A Montgomery County firefighter who quit the force three years ago after he was found guilty of assaulting a female subordinate is currently receiving tax-free disability payments from the county.
To some county officials, it’s another example of a broken disability pension system that needs to stop approving payments for county workers if they’ve committed a crime or some other act that would get them fired.
Public safety unions have opposed those efforts. Union officials say that any of their members who are hurt on the job ought to be compensated, regardless of future or past transgressions they are accused of committing.
In August 2005, Aaron Weitzman was a lieutenant in the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service when he locked himself in a bathroom with a female co-worker, lifted up her shirt and started kissing parts of her body against her will, according to court records. A jury in December 2006 found Weitzman guilty of assault. He was sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation.
A month after the verdict, Weitzman quit the fire department with an application pending for service-related disability pay. In June 2006, he was notified that he had qualified and would receive payment going back to Jan. 20, 2006, his last day on the job.
Reached by phone, Weitzman confirmed that he was a former Montgomery County firefighter who was receiving pay for neck and arm injuries, but declined further comment.
Montgomery County Career Fire Fighters Association President John Sparks declined to comment specifically about Weitzman’s case but added: “I don’t see a connection between a job status and the disability retirement process. … They’re not intertwined.”
A county spokeswoman said Weitzman’s final salary when he left county employment was $61,558 a year, but added the county could not release information about Weitzman’s disability pay, including how much the county is paying him a year and whether he applied for disability payments before or after he was charged.
In a report last September, Montgomery County Inspector General Thomas Dagley highlighted four former Montgomery County police officers who applied for disability pay either shortly before or directly after pleading guilty to various crimes, including theft and misconduct in office. The three officers who received disability pay averaged more than $30,000 each in tax-exempt pensions last year.
Two members of the County Council and County Executive Ike Leggett have said they were working to change the way the county determined disability benefits to be able to exclude former county workers who’ve been fired for intentional wrongdoing. Union officials have promised to oppose those efforts.
