EDZO 2021: The Year of Living Recklessly
Three Strikes
As Ed Kelly’s first year draws to a close he may be the happiest of all.
His promise to “take our union back” suggested hope of reform but there has been zero evidence of that.
His predecessor and president-for-life Harold Schaitberger sold the IAFF out with corrupt deals in order to create his obscene income stream, the sell-out continues.
Failure One: The Schnader Report
The IAFF-commissioned Schnader Report investigated various financial misdoings and corrupt behavior.
Kelly’s time and place to begin taking our union back should have been with the immediate release, in unedited form, of that $1.2M report detailing the breadth of IAFF corruption.
But Kelly crumpled saying he needed board approval to do so.
And we thought he was in charge of the IAFF.
So much for bold leadership or any leadership at all.
It’s a cowardly dodge and not-so-slick cover to avoid doing the right thing — the membership would back the courageous act of releasing the report to all of us.
After all, we paid for it and it’s our report.
That would be taking our union back.
Failure Two: People
How you choose and treat the people around you says a lot about how you will treat our union.
Since the election, information has surfaced of his treatment of various candidates in other IAFF races, how they were drafted (or summarily dumped) to suit his immediate purposes. It’s a predator’s instruction manual.
Sources report he
- informed longtime IAFF Trustee Mark Ouellette that Ouellette would be retiring,
- asked Chicago’s Dan Fortuna to take Ouellette’s place,
- asked Fortuna to engineer Chicago Local 2’s endorsement of Edzo for IAFF president which Fortuna failed to do,
- turned on Fortuna and attempted to draft New York’s Jake Lemonda for trustee, and
- when Edzo couldn’t get Lemonda, he told Ouellette he was back in the race.
(And Ouellette is watching over IAFF finances, so much for independence!)
Kelly also
- broke with Frank Lima over Lima’s green-lighting of Schaitberger’s illicit pension,
- persuaded New York’s Jake Lemonda to enter the secretary-treasurer race against Lima,
- hung Lemonda out to dry saying he “had no dog in that race” after urging Lemonda to run,
- then painted a false picture of himself and Lima as “best friends forever.”
His numerous victims could staff an engine company though they should be careful about following him anywhere, much less into a working fire.
In the past few months, two of his senior “chiefs” have departed, leaving him searching for replacements.
Edzo created a triumvirate of senior managers consisting of Matt Vinci, Mathew Golsteyn and Wayne Murphy.
Vinci is a much respected former firefighter, IAFF leader and senior instructor.
Golsteyn was Edzo’s assistant as GST.
Murphy has previously been suspended from the practice of law as a result of misconduct.
Though Vinci had been an IAFF manager for years and was appointed Kelly’s chief of staff, Kelly tired of him after a few months and talked of demoting him, Vinci is reported to have said “no thanks” and left.
Kelly’s disgraceful and disrespectful treatment of Matt Vinci meant he lost the senior counselor he needed the most. Vinci knows the IAFF at the DNA level: the people, the job, the challenges, the culture.
Mathew Golsteyn is a former U.S. Army Special Forces Captain who faced charges of murdering an Afghan civilian. After a public shouting match with Kelly at the October executive board meeting, Golsteyn also departed.
That leaves Wayne Murphy, the lawyer who has been repeatedly cited for professional violations in two states.
Anyone hearing the details of these departures or reads the professional sanctions against Murphy, would run in the opposite direction if asked to work for Edzo.
It’s also said the IAFF legislative operation now reports to a D.C. lobbying firm. Dave Lang, head of the IAFF legislative operation and another longtime IAFF leader, departed taking a pass on that new arrangement.
Similar “outsourcing” is said to be underway in the Communications Department.
The portrait of Kelly which emerges from the campaigns and the staff changes is of a truly ruthless character using and discarding people with abandon.
All these internal matters, taken together, show someone unable to build an effective team or act ethically.
Externally it has been much worse.
Failure Three: Covid-19
The scourge of Covid-19 offered an opportunity to lead, but Kelly squandered it when he rushed to New York and became part of their great Covid Slap-down.
He could have acted aggressively to bring the board around to a consistent position in support of Covid-19 vaccinations; the board should have then taken that position to our local affiliates.
Instead, he pandered, an act which is costing the lives of IAFF members, 79 to date. Their blood is on his hands.
Kelly failed to realize he had a larger role to play — protecting all IAFF members, a role he forfeited when it mattered most.
It’s especially bizarre as he never shuts up about dead firefighters, funerals and churches, more evidence that those are just empty words meant to obscure and dazzle.
Kelly is following in Schaitberger’s footsteps, decimating the IAFF with more deals, dodgy staff moves and ruinous strategies at a truly life threatening moment for our union.
