Salina Fire Chief Kevin Royse has been placed on administrative leave.

KWCH TV, citing an e-mail which went out to the agency on Tuesday, the Chief has been placed on administrative leave with personnel action pending.

The email states three other chiefs including Chiefs Abker, Goertzen, and Stover, will act in the Chief’s role in the interim.

Back in  August, following allegations  of time-card fraud within the department, the City of Salina had an outside agency investigate.  The investigation found misuse of “admin time”, also called by the fire department “admin days” or “executive leave”. By using this “compensation time“, time cards were essentially falsified to use vacation days for buy back.

The audit found a pattern of this dating back at least to 2007, and probably before that.

The use of this “compensation time” is not allowed per city policy, but rather was unique to the fire department.