Former chief creates firestorm

The drama began to unfold Sept. 30, when a former commissioner contacted the newspaper. Bill Brown said he had learned that former chief Mitch Kitchens had applied to become a firefighter/emergency medical technician for the county, but said that Kitchens was ineligible because he had signed a document in 2007 stating he would never try to work for the county government again.

Former commission chairman Doug Garrison confirmed Brown’s information and also provided a copy of the agreement that he said he and Kitchens signed on April 19, 2007.

The document is a relatively standard “Separation Agreement and Full and Final Release of Claims.”

Section 6 with the heading “Complete Termination of Employment Relationship” states that Kitchens and the county government were terminating their relationship “for all time;” that Kitchens acknowledged that he would “not seek reinstatement, future employment, or return to active employee status with the County;” and that the county could not be compelled to consider him for “any position at any time.”

The file name for the document provided by Garrison is “BOC-2007-04-12 — Angela Davis — Mitch Kitchens Separation Agreement [1]. doc”.

However, the document was unsigned, and the Human Resources Department staff deferred to the county attorney a reporter’s Sept. 30 open-records request to look through Kitchens’ file. The department has been without a director since Norma Jean Brown was placed on administrative leave a month ago.

Davis held off the newspaper for a few days, saying the law gave the county three business days to respond.

However, on Tuesday when the three-day deadline was up, she acknowledged that the HR staff had been unable to find the signed document until Monday.

She also confirmed that the copy of the separation agreement that she received from the staff does not have the “termination of employment relationship” provision in it.

Asked for copies of every version that her office had drafted, Davis provided one document that was identical to the one Garrison provided.

She said she could not explain why the signed document in Kitchens’ file was different.

However, Kitchens told the Barrow Journal Tuesday night that Garrison and former county operations chief Keith Lee agreed to change the document themselves three years ago, after he refused to sign it with that provision in it.

Kitchens said he had agreed to resign in April, but asked to work through May 31, 2007 in order to complete his seventh full year of service in order to increase his future retirement benefit.

“They said in order for us to let you stay until May 31, and let you work out your retirement and not take your resignation today, we need you to sign this document,” he said.

“I said, ‘I need to read it.’” He said he took the document to his office at fire headquarters, then either that same day or the next, he walked the document — with section 6 circled — back up the hill to the government building, and told Lee and Garrison: “I’m not going to sign this with it saying I would never seek to be rehired… If you want me to sign this document, you need to remove that.’” He said they told him “OK,” and they would “get with the county attorney and get that pulled out and get back to you.”

Kitchens added: “They had it retyped. I think they just done it. I don’t know who done it. I left and came back and it was done that afternoon.”

He said he doesn’t know if Davis was consulted before the document was amended.

But once that provision was removed, he said, “I signed it.”

Asked late Tuesday to respond to Kitchens’ version of events, Garrison said in an e-mail: “He is not telling the truth! Period!”

For more on this story, see the October 6 edition of the Barrow Journal or click here to read the full story online when you subscribe to our new e-edition.