Mayor Vincent Gray’s pick for fire chief said he has begun cutting the overtime spending that has plagued the D.C. Fire and EMS Department for years. Ken Ellerbe, who began acting as fire chief at the start of January, said he tackled the department’s overtime budget right away.
“Overtime has been trending down,” Ellerbe said Tuesday during a D.C. Council oversight hearing . “It’s about 35 percent lower than it was previously.”
The District’s fire and emergency medical services department has busted its overtime budget for years. The department went nearly $9 million beyond budget in 2008 and $7.2 million over in 2009.
Under restrictions now in place, no one in the department is able to receive $20,000 or more in overtime within a fiscal year. That’s a big change from the previous system, which allowed some people to take home nearly $100,000 a year in overtime payments.
In the past, the department has taken operational-level employees and moved them into administrative positions. However, Ellerbe is in the process of moving them back and hiring civilians to fill the administrative positions in order to cut back on overtime.
“We’ve put 38 of our operational people back to the position they’re supposed to be at. We have cut out some of the support units that were operating based on overtime,” said Ellerbe.
Gray announced his selection of Ellerbe as fire chief in December despite earlier controversies when he left the agency to take a job in Florida.
Gray had two months to find a replacement for outgoing Chief Dennis Rubin. National searches are common when looking for key department heads in major cities, but Gray went for a familiar face in picking Ellerbe.
He was a 27-year veteran with D.C.’s fire department before leaving his deputy fire chief position in August 2009 to become fire chief for Sarasota County, Fla. Four months later, the Washington Times reported that when he left, D.C. had put then-49-year-old Ellerbe on leave without pay until after his 50th birthday ?– which would have increased his pension by $600,000. The deal fell apart when it was reported, and Ellerbe officially resigned.
Ellerbe said Tuesday that he resigned in order to avoid controversy, although he said he did nothing wrong because the deal was part of an official personnel exchange agreement.
