First of two parts
As a matter of political gospel, and survival, firefighters are sacrosanct.
No matter the depths of a municipality’s budget crisis, neither the firefighters’ ranks, pay nor benefits are touchable.
No reductions are in force for firefighters.
Yet in cities all across the country, that’s exactly what has been happening. The men and women in red are becoming as vulnerable to budget cuts as other municipal employees.
The new landscape clearly has been shaped by the brutal fiscal conditions in localities. In an era of such severe economic uncertainty, high-level municipal officials, elected and otherwise, have not been shy about portraying firefighters as a group that has vacuumed up more than its fair share of municipal resources, whether for salaries, equipment and firehouses, or for some of the most generous retirement packages offered by local governments today.
But other factors have contributed to the new view. One is a question of efficacy. There’s a growing discussion about whether, in a world with fewer fires and more emergency medical-related incidents and automobile accidents, firefighters are deploying resources to maximum effect.
The Cost-Efficiency of Firefighters
Right now, the cost of paying a firefighter is foremost on city officials’ minds.
Take San Jose in the Bay Area. Over the past decade, the cost of firefighter wages and benefits in the big California city has increased 100 percent, while city revenues have only risen by 20 percent, according to Michelle McGurk, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office. The average firefighter, she says, now costs the city more than $180,000 per year. Moreover, the highest-paid employees in San Jose aren’t high-level city managers or even the city manager. They are upper-level members of the city fire service. Firefighters with 30 years of service can retire as early as age 50, with 90 percent of their salary.
That was just the beginning of the tough line that the San Jose mayor’s office took when it handed out pink slips to 49 firefighters in the fall of 2010, a decision that the city laid directly at the feet of the San Jose firefighters’ union, Local 230.
“Let me be very clear,” McGurk says. “We didn’t have to lay off firefighters. It was the decision of Local 230. They could have come through with concessions.”
With an open contract, the firefighter union’s collective bargaining agreement expired in June 2009, the city asked Local 230, along with all other city unions with open contracts, to give back roughly 10 percent in wage and benefit concessions in a deal that would have saved the 49 firefighter positions.
But Local 230 summarily rejected the idea, arguing that the city wasn’t in as bad fiscal shape as it claimed and that firefighters were being asked to bear more than their fair share of cuts.
Are They Pampered?
Painting firefighters as something of a pampered class, well-paid with retirement packages that would be the envy of anyone in either the private or public sectors, would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Today, it’s a widespread practice.
Having spent a decade on a post-9/11 pedestal, the profession has been on the receiving end of more stringent scrutiny. Government officials and the public they represent appear to be taking a much harder look at exactly what they are buying when asked to spend bigger and bigger bucks on firefighters, firefighting equipment and emergency response.
In cities where firefighter layoffs haven’t occurred, it has frequently been due to concessions wrung from unions, despite unions’ reputation as tough negotiators. It’s not that the unions have caved in easily to city demands. In Jacksonville, for instance, the firefighters’ union at first rejected a contract calling for a two-year, 2 percent pay cut, that, for the first time ever, required single firefighters with no dependents to contribute to their health insurance.
In the face of rejection, the city promptly followed through on its threat to lay off 15 firefighters, a messy process that involved bumping another two dozen active firefighters to lower-level jobs.
They Ran Out of Straws
The move was the culmination of several years of tough budgets for Jacksonville, says Misty Skipper, a city spokeswoman. In a city looking at escalating employee costs of 20 percent in the next five years, it means that every employee in government must sacrifice. It’s part of a new reality.
“In the past, our public safety sectors have essentially been held harmless,” Skipper says. “This year we knew the gap couldn’t be addressed just through non-public safety areas.”
In the face of layoffs, the Jacksonville firefighters’ union capitulated. Besides the 2 percent pay cut, single firefighters without dependents will now contribute 5 percent to their healthcare coverage. While the 15 laid-off firefighters were reinstated with the recent ratification of the firefighters’ contract, the city still will eliminate 15 fire and rescue positions through attrition.
“Obviously, a pay cut is never good, especially when you’re already on the low end of the pay scale,” says Randy Wyse, president of the Jacksonville Assn. of Firefighters. (Starting pay for fire and rescue personnel in Jacksonville is just more than $34,000, with additional pay available for medical training, firefighting-related educational advancement and longevity.) “But my members understood the economic times and responded.”
What irritates Wyse about the firefighter cuts, beyond the sacrifice his members are making, is that in his view, the city is spending millions to keep its professional football team, the Jaguars, happy, and to develop local amenities like a $600,000 riverwalk. Given that, Wyse thinks the city has the cash for luxuries while it squeezes public safety. He is inclined to label the city’s budget crisis “contrived.”
Even if city resources may be somewhat constrained, he says, “there’s no recession in demand for our services.” The number of fire and emergency medical services (EMS) calls is increasing every year. Firefighters are, he says, “becoming the first line in someone’s health care.”
(To be continued)
Jonathan Walters, executive editor of Governing.com, lives in upstate New York and spent 30 years as a journalist covering public policy for the Washington Post, USA Today and others. He may be contacted at jowazz22@gmail.com
