Five firefighters are suing the Unified Fire Authority and two of its former top administrators for allegedly hiring less-qualified family members of command staff instead of them in 2011.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, says the men were experienced firefighters seeking full-time positions with the agency that spring. They scored well on their written and oral examinations, the lawsuit states, but were passed over to fill any of the 12 open positions in favor of nine applicants who were related to former Chief Michael Jensen, ex-Deputy Chief Gaylord Scott, an assistant chief, a battalion chief or a captain in the department.
“Of particular concern was that the son and son-in-law of Defendant Jensen, who were hired in 2011, had absolutely no experience in firefighting, unlike the Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit asserts. “The son of Defendant Jensen was hired directly out of high school and the son-in-law had been working as a plumber.”
Jensen, a Salt Lake County councilman, had two sons, two brothers-in-law and a cousin under his command. Scott had three nephews in the UFA. Both men are named in the case but neither responded to requests for comment Saturday morning.
The lawsuit comes barely a month after the Utah attorney general’s office declined to prosecute Scott and Jensen for nepotism and misusing public funds because officials said they were unlikely to be convicted. Still, the office’s more than yearlong investigation found the two had a pattern of abusing their public positions for personal benefit.
The UFA — which provides fire services to more than 400,000 people in nine cities and five townships in Salt Lake and Utah counties — is still weighing whether to seek recovery in a civil suit of at least $370,000 in public funds a state audit concluded the two administrators had improperly received.
A UFA spokesman said in a statement Saturday that the agency “became aware that the lawsuit was filed yesterday” but was “unable to discuss pending litigation publicly.”
The agency ultimately hired the five firefighters named in the suit at the beginning of 2013. But a change in the retirement plan as of July 1, 2011, means they have less-favorable retirement benefits than if they had been hired sooner.
The audit, released in 2017 after Jensen and Scott had resigned from UFA, found the agency had deviated from its standard hiring practices during the time the five firefighters were first seeking full-time employment — possibly in an effort to ensure family members received the better retirement benefits.
Jensen, for example, requested a condensed emergency medical technician class so his family members could meet the UFA’s requirement that all hires be certified, and the agency hired its new employees on June 27 rather than at the beginning of a bimonthly pay period, as is normal.
The attorney general’s office report further revealed the agency ran a training course full time, instead of part time, so it could be concluded before the interviews in June, which the organization has never done since. Administrators also gave their family members discounts from normal tuition and preferential treatment during the oral exams, the report found.
The five firefighters had been “perplexed that they had not been chosen” for the open positions and had tried to figure out why — with no success. After the audit became public in 2017, the lawsuit says, they learned there were indications of preferential treatment in the hiring process and decided to pursue legal action.
The firefighters are seeking seniority rights based on a hire date of June 27, 2011, payment for lost back pay and retirement benefits and an order prohibiting UFA from treating applicants or employees more favorably than others based on familial ties.
Legal counsel for the firefighters could not be reached immediately on Saturday for comment.
Follow @tstevensmedia