Cal Fire Director Ken Pimlott came to Thursday’s State Personnel Board meeting to report reforms in his department’s slipshod hiring and promotion practices.
He left with a stern challenge to transform his leadership.
“There needs to be, in my opinion, a real tone at the top change,” board Vice President Lauri Shanahan said.
Her critical comments came at the end of Pimlott’s presentation on how the department is fixing dysfunction uncovered in a probe of two academy fire captains who were demoted last year – and then regained their lost rank and new jobs within a month.
After The Sacramento Bee broke the promotion story – one of a series of reports that revealed Cal Fire Academy employees drank on duty, misused state time, stored and shared inappropriate photos on state cellphones and, in one instance, used state property to hook up with prostitutes – the Personnel Board launched an investigation.
In December it released a report that found Cal Fire gave “inconsistent and contradictory information” how the promotions occurred and couldn’t explain why the two demoted firefighters were better suited for new jobs than anyone else.
Cal Fire’s personnel records were so shoddy, investigators said, that officials couldn’t even say how many applications it received for the two posts or how many people were interviewed.