and code of ordinances.

After hearing testimony from both sides earlier this year, a Nassau County hearing officer sided with the city and stripped Wade of his post.

About this case, Gusler wrote that Wade’s removal bore no relation to his duties as a commissioner and only violated local zoning ordinances, but that “the violations that Mr. Theofan has been found guilty of are of a far more substantial character.”

Gusler holds that because Theofan was found guilty of the charges against him, the council is “compelled to agree that these violations of the law require Mr. Theofan’s removal from office.”

Like Gusler who handed his letter to various media outlets last week, Theofan responded to his charges in an open e-mail on Oct. 26, contending that Gusler is motivated to retaliate against the city for bringing forward and prosecuting “six pending disciplinary proceedings” against him, and is “positioning himself to claim that he is being retaliated against in the event that he is fined, demoted or terminated.”

Theofan noted that Gusler filed a federal Civil Rights law suit to sue the city and its volunteer fire department and police department, and certain city officials and employees, including Theofan, Councilman John McLaughlin, attorney Corey Klein and members of his staff.

“I am absolutely confident that the complaint will eventually be dismissed,” Theofan said of Gusler’s suit.

Theofan, in addressing the violations on which he was found guilty, wrote that in July 2007 two paid LBFD firefighters “while on duty, anonymously perpetrated an unspeakable act of cruelty and harassment against a fellow firefighter and his fiancé.”

While Theofan declined to reveal details to protect the firefighters’ privacy, he wrote, they refused to come forward or apologize, and the victims hired an attorney that named the city and the firefighters union as defendants.

“At my urging, the attorney held off commencing litigation in the hope of reaching a settlement,” Theofan explained. “I then wrote to all the firefighters expressing my disappointment with their union for not assisting in resolving the matter and I urged the membership to accept a monetary settlement to be paid by the perpetrators in lieu of any other disciplinary action.”

Theofan wrote that if there were any indiscretion on his part, it was his attempt to save the paid firefighters from themselves by writing to them.

“Mr. Gusler’s suggestion is mean spirited, misguided and downright ridiculous,” he concluded.