The head of Rhode Island’s trash agency yesterday fired five longtime employees in a management reorganization that he said would save taxpayers more than $500,000 a year.

The shakeup follows months of turmoil at the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, where the executive director hired last year has clashed with old-guard leaders, prompting an exodus of board members and an ongoing forensic audit of possible mismanagement and criminal wrongdoing at the dump.

Michael O’Connell, the executive director of Resource Recovery, said that the reorganization was not prompted by the forensic audit, but by a desire to change how things are done at the $70-million agency that oversees state recycling programs and the Central Landfill in Johnston.

“They’re looking back,” O’Connell said of the auditors. “I’m looking ahead. We’re trying to create a stronger, flatter, leaner organization that can better serve the taxpayers. It’s a new era.”

Among those ousted yesterday was the $134,000-a-year deputy director, Dennis P. aRusso, a 21-year veteran of the dump and the son of former Johnston Mayor Ralph aRusso.

“My father didn’t want me to go up there 21 years ago, and he was right,” said aRusso in an interview last night. “When the dump was on fire at 3 a.m. there was only one person they called, and that was Dennis.”

His reward, said aRusso, was to be summoned into O’Connell’s office at 1:30 p.m. yesterday, told he was no longer needed, handed a severance agreement in a sealed envelope and escorted from the building by a Johnston deputy police chief and sergeant. aRusso has a 7 a.m. appointment on Saturday to clean out his personal effects, he said.

Meanwhile, aRusso is eager to talk to his lawyer about a possible challenge to his firing.

O’Connell also fired regulatory compliance director Claude A. Cote, who earned $114,000; facilities manager William Jasparro, a former Johnston firefighter who had been at the agency for 12 years; and security chief W. Patrick McQueeney, the son of former Providence police chief Walter McQueeney and a former Rhode Island state police captain hired after his retirement 11 years ago. Jasparro and McQueeney each earned $80,000.

Finally, O’Connell fired administrative manager Sharon D’Angelo, who earned $66,000 and had been at the landfill for 22 years. She lives with Dennis aRusso in Johnston, he said last night.

“So this household took a double hit,” said aRusso. “We both got cut off from our Blue Cross.

“The sad thing is that the five of us all worked together –– our offices were side by side. Now we’re all gone. It still hurts.”

O’Connell said that he wanted to eliminate “redundant” positions and combine others. For instance, he said, the agency doesn’t need a deputy director when it also has a director of operations. It doesn’t need an internal legal counsel when it uses outside lawyers with different specialties for different issues. O’Connell said that he plans to combine the jobs of security chief and facilities manager, but that neither Jasparro nor McQueeney is qualified to do both.

As for D’Angelo, who had worked directly for the executive director and had worked for O’Connell’s predecessor, Sherry Mulhearn, O’Connell said that her position was no longer necessary.

O’Connell, hired in early 2007, quickly clashed with the old guard at the landfill as he began questioning various practices, from costly acquisition of nearby land for an industrial park and other, unspecified purposes to other contracts to the investment of pension funds with a company tied to a board member to charitable donations to pet causes of board members.

O’Connell alerted Governor Carcieri, who approved a forensic audit that began early this year. A preliminary audit, released in March, found signs of mismanagement, cronyism and possible corruption, prompting a full-scale audit that is expected to be finished this fall.

As a result of power struggles between Governor Carcieri and the Rhode Island Senate over the agency, there is no functioning board to approve O’Connell’s actions. Several members left or were removed earlier this year as a result of the turmoil, and the Senate failed to act on a new slate of nominees from Carcieri before the General Assembly adjourned last month. Six of the board’s eight seats are vacant.

Consequently, the governor issued an executive order on July 2, essentially declaring the dump a disaster area and assuming the authority over its operations through his liaison to O’Connell, administration director Jerome Williams.

Under the authority of the emergency order, Carcieri approved O’Connell’s management reorganization.

“The governor is, in effect, our board,” said O’Connell.

aRusso, who spent 11 years as a sewer-plant inspector at the state Department of Environmental Management before moving to Resource Recovery, at a time when his father, the Johnston mayor, was trying to shut down the dump, signaled last night that the circumstances of yesterday’s firings could form the basis of a legal challenge. He said that the agency’s bylaws contain a provision, dating to 1997, which requires a vote of the board to fire the executive director, deputy director, chief financial officer or head of security.

And aRusso said that there are still problems at the dump –– problems that have grown worse during O’Connell’s 18-month reign.

“There are people up there stealing every day . . . it’s a zoo,” he said. But he didn’t want to elaborate until he has had a chance to talk to his lawyer and time to absorb the shock of his abrupt termination.

Asked if he could have done more to stop the thievery, aRusso replied, “I have no idea.”

mstanton@projo.com