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BLUFFDALE — Ten months after it was announced that former Bluffdale Fire Chief and mayoral candidate John Calvin Roberts was under investigation — which came more than a year after the city received whistleblower complaints — the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office on Monday filed criminal charges.
Roberts, 68, of Bluffdale, was charged in 3rd District Court with misuse of public money, a second-degree felony; and five counts of falsifying or altering government records, a class B misdemeanor.
In 2020, Roberts was the subject of whistleblower complaints, some of which alleged he offered crew members double pay to sign up to work holidays but did not actually require them to work. Roberts ended up signing a "separation" agreement with the city that ended his 40 years with the fire department but allowed him to work for the city in the future in a different position. About one year later, as Roberts ran for mayor against then-city employee Natalie Hall, city leaders issued a news release announcing a new investigation into Roberts' time as fire chief. Roberts contended the announcement was politically motivated and pointed to difficulties he faced staffing the department on holidays.
According to charging documents filed Monday, the district attorney's office said it was asked by Bluffdale city administrators to review payroll documents related to the city's fire department between Dec. 22, 2018, and Aug. 17, 2019. An investigator "reviewed hundreds of daily reports which had been approved and signed by John Calvin Roberts in his position as the chief of the Bluffdale Fire Department," the charges state.
While reviewing those documents, the investigator found "handwritten modifications made, which either added employees to a daily log who were not typed in previously or which altered the reported hours on the daily log for those already present," according to the charges.
The investigator then compared the daily reports with shift logs and found inconsistencies, including several firefighters who were working at other fire departments when the altered daily reports stated they were working for Bluffdale, the charges state.
Bluffdale estimates the city paid out a total of $86,000 to firefighters for hours not actually worked, the charges state.
In the charging documents, Roberts told the investigator "that he had, in fact, altered the time logs in order to generate additional pay for the affected employees, that he had done so intentionally and that he knew that the conduct was wrong."
