“The challenge is: Where do we go from here?” longtime Montgomery County Council member Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) said. “These are challenging times for first responders and public safety leaders. We’ve got to get this right, but we can’t wait too long.”

Details behind the fire chief controversy are difficult to know. What’s clear is that the firefighters union raised enough concerns about Bailey in private meetings with council members that the matter was forwarded to the Montgomery County Inspector General’s Office, according to three officials with direct knowledge of the process who spoke on the condition anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

On March 1, that office issued a vaguely worded news release regarding several incidents of alleged misconduct by “a senior Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services employee.” The inspector general concluded, according to its release, that in a 2021 incident, the senior employee violated fire department “hands-off” and decorum provisions and in a 2019 incident violated the department’s language decorum provisions. The news release didn’t detail the violations but instead offered a wide range of conduct covered by the provisions — including demeaning language, unwelcome touching and potentially injurious horseplay. The release didn’t name the officer, but multiple people with direct knowledge of the process said it was Bailey.

Four days later, with Bailey’s support on the council shaky, Elrich withdrew his backing and said he would find another candidate.

Elrich declined to discuss the inspector general’s report — a detailed version of which had been sent to his office on Feb. 28 — but he said last week that he still thought Bailey remained qualified for the job and wanted to renominate him. “I was ready to put him forward again,” Elrich said.

But he did not think Bailey would be confirmed. “Knowing that we did not have the votes on the council,” Elrich said, “there was no point in putting it back out there.”

Bailey declined to comment on the report and for this story, as did Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi, who said she was precluded from discussing personnel matters.

Running Montgomery’s fire and rescue agency is an enormous job. The suburb north of Washington yields an average of 300 emergency medical calls a day, plus another dozen for fires. The agency employs about 1,250 career firefighters and medics, has a large volunteer force and runs dozens of stations across 500 square miles of land.

Elrich’s search for a new fire chief dates back to last spring, when Fire Chief Scott Goldstein announced he would be retiring on June 30. How much Elrich listened to concerns about Bailey from Montgomery’s career firefighters union — Local 1664 of the International Association of Fire Fighters — also remains in dispute.

Union president Jeff Buddle said Elrich constantly rebuffed them. He provided a list of six times — from Nov. 28, 2022, to Nov. 13, 2023 — that the union raised its concerns, either in writing or verbally, about Bailey. On that final date, Buddle said, he specifically asked Erlich during a meeting in the county executive’s office whether he understood their concerns.

“The County Executive acknowledged the union’s concerns, but stated that he was moving forward with the nomination notwithstanding the union’s concerns,” Buddle said in a statement.

On Nov. 17, Elrich sent his official transmittal of Bailey’s name to Evan Glass, who was then president of the council, for possible confirmation. After such nominations, council members often talk among themselves about the candidates or meet individually with the candidate — as was the case with Bailey.

They also heard from others. Senior leadership at the fire department – in the form of 12 division chiefs and assistant chiefs – wrote to endorse Bailey. “We are well-positioned to attest to his intellect, character, and overall focus on the health, safety, and wellbeing of all members of” the department, they wrote, saying that vision and adaptability also were needed. “It is crystal clear to us that Chief Bailey is that person.”

On Dec. 19, according to county records, Buddle also wrote Andrew Friedson (D-District 1), who took over as council president on Dec. 5, with the results of a survey distributed to 1,235 bargaining unit employees who were asked if they supported Bailey as their next chief. Of the 826 responses, 81 percent said they did not support the nomination.

Buddle declined to describe the concerns about Bailey that the union shared with council members, calling them serious “personnel-related matters.”

Nominations such as Bailey’s are generally good for 60 days. If the council doesn’t act on them, the county executive must resubmit the name. That didn’t happen in mid-January as Elrich and his aides instead tried to shore up support on the council for Bailey.

The county executive also said he couldn’t be sure that if he resubmitted Bailey’s name, the council would even schedule a public hearing on the nomination, which would have given Bailey a chance to address the criticisms publicly.

Friedson said that at a certain point, Elrich’s office didn’t push the nomination.

“My focus as council president has always been to protect the integrity of the process and to ensure we are safeguarding the best interests of county residents, the fire rescue service, the council, the county government, and the nominee,” Friedson said in a statement this week. “I was in communication with the assistant chief administrative officer at various points throughout the process but was never informed that the [county executive] was interested in resubmitting the nomination or asked specifically by the county executive whether or not the council would schedule a public interview.”

Elrich acknowledged the union had spoken to his administration about incidents involving Bailey, but they could find no record of them being reported when they were said to have occurred. “We went back through HR and the reporting process in the department and not a single thing that they listed appeared in any record of having been ever raised with personnel or raised with the fire chief, ever,” Elrich said.

He suggested the union’s lobbying against Bailey was motivated to have him pick a candidate of its choice with a strong union background: “At the same time they’re doing this,” Elrich said, “they’re trying to push me to hire a fire chief who’s running a five-station department that was a former union president for 11 years.”

He broadly criticized bringing up years-old incidents that were said to have happened but were never reported as a way to undermine a nominee. Such criticisms, as it turned out, led to the inspector general referral on Jan. 2 and the news release, in broad strokes, of its findings on March 1.

“This is scary,” Elrich said.

Elected in 2018, Elrich struggled a year later in his first search for a new police chief. Over more than six months, his first three choices — all external candidates — bowed out. He then selected Marcus Jones, a Montgomery Police Department veteran who had wanted the job from the beginning. Jones is set to retire this summer. Elrich told top council leaders he plans to interview two top commanders in the department and by early May hopes to have a name sent to the council for confirmation consideration.

In his search last year for a new fire chief, Elrich recalled, he spoke about Bailey with Buddle. “I mentioned Charles’s name, and he said he could work with him,” Elrich said. “He actually at one point, when he was dissatisfied with the way the previous chief had handled discipline issues, said he’d prefer that Charles handle those issues. We did that.”

Buddle, the fire union president, said that Elrich’s recollections about Bailey were incorrect and that Bailey had never been designated to handle disciplinary issues.

He declined to discuss the inspector general report, but he addressed it earlier in a statement to others in the union.

“Our members who stepped forward to provide witness testimony should be commended for their courage in providing first-hand accounts of such misconduct,” Buddle wrote.

Before they did so, according to Buddle, the county executive had plenty of time to research their concerns.

“It is unfortunate the county executive seems to assign all the blame to the union,” Buddle wrote in an email, “for his own failure to properly vet yet another nominee for a significant position within his administration.”