Attributed to Overtime : Firefighters: Some Hit $70,000 Mark

Between 20 and 30 firefighters, including battalion chiefs, captains and engineers, were paid more than $70,000 last year on the Los Angeles County Fire Department, according to Fire Chief John Englund.

Much of the their pay is attributable to overtime made necessary by “budget restraints” that require the Fire Department to “work short” and still man fire stations round the clock, every day of the year, Englund said.

The question of how much overtime is worked by about 2,100 uniformed members of Englund’s department was raised several days ago when it was disclosed that Reynoldo Wilson, a county paramedic, earned $98,483.65--nearly $60,000 of it in overtime--last year.

The county pays the average firefighter about $39,000 a year in straight salary.

To make more than Englund’s $93,314 salary, Wilson volunteered for all the overtime he could get, working as many as 120 hours a week.

His long hours and big pay check concerns Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Hahn’s press deputy, Dan Wolf, said the supervisor, who is recuperating from a recent stroke, will offer a motion for consideration at the next Board of Supervisors meeting calling for a review of regulations governing Fire Department overtime.

“These figures raise serious questions about current overtime policies,” Hahn’s motion says. “I am concerned about whether firefighters and paramedics can perform their critically important jobs at the peak of efficiency and effectiveness when working as much as 120 hours a week.”

Wilson’s supervisors reported that the paramedic had performed his duties properly, Englund said, but the chief added that his department is reviewing its overtime policies to assure safety and fairness.

“Where and when do you draw the line (in limiting overtime for safety considerations)?” Englund asked. “We don’t know whether it can be defined. We are asking the medical community to help us.”

There is no medical criteria for determining whether a county firefighter is capable of performing his or her duties after working many hours of overtime, according to Chief Deputy Fire Chief Early Fordham.

“It’s basically observation by a supervisor whether a man is capable of working in an adequate manner,” Fordham said. “Nothing is set in concrete. You look for mental alertness, fatigue and job performance.

“Also, you have to realize that many people have many different tolerances for all kinds of things. It’s done on an individual basis.”

Englund recalled that when he was a fire captain, he never turned down offered overtime.

“If I turned it down, I would have felt I was depriving my family,” he said. “Probably 20 years ago, a lot of people had jobs outside the department. Now that salaries have been adjusted, most would rather work overtime.”

Englund also said that the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act has increased wage costs by requiring that firefighters and police officers be paid overtime after meeting negotiated standards of hours of work.

In the Los Angeles Fire Department, where the base pay for a Firefighter Two is $37,970, Deputy Chief Darrel Thompson said that no ready statistics on high rates of pay were immediately available. But he said a check is being made.

“I know we had some firemen in the $60,000 range,” Thompson said. “That’s overtime and base pay.”