BATON ROUGE — After months of back and forth, today Mayor-President Sid Edwards announced the city will not be moving forward with its plans to merge Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Services and the Baton Rouge Fire Department.
“We’ve decided that we’re not going to go forward with the merger. At the end of the day, for me, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,” Edwards said.
LISTEN: One-on-one with Mayor Sid Edwards
Under the proposed merger, Fire Chief Mike Kimble would have had authority over EMS. In August, Judge Ron Johnson issued a court order blocking any effort to reclassify Kimble’s position at the Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board.
Since Edwards floated the merger idea, many EMS employees voiced strong opposition, citing numerous concerns.
“I listen to everyone. I was trying to do this, in my opinion, for you. Not to you,” Edwards said.
Earlier this year, East Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Service Paramedic Association and The Coalition for EBR-EMS filed a lawsuit, naming the Baton Rouge Fire and Police Municipal Civil Service Board and the City of Baton Rouge as defendants.
“The lawsuit didn’t bother me one lick. I don’t make decisions based on that,” Edwards said. “The lawsuit had nothing to do with it. I just felt where we’re at right now in the parish, the initiative we put out there not passing all the things we have to deal with, with public safety being number one, the homeless initiative, and all those things that I just really want to put my focus on that.”
Interim EMS Director Chris Landry said this decision doesn’t impact his team. “Nothing changes for us. One of the things that has been said from the get go, despite what everybody was thinking, is nothing was going to change for us as far as EMS, with the preparation and the things that we were going to do to prepare to continue putting this department forward and providing the best service for the citizens of this parish,” Landry said.
“I’m going to continue to look for efficiencies throughout the city parish. I’m continue look to look into how we can improve every aspect of what we’re doing, and keep digging, and it’s what I promise to people, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do,” Landry said.
Robert Aguiluz, attorney for the EMS Coalition called the mayor’s timing of the announcement “interesting,” adding “The City’s deadline to produce documents requested in discovery is midnight tonight, but the City of Baton Rouge has yet to respond.”
This is particularly troubling given that Edwards and his administration has repeatedly stated that the Parish Attorney’s office advised that legally the Parish Department of EMS could be eliminated, and City Fire Department could establish a division to provide emergency medical service in its place without changing the plan of government through a vote of the public…. yet the Parish Attorney’s office has denied in response to two separate public records requests that it issued any such advisory opinions. The same is true regarding the administration’s representations that it had been advised that the City Fire Department could take the millage dedicated to the Parish Department of Emergency Medical Services without a vote of the public.
Edwards’s statements at the press conference does not end the lawsuit, as it does not legally bind the City and Edwards has repeatedly demonstrated that he changes his mind more frequently as Mayor-President than he changed coaching shorts as a high school football coach. The only option the City has to possibly put a stop to the lawsuit and to avoid producing the documents is to specifically plead to the Court that the issue of the so-called merger is completely dead, and that the issue of whether it needs to go before a vote of the public is moot.
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