It’s back to square one in the Haines Borough’s search for a new police chief.
The borough’s finalist Gregory Boris visited town last week, met members of the community in a town hall at the library and sat for an in-person interview before leaving on Wednesday. Then on Friday, Boris sent an email to a dozen people, including current interim chief Michael Fullerton, saying he was withdrawing from consideration.
In it, he said he was optimistic about the position and the community, but faded after he met acting chief Michael Fullerton.
“If the goal of this ‘ambassador’ was to shed your community and your police department in the worst light possible, and discourage anyone from seeking employment in hopes of protecting your citizens, then it was accomplished,” he wrote. He went on to describe Fullerton as sarcastic and “disgruntled” and said he described the community as “dying.”
But Fullerton said he conducted himself professionally, and with candor.
“The Haines Borough would be ill-served hiring someone who was misinformed as to the issues facing our new Police Chief,” he wrote. “Mr. Boris deserved to understand the challenges he would be facing in leadership in the Haines borough Police Department. The HBPD, as I have shared with Haines Borough leadership, is in a ‘fragile and brittle’ state. That includes the fact that two officers in the department are actively considering leaving.”
He also noted that it’s expensive and an investment to hire, relocate and train someone to take on a role in Haines.
“I would like to think I did Mr. Boris a favor,” he said. “Giving him a real and complete understanding of what the challenges are here and he’s either going to be invigorated by that and be the type of person to [say] ‘bring it on, I’m ready for that challenge.’ Or, he’s going to be the type of person [to say] “that’s not for me.’”
In a later interview, Fullerton said he did not think he described Haines as a dying community, but he did say it’s a community in decline as it’s having a hard time attracting and retaining young people and families. He said he did not sugarcoat the borough’s challenges.
“I must include that Mr. Boris made several comments that I found to be both shocking and distasteful which colored my impression of him,” Fullerton wrote. “I am relieved that Mr. Boris has come to the conclusion that the job of the Haines borough Police Chief was not a good fit for him. I agree.”
Overall, Boris said he enjoyed meeting people in Haines, but he didn’t feel welcomed. He said he was directed to the grocery store across the street from his hotel for food and felt his questions about where his kids would go to school, how his family could access medical care and the realities of small town life were met with derision.
“I hate to say, like being from the East Coast if a police officer came to my department for whatever reason … if they needed anything, we would go out of our way to make sure they’re accommodated the best we could,” he said. “I don’t have to have the red carpet rolled out, but at least be polite.”
A conflict of interest or the reality of living in a small town?
When reached by phone after he sent the letter, Boris said he had not applied for any other jobs, and is not openly job hunting – but thought Haines would be a spot for him and his family.
But he said the problems started almost as soon as Michael and Alekka Fullerton showed up together to pick him up from the ferry terminal.
“It felt like, you know, an ambush from like, even before I left. In the back of my mind, I felt like I was walking into a situation that just wasn’t great,” he said. “Here you’ve got the woman who’s hiring you, her husband’s in an acting chief position.”
Boris said getting hired to supervise his boss’s husband seemed like a huge conflict of interest from the get-go.
“It just seemed like a strange situation and it just never, like, progressed from that point on,” he said.
Alekka Fullerton acknowledged that the whole situation is complicated.
But she also noted that the borough has codified a Rule of Necessity.
“We have recognized in our Haines Borough code that we are a small community and we have a pool of skilled laborers or people who contribute to his community and sometimes something that looks like a conflict outside of our community will not be considered one here,” she said. “I think that probably is something that Greg [Boris] had never experienced before, coming from Baltimore.”
Alekka Fullerton also said she’s aware that the community’s perception of a conflict of interest can be a problem, even if there is no actual conflict.
She said this is the first time the two of them have been in a situation like this, but said there are safeguards in place to keep their personal relationship from impacting their professional one. For instance, Jila Stuart the borough’s finance officer, is directly managing the police chief and Alekka Fullerton said she asks Stuart to take care of anything that would be a direct conflict – like money.
“It’s interesting because one of my great strengths is that I’m very good at compartmentalizing. I think because I was in a confidential job for so long as a lawyer and Michael is in a confidential job, that we both know how to compartmentalize,” she said.
Both Fullertons, and others involved in the hiring process said Boris did not raise any concerns about their relationship or his perception of a conflict of interest while he was in the community.
Moving forward
Elected officials responded to Boris’s letter differently.
Assembly member Gabe Thomas, who heads the personnel committee, said he thinks Boris is “throwing mud” and he’s not sure it’s worth re-examining how the borough manages its police chief position as an answer to the potential conflict.
In the past, Haines’ assembly has managed the chief but that changed more than a decade ago and Thomas said he doesn’t think the assembly should try that approach again.
“Here, with our structure, it would turn into a political thing,” he said.
Thomas said he doesn’t want to see this issue deter interim manager Alekka Fullerton from potentially taking on the manager’s role permanently and trusts that she would avoid letting her personal life get mixed up with her professional life.
“I think this ultimately opens up the bigger problem that Haines needs an HR department,” he said. “It’s not that the manager doesn’t have the capability. I think she doesn’t have the time.”
Mayor Tom Morphet noted that both Fullertons are filling their respective positions in an interim capacity right now. Michael Fullerton stepped into the interim role after former chief Josh Dryden left in November of 2024, while Alekka Fullerton didn’t enter into negotiations to serve as interim borough manager until December.
Morphet flagged the potential conflict at the time, but said the assembly didn’t fully think through how it could work, other than the short-term solution of having finance director Jila Stuart supervise the police chief.
But Morphet said he and Stuart are already having management conversations which demonstrates how fraught with conflict the situation is.
“I’m not supposed to be directing any decision like that, the manager is. [Stuart] doesn’t have any training in supervising police departments, so automatically with the current arrangement we get into all these jury-rigged relationships with people outside of their realms of expertise and authority thrust into decision-making positions.”
After meeting Boris, Michael Fullerton said he had conversations with borough staff about applying for the police chief’s position. He said he hadn’t seriously considered applying for the position until he met – and was underwhelmed – by Boris.
“I don’t understand how he thought that might be workable,” Morphet said, though he noted that staff could find a way to do it if there were no other candidates.
“It would be a time suck,” he said. “There’s potential conflict enough with him serving as an officer and her being the manager. The police chief is the most powerful person in this town because you have power of life or death. The second most powerful is the manager. Having those two people in a personal relationship, even if they were dating it would be a conflict.”
Deputy Mayor Cheryl Stickler found herself in a similar position when she was working as a school administrator in the Haines Borough School District. Stickler was the principal and supervised the special education director who was married to her boss, the superintendent.
“I found the situation to work only when I carefully guarded what information I shared with my boss,” she wrote in an email.
Stickler said she was working to protect the special education director’s right to due process and while she has no way of knowing what information the couple shared with each other, she said she does not believe confidentiality was breached.
But, communication was difficult and Stickler said the team had times of success and joy.
Still, Stickler said she would not recommend the situation to anyone serving in a position in which breaches of confidentiality could have serious repercussions.
“Would I sign up for that job situation again? No. Do I regret that I worked in that situation? Not even a little bit, because our students were being well served,” she wrote.
Michael Fullerton said he’s given it careful consideration, but given the tone of the discourse in Haines he has decided not to seek the role of the chief.