Fired Official Is Critical of County Plan for Emergency

NY Times 18may02

TARRYTOWN, NY May 17 — The former deputy director of emergency preparedness for Westchester County said today that his dismissal this week was unfair and that it was a result of his attempts to design a new evacuation plan for the county that was good for more than show.

The former official, Christopher Kozlow, who was fired on Monday, said that County Executive Andrew J. Spano was primarily concerned with revising the existing evacuation plan quickly to soothe public fears after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

But Mr. Spano called the criticism nonsense and said he was fired because of ineffectiveness. "He talked a good game and looked good," he said, "but he just didn't deliver."

In November, Mr. Kozlow was put in charge of creating a new emergency plan for responding to an accident or sabotage at the Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan. But he said today that his aims collided with those of Mr. Spano.

Mr. Kozlow said: "I was not going to put my professional reputation, my integrity, down by just writing a document without testing and evaluating and making changes. The rush was on public perception, getting it out there."

He conceded that before his firing, he had spoken in support of the direction of the evacuation planning and had not criticized Mr. Spano. "I took ownership of the plan I inherited," he said, "which meant I was accepting responsibility, whether I thought it worked or didn't think it worked." He said he hoped to "rip up" the old plan and develop a new one.

But Mr. Spano said that Mr. Kozlow missed deadlines to submit plans and complete committee work repeatedly, and that Westchester was lagging behind other counties in evacuation preparedness as a result.

"One committee that he was in charge of never even got started," Mr. Spano said, "and when I confronted him two weeks ago, he took 15 minutes to get to a particular place where it still wasn't clear when the work would be complete."

Mr. Spano said that the decision to hire Mr. Kozlow was made by Jay B. Hashmall, a former deputy county executive who was forced to resign last year after a report in The Journal News about irregularities involving county contracts. Mr. Spano said that at first he was "one of Mr. Kozlow's biggest fans." He said the dismissal would not derail the pace of the planning, because a number of people were working on it.

However, State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky said the departure left Westchester on dangerous footing. "The evacuation plan was disastrous in the first place," he said, "and is now in tatters."

Mr. Brodsky said he thought that Mr. Kozlow wanted to "make real change and was being told `we need a paper plan.' Whether or not the changes would work or wouldn't work was secondary to putting forth a document that they could wave in the air and say, `Look, it's changed.' "

Mr. Kozlow's lawyer, Jonathan Lovett, said his client intended to file lawsuits next week against the county government, Mr. Spano and various county officials, as well as unspecified state officials.