LARGO, Fla. -- One of five commissioners who voted to fire a transsexual city manager said his management style, not his lifestyle, led to the dismissal.

Largo City Commissioner Gay Gentry said City Manager Steve Stanton was a "hard-nosed, my-way-or-the-highway" boss who expected more understanding of his personal situation than he showed to some of his roughly 1,200 employees in 14 years as the city's top official.

"Suddenly the rules were changing and he was asking to be dealt with in a different way than he was dealing with people," Gentry said.

Commissioners voted 5-2 early Saturday to fire Stanton from his $140,000-a-year job. Stanton was forced last month to reveal he was a transsexual and planned to live as a woman and eventually pursue a sex-change operation.

Stanton defended the employment decisions he made, including firing a public works employee who stayed home with his elderly mother when a hurricane was approaching.

"Every one of those employment decisions were correct and proper," Stanton said.

Stanton and his attorney said the commissions' two votes to fire him in the last month are discriminatory. They have not said if he will sue the city. His employment contract says he can be fired without cause at any time.

Stanton, 48, said he plans to concentrate on the transition from life as a man to life as a woman and will begin the process of legally changing his name to Susan. He said the cause of transsexual rights was advanced by the attention surrounding his fight to keep his job.

"I'm on cloud nine. It went super. It went great," Stanton said of his failed appeal. "This is not about Steve keeping his job exclusively. It was about supplying information and education about something that people just don't understand."