Missouri Ambulance Official Blames Union For Her Ouster

The chief financial officer of the Lincoln County Ambulance District says she is being forced out of her job because she has tried to keep the salary and benefit demands of union paramedics and EMTs from breaking the district.

In the past seven weeks, Mia Farmer's duties have been reduced and her salary slashed by $10,000 to about $60,000 a year, and she has been placed on paid administrative leave. She's been told her pay could be cut again next month.

Union officials have denied that they are behind any effort to oust Farmer, who has spent 20 years with the district, working as an EMT and later as a paramedic until she got the job three years ago as the financial officer.

"We have nothing to do with it," said Dennis Murray, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 2665, which represents paramedics in the district. "I've never heard one bad thing said about her from the shop steward in Lincoln County or any other member. It's really between the board of directors out there and her."

Several union paramedics reached by phone declined to be interviewed about Farmer's plight, saying they feared retaliation at their job if they spoke out.

Neil Bruntrager, attorney for the district, said the shift in Farmer's duties was part of a restructuring of the district, which included a decision to outsource the payroll. It came about because of nearly $15,000 in errors he said Farmer had made on payroll issues -- including $4,000 overpayments she made to both herself and to the chief of operations. He said the cut in her pay, when considering the overpayment, was really about $6,000.

Farmer, 40, admits that she made several accounting errors but says they only amounted to about $2,900. She says the timing of the disciplinary action -- well after she made the errors -- suggests a retaliation by union-backed board members for her objections to raises and benefits sought by union paramedics and EMTs.

Since 2001, the starting base pay in the district has increased 20 percent for paramedics and 25 percent for EMTs, according to copies of ambulance district memorandums. The average pay last year for paramedics was $48,011; for EMTs it was $42,615.

In addition, paramedics and EMTs now get more vacation pay, holiday pay, short-term disability benefits and coverage of 75 percent of the health-care costs for family members.

"Nobody in Lincoln County has as rich of a benefit package as we do or as good of pay as we do," Farmer said. "And it just blows me away that people keep asking for more."

Farmer says that she is not anti-union and that she was one of three medics who brought in Local 2665. But she wants to save money for district growth, not to spend it on benefits. Her opinions have put her at odds with a vocal minority of the union paramedics, she said.

"I became the enemy, and it has just escalated from there," she said.

Financial turnaround

Although both sides acknowledge that the accounting errors were unintentional mistakes, Bruntrager said board members contended that Farmer was not qualified to head finances.

Farmer counters that when she began overseeing finances, the district was $440,000 in debt and now has $2.3 million in the bank. Under Farmer's money management, the district has bought five new ambulances, a new supervisor's vehicle, hired five paramedics and one EMT, bought property in Elsberry to relocate that station and built a new station at Auburn -- a move that cut response times by 10 minutes in the northwest part of the district.

But her biggest accomplishment, she says, has been passage of a half-cent sales tax to support the district, which has allowed it to roll back the property tax rate to 15 cents from 28 cents for each $100 of assessed valuation.

Bruntrager said the financial turnaround should be credited to the board. Dorothy Balaban, a medical billing clerk with the ambulance district, said Farmer had done the outstanding work.