Former staffer blamed for mistakes on fire chief's resume

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Fire Chief Ronnie Few says a staffer at his former department in Augusta, Ga., is to blame for errors on the resume submitted to the Washington City Council at the time of his nomination. <br> <br> ``The chief didn&#39;t lie on the resume,&#39;&#39; Fire Department spokeswoman Lisa Bass said Friday. ``The chief transmitted information about his background to an administrative staff person and mistakes were made at that point.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Bass said whoever prepared the resume mixed up organizations and made mistakes in transcribing information. <br> <br> The resume submitted to the city council was attached to a letter from Mayor Anthony A. Williams nominating Few for the job. It said that Few graduated from Morris Brown College in Atlanta and was selected 1998 Fire Chief of the Year by the International Association of Fire Fighters, a labor group affiliated with the AFL-CIO. <br> <br> It turned out that Few attended Morris Brown for only one academic year, 1971-72, and the association never gave him such an honor. <br> <br> ``Chief Few is who he says he is. He has testified to that two years ago,&#39;&#39; she said. ``These discrepancies came up during the council hearing. He corrected those mistakes at that time.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> In a letter to the mayor, council member Kathy Patterson said Williams should ``either clear the air on this matter immediately or replace Chief Few.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> In 2000, former parks director Robert Newman was forced to resign after a series of controversies, including one involving inflated titles on his resume. <br> <br> Last year, the mayor&#39;s chief of staff, Kelvin Robinson, was criticized for not revealing he resigned from his previous job after he was accused of giving an unauthorized bonus to an assistant. <br> <br> Bass took full responsibility for an incorrect biography the department had in its files and on its Web site. She assumed her copy was correct and that Few never saw the false information. <br> <br> On the chief&#39;s updated bio, it says he earned an associate degree in fire science from DeKalb College, now known as Georgia Perimeter College, in Decatur, and received two awards from the Carl Holmes Executive Development Institute, a contractor he has hired to run training seminars. <br> <br> Few is also taking correspondence courses in another fire services-related field from the University of Cincinnati, Bass said. <br> <br> The chief was unavailable for comment because he was out of town on a training seminar, Bass said. <br> <br> Few, 49, a native of East Point, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, became Augusta-Richmond County&#39;s first black fire chief in 1997, supervising about 300 firefighters. <br> <br> As D.C.&#39;s fire chief, he directs over 2,000 employees, including about 1,400 firefighters and paramedics.