PORT ALLEN -- The West Baton Rouge Parish Fire Protection District No. 1 Board of Commissioners was forced to revote to move forward with Butch Browning as WBR Fire Chief in a part-time role.

The same vote happened back in August, but the state Attorney General's office forced a redo, claiming the board had violated open meeting laws by not allowing public comments.

"I decided to contact the attorney general's office and ask them for their opinions. They are the ultimate authority on public meeting law on whether or not it was a violation. They considered it a violation," Former WBR volunteer firefighter John Summers said.

At Thursday's meeting, there were public comments, allowing several current and former firefighters to share their concerns about moving forward without a full-time chief. That was something they weren't able to do at the August 28 meeting.

"I challenge anyone in this room to find me one example nationwide of a department of our size that is completely made up of contracted part-time leadership," West Baton Rouge Fire Deputy Chief James Hartley said.

Another public commenter was John Summers' brother Anthony, also a former firefighter.

"My brother and I had been working since probably 2016, 2017 to push to get the department right because we feel that the department, since the consolidation in 2014, has not served the interest of the residents of West Baton Rouge Parish," Anthony said.

The controversy surrounds Browning and his part-time role as fire chief. During Thursday's meeting, the board asked Browning if he felt that the fire department was better as a whole since being brought in a few years ago.

Browning said that it has overcome major staffing issues and pointed to the fact that the department received a class three rating for public fire protection insurance. For the grade, one is the best and 10 is the lowest.

Still, the board wanted to make it clear that even though it once again voted to move forward with Browning, its goal is still to get a full-time fire chief.

"I mean, it has always been our goal to go to a full-time fire chief, but you know we got to make sure that things are in the right spot to do that," WBR Parish Council Chairman Carey Denstel said.

West Baton Rouge Parish President Jason Manola previously told WBRZ that the decision to bring on Browning in a part-time capacity was former Parish President Riley Berthelot's decision.

"It was, and I was on the council then, but yes, to answer that, I guess that was three years ago," Denstel said.

The board asked Manola when he would start looking into hiring a full-time chief.

"Whenever it becomes operationally and also economically doable to do it, we should do it. To give you a certain time frame, I would say within the next year to probably 18 months that it will be time to start looking at our classification," Manola said.

Manola also pointed out that the parish is going to have to completely change the classification plan for the fire chief, since the old job description doesn't fit the current one.

"We now have an EMS service, so we have to rewrite the plan," Manola said.