Local independent reporter Mike Kirby recently published a two-part story on his blog (kirbyontheloose.blogspot.com) investigating whether Northampton’s Fire Chief Brian Duggan has been fulfilling his duties as the city’s second-highest paid official, or whether work he has been doing for a private consulting firm represents a conflict of interest.
In the first part of his story, Kirby describes his many efforts to meet with Chief Duggan at his office on a weekday morning, only to be politely and repeatedly rebuffed by his secretary. One morning, when he asked a firefighter working outside the station if he knew where his boss was, the response was, “You mean statewide?”
“The firefighter wandered away, but the phrase ‘statewide’ resonated,” Kirby wrote. “I knew Duggan’s consultancy business had been dissolved by the state, and he had one warning from the mayor about his outside activities, but maybe it hadn’t stopped him.”
Researching online, he found Duggan had another job.
“Our second-highest paid official is a double-dipper,” Kirby wrote, “drawing a fulltime salary of $139,095 while drawing a salary as a project manager and consultant for Municipal Resources Inc. of Meredith, New Hampshire.”
Over the last year, Duggan was part of a team that presented a “major 187 page study to the town” of Norwood, which is “just off 128 south of the Mass Pike. Driving time is about two hours,” Kirby reported. The study, “Fire Services Substitution Cost Analysis,” required dozens of interviews with local officials, orientation meetings, extensive data gathering and multiple drafts. It was published this spring after about a year of work.
For the Cape Cod community of Chatham, Duggan also authored “Fire Services Organizational Analysis,” which was published this last July. Kirby points out that according to Google, the drive to that town from Northampton is about 3 hours and 14 minutes.
Duggan is a full-time, 40-hour-per-week employee. According to his contract with the city, “the chief is expected to immediately respond directly to significant emergency incidents.”
“If he is getting paid twice for the same hour, he is stealing from the taxpayers of Northampton,” Kirby wrote.
The second part of the story details an interview Kirby conducted with Duggan after the first part of his story was published.
The chief, Kirby wrote, “broadly hinted that his work for MRI was over, saying, ‘This was past tense.’ He said that he did the work on his personal time, and further stated that he would not reveal his earnings from MRI for the last few years nor make public any information on his billable hours to MRI unless he was ordered to do so by the mayor.”
Chief Duggan told Kirby he had been accepted, with former Mayor Higgins’ approval, to a master’s degree program at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, and he had just returned from a two-week federal training program. The 18-month degree program will provide Duggan with “strategies, plans and programs to prevent terrorist attacks.”
Earning the graduate degree “involves a significant commitment on the part of the participants and the agencies to which they are assigned,” Kirby found on the program’s website. The program calls for 15 hours a week in web-based course work, and participants are required to spend two weeks every quarter in West Virginia and other— perhaps international—sites.
Kirby concludes, “That means the chief will be out of the area a total of 12 weeks over the next year and a half. To me, that time commitment represents a significant burden on his subordinates, as well as on the city of Northampton, which will continue to pay the second highest salary in the city to a part-time fire chief.”
Chief Duggan did not respond to an interview request by the Valley Advocate.
