How Firefighters Bankrupted America and Other Right Wing Bedtime Stories

[McCamy Taylor]

Since policemen and firefighters put their lives on the line for the communities they serve….they must be realistic when it comes to the question of whether their pensions can be properly funded.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33190358/How-Chapter-9-Can-Solve-the-Pension-Shortfall-Crisis



You are a firefighter. Everyday, you put your life on the line, in order to protect your fellow citizens. While other people flee from the sites of disasters---fires, explosions, earthquakes, terrorist attacks---you rush in.

Due to the physically demanding nature of your work as a firefighter, you are likely to retire in your 50s---if you are lucky enough to avoid breaking your spine while rescuing a child from a burning building in your 30s or 40s. Once you are too old to work, you have 10 to 15 years to go before Social Security and Medicare kick in. No problem. The citizens who hired you to protect them promised that they would pay you a pension to help you get by when you could no longer do the job. So, you put on your uniform and grabbed an axe and got to work.

It isn’t as if you had no other career options. You could have joined the military, and defended your country abroad. As a career military retiree, you would have been entitled to a pension and health care guaranteed by the U.S. government. However, you wanted to protect Americans at home---

Now, your local government says that it is bankrupt. It can not pay its bills. Oh, and by the way, the money it was supposed to have paid into your pension fund? That money was spent on something else. Too bad for you. Maybe you would have been better off dying in the line of work….

Another thing. Did I mention that you are a greedy bastard, who has driven your fellow citizens to the verge of bankruptcy?

Vallejo is a Bay Area community of 121,000 that two years ago became the state's largest city to declare bankruptcy. Like other municipalities, its public-sector unions had driven its budget deep into the red. A report issued by the Cato Institute last September noted that 74% of the city's general budget was eaten up by police and firefighter salaries and overtime along with pension obligations.

snip

Police and fire officials can retire at age 50 with a pension that pays them 90% of their final year's salary every year for life and the lives of their spouses.
Stephen Greenhut in WSJ Opinions Online

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703625304575115551578762006.html

A financial investor recently told me that bonds are a safe investment. He must not have heard about the recent trend of cities declaring bankruptcy in order to void their pension agreements. Or maybe Wall Street thinks that tossing retired firefighters onto the garbage heap is good for American business.

I wonder if the businessmen in the World Trade Center on 9/11 thought the firefighters were too highly paid.



Some links about cities in default:

Prichard, Alabama, 1999 and 2010. Note that the city has not made pension payments to any of its 140 retirees since 2009, even though there is $600,000 in its pension fund.

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-us-federal-government/13482313-1.html

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/09/after_bankruptcy_case_gets_tos.html

Vallejo, California, 2008-10

http://www.vallejobankruptcyupdate.com/

Harrisburg, PA 2010

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37354955/More_Cities_on_Brink_of_Bankruptcy

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2010/09/02/Harrisburg-tense-on-edge-of-bankruptcy/UPI-59151283438237/

[McCamy Taylor]

1. PS This is anecdotal so I will put it here. Retired firefighters have 4 year life expectancy

according to this:

http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/retirement-where-did-the

I am sure that it depends upon where you work and that some retirees live much longer than that. But years of physical abuse of the body, heart and lungs takes its toll.

[hedgehog]

2. A lot of union contracts are written so that the pension is

based on what you earn the last few years. So steel workers, firemen, policemen etc are apt to put in crazy overtime just before retiring to try to boost their pensions. They follow the rules, then some reporter or politician makes a big stink about the money they're making. If people don't like this, next contract put a cap on overtime.

If someone earns one government job for 20 or 30 years, retires and goes out to get another government job and earns another pension, they're castigated for double dipping. Again, they followed the rules! What does earning a pension from one job have to do with earning a second pension in a different job?

[McCamy Taylor]

4. Maybe they wrote the rules to get more firefighters and police to work overtime?

It is cheaper to get your employees to work more than it is to hire more employees. Certain jobs (like medicine, law enforcment, firefighting) do not shut down at 5 pm. Your employees have to be willing to work long hours in an emergency. However, overtime is risky for police and firefighters since fatigue can make you neglect your own safety.

So, maybe these rules were put in place to fill gaps in coverage. I.e. the safety and welfare of the citizens required that overtime be encouraged. And one way to encourage it was to offer more pension. If pensions are cut now, then cities will have to start hring more firefighters to get the job done---or raise overtime pay to make it attractive. There is no free lunch on this one.

No matter how you look at it, the move to play "backsies" with pensions is going to put the public at risk. I would not consider firefighting as a career right now. I would join the Army. The Pentagon will protect its employees benefits.

[seaglass]

3. My husband is a firefighter in his early 50s, we cannot afford for him to retire.

Fortunately he is in good health and we live in a suburb so the odds are a bit better for him than for a city firefighter.

The amazing thing that people forget is 1.) he is paying into his pension and 2.) he worked for 10-15 years contributing to SS and he gets ZERO social security payments

[McCamy Taylor]

6. I am a physician and I can not imagine my 50 year old patients doing that kind of work.

Especially men. Their hearts start to weaken in their 40s. Sure, they can pass a treadmill test. But what if they have to do maximal cardiac output with low oxygen and soot and particles in their lungs for 15 or 20 minutes? Most people can stop what they are doing if they get chest pain. If you are in the middle of a raging inferno, stopping could mean dying.

[MedicalAdmin]

7. It is a rare patient who is in the kind of shape needed after 40.

My thoughts on this subject to any firefighter reading this.

Just "get lost on the way" to the next fire at a bank, wall street, insurance company, country club, or investment firm.

[McCamy Taylor]

8. But you know they wont anymore than a doctor will let a plaintiff's attorney die.

It is an avocation. The people who do it believe in it.

[seaglass]

9. I don't want to minimize my concern BUT fortunately the majority of calls

my husband responds to are medical calls/car accidents, not fires.

Maybe I SHOULD be more worried but my husband probably has a fire once every 3-4 months, a major fire maybe only 1-2x per year and no buildings over 2 stories.

He works out 1 hr every night and also does masonry on the side. He is physically fit.

And yes he is very devoted; he is also on a DMAT team and went to Haiti within a couple days after the earthquake and New Orleans a short time after Katrina.

[Swamp Rat]

5. Don't forget about the 'war of Obama's choosing', which is one reason America is bankrupt

[AsahinaKimi]

10. I wonder what some home owners in

Southern California (Those who had their homes saved) during the many fires


would say to these Republicans?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. what they want to give you for your service....

[russspeakeasy]

12. Yes they are greedy and so are the kids that get a free breakfast

because both of their parents are working 2 jobs and still
qualify for a free meal program.....speaking of greedy, what
the hell are those parents doing, hogging 2 jobs each...
Just wait until Allan Simpson finds out about the
unprecedented greed of the underemployed....

[Bombero1956]

13. it's a vicious circle

Overtime is used to cover gaps in staffing which is a consequence of not having hired enough people to do the job. I just retired with 32 1/2 years of service for my department. During my years on the job I saw our department's staff reduced from 400 + firefighters and officers to just 276. The department has 40 vacancies right now and the other positions were voted out of existence by the city council. They closed 4 stations, disbanded 5 engine companies and 4 ladder companies. We went from never having to use mutual aid to using almost every time there was a working fire. This in the name of reducing taxes and balancing budgets. I always wondered how the taxpayers in those communities felt sending their people over to our city to cover empty stations. Every time I see some clown complaining about lack of services and then wanting to reduce taxes I want to kick his ass. There was a time when people paid their taxes and understood that it paid for much needed services like Police and fire protection, teachers and road repair. Now we have government by ballot question where the loudest complainers and the deepest pockets call the shots for the majority.