Alarming Rise for NY Firefighter OT, Pensions

June 14 -- SYRACUSE, NY -- Fifteen years ago, a Syracuse mayor saw a way to save a few bucks.

Matt Driscoll was negotiating a contract with the firefighter's union. The city wanted to get rid of a rule that let firefighters "vault" unused compensatory time and cash in on it just before retirement. The firefighters wanted a more lucrative pension benefit.

So they struck a deal that, at the time, saved the city millions. The union got its benefit. The city nixed the vault rule and skipped a raise for firefighters. Now, 15 years and two mayors later, the full cost of that deal is being realized as pensions and overtime costs rise.

The deal slashed city spending, but boosted the burden on the state retirement system by fostering a system in which firefighters rack up overtime in their final year, leading to higher pensions.

The state gets no say on how the city doles out overtime, and the city doesn't have to pay a retiree's pension. That leaves little ability or incentive to fix the system.

There are six Syracuse retirees with pensions greater than $100,000. Five of those are firefighters who retired this decade (the sixth is a cop).

For the Fire Department's top overtime earners, the pension benefit can lead to a pension larger than their base salary. It's something the union president said he's trying to corral, with help from new leadership in the department. Retirees attribute high overtime payouts to budget cuts - fewer employees doing more work.

The top Syracuse pensioner is Stephen J. Cavuto, 59, a firefighter who retired two years ago as a deputy chief. His pension is $126,900 a year - more than he made in most of his 31 years on the job and more than his $104,000 salary the year he retired.

Statewide, New York's pension program pays nearly $11 billion to retired cops, firefighters and local government workers each year, not including teachers. That's a little more than the annual budget of Iceland. It's a figure that doubled over the last 10 years, as six-figure pensions have become more common, especially among cops and firefighters.

One-year benefit

Over the last eight years, 10 Syracuse firefighters - mostly district chiefs or deputy chiefs - retired with pensions higher than $90,000, due in large part to big sums of overtime at the end of their careers.

The Fire Department uses a one-year final average salary benefit. A pension is based on total pay in someone's final year, instead of an average of three years like many pension benefits. For one year, then, you can sacrifice your free time to boost the payout you'll get (free of state income tax) for the rest of your life.

At the time the one-year benefit was adopted in 2003, the decision saved the city millions. Not only did the city get rid of the vault rule, it was able to skip a raise for nearly 300 people.

Since then, however, annual overtime costs for the department have risen from $1.4 million to $4.7 million.

The department also has 21 fewer firefighter positions now than it did then, according to the city budget. The fire chief said the increasing overtime costs are a result of doing more work with fewer people.

Cavuto, the city's top pensioner, retired in 2016 after 31 years of service. He made $68,000 in overtime in his final year on the job, according to records from the state comptroller's office. In a typical year, Cavuto made between $12,000 and $18,000 in overtime, according to city pay records. Those numbers jumped sharply in his final few years. His regular pay rose as well.

Cavuto attributes that jump to his duties as a deputy chief. He was the lone chief in charge of approving new construction during a boom in city building (among other duties). His hours also increased after a district chief who shared some of his responsibilities died in early 2015.

"There was a tragedy," Cavuto said. "As he was dying of cancer his productivity dropped off and I picked it up. I wound up working more. It wasn't anything magical."

It was up to Cavuto to meet with developers and sign off on new projects. More often than not, he had to work around their schedules. During the construction of Destiny USA, for example, there was a financier involved from Italy. Cavuto had to attend regular 5 a.m. meetings to accommodate someone across the globe.

All those extra hours, he said, don't come without a cost. He had to work, a lot.

"It took a toll on home life," he said. "I missed birthdays and holidays. I always kept a bag with a change of clothes in it. I never went home at night."

Loopholes in the contract

As part of the department's collective bargaining agreement, overtime is generally awarded on a rotating basis. After you take an available overtime shift, you go to the bottom of the list. If you're offered overtime and refuse, you're moved to the bottom of the list as if you accepted. The list is initially ordered by seniority, so the longest-serving members get first crack at overtime. 

Union President Paul Motondo said that system ensures overtime is evenly distributed among regular firefighters, for the most part.

But the contract is riddled with loopholes. There is an exception in the contract for employees who are "offered to be put on duty," "ordered to duty" or told to "remain on duty" for various reasons by department leadership. Those hours are awarded independent of the rotating list, so if you take them, you don't lose your shot at regular overtime.

Some of that is common sense: A firefighter shouldn't be expected to drop his hose in the middle of a fire just because he wasn't up next on the overtime list.

A review of last year's overtime list, however, shows that more hours go to firefighters about to retire. Three of the four top overtime earners last year retired in the early months of 2018.

Top earners

The highest-paid person in the department last year was Lt. Joseph Galloway -- a fire investigator who retired this January after 22 years.

Galloway more than doubled his $74,000 salary in his final year, making him the fifth highest paid city employee in 2017. He made $168,500. His pension will likely be about $78,000 (as of May, the comptroller's office had not yet calculated the amount, but Galloway shared some some of his calculation paperwork with syracuse.com).

Galloway worked 1,351 overtime hours in his last year, an average of 26 extra hours per week. That's 400 hours more than the next highest person, Lt. David Hook, who also retired in January.

Galloway said in an interview that he hadn't planned to retire this year. He'd hoped to continue running the Fire Investigations Bureau under a new chief for two or three more years. But he wasn't part of the new leadership's plan, he said, so he retired.

His case is somewhat unique. He's been among the top overtime earners in the department since at least 2014. Galloway was one of only three fire investigators, and the department requires an investigator on duty at all times.

He became supervisor of the investigations bureau after the full-time supervisor position was cut, which added many administrative duties to his regular workload. That, in turn, led to lots of overtime.

"Five years ago, when I took over, I knew that would be the case," he said. "I accepted the challenge and responsibility, but I wasn't going to do it for free."

His overtime hours were especially high last year, he said, because he had two cases go to trial. Those cases involved hundreds of overtime hours in preparation, court appearances and things like depositions.

Motondo said cases like Galloway's irk the rank-and-file, who are generally more constrained by the rotating overtime list. Galloway's unit operated independent of that list, since they weren't fighting fires. 

The average firefighter worked 238 overtime hours in 2017. Those hours are usually used to make sure fire stations are staffed around the clock.

Fire Chief Michael Monds said his administration has made personnel changes to spread some duties among more members, which would cut down on some individuals working lots more overtime than others. He declined to say, specifically, what those duties were.

Monds also stressed that more than 80 percent of overtime goes to firefighters "on the trucks" and that his department has fewer people to do more work. He noted the increase in new construction in the city, as well as an increase in calls for opioid overdoses.

"We respond to all the shootings and stabbings that happen in the city. We're the first people on scene," he said. "We're trying to split duties up so it's not just one person with the overload, that will make some people not make as much money in the long run...But I can only divide up stuff so many times."

Cavuto, the retired deputy chief who started with the department in 1985, said he watched the department slash "back room" positions during his tenure. Off-the-truck duties were then split up among remaining personnel. That led to more chances for overtime.

"I joined in 1985 and you had one or two overtime [opportunities] a year," he said. "They were so rare you were expected to bring in dessert when you got one. You were getting extra money, so you brought everyone ice cream."

Overtime for the Fire Department today costs between $4 million and $5 million a year. There were about 85,000 hours of overtime worked last year. At a recent council hearing, Chief Monds - who was appointed to the position earlier this year - said the department is projected to spend around $4 million. That's down from the previous fiscal year, but still about 20 percent over budget.

Mayor Ben Walsh has budgeted for a new class of firefighters this year, which Monds said will cut down on overtime.

Cops want what firefighters get

In Syracuse, the one-year pension benefit applies only to firefighters, not police. That isn't for lack of trying, on the police department's behalf.

City Personnel Commissioner Robert Stamey said the police union has been lobbying for a matching benefit in negotiations since firefighters got it in 2003. The police and fire departments have generally matched one another for benefits. The one-year benefit for firefighters broke that trend.

"One used to get whatever the other guy got," Stamey said.

The benefit isn't the norm statewide, nor is it rare. Of the 687 fire and police departments in the state pension program, 210 use a one-year final average salary to calculate pensions, according to the state comptroller's office.

It also has limits on how much an employee's salary can increase from one year to the next and still be included in a pension calculation. Any pay increase over 20 percent from the prior year won't be used to calculate a pension.

Jeff Piedmonte, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said the benefit is a win-win for the firefighters and the city. Firefighters get to spend a year taking any available overtime shifts to get their best pension, he said, and the city gets a one-year heads up when a firefighter plans to retire. That allows the department to prepare to fill vacancies.

"It gives them an idea of who's leaving," Piedmonte said. "And if there's any extra overtime available, they've got first crack at it."

Chief Monds said at a spring council hearing he knew of four firefighters who planned to retire by July.

Piedmonte said the police department has tried for several years to get a similar benefit. The firefighters' contract includes a clause that says, essentially, firefighters will receive whatever cops get, he said. But it's not reciprocal for police.

Piedmonte said the one-year final average salary is a desirable benefit, but the police have negotiated for higher salaries, so it generally balances out.

The police union's contract with the city has been expired for two years. It will be up to Mayor Walsh to negotiate a new one in his first term. The fire union is also negotiating a new contract.

In his State of the City address in January, Walsh cited rising costs of pensions, salaries and retiree healthcare costs as some of the factors contributing to a deficit in the city. A memo prepared by his transition team identified expired labor contracts as one place to potentially save money.

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