Dennis Thayer, the former emergency management and 911 director for Catoosa County, speaks to the Catoosa County Board of Commissioners Tuesday, April 16, 2019 during a grievance hearing for Thayer at the Catoosa County administrative office in Ringgold, Georgia. County Manager Alicia Vaughn fired Thayer on March 11, citing "gross insubordination." RINGGOLD, Ga. - Only a fool would do the thing Dennis Thayer is accused of, he told the Catoosa County commissioners in his defense Tuesday night.
Thayer, the former emergency management agency and 911 director, was fired March 11 for taking a training trip to Savannah against County Manager Alicia Vaughn's direct order. Vaughn emailed Thayer after he asked to go, denying his request.
But Thayer said she changed her mind the next day. He has no proof of this conversation, which he said occurred in his work truck as the two drove to a meeting at the sheriff's office. During a grievance hearing Tuesday, Thayer asked the commissioners to trust him. Surely, he said, he wouldn't be so crazy as to directly disobey his boss.
"I have never, ever taken the stance to completely ignore what I was told by a supervisor and do the opposite," he said. "There is no win-win in that for me. Why would I do that? It defies common sense. I didn't care that much about the training to risk my job over it, to be away from my family, to be away from work."
Vaughn told the commissioners that Thayer lied.
"I did not tell him [to go]," she said. "I told him he could not attend, and he attended anyway. I was not aware that Mr. Thayer attended the training. I heard that from a third party. I believe it is a very serious issue when your EMA, 911 director is out of the office. If we had had any kind of emergency whatsoever, we were not covered, because he did not tell me in advance."
County employees normally appeal their firing to a higher level supervisor. But because Thayer reported directly to Vaughn - the county's highest administrator - his appeal goes directly to the commissioners. He could have held a hearing in an executive session but chose to make his arguments at a public hearing.
In addition to what he deemed common sense, Thayer relied on one more piece of information. In an email denying his request, Vaughn told him he could not go because she wanted to organize a budget retreat for department heads and county commissioners for the end of February, when the training in Savannah was supposed to take place. But that retreat didn't happen because some commissioners took a trip to the District of Columbia.
"The retreat didn't take place," he said. "So that supports somewhat of my statement."
In a letter to Thayer on March 11, Vaughn also wrote that he was being fired for failing to finish writing department policies for the 911 center. She met with Thayer Nov. 28 and asked him to complete this task.
Thayer conceded he had not finished the job. But he said he was making progress. When the county hired him in March 2018, the department had no formal policies. He said the office contained a book with hand-written notes on how the 911 dispatchers should do their job.
His first three months on the job, he said he put together 23 written policies. He also wrote seven "directive memos," which were similar to policies but had not been formally adopted yet. A week after the November meeting with Vaughn, he said he sent his department's four shift supervisors copies of 40 more proposed policies. He asked for their thoughts and gave them two months to respond.
Thayer said the policies were modeled after Cobb County, where he used to work. After receiving feedback from the shift supervisors, he said he told Vaughn at the beginning of March that he needed 30-60 more days to finish the task.
When he took the job, he added, there were about eight unfilled positions. He said he had hired all but two positions.
Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk, who sat on a panel that recommended hiring Thayer last year, said the director knew what the administration's policies were for his job.
"He was trying, working," Sisk said. "But we needed to get standard operating procedures in place. You can't really train someone if you can't tell them what the standard operating procedures are."
Thayer said Vaughn punished him for trying to follow other rules administrators gave him. During their meeting in November, Vaughn told him to take fewer trips out of the county. His listed job requirements include obtaining basic emergency manager certification within one year of taking the job. According to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency, this certification requires attending nine training courses that take up 14 days.
The county also required him to obtain advanced emergency manager certification within three years. This meant he needed to complete another 14 training courses that take up 25 days.
According to expense reimbursements, Thayer billed the county for 16 trips in his first year on the job. Of these, 11 were for training courses. The other trips included a GEMA meeting, conferences and a meeting with executives from Puckett EMS, the company that has since signed a contract to provide ambulance services in the county.
Thayer's most expensive trips included an April 2018 GEMA conference in Savannah, which cost the county $353, and a National Emergency Number Association conference in Nashville in June, which cost the county $554.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.