Dousing Fire OT -
Commish In Pension Crackdown
NY Post
2/10/09
Fire
Commissioner
Nicholas
Scoppetta plans
to rein in
discretionary
overtime in the
wake of The
Post's
disclosure that
firefighters and
FDNY officers
are racking up
huge amounts of
OT to inflate
their pensions,
aides said
yesterday.
"The fire
commissioner is
considering a
hard cap on the
amount of
administrative
overtime that
can be earned,"
FDNY spokesman
Frank Gribbon
said yesterday.
The cap would
affect several
hundred
firefighters on
light duty or in
administrative
posts, where
insiders suspect
the greatest
abuses are
occurring.
The Post revealed on Sunday that 72 percent
of uniformed members of the FDNY have retired on tax-free
disability pensions since 2004, often by inflating their
pre-retirement-year paychecks with vast amounts of overtime.
By comparison, only 19 percent of cops
qualified for disability retirements.
One veteran fire official with back
problems retired last year with a $175,000 disability pension,
an insider said.
"The real issue here is some people are
working $50,000 a year in overtime," a source said.
"How can you work those kind of hours and
be disabled?"
Overtime at the Fire Department this year
is budgeted at $194 million - the highest since the aftermath of
9/11.
Last year, the department spent $137
million on OT.
Gribbon said there's no way the FDNY would
spend the entire $194 million.
"I'm positive we're not going to reach it,"
he said, pointing out that the agency returned $23 million in OT
funds last year.
He estimated total overtime expenditures
would hit $150 million to $160 million by June 30, the end of
the 2009 fiscal year.
According to the Inde pendent Budget
Office, the most the Fire De partment has ever spent in overtime
was $195 million in 2002, right after its ranks were dec imated
in the World Trade Center attacks.
A year earlier, it spent only $82 million.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday
he would "look into" the large number of taxpayer-supported
disability pensions being dispensed by the 12-member Fire
Department pension board, where he and the comptroller serve as
the only elected officials.
"I don't know whether there are abuses or
not," Bloomberg said. "In all fairness to the Fire Department,
firefighting is a dangerous job."
david.seifman@nypost.com
