By Bruce Eggler
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company

NEW ORLEANS — The tangled, long-running dispute over how much money New Orleans firefighters should be making has become too complicated for City Hall to figure out, and the whole issue has been dumped in the lap of the Fire Department's administrative staff.

A May 21 memo from Assistant Fire Superintendent Edwin Holmes to all department personnel reported that the headquarters staff was suspending other business to focus on what Holmes called an "unprecedented, monumental task:" calculating how much money is due to about 650 firefighters.

Because the task involves about 3,000 separate computer transactions, the memo said, the Fire Department's "administrative staff will be working on this on a full-time basis," plus overtime hours, and "will be suspending as many other administrative functions as reasonably possible."

"The city had hoped to accomplish this through massive computer programs, as opposed to individual computer transactions," Holmes wrote. "However, it has been determined that that will not be possible."

At issue is how much back pay firefighters are owed under the rules that went into effect early this year when the city, after losing a series of court rulings, agreed to implement state-mandated individual longevity raises that it had refused for decades to pay.

The city began paying firefighters at the new rates in late January, but it also was supposed to make those rates retroactive to Sept. 1. That's where the problem arose.

Chief Deputy City Attorney Joseph DiRosa, the city's chief negotiator on firefighter pay issues, said the city's computerized payroll system is set up to handle longevity raises under the city's civil service system, but it couldn't deal with retroactively implementing a different set of longevity raises.

Efforts to write computer programs to solve the problem failed, meaning that each firefighter's back pay must be determined through a series of individual calculations and then reported to the Civil Service Department for confirmation.

But the pay dispute is much more complicated than that, and the calculations being done at fire headquarters do not take into account the latest developments in the legal dispute between the city and Fire Fighters Association Local 632.

At the same time the city implemented the state-mandated longevity raises in January, it also began paying a 10 percent across-the-board raise that the City Council approved for firefighters last fall over Mayor Ray Nagin's opposition. Yet despite the supposed double set of raises, many firefighters reported they were receiving far less money than they had expected, with some saying their new paychecks actually were smaller than in the past.

City officials said that was because they had stripped away credit for previous city longevity raises that should no longer apply when the state-ordered raises were implemented. They said firefighters were not entitled to "double dip," or benefit from two different sets of longevity raises.

City civil service rules give employees a 2.5 percent raise after their first year and then every fifth year. The state law gives firefighters a 2 percent raise each year from their third through 23rd years, meaning the state raises accrue four times faster during those 20 years than the longevity raises that all other city employees get.

Civil District Judge Kern Reese ruled against the city in March, saying it had to pay firefighters both the city and the state longevity raises, although not both raises in the same year. He also ordered the city to include state supplemental pay and special millage-based pay in calculating the base pay on which raises are calculated. Excluding those two sources of money from the base on which the 10 percent raise was figured could cost a firefighter $500 a year.

The city has appealed Reese's ruling to the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, which has agreed to hear the case. The city also has asked the higher court to suspend the effect of Reese's decision until the appeal is decided.

The appeals court has not said when it will rule on either city request. Meanwhile, the current pay calculations do not take Reese's March rulings into account, meaning that further recalculations could be needed when those issues finally are decided.

Longevity rules
The city's appeal says a 1999 ruling by Civil District Judge Robert Katz awarded the city a credit in the calculation of firefighters' "back pay and future pay" for "any payments" made under the city's civil service longevity rules. Reese's ruling would deny the city that credit, DiRosa said.

The city also is challenging Reese's refusal to award it credits to which it claims it is entitled for discretionary pay raises granted to firefighters during the 1970s. A 2003 ruling of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal said the city would receive credit for such raises, DiRosa said.