Former Ore. Firefighter Gets $103K Settlement

Nov. 21--A state board has ordered the city of Portland to make Tom Hurley, a firefighter-turned-chef who went back to firefighting last December, "whole" for at least three years of lost disability payments.

The city cut the payments off when Hurley refused to return to work in 2007.

The state Employee Relations Board this month ordered the city to not only to pay the estimated $103,000 in lost disability payments, but to add 9 percent annual interest.

Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who dubbed Hurley the "poster child" for the abuses to the city's taxpayer-funded public safety fund before voter-approved reforms in 2006, is livid. He has argued that Hurley only returned to the Fire Bureau last year to help boost his pension and because his restaurant businesses had failed. Hurley is eligible to retire Sept. 10, 2013.

"It's kind of a slap in the face, " Saltzman said Monday. "To have this still festering in our system, it's just really galling to me."

The city plans to appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The city fired Hurley in 2007. But he returned to a low-hazard fire building inspector's job last Dec. 23 after a deal brokered by Fire Commissioner Randy Leonard. Before that, Hurley hadn't worked as a firefighter in 17 years after reporting injuries to his knee and back. During that time, he collected disability.

Records show an independent medical examiner said in 1995 that Hurley could return to work. Instead, the fund's board sent Hurley to another doctor and he remained off work. The disability fund paid to send him to the French Culinary Institute of New York in 2000.

He ran an upscale French restaurant in Northwest Portland called Hurley's before selling it and opening a restaurant and bar in Seattle. The restaurants failed and he was out of work as of March 2010.

After voters approved reforms to the public safety fund in 2006, the fund started a "return to work" program for injured police and firefighters. The fund ordered Hurley to start training as a fire inspector in 2006. He refused, noting he was operating restaurants at that time.

"At this time, Grievant (Hurley) was working 12 to 14 hours a day as an executive chef overseeing a new restaurant in Seattle he had opened in November 2006," the board's ruling says.

Hurley also argued that as a disabled worker who had undergone vocational retraining and was actively employed in another field, he couldn't be required to retrain as a firefighter, state records show.

Because of Hurley's restaurant commitments, the city gave him the chance to reschedule training, but he never did. The fund cut off his disability benefits and terminated him in 2007.

Hurley never appealed. Instead, the Portland Fire Fighters Association filed a grievance against the city on his behalf.

An arbitrator in January 2010 granted Hurley $103,000 for three years of lost disability payments and $3,200 in monthly benefits, a decision Saltzman then feared could open the door for other injured firefighters and police to challenge the city's return-to-work program. The arbitrator ruled the city couldn't force an injured worker to return to a newly created, light-duty job without bargaining wages and hours.

The city didn't follow the ruling, arguing that the arbitrator overstepped his authority and arbitration doesn't cover the fund, a separate entity.

At the time, Commissioner Nick Fish, a former labor lawyer, noted that no other beneficiary of workers' compensation or the Public Employee Retirement System's benefits has sought remedies through arbitration.

But the Employee Relations Board disagreed, saying the city, not the fund, must pay Hurley.

"We emphasize that the Arbitrator's award obligates the City, and not the Fund, to pay the Grievant," its ruling said. "The Arbitrator did not order the Fund to do anything; the City is free to get the money to pay the Grievant from any department, division or fund it chooses."

-- Maxine Bernstein