Fire Union Seeks Investigation Of Kottage

The executive board of Firefighters Union Local 825 has voted to purse an ​“independent investigation” to determine whether its president illegally sought a six-figure personal payday while negotiating an extension of its contract.

The vote took place Wednesday night at a meeting at the fire training academy on Ella Grasso Boulevard.

Union President Jimmy Kottage came to the meeting to outline a deal he had just struck with the Harp administration to extend the firefighters’ contract for two years in return for changes in scoring promotional tests and dropping a challenge to the hiring of a new 911 call center chief. (Scroll down for details of the contract, in an earlier version of this story.)

The executive board took no action on the contract Wednesday night. (The full membership will vote on it next week.)

Instead the executive board confronted Kottage with an allegation that has swept like a third-alarm blaze through firehouses earlier that day: That he had used the contract negotiations to try to get the Harp administration to extend his personal pension by three years, which would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The board — including Kottage — then voted unanimously to ask an outside agency to determine ​“if President Kottage attempted to negotiate three years of pension time for himself during contract extension talks or during private meetings about the extension,” union Secretary-Treasurer Frank Ricci reported afterwards.

Ricci said the board will contact the FBI, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the local police and the state’s attorney to see which agency is the appropriate one to determine if a crime occurred.

Marcus Paca, the city’s labor relations chief, told the Independent earlier in the day that he had convinced Kottage to drop the effort to extend his pension.

“Jimmy did bring that up. I was able to convince him … we had bigger fish to fry,” Paca said. ​“The needs of the firefighters outweighed personal needs.”

“To his credit, he went along with it,” Paca said of Kottage.

Kottage told the Indpedendent and the executive board that he did nothing wrong. He said he did discuss the pension with Paca, with whom he was negotiating the contract extension. But he claimed he never brought the matter up as being part of the contract negotiations.

It had ​“nothing to do with negotiations” over the contract, Kottage insisted. Kottage had been a member of the ​“New Haven 20” firefighters who successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of a promotional exam. Nineteen of those 20 plaintiffs, who had passed a captain’s exam, had three years added to their pensions as part of a subsequent settlement with the city. Kottage, who did not pass the exam, was the 20th and did not receive the extra three years; he signed on to the settlement. He has since sought to get his extra three years too, he said.

Wednesday’s controversy was just the latest in a stream of disputes that have wracked the department. Click here and here and click on the video for information on the most recent ones.

An earlier version of this story follows:

City, Fire Union Strike Contract Deal

Tackling two outstanding disputes at the daily soap opera known as the New Haven Fire Department, the Harp administration has agreed to extend the fire union’s contract two years in return for a change in the scoring of promotional exams and a truce over the hiring of the 911 call center’s chief.

The administration negotiated the contract extension with Jimmy Kottage, president of firefighters union local 825. The pact needs approval first from the union, then the Board of Alders.

Kottage is scheduled to present the proposed deal to his executive board at a meeting Wednesday evening, then to the general membership next Monday and Wednesday. A vote is scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

Kottage and city labor relations chief Marcus Paca outlined the terms of the deal in interviews with the Independent. They include:

• Increasing the weight given to the oral portion of promotional tests for lieutenant and captain, from 40 to 65 percent, based on the recommendations of an outside consultant. The Harp administration sought the change as a way to help promote more firefighters and address a broader shortage of firefighters and supervisors, Paca said. (The department is nearly 100 firefighters short, greatly increasing overtime costs.) How to weight tests has been a long-running controversy in the department, the subjects of numerous lawsuits. African-American applicants have generally performed better on oral portions than on written portions of promotional tests.

• Extending the contract, currently set to expire on June 30, 2016, to June 30, 2018. (Click here to read about the current contract.)

• Increasing pay 2.5 percent each of the new two years.

• Extending by a year the current amount (65 percent) that the city contributes to firefighters’ health savings accounts. That percentage had been set to drop to 50 percent next year.

• Ending a dispute over the administration’s hiring of firefighter Michael Briscoe to head the joint police-fire emergency call center. Kottage said he agreed to withdraw grievances related to the Briscoe case ​“so we can move forward. The fire department is an absolute mess at the moment. Unless we move forward, we’re going to stay in this horrible condition.”

Paca said the city reserves the ability to seek general health insurance savings by negotiating better deals with insurers.

Asked Wednesday about the proposed deal, Board of Alders President Jorge Perez said: ​“I have not seen the details. It would be hard for me to make a comment. It has not been communicated with us yet.”

Today’s Drama

This being the fire department, news of the pending deal leaked out fast and prompted rumors and accusations before it was officially and publicly released. Some firefighters said they planned to quiz Kottage (pictured) at Wednesday night’s meeting over allegations that he had struck the deal in return for a lucrative personal benefit — an agreement from the city to let him add three years to his pension.

Paca and Kottage said they did discuss the matter, but ​“absolutely” did not strike any deal. They said it does not appear anywhere in the memorandum of understanding the two sides signed detailing the proposed contract extension.

The pension matter dates back the ​“New Haven 20” lawsuit firefighters filed — and ultimately won at the U.S. Supreme Court—over the city’s handling of promotional exams. Kottage was one of the plaintiffs. Nineteen of the plaintiffs, who had passed a captain’s exam, had three years added to their pensions as part of a settlement growing out of that decision. Kottage, who had not passed the exam, agreed as part of the settlement not to get the three-year addition to his own pension. But the matter remains the subject of continuing litigation.

“Jimmy did bring that up. I was able to convince him … we had bigger fish to fry. The needs of the firefighters outweighed personal needs.”

“To his credit, he went along with it,” Paca said of Kottage.

Kottage insisted that, while he and Paca discussed his pension, it had ​“nothing to do with negotiations” over the contract.