Fire Department leader Laura Kavanagh in heated feud with top chiefs — NYC public safety, ageism, sexism in dispute

See it as a matter of life and death involving the only men remotely capable of saving New Yorkers from giant fires — or as a sirens-blaring ego trip for prideful, old-school Fire Department chiefs who can’t bear having a younger woman as their boss.

Or, like some in the FDNY, you could see the feud burning between FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh and her top chiefs as a towering inferno of entertainment — despite its impact on a public safety agency with a $2 billion budget and 17,000 employees who fight fires, render emergency medical treatment, and answer 911 calls.

“We have no idea what’s going to happen next, but something is going to happen,” one FDNY union official told the Daily News. “We’re just ordering more popcorn.”

Strife in the Fire Department last week resulted in the firing of two deputy commissioners — including Terryl Brown, the department’s top lawyer and its highest-ranking Black executive, and Frank Dwyer, its longtime top media spokesperson.

It’s also brought demands for demotions from other staff chiefs — which Kavanagh has not approved.

Four chiefs Kavanagh has demoted filed a lawsuit last Monday demanding they be kept in their posts. The lawsuit’s first sentence: “This case is about one thing: the safety of the public and valiant firefighters of the New York City Fire Department.”

The chiefs’ claim about their expertise — and their pride — is hammered home in the suit’s fourth sentence: “When any fire department, police department, or other public-safety or military organization has inadequate or inexperienced Incident Commanders, people die.”

The conflict was kindled in October when Mayor Adams named Kavanagh permanently to the post of fire commissioner.

Kavanagh, 40, was a Democratic political operative and a top aide to former Mayor Bill de Blasio. She joined the Fire Department in 2014, and moved through a series of of high-level administrative jobs until she took over as acting commissioner in February 2022, after Adams’ election and the retirement of the previous commissioner, Daniel Nigro.

Kavanagh has no firefighting experience. That shouldn’t seem unusual to longtime department employees — one of her recent predecessors, Nicholas Scoppetta, also had no firefighting background. Scoppetta, a city government veteran, held the job for eight years during former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration.

But soon after she got the job permanently, Kavanagh’s relationship with veteran department chiefs went up in smoke.

The chiefs griped that Kavanagh makes all her decisions with a small circle of aides — among them an ex-NYPD lieutenant — and that she ignores their years of experience.

The undercurrent of distrust came to a head on Feb. 3, when she demoted three brass —assistant chiefs Michael Gala, Joseph Jardin, and Fred Schaaf, who each have around three decades of firefighting experience under their belts.

That same day, Kavanagh held a meeting with her staff chiefs. Jardin, Gala and Schaaf were told not to attend, sources said.

Kavanagh complained that her staff chiefs hadn’t brought her any new ideas. She wanted “out of the box thinking,” but was peppered with requests about overtime and department-issued take-home cars, according to a recording of the gathering shared with The News.

Kavanagh also warned her chiefs against bullying subordinates, something she had her fill of while dealing with one-time tough-talking Chief of Department James Leonard in 2018 when she was first deputy commissioner.

Leonard, who was known for his abrasive comments and for offering up an occasional misogynistic slur, quietly left the department after he was removed from duty for “inappropriate behavior.” “There are still a lot of Leonards in this department,” a source close to Kavanagh said.

Outraged by Kavanagh’s decision to demote Gala, Jardin and Schaaf, eight more chiefs, including Chief of Department John Hodgens, the FDNY’s most senior uniformed official, and Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito asked in solidarity to be demoted and put back in the field.

So far, Kavanagh hasn’t approved any of the requested demotions, a high ranking FDNY official said. “None of these posts will be vacant come Monday,” the official said.

Of course, the high-level fracas has ended up in the courts. Gala, Jardin, Schaaf and Michael Massucci, a deputy assistant chief, filed a suit in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Feb. 27 which the city moved to Brooklyn Federal Court.

“Kavanagh has abused the office of Fire Commissioner, violated the oath of office, put the public and members of the FDNY at risk, and retaliated against senior staff for raising safety concerns about leadership decisions,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit also says the demotions leave the city’s firefighting forces with an “unimaginable level of unpreparedness” — including leaving the department without anyone who has ever led the scene at a five-alarm fire.

The four chiefs’ 31-page complaint cites news articles to claim Kavanagh and her aides are engaging in a media smear campaign against them. It says Gala, 62, Jardin, 61, and Schaaf, 60, are the department’s oldest staff chiefs.

The complaint, written by lawyer Jim Walden and his legal team, disses Kavanagh, calling her request for “out-of-the-box thinking” an “ill-defined approach” that supplanted the department’s traditional “focus on firefighting science, which has required, established, and clear military protocols, adherence to science and training, and expert precision.”

“An experienced professional would not seek to fix that which is unbroken. A political operative would,” the complaint says.

It also bristles with expressions of the chiefs’ pride and claims of their irreplaceable expertise. “Judicial action is required to maintain the safety of New York City residents and visitors by restoring the firefighting responsibilities of Staff Chiefs who were reassigned,” the complaint says.

City attorneys claim that the chiefs’ lawsuit is peppered with “fanciful fear-mongering” and “demeaning” language about Kavanagh.

It’s early days in the case, but chiefs already have suffered a pair of blows from Brooklyn Federal Judge Rachel Kovner.

The chiefs “have not established that the departure or demotion of officials with experience commanding four- or five- alarm fires creates a likelihood of irreparable harm to the public,” Kovner wrote on Thursday.

The judge also noted that evidence in the case so far shows “that the pool of Staff Chiefs and of Deputy Chiefs eligible for promotion [to replace the demoted chiefs] consists of extremely experienced firefighters.”

The chiefs asked Kovner to reconsider on Friday — and for a second time, the judge shot them down. “[I]t is undisputed that since plaintiffs’ [the chiefs’] demotions were effected a month ago, all the serious fires that have occurred were ‘fully staffed,’ even though plaintiffs had been removed from the Incident-Commander pool,” Kovner wrote.

In a statement to The News, the Fire Department said the number of deputy fire chief available to respond to major incidents “is actually slightly higher than it was for nearly all of last calendar and fiscal year.”

“No chief position is vacant or unoccupied …. The number of Deputy Chiefs serving currently is also above FDNY’s budgeted headcount. New Yorkers can rest assured that, under Commissioner Kavanagh’s leadership, the FDNY remains fully prepared to keep New Yorkers safe and respond to any and all emergencies,” the statement said.

FDNY sources note that Jardin, Gala and Schaaf haven’t responded to a single fire since Kavanagh demoted them.

Kavanagh’s supporters say she is simply trying to build the best team possible keep the city safe and make the department more inclusive for women and people of color.

Yet other FDNY insiders say Kavanagh’s “my way or the highway” approach to leadership is the problem.

Kavanagh “seems to want to fight with everybody” when she should be getting advice from her staff chiefs, a former high-ranking FDNY staffer said. Commissioners without firefighting backgrounds, including Scoppetta, succeeded “because they listened to the seasoned fire chiefs under them,” the staffer said.

“But with Kavanagh, there’s a lack of sophistication, a lack of seriousness, and hubris,” the staffer said. “The endgame to me is she’s not going to be there in six months.”