County employee under investigation after press conference appearance 

ATHENS, Ohio — A county employee has been put on leave pending an investigation, following his appearance at a press conference organized by a candidate for Athens County commissioner. 

At an hour-long press conference outside the Athens County Courthouse on Oct. 24, former EMS employee Jon Rose accused Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins of mismanaging Athens County Emergency Medical Services. 

Rose, an independent, is challenging the Democratic incumbent, Adkins, in the Nov. 5 general election. 

The press conference included testimonials about working conditions that Rose said came from current or former ACEMS employees; Rose read them aloud. 

Rick Trask, a former full-time ACEMS paramedic and former president of ACEMS’s union (International Association of Fire Fighters Local #5126), spoke at the press conference about his three decades working at ACEMS.

Days after the press conference, Trask was subsequently placed on leave and is being investigated for an alleged violation of the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government employees from participating in political activity, including using “official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the results of an election or nomination.”

“I think it’s ridiculous,” Trask told the Independent. “I feel like they’re violating my right to free speech by even doing an investigation that I may have potentially violated the Hatch Act.”

In an interview Wednesday, ACEMS Chief Amber Pyle would not confirm an investigation into Trask’s appearance at the press conference, or otherwise comment on the situation.

IAFF Local #5126 President Charles Dunlevy confirmed in an interview that pending investigation into violations of the Hatch Act, Trask is ineligible to pick up or volunteer for ACEMS shifts.

Adkins told the Independent, “I don’t know of any discipline on Rick Trask.”. 

Trask said the suspension and investigation “feels like it’s a political move due to the fact that Jon’s running in contention against the current commissioners.”

“I wasn’t there endorsing Jon, I wasn’t endorsing Charlie, or not endorsing either one of them,” Trask said in an interview. “Jon asked me to be there and speak on what I knew of from being the former president, and that’s why I chose to go, because I feel it’s important that people voting for tax levies and political positions … know some of the stuff that’s going on within their county that their tax money is going to pay for.”

In an interview, Trask told the Independent that he’s worried that his suspension and investigation will silence other ACEMS employees.

“I guarantee you there isn’t anybody going to say a thing now that I’m under investigation, because they’ll be in fear of losing their jobs, and their families’ well-beings depends on those jobs, right?” he said. “Yeah, so they’re not gonna say a thing. They’ll be in fear of retaliation, which basically feels like that’s what this is.”

Trask said at the press conference that he chose to “move on” from ACEMS; he now works part time for ACEMS (though he is on leave) and a private company in Columbus, where he “didn’t just get a little bit of a raise, I doubled my salary.”

He left as president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local #5126 union in July, he said in an interview. He added that he retained his union membership, despite dropping to part time.

Allegations of underpayment

About 25 to 30 people — mostly members of the news media — attended Rose’s press conference, which was also livestreamed on Facebook. In an email to multiple media publications announcing the press conference, Rose said he would be “joined by several whistleblowers who have personal experience with how this corruption endangers the Athens County community as a whole.”

However, Trask was the only individual who spoke in person. 

“We were supposed to be joined by a whole bunch of current EMS employees. However, we sent out a confidential media release and it was erroneously published in one of the local papers,” Rose said.

Rose said he asked the whistleblowers to not come due to concerns of jeopardizing their jobs and safety. 

At the conference, Rose shared seven letters from current or former ACEMS employees; only one, from a former employee, included a name. 

Rose alleges that ACEMS is mismanaged “by the hands of the current commissioners to the point of endangering the community,” he said. 

Examples of the commissioners’ alleged mismanagement, Rose said, included:

Requiring ACEMS to pay for 911 dispatching services, when neither the Athens County Sheriff’s Office nor the Athens City Fire Department do. 

Pyle told the Independent ACEMS pays $185,000 annually for 911 dispatching. 

Adkins told the Independent that ACEMS was not included in the initial dispatching plan when it developed in the 1990s. When that plan was created, ACEMS did not exist; its predecessor, Southeast Ohio Emergency Medical Services, opted out of joining the plan, Athens County 911/EMA Director Teresa Fouts-Imler told the Independent in an email. 

“After SEOMS disbanded, Athens County EMS was formed, which required three additional staff members to handle the EMS workload and call volume at the Athens County 9-1-1 center,” Fouts-Imler wrote. She said that future contracts for 911 services will include a joining fee to cover increased costs because “the initial 9-1-1 plan implemented in the mid-1990s no longer adequately supports the costs of operating the 9-1-1 system today.”

Making ACEMS obtain a bank loan, with interest, to purchase ambulances and pay staff. 

The “commissioners could have paid for these ambulances out of the general fund or at the very least given ACEMS a loan out of the general fund so that Athens County Citizens didn’t have to ultimately foot the interest on the loan,” Rose said.

Adkins confirmed that the ACEMS took out a loan to purchase ambulances, but declined to comment further. 

In an email, Pyle said ACEMS took out the loan in February. “We used it to pay for 2 new ambulances that were ordered in 2021 by the previous Chief,” she said. “At the time there was a 3-year lead time due to Covid and problems with getting parts to build them. That loan was paid off this month (early I might add).”

Billing ACEMS for maintenance at EMS stations, “which are county buildings,” Rose said.

“This person is a county employee, paid by the county, and the county sends ACEMS a bill for the county maintenance worker’s time and materials,” Rose said.

Adkins said the county bills all county agencies for maintenance work because each has its own budget for maintenance, either by county employees or contractors. 

“It’s levy money … if it wasn’t standalone, and we was putting general fund money into that, then that’s less services we can do for the general fund,” Adkins said. 

High turnover due to “low wages and forced mandatory overtime,” which Rose said “puts the health, wellbeing, and safety of EMS employees and the community as a whole at risk.”

The Independent is investigating these claims. 

At the press conference, Trask said his wage was capped at $19.91 an hour after 33 years of experience at ACEMS. 

“I’ve taken care of patients in this county for 33 years now,” Trask said at the press conference. “And during that time — I’ve had my electric shut off, I’ve had hardly any groceries in my house, but yet I got up and went to work everyday. I’ve worked three and four jobs at a time to make ends meet.”

Records obtained by the Independent show that the lowest paid employee at ACEMS is an emergency medical technician, who makes $14.55/hour. ACEMS Assistant Chief Randy Crossen Jr. said that pay starts at $15.55/hour for an EMT, $16.32 for an advanced EMT, and $17.62 for a paramedic.

Jeff Woodrum, interim director of Vinton County Emergency Medical Services, told the Independent that starting pay for an EMT there is $15/hour, slightly lower than in Athens. However, starting pay for advanced EMTs ($17.50/hour) and paramedics ($20/hour) is higher.

The living wage for a single adult with no children living in Athens County is $19.39, according to the MIT Living Wage calculator. Mean 2023 pay for a paramedic in Ohio was $22.81/hour and $18.75/hour for EMTs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trask told the Independent that he is vocal about ACEMS pay, in part, because of its aging workforce. 

“If we don’t do something to make the wages and everything more competitive with surrounding areas, there’s going to be nobody applying to fill those jobs when those people are able to go into retirement,” he said.

Union president Charles Dunlevy agreed. 

“Within the next seven years … we are going to be losing a lot [of ACEMS employees] to retirement,” he said. “We don’t have the personnel right now to even think of filling those spots.”

Pyle said ACEMS currently has 67 employees and has four full-time positions open. The agency performs around 900 runs per month, she said.

Recruiting and keeping employees requires better pay and benefits, Dunlevy said. 

“I think the biggest thing is, we need to attract more people to work here at Athens County EMS, and by doing so, it’s going to take either bring enough to pay or some better benefits or something,” Dunlevy said. “I don’t know the overall answer to it, but we need to find something unique for our county to bring people in instead of everybody going out and away from here.”

Years of concerns

Rose’s press conference is not the first time that ACEMS employees have complained about work conditions.

In April 2012 — about a month after Adkins won the Democratic primary in his first, successful run for commissioner — the Athens News published a letter to the editor from an ACEMS paramedic about the “massacre of our county EMS service” that dated to the agency’s founding the year before. The letter writer complained of poorly maintained equipment and lack of support for required continuing education.

Two years later, WOUB reported (via The Athens Messenger) that ACEMS relied heavily on part-time workers and had lost 24 employees since the agency was started in 2011. According to the article, then-Chief Rick Callebs planned to ask the commissioners to allow ACEMS to convert some of the part-time jobs to full time. 

Staffing was still an issue in May 2022, when Callebs told the commissioners that ACEMS was “scrambling” to fill positions, in part because potential hires had better offers elsewhere in southeast Ohio. 

“I don’t know where they’re getting their money. They have the same [tax] rates as we do,” the Athens Messenger reported Callebs saying.

In a subsequent letter to the editor, Rose said he was one of several ACEMS employees who had quit because of low pay. 

“Some people will say it’s not about the money, it’s about the pride of doing the job, and I would agree to a certain degree,” Rose wrote. “But the reality is, while working full time at ACEMS, my kids still qualified for Medicaid. Many employees received other types of public assistance as well. This is shameful.”

“Don’t buy their excuses that they can’t afford to raise wages,” he wrote. “The runs we go on bring in a boatload of money and at any given time, there are millions of dollars in the EMS fund which legally have to be rolled back into the company, so why not give it to the deserving employees?”

At the Oct. 24 press conference, Rose said that his letter resulted in some changes at ACMES, such as bonuses — but only after he had quit. 

Pyle confirmed ACEMS employees received $4,000 retention bonuses in December 2023, funded by the American Rescue Plan Act.

At his press conference, Rose even went as far as saying he would drop out of the race if Adkins could “make sense” of his allegations.

“But he can’t. He hasn’t been able to for the last 12 years,” Rose said at the conference. “Sorry Charlie. Step aside and let someone who actually cares about the county give it a try.”

Adkins’ reaction

In an Oct. 28 press release responding to Rose’s allegations, Adkins said, “I highly value our employees. I have worked closely with our EMS local 5126 Union and will continue to work to improve the life of our EMT, Paramedics and staff. I will continue work to ensure we’re offering competitive pay within the limits of our levy funding.”

EMS is funded in part by three property tax levies passed in 2018, 2019 and 2021, totaling 2.5 mills. Those levies are prorated by state law to keep taxes from increasing with inflation, so the effective tax rate of the combined levies is 2.19 mills for residential and agricultural property.

The county seeks to renew one of those levies — a 5-year, 0.5 mill tax — in this year’s general election. The Athens County Auditor’s office estimates that the tax would generate about $557,000 per year at a cost to property owners of $11 per $100,000 of valuation.

Adkins criticized Rose for not offering solutions, “scandal” or vocal support for the levy renewal.

“Before I’d be complaining a lot [about wages], I would be trying to get this levy passed,” Adkins said.

Adkins disagreed with Rose’s characterization of him as a “bully.” 

“My granddaughter is a paramedic for Athens County,” Adkins said. “If anybody was any smarts whatsoever, would think about it, do they really think that I would hurt my granddaughter from getting a decent wage from Athens County?”

Election Day is Nov. 5. Early voting is currently underway. Find more information from the Athens County Board of Elections.