Scranton Firefighters Challenge Layoff
A group of firefighters and police officers in Scranton, Pennsylvania, have filed suit to reverse a layoff decision that they claim violates a local ordinance. Mayor Chris Doherty ordered the layoffs on July 29, 2011 seeking to save roughly $212,000 this year and $700,000 next year.
The suit filed in Lackawanna County Court alleges the mayor “has an undeniable, clear and ministerial duty to maintain minimum staffing levels of 137 and 150 in the fire department and police department” and seeks a writ of mandamus to compel him to rescind the layoffs. Local ordinances specify the minimum levels of firefighters and police officers and the city council has refused to reduce those numbers despite being asked to do so by the mayor. In fact, last December the council overrode the mayor’s veto of the minimum staffing requirement.
According to the data in my Fire Litigation Database, this is at least the 24th suit in the past 2 years where firefighters and/or unions in the US have sought to block a layoff via a lawsuit.
Mr. Varone,
I find this to be a very timely article given the recnet announcements from several states regarding the potential to layoff many firefighters. The community in which my husband is employed is currently attempting to do the same thing. However, the fire department is also the EMS agency for the city as well as for surrounding communities.
I went to the city council meeting held this week and was shocked that many of the council members were not even aware that most of the FireFighters are also paramedics that run the ambulance! The city council stated they want the focus to start being on the ambulance, however, with only 5 firefighters on per shift, it will be impossible to continue to deliver the current level of care they have been providing. This includes intercepts with outlying community EMS agencies, Interfacility transfers, and 911 emergency response. The proposal the chief came up with was to incorporate the volunteer FD to assist with fire calls. However, from my understanding at the meeting, volunteer firefighters are not trained to the same standards as the city fire department.
What is the cities legal responsibility for the citizens? If they have a level of service now, how is it possible to not only take it away, but to also make it worse??? The current proposalby the chief is to only run one ambulance instead of two. Which means if the hospital has a transfer, that will leave the city without an ambulance for almost three hours.
The mayor is very anti-fire (he is the former police chief)
Legally speaking, I feel that if the city has a current level of care they are able to provide, they need to maintain that; if they do not, people will die. And no, I am not being overly dramatic. We live in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest level II trauma center being more than 45 miles away.
The fire department has one of the most aggressive cardiac protocols in the state, and has been praised by the cardiologists for the timely care the STEMI patients have recieved. However, the mayor stated that perhaps the fire department will just have to stop providing stemi care to the hospital.
Renee
There seems to be a very cold wind blowing through the country these days. It is an uncaring, unsympathetic, cynical breeze. The politicians are riding on it.
Proving that a citizen’s death (or even a firefighter’s death) has been caused by budget cutbacks will be very very difficult. I use this analogy: You have a large wagon that should require 4 horses to pull it. If for financial reasons the wagon is pulled by three horses, and one of the horses suffers a heart attack and dies, how do you prove the horse would not have had the heart attack anyway?
It seems that many people don’t care about the level of fire and EMS service they have – or care more about keeping their taxes low. Public employees are villianized while the Wall Street bandits are forgotten. And then something like the Alameda drowning incident occurs and you would think the public would wake up and hold the politicians accountable for cutting such a vital program ….. but no… the public blames the greedy, lazy firefighters. Many people thought the Alameda firefighters should have found a way to effect a water rescue even though the water rescue program had been eliminated! Its like blaming the two surviving horses for not doing more to help the one that had the heart attack. No asks why there there were only 3 horses pulling the wagon. You just can’t win.
So to answer you question can the city be held liable (legally or morally) – for cutting services: theoretically yes, realistically (as crazy as it sounds) the firefighters will be as likely to get blamed as the city. That is a sad state of affairs.
Mr. Varone,
Thank you for the reply. How would this affect the ISO rating? Currently, I believe the city of Antigo (Wisconsin) has an ISO rating of 4 (I believe). I was informed when I confronted the city council (by the mayor and the clerk-treasurer) that this would have no affect on the ISO rating. I strongly disagree; however, I do not know where to find the resources to refute their claims. I was told the ISO rating is only affected by the water supply; however, if there are no firefighters to put water on the fire, having a good water supply does not do anyone any good.
Thoughts or Ideas?
Thanks,
Renee
Renee
The ISO looks at a lot more than water supply – but water supply does account for alot of the final score. It is possible for reductions in apparatus and staffing to lower ISO ratings but given the complexity of the ISO process it is hard to estimate it.
As for the need for there to be firefighters to get the water onto the fire, I could not agree with you more. NFPA 1710 might be a good place to start.
Thank you!
Time to get real. Firefighters are necessary but only as a modest salaried employee with no eternal benefits or retirement. Provide a matching 401K
No more parasitic existence..
Really? You mean treat them like they are just above entry level McDonald’s employees… turn them into glorified Walmart greeters… That’s the kind of person you want walking through your home when no one is around and the fire alarm goes off? To help your loved ones if they are deathly ill or seriously injured? To deal with the kinds of disasters that firefighters routinely have to deal with?
Because collectively we had to bail out the Wall Street millionaires? Seriously?
It is easy to trivialize what firefighters do day-in and day-out because most people have no idea about what we do until they need us – but surely you understand there is an impact to reducing benefits. Think about it next time you are in a doctor’s office or ER. Think about the impact on the level of care you would get if those running the facility had reduced the doctors income and benefits to minimum wage – or the “modest salary” – you describe… or the next time you are sitting on a jet if you knew the pilot was paid minimum wage. The best would leave the profession and the rest… well… there’s a saying, you throw peanuts you get monkeys. When lives are at stake – we need to do better than throw peanuts.
Well designed pensions actually benefit fire departments by retaining experienced employees. 401Ks make employees portable – free to leave at any time – taking all the training and experience with them – training and experience that is a valuable investment that the community has made in them.