County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig — a big, congenial, forceful public presence — announced that he’s retiring after 33 years in the field of firefighting. Hartwig, who started his career as an ambulance EMT, was hired by the county in 2019 because he was seen as someone with the political skills and requisite experience to wrest control of AMR’s 40-plus-year ambulance monopoly and secure it for the county’s multiple firefighting agencies. During his tenure, Hartwig came remarkably close to achieving what seemed like an impossible feat, but not without considerable controversy, blowback, litigation, and, ultimately, defeat. Driving the dream was the conviction that firefighting agencies could field more ambulances and respond quicker and for less money than a private company like AMR with its corporate executives and investors to satisfy.
Hartwig had the support of all the regional fire chiefs, the firefighters’ unions, top county administrators and a strong majority of the county supervisors. AMR was not inclined to roll over and sued, charging that the supervisors rewrote the bidding process when the results did not come out to their liking and bypassed many legally mandated oversight bodies in the process. Judge Donna Geck wrote a withering legal opinion favoring AMR, and Attorney General Rob Bonta weighed in on the company’s behalf, charging that the supervisors, in their quest to dethrone a monopoly operator, were at risk of creating a new monopoly. When the supervisors declined to fight on earlier this year — a losing battle, they argued — Hartwig concluded the time was ripe to step down. He will serve as chief the remainder of the year.
