District fire academy recruits will spend part of their training time serving drinks and passing out cake at a council member’s ward parties rather than learning how to save lives and fight fires.
D.C. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin has assigned the 32-member recruiting class and its instructors to serve as waiters and hosts at a Holiday Bash on Monday hosted by D.C. Councilman Jim Graham. This comes four months after Rubin ordered the recruits to help with Graham’s 63rd birthday at the Columbia Heights Community Center.
Graham said he’s been assured by Rubin that the parties don’t take the recruits away from their training, but if they do, he said, he “will respectfully decline their service.”
“I don’t want any controversy over this,” Graham said.
Rubin said the parties are community events. Working at them helps introduces the rookies to the public and reinforces the lesson that the firefighter’s job is about community service, Rubin said. The recruits help out by serving lunch, pouring soft drinks and helping invalids out of vehicles, Rubin said.
“The first time that a firefighter puts a hand on an individual should not happen during an actual emergency,” Rubin said.
Dan Dugan, president of the D.C. Fire Fighters Association, said some community participation is good, but the recruits need to be at the training academy so they can be effective once they get out on the streets.
“We certainly don’t want our recruits to be rented out,” Dugan said.
Kenny Lyons, head of the District’s paramedics union, said using District employees to further aid a political figure, such as a D.C. Council member, is a “woeful violation” of the Hatch Act. The federal law prohibits D.C. government employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty or in uniform.
“He’s using the recruits to write a political check,” Lyons said. “This totally blows my mind. It’s either ignorance or arrogance or both, but it’s no excuse for violation of the law.”
Graham and Rubin said the parties were not political and not a violation of the Hatch Act. Most of the partygoers were senior citizens and children. A worker at Graham’s office said Monday that the parties are by invitation only, but no one will be turned away.
Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite said Graham’s is the only party that the recruits have helped, but Rubin has called on cadets to install smoke alarms, assist residents moving out of burned-out apartments and help Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. with disadvantaged youth at a golf outing.
The parties are already factored into the training and won’t delay their graduation, Crosswhite said.
But a member of the fire department who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions said the parties cost the recruits a day of training at the academy. The recruits, who earn $44,000 a year, were ordered to take the Monday morning of the party off and come in around noon in their uniforms, when they’ll be bused to the nearly four-hour affair.
The fire department member said the duty is expected to take about six hours for traveling, cleaning and helping the residents back into their vehicles, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $4,000.
Rubin said he welcomed a review by the inspector general or Attorney General’s Office.
“I don’t know how in the world it could be [a violation]. But if it is, I’m guilty, and I will prevent it from happening again,”
Rubin said.
