The District’s fire chief said Wednesday that a plan to cut his department’s overtime budget will mean fewer firefighters and paramedics available to answer calls for help, in the latest salvo in a long-running feud between Dennis Rubin and the D.C. Council over high overtime pay.
The D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary has approved an initial budget that would cut $5.2 million in overtime pay for the fire department, or an 82 percent decrease from the current fiscal year. The move comes in response to projections that the fire department is on track to double its current overtime budget of about $6 million.
Rubin said his department is short-staffed by more than 170 employees, and there is “nothing that anyone can do besides fill the seats with overtime or close a fire company.”
“That’s not a threat … but it’s a statement of fact,” Rubin said.
Nonsense, said Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson, who has been an outspoken critic of the department’s chronic overtime problems.
“It’s a management issue,” Mendelson said. “He doesn’t need more money.”
Mendelson said there’s no need for any service cuts related to a reduction in overtime pay. Next fiscal year’s budget includes enough funding to fully fund staff levels so that minimal overtime is needed, Mendelson said.
But the bigger issue, he added, is that Rubin’s mismanagement of the department has led to unchecked overtime spending.
Rubin has allowed more than $340,000 in overtime to be paid to salaried managers and allowed a small group of employees to rack up huge amounts of extra pay, including two firefighters who made more than $100,000 in overtime pay last year.
And Mendelson characterized the February snowstorms as a “orgy of opportunity” for fire department employees to earn massive amounts of overtime. The city paid $1.1 million in overtime alone for the fire department during one pay period.
Rubin, who said he’s not proud of his department’s overtime problems, shot back that his department provided exemplary service during the snowstorms and Mendelson’s comments were a low blow.
“I couldn’t be any prouder of them,” Rubin said.
