I just got through reading about a VFD that suspended a bunch of guys because they ran a fund raiser without the blessing/permission of the board of trustees

Some examples of internal politics i have heard of are:

A department that disolved their volunteer association at the beheast of the paid chief of department because (he said) the way the association operates makes them a liability to the department and "a lawyer" said that they could be sued if the fire chief was not put in charge of it at once. The association president asked to speak to the lawyer personally and the chief said he couldnt because he represented the district not the volunteers. They disolved the association then discovered that it was a power grab by the chief because the volunteer association had a lot of money that the chief and the board didnt control and saw the association as a threat

Another departement disolved their asociation when the department went combination and chief announced that they were going to be hireing some paid FF's soon and if the association disolved, the former members of the association would recieve hiring preference and this had to happen because under the bilaws, the assocoation had to approve of all new members and under state hiring law it was wrong because the district does the hiring. So instead of amending the bilaws, they disolved the association and that ended up being a power grab because the chief got "amnesia" at hiring time, none of the former volunteers got hired and the associations money went to the district because the chief said it had to

I recall a department that got rid of all of their volunteers in favor of a paid force and the volunteers took everything except the building because the district owned that forcing the district to "lease" the engines and equipment from the firefighters association until the district could buy their own. There was a court battle and they sided with the association who did indeed legally own the equipment

One of my favorites (because i was president at the time) was when the association voted to buy some equipment that the chief didnt want us to use and the only reason he would cite was because as chief he has say over operational matters and as chief he could veto the descision. This was not in our bilaws and he made it clear that if we bought it, it would never be put into service. The membership voted to do it anyway and he tried to suspend us for insubordination. I cited that in our bilaws, the chief or board of commissioners have no greater authority over the association but is free to attend meetings and does have a vote. The equipment sat unused for about a year and he forbid us to store it on department property. After a while he had no choice but to use it when we had to call mutual aid for a tool we had in a storage facility and everybody knew about it

I also recall a department in NJ where a chief refused to put a new piece of appratus in service because the association voted against his choice of color

Anybody else have rules or situations like this in their department and what problems has it caused?