The Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority board of trustees unanimously voted Thursday to terminate its general manager roughly two weeks after he was charged with driving under the influence.
However, TARTA acting board President Francis Frey said James Gee’s immediate firing was related to his job performance and would not say whether his OVI charge played a role in the decision.
The 12-0 vote to terminate him was followed by a 10-2 vote not to negotiate or offer severance and other separation benefits. Mr. Frey and trustee Harvey Savage cast the lone votes in favor of negotiating severance terms with Mr. Gee, who was not present at the meeting. Board member Bill Pitzen was absent.
“This was performance-related, and based on the board’s belief that we need new leadership to take TARTA into the future,” Mr. Frey said during a news conference following the vote.
Mr. Gee did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment Thursday.
Mr. Frey said Stacey Clink, the transit authority’s finance director, had been appointed acting general manager while a search is organized and conducted for a permanent successor.
Police found Mr. Gee, 49, sitting in his Ford Escape outside his Farmview Drive home July 19 after a 911 caller reported a vehicle of the same description driving erratically and “hitting things” while headed toward Waterville from downtown Toledo at about 10:30 p.m., a police report showed.
Body-camera footage later released by the Waterville Police Department showed Mr. Gee struggling to complete sobriety tests, often stumbling and slurring answers to officers.
Officers drove him to an Ohio State Highway Patrol post for further testing. Once at the post, Mr. Gee refused to take a breath test. He was issued a citation before police drove him back to his house. His driver’s license is suspended for a year due to his refusal to take a breath test.
A week later, the TARTA board voted to suspend Mr. Gee without pay for two weeks pending further action.
But even before the alleged drunken-driving incident, the transit trustees had met several times in lengthy closed-door executive sessions to discuss “personnel issues.” Mr. Frey declined to answer questions about those meetings’ significance.
Mr. Gee, whose annual salary is $130,000, had been with the agency full time since 1994 and was promoted to general manager in 2003.
Carly Allen, the president and business agent of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 697, had written two letters to the transit board calling for Mr. Gee’s dismissal after the OVI charge was lodged, the more recent saying it should be done without severance.
“I’m supportive of the board’s decision today. It’s the fairest outcome,” Ms. Allen said after the board’s vote before expressing disappointment that neither the board nor Mr. Frey made any mention of political fund-raising orchestrated by Mr. Gee that had recently come under renewed scrutiny.
The board needs to find a successor who is “innovative and responsive — we need to do some reforming and transformation,” said Ms. Allen, whose union represents bus drivers and mechanics at TARTA and its subsidiary Toledo Area Regional Paratransit Service.
State Rep. Derek Merrin (R., Monclova Township) last week called for a state investigation of TARTA’s “Jeans Day,” during which employees were encouraged to donate money in exchange for wearing informal clothing to work — with proceeds going to Citizens for TARTA, a political action committee promoting local transit levy questions. TARTA officials responded that donations were purely voluntary and no records of who contributed were kept.
Mr. Gee’s administration had previously been cited by the state auditor’s office for lending transit authority money illegally to Citizens for TARTA during levy campaigns.
Before Thursday’s vote regarding Mr. Gee, the board elected Mr. Frey, who had been its vice president, as president to succeed Charles “Chuck” Larkins, who died July 22 at his Waterville home of a suspected heart attack. Daniel Woodcock was elected vice president to fill that resulting vacancy.
During a public comment period at the meeting’s start, the Rev. Cedric Brock, pastor of Mount Nebo Baptist Church in Toledo and an outspoken public transit supporter, urged the trustees to be forgiving of Mr. Gee’s drunken-driving charge.
“He made a mistake. We all make mistakes,” the Rev. Brock said before praising the trustees for doing “a great job with very little.”
But in her letter, Ms. Allen said Mr. Gee should be treated like “any other safety-sensitive TARTA employee would be treated given a similar situation.”
Mr. Gee’s employment contract with TARTA provided him with the use “of an automobile which shall be leased or purchased, maintained, and insured at the expense of TARTA” — a vehicle he reportedly was driving at the time of his arrest.
But the contract also specified Mr. Gee was “terminable at the will of the TARTA board of trustees, under whose direction [Mr. Gee] will serve,” and provided no requirement that termination be only for cause.
First Published August 1, 2019, 3:26 p.m.
