By Scott Daugherty
The Maryland Gazette
Copyright 2006 Capital Gazette Communications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
The county Fire Department overspent its annual overtime budget by $5 million in the last fiscal year - twice as much as it predicted and $2.77 million more than what’s budgeted for this year.
Now several County Council members are afraid the same thing will happen this year, as the department plans to launch a new fourth shift of firefighters Jan. 1. Currently, county firefighters work one 24-hour shift and get two days off. Starting next year, they’ll work 24 hours and get three days off.
“My gut feeling is that they will exceed their budget again,” said Councilman Ron Dillon Jr., of Pasadena. He believes that spreading the current number of firefighters over four shifts will just lead to more overtime.
“Doesn’t that make sense if we are doing this much (overtime) with three shifts?” said Councilman Pamela Beidle, of Linthicum. “I’m very, very concerned about it.”
The new shift, which was born out of union negotiations, actually goes against the wishes of a special committee formed to address overtime problems. That committee, appointed by County Executive Janet S. Owens in August 2003, proposed ending the department’s 24-hour shifts for a combination of 10- and 14-hour shifts.
Still, Chief Ronald D. Blackwell is “cautiously optimistic” that the department will stay within its $5.8 million overtime budget for this fiscal year - noting that the department spent only $767,000 on overtime in July and August, down from about $1.3 million in the same two months last year. He added that new restrictions on leave will go into effect Jan. 1, making it harder for firefighters to take off and therefore limit some overtime.
That said, Chief Blackwell admits that his staff doesn’t know what the fourth shift will do to overtime.
“The optimism is tempered by the caveat that we don’t really know what will happen,” he said. “We still don’t have any experience with this department working with four shifts. There are some unknowns.”
Not that bad
Chief Blackwell blamed last year’s overtime issues on a push to hire and train more than 140 new firefighters for the fourth shift. He said the department wasn’t able to hire as many fully trained paramedics as he expected, a miscalculation that forced him to pull firefighters off the street and send them to college. Of the department’s current 820 firefighters, 135 are still attending the county fire academy or a community college.
Chief Blackwell said in December that sending that many firefighters to school at once would force the department to spend “at least” $2.5 million more than he had planned. But in March, he dismissed a warning from County Auditor Teresa Sutherland that the department could go $5.25 million over budget.
“It should be less than that,” he said at the time.
Chief Blackwell argued last week that the department didn’t really spend $5 million because it saved $1.2 million on unpaid salaries, not to mention unpaid pensions and benefits. He also noted that the federal government paid back some of that money - about $500,000 - because the county spent hundreds of overtime hours helping the people of Louisiana recover from Hurricane Katrina.
Some overtime also is necessary to safeguard the county, Chief Blackwell said. Specifically, he recalled how firefighters worked long hours to search for the body of Capital-Gazette Newspapers Publisher Philip Merrill, rescue people from the June floods in west county, and treat American citizens flying into BWI-Thurgood Marshall Airport after fleeing Lebanon in July.
“Those things seem to get forgot,” he said.
In all, the county spent $8,572,888 on overtime for firefighters overtime during the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to statistics released by the county last week. Only $3.5 million was budgeted for overtime in fiscal year 2006 - $2.77 million for firefighters and $733,000 for supervisors who cover other officers’ shifts.
The department budgeted $5.8 million for overtime in this fiscal year - $4.4 million for firefighters and $1.4 million for supervisors.
Demanding answers
Mrs. Beidle and Mr. Dillon called on Chief Blackwell to do more to curb overtime in May as he presented the department’s $89.9 million spending plan. They specifically told him to get more involved in the hiring process of new firefighters to curb escalating attrition that’s driving up overtime.
Mrs. Beidle questioned whether the department was hiring people who don’t really understand what it means to be a firefighter and emergency medical technician. According to data released by the county auditor in May, 125 firefighters have left the department in the past three years, and 49 of those quit within a year of being hired.
Many councilmen still believe that the overtime is a symptom of a larger problem with attrition and hiring. And although they know the department has been coping with overtime issues for years -and even acknowledge that Chief Blackwell inherited the problem from his predecessor - they still expect him to live by his budget.
“I don’t know what the answer is, but the fire department needs to figure it out,” Mrs. Beidle said.
She was eagerly awaiting an audit of the department’s retention problems, but Ms. Sutherland said that audit won’t be complete until late October.
Councilman Barbara D. Samorajczyk said she wants to see a formal plan for how Chief Blackwell plans to limit overtime.
“We need a clear outline of all the factors that go into this problem and what we are doing to address each one,” she said.
To help the department manage its money - and particularly its overtime issues - Chief Blackwell has already decided to replace one battalion chief with a “fiscal affairs manager.” That person will handle the department’s day-to-day expenses and help it “get a better handle” on finances, Chief Blackwell said. The department is still in the hiring process for that position.
He commended Deputy Chief Bob Ray’s handling of the department’s money, but noted that he wasn’t hired to write a budget.
“His training is in firefighting, not finance,” Chief Blackwell said.
Overtime peril
The last time the fire department spent this much on overtime, the chief lost his job.
In 2003, Roger C. Simonds Sr. overspent his $6.8 million overtime budget by $1 million. He paid firefighters more than $135,000 in overtime to renovate a department warehouse and office space in Millersville. The County Council had previously denied the department funding for that work.
Ms. Owens fired Chief Simonds in March 2004 and hired Chief Blackwell, previously of the Prince George’s County Fire Department, five months later.