fired by governance failure
No, this means that their terms have come to an end as previously defined via governance. This was designed to require defining continued involvement and deliverables.
Are we expecting current operators to keep working for free?
This proposal has been created to compensate operators.
When did we vote to give control to these ‘budget stewards’?
This is in the scope of the proposal itself and also defined in another ongoing proposal: [DRAFT 2] Rewarding Contributions in $CODE.