Mayor Rahm Emanuel does not plan to appeal an arbitrator's order to rehire four firefighters who were fired for padding mileage reports, but continued his tough talk on employee misconduct.
"I give no quarter to anyone who does anything wrong or violates the public trust," Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference Friday. "When it comes to a culture and atmosphere, we condone no violation of the public trust. None. Zero tolerance."
The mayor was responding to a ruling by arbitrator Edwin Benn, who on Thursday reversed the firings of three Chicago Fire Department lieutenants and a firefighter who were among 54 Fire Prevention Bureau personnel who padded their mileage reports.
Benn ordered that the four instead should be suspended without pay for 40 days. Emanuel said the arbitrator concluded the firings were "out of sync with what happened here," and the mayor gave no indication he disagreed with that assessment.
It was the second time that Benn ordered the same four firefighters be returned to work after they were fired for misconduct. Four years ago, the city fired them for accepting and not reporting pay from private companies to do weekend pump inspections at high rises, but Benn ruled that suspensions were more appropriate.
In both cases, the firefighters and supervisors violated city rules, but nevertheless engaged in conduct that had been condoned within the department for decades, Benn concluded. Padding mileage accounts was encouraged and "almost a work rule," he wrote.
In his recent ruling, Benn also ordered the city to rehire a captain and lieutenant who the city refused to rehire after they resigned in the face of mileage-padding allegations. They will be docked 40 and 25 days pay, respectively.
Another 44 firefighters will have their 30- to 60-day suspensions reduced to a range of 20 to 40 days. Four others who resigned with allegations pending are unaffected by Benn's ruling.
The city's Law Department doesn't intend to appeal the ruling.
"There have to be extreme circumstances in play to appeal and overturn an arbitrator's decision and they're not present here," said spokesman Roderick Drew.
Inspector General Joseph Ferguson recommended the firing of all the firefighters that his office determined had falsified their mileage reimbursements to the tune of $100,000 in 2009. But then-Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff meted out lesser discipline in all but the four cases.
Benn compared Ferguson to the Queen of Hearts from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," a character who was fond of declaring "Off with their heads!" Ferguson, he wrote, risked becoming "a powerless entity which is not to be taken seriously," much like the Queen.
Ferguson's office declined comment Friday.
Copyright 2012 - Chicago Tribune
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
