Three Los Angeles city firefighters have reached salary levels that rival the U.S. president, and it's not the first time some of them have appeared on lists of top government employee salary earners, according to data from a nonprofit watchdog group.
Captains Charles Ferrari and James Vlach and firefighter Donn Thompson earned nearly $1.4 million combined in salaries last year, 72 percent of which came from overtime pay, according to Transparent California, a project of the Las Vegas-based Nevada Policy Research Institute.
They earned more overtime than 600,000 workers surveyed statewide, according to the nonprofit that gathers salary data using public records act requests to public agencies.
Thompson has been appearing on overtime lists for years. A Los Angeles Times article from 1996 lists him as a top overtime earner. In 2009, the Los Angeles Daily News identified him as a top overtime earner for the year 2008.
"It's definitely a scam," said Robert Fellner, the research director for Transparent California, which provides comprehensive, searchable information on the compensation of public employees in California.
Fellner says paying overtime diverts resources from other vital services.
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"The fact that this has been going on for so long makes perfectly clear that this is a system designed to enrich the members," he said. "Overtime is for unforeseen events. When you see the same guys collecting such large amounts of overtime over such a long period it reveals that the system is being gamed."
Ferrari, Vlach and Thompson could not be reached. Tony Gamboa, the president of United Firefighters Los Angeles City, the union that represents the rank and file, did not return a call seeking comment.
In a story published in the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2016 about firefighter overtime, Thompson defended his overtime, telling the newspaper, "The first thing [people] think of is firefighters sitting around at the station, but they're not just handing out free money over here. I'm working hard. I've never spent that much time at home. I basically lived at the fire station."
Fire Department officials say the overtime figures have been rising due to staffing shortages because of retirements. The department hasn't been able to hire fast enough to fully staff the 106 stations across the city, said Battalion Chief Orin Saunders, who oversees employee relations.
[2017 UPDATED 12/19] 2017 Southern California Images in the News
In 2014, the department was short every day about 400 firefighters, a gap that needed to be filled through overtime. Today, that figure is about 280. That figure is expected to be 140 next year, said Peter Sanders, a department spokesman. The department is authorized for 3,300 sworn personnel and staffs stations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
The department has a complicated schedule that has built-in overtime. Firefighters are guaranteed at least 12 hours overtime in any given 27-day deployment period, unless they call in sick or take a holiday off, Saunders said.
Firefighters can volunteer for overtime shifts on a rotation, with the firefighter who has the least amount of overtime up first for overtime. The average salary for rank and file firefighters is $117,505 with the average overtime amount $57,721 while the average overtime worked is 898 hours, or more than 37 days of overtime, Sanders said.
Sanders said the agency had a five-year hiring freeze that ended in 2014 but retirements and attrition continued, creating additional vacancies that needed to be filled through overtime.
"As we have been placing dozens of recruits in the field every year since 2014, we have been able to catch up on those vacancies, which reduces overtime opportunities," he said.
