LAPD Overtime a City Council Topic last week. Can they handle it?

The LAPD has it's own overtime considerations on overtime that the City Council is examining as part of the city budget items. "City grapples with LAPD's overtime pay," By Jason Kandel, Staff Writer http://www.dailynews.com/ci_10707094 is a story that appeared in the DAILY NEWS on April 17, 2009, a little earlier than the Fire Department's overtime story. The LAPD has it's overtime cost rising over the last 10 years but the workforce has been relatively stable, and that's caused concern.

Sizable increases in base pay - which is how overtime pay is determined -
are also part of the reason LAPD's annual overtime bill surged from about $32
million in fiscal year 1997-98 to nearly $79 million in 2007-08, according to
LAPD figures.

Greig Smith, Council Member and an LAPD Reserve officer, offered an explantion,

It's cheaper than hiring more police officers," said Los Angeles City
Councilman Greig Smith, a member of the city's Budget and Finance Committee.
"For a long time that was our reasoning. It was acceptable because it is
actually cheaper.

"It kind of spun out of control."

Regardless of what Smith says, and often it's in the form of a poor analysis or inappropriate analogy, the overtime is an increasing expense to be dealt with directly.

The city council is trying to get the budget balanced and some have asked that the mayor's plan to arrive at a 10,000 officer force by continued hiring be held off temporarily to help financially. Mayor Tony is intent on this goal, as he's in urgent need of more feathers in his cap to use in his bid for California's next Governor- as if he hasn't done enough for us at the city level already. The union, of course, would like to have more members and says that would ease the OT, which is often due to time spent in waiting in court to testify on cases.

The LAFD overtime as the city's other financial concern, will keep council busy for the near future, and satisfactory "solutions" rarely can be expected by the Council.

If you have any views of this council having some special skill or lofty ideals applied, you can forget that. Just tune in online live or on-demand to the meetings and after a few of those sessions you will either be thoroughly frustrated and disillusioned, wondering why no one runs against them, or you will be like many others who have no time to see that and become an "admirer" of these noble folks who are able to work so intently on the city's problems.

Let me tell you now, a lot of the problems were created BY them and their "lofty" ideals and ideas. Remember, each Council Member makes almost $180,000.00 cash salary a year and all have another $100,000.00 or so of benefits to help them get their job done. 15 Council Members with a staff of 20 and they've had up to 8 city cars apiece assigned full time to them and they still waste time with personal agendas for Resolutions and other items, all out of their jurisdiction, to send to D.C. or to Sacramento for those elected representative to ignore or to acknowledge courteously and then ignore, but to sound as if they are taking in such offerings.

The budget crisis comes, in part, from spending for programs without enough checking into worthiness of the programs they fund. A good deal of cronyism is showing in this area. Sometimes it's just throwing money at a problem on some "snake-oil salesman's" pitch for a cure that they are to lazy or ignorant to work on. This tradition is not new, but the dollar values increased and the assumption of continued tax money rolling in was a bad one to adopt.

So now, taxpayers get more taxes and "fees" imposed to cover the past council shortcomings in judgment and there's plans for MORE- (May 19th brings a lot of them for you to hang yourself with.)

More on LAFD Overtime story; Union publishes statement.

Yesterday's posting here about the L.A. Daily News story - "L.A. Fire Department overtime pay going through the roof," by Jason Kandel, Staff Writer- http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_12175241 -on the high cost of LAFD overtime has stirred up a lot of opinions. There is now a statement, "Overtime Issues," issued by the Executive Board of Local 112 of the firefighters union, the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. You can see that on their website, http://www.uflac.org/index.cfm?section=1

The response takes the position that the Daily News story is an inflammatory one that was purposely printed to work against the firefighters union in their contract negotiations. It also states that the overtime conditions are created by the employer and not any fault of the employees. In the end, the urging is to hire more firefighters so that the current firefighters will have better work schedules and home lives.

There still has not been any union rep coming on the radio so far. KABC-AM 790 morning host Doug McIntyre has invited Pat McOsker, President of Local 112 speak on the topic, and so far there's been no response. The author of the story Jason Kandel, Staff Writer for the Daily News, was a guest this morning and described how the story originated and how the public records request was made for the underlying data. The numbers that came out were what make this story so surprising. I don't think that accusations by the union aren't valid. Trying to somehow work against the firefighters in their contract negotiations is not the point of the story, as the findings themselves are both newsworthy as showing some management styles that appear as costly approaces to personnel management, and secondly, the costs are entirley borne by the taxpayer. All this is when we have a city budget that is deeply in the red, making all expenses important to consider and "high" expenses deserving of special attention.

A Fire Commission member was interviewed on KABC radio this morning and did not have specific explanations for the showing made by the news story. He asked that they be given a few weeks to examine the situation before anyone criticizes the overtime conditions. It does seem that as a commission, they should have been on top of this in the first place and have information available to answer questions now. It looks like the were not aware of the condition and that it was news to them, too. Asking to hold criticism until they have a response is not a reasonable request.

Some explanation offered have shown that the job description of an employee vacancy on a shift requires that the substitution under overtime conditions calls for using an employee with the same "job classification" - for example, certain employees handle driving trucks and others handle other tasks, so the same class of employee is required if it's the ladder truck driver spot vacant on a shift, and that is who can do overtime for that vacancy and so on. That's an explanation for some of the OT going to certain persons more than others, but there still has been a big increase in OT and one employee has made a half million dollars of OT in three years, and that does not seem to be saving money. Some cross-training sounds like it might help but unions tend to resist changes.

Training, pension, and other costs for each new hire are what is said to be saved by using overtime. Still, you would seem to have a lot of tired firefighers from time to time, and a bigger work force might get you more man(woman)power in cases where lots are needed at the same time, like wild fires, and having a fresh workforce sounds like a benefit all around. There's a lot of interpretations to this, but the idea that OTHER cities don't have the same situations in OVERTIME has to make you wonder what is going on. And there's really no one in their right mind operating against firefighters, who do a necessary and worthy service for the public.

More to come from the various sources. We definitely will see what develops and what kind of solutions, if any can be found, will be called for.

L.A.F.D. overtime pay rises as Mayor spins budget

Mayor Tony gave his State of the City speech last week, telling us what we already knew- that the city was spending more money than it had. The Mayor continues to proclam the theme he's pushing, "Everyone has to share in the pain of the financial hardship." More symbolic than "painful," he's even pledging to cut an hour of his own pay. I dare say that his hour of lost pay will barely be noticed in his life style and pay rate- it's like swatting a fly at a picnic for him, but for others much lower on the pay scale, it's closer to bumping into a beehive with angry bees joining your picnic. But we can quibble later about the fallacies of his speech and actions. Meanwhile, the story of the L.A. Fire Department "overtime costs" continuing to rise has surfaced in numerous news outlets (but not much in the L.A. Times here) and there's been a lot of views on "why" this is happening, and "what" it means, and "what" cutting might do to hurt the public and "what's" responsible.

All well and good to find these things out, but as the "powers that be" start to look for solutions as to this aspect, you are witnessing a "circling of the wagons," a normal behavior when there's an agency, company or department of any group that comes under scrutiny of any sort, especially when it has to do with money operations.

The L.A. Daily News is on the topic, "L.A. Fire Department overtime pay going through the roof," By Jason Kandel, Staff Writer, April 19, 2009. [http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_12175241 link earlier omitted in error.]

The story observes that,

Los Angeles firefighters now average six times more overtime than their counterparts in Chicago, five times more than in Houston and two times more than
in San Diego - a city that has roughly the same ratio of firefighters-to-residents as Los Angeles.

Some of the information is an eye-opener, to say the least.

The Daily News analysis found:

--56 firefighters earned at least $100,000 in overtime on top of their annual salaries last year, up from three in 1999 and 10 in 2005.

--The average Los Angeles firefighter earned about $36,500 in overtime in 2008, compared with $29,000 in 1999. Their average salary and overtime compensation totaled $117,000.

--The department's top earner racked up a total of $570,276 in overtime in the last three years, including $206,685 in 2006. His three-year overtime total was nearly double his base salary for that period.

The story also includes views on why the overtime situation is justified and may still be cheaper than hiring more persons to fill the need. It's something that's been going on for years and growing. You have to wonder why some of the solutions were not considered earlier. It has to come to reaching this "city budget crisis" for any examination of internal operations to come to the light of day.

You might check the Daily News story and form your own impressions. The story is being treated in assorted ways by different people and groups. The KTLA TV news story, Report: Los Angeles Fire Department Racking Up Overtime states "The Los Angeles Fire Department is apparently under fire for racking up the overtime." While it tries to handle this topic delicately, adding the word, "apparently," does appear to be hedging the bet needlessly. Firefighters and a fire department are essential components of city services. But that still creates no entitlement to "carte blanche" terms as an expense. No one wants to see the loss of city services or the unnecessary spending of tax dollars. The city needs to cut expenses or collect more money overall and this area looks like it could use some changes.

I heard one question on the radio about whether as some calculate, that a pension is calculated with the highest yearly (or series of years) income used as the base to set the pension value. So "spiking" the pay with lots of overtime has the real benefit to come up for an even longer lasting benefit. That is just someone's speculation and there's not anything to say if that would apply to city service in any way, but if it does, there's another bit of motivation for an employee to keep up earning the overtime hours.

Neither losing services or paying more taxes is a choice that city residents will enjoy. But that's the way that the Mayor is begining to build his case. I think that there's a need to get into this topic before the city goes entirely down the drain. (I am still trying to see how the Mayor's "Summer Midnight Basketball" pet program fits in as an additional expense to a service-slashing endangered parks and recreation dept.)

If we think this is all part of operating a big city and we have to just suck it up, then I ask, "Why don't other big cities have the same catastrophic sized budget conditions?" Management would be the word you might look for, good management, actually. We don't have that. Look for more taxes- sales taxes- to be the way out for those who see taxes rising to meet expenses instead of better management. Check how much is going to sales taxes NOW and think about another 1% here and .5% there. I say we need to check "expenses" and if current management (Mayor and City Council) can't do it, then we need new attitudes and new people without that DNA spending gene so prominently operative to be our leaders.

On top of all this financial chaos, Mayor Villaraigosa continues to have his eye on the prize, in this case, it's the Governor's office. Villaraigosa's speech says "share the pain" and still no layoffs in city service- he does not want to have anyone angry at him, not city employees or trades unions or anyone who could possibly be a vote. There's some real wheeling and dealing going on by Tony to try to keep his chance at being Governor of California within his grasp, so keep that in mind as you read more on the city scene. "It's not all as it appears to be," is the punchline to a colorful story involving cellmates in prison, told to me years ago in a different setting to illustrate the point. These are words to keep in mind to apply regularly in connection to current events.