Council letting abuses slide

To the Editor:

Having been a regular attendee at city council meetings for at least a decade and attending budget hearings for years, there has been one issue that has been spoken about over and over, year after year, and remains unchanged to date. That issue is the overtime abuses and cost over runs of the Warwick Fire Department. I have watched as the last 4 fire chiefs have failed to even come close to operating within the confines of the extremely generous budget that that taxpayer grants to them year after year, only to give us the middle finger wave, and repeat the performance the following year.

Tens of millions of dollars of non-reconciled overtime has been discussed for years, resulting in no reasonable explanation from any of the chiefs, with no council member attempting to perform the simplest of document research to reconcile the inconsistencies, and every year we see the same incompetent use of our tax dollars with explanations that a toddler would be embarrassed to put forth.

As an example of the incompetence, I will refer to specifics from last year’s budget hearings. Under questioning, Chief McLaughlin, Mayor Avedisian, and Finance Director Zmyslinski were unable to reconcile how sick time was accounted for. Having no line item in the budget for uniform firefighter sick time, they attempted to use the default position that sick time is included in the line item for salary. If in fact that is true, then it becomes impossible to track individual sick time. This becomes an open door for fraud.

Under questioning pertaining to the explosive overtime line item, McLaughlin indicated that “there was an enormous amount of fire fighters out sick resulting in overtime coverage”, however, the documents obtained from the city indicate that virtually no firefighter was docked a sick day.

When that line of crap failed to satisfy me, the chief back pedaling and stated that the majority of the overtime was due to special rescue training such as high elevation training etc… Unfortunately, the chief didn’t realize that the person asking the questions was aware that a 1 million dollar federal grant was given to the WFD for that specific training.

The next part of the discussion centered around a contract stipulation called “substitution”. Substitution is known as one man working a shift for another man at straight time. It’s commonly referred to within the department as “the gentlemen’s agreement”. Under the union contract on page 16 it is defined as the following:

SECTION 2. SUBSTITUTIONSThe right to substitute at any time shall be permitted, provided, however, that permission in writing to substitute must be obtained from the Battalion Chief on duty. A substitution shall be defined as a mutual exchange of time. No other form of compensation shall be allowed.

When Chief Mclaughlin was questioned directly on this issue, he testified on video, that he could produce each and every instance of substitution that was granted by the department “in writing”. The following day a public records request was made for the substitution documents in accordance with the contract requirement and the chief’s statements. The formal answer of the request given by the Chief – “NO SUCH DOCUMENTS EXIST”.

No questioning of the obvious inconsistencies came from the council Finance Chair Vella-Wilkinson, and no inquiries from the remaining members of the council. Only silence. Given the fact that the majority of the members of the city council take regular campaign contributions from the WFD union, it’s easy to understand why the council just “let it slide”.  Coincidently, as a taxpayer you should know that not only did 6 members of the council admit to not reading the new fire contract prior to voting on it, but they also took campaign donations from the department just weeks before ratifying the contract. This is all publicly available information, and the information compiled after months of research has been made readily available.

In particular, the new contract increased the unused sick pay bonuses from $345,000 to $932,500, per year for the term of this contract, and I would assume that this perk will not be given back in the near future. A perk worth tens of millions of dollars, all subsidized by you, the taxpayer, whose spokesperson, didn’t read the contract but did take union donations. God help us.  How did we get to this level of incompetence?

Let me be the one to spell it out for you, as here is what takes place. Firefighter A calls Firefighter B to work his shift (for whatever reason, say for example, to go to URI to work on a painting contract). Firefighter A calls out sick (substitution) is paid for the day, is not docked one of his 20 sick days, and Firefighter B is paid overtime for the shift covered. The scheme rotates from man to man in the department, no one is charged off a sick day, and the overtime goes thru the roof.  Now this may be my analysis, but the city documents suggest the same, and the city has offered no other documents to suggest otherwise. Let’s face it, we all know that this is happening, but the city council continues to “let it slide”. At one time or another, every member and every chief of the department is a beneficiary of the scheme.  By the way, the documents obtained by the city also reflect this.

As of this date, with all of the years of controversy over the abuses, still, no council member has requested an audit or any kind of basic investigation to reconcile what appears to be on face value, an organized fraudulent scheme. The research and documentation is available to the council members, yet they do nothing. Not one minute of questioning.

At the council meeting of Monday, Nov. 21 a purchase came before the finance committee and the formal council that rattled the meeting. For 45 minutes the finance chair and other members of the council became irate over the request to purchase 2 replacement slides for 2 playgrounds. The cost of the slides, $5,000, became the focal point of the council debate. The discussion went from cost, to need, to materials, to safety, to repair, and went on for a debilitating 45 minutes.  Playground slides, sent the finance chair spinning out of control. If only the council would spend 1/10th that amount of time discussing the real financial issues plaguing this city, such as fraud, deception, and theft, maybe, just maybe, they could accomplish something for the taxpayer.

I will offer the following as my solution. The city should purchase the 2 slides. I will contribute 50 percent of the cost. One of the slides should be erected in front of the WFD headquarters, not only for the children to play on, but also as a trophy reminder to the taxpayers from the fire department. The other should be erected inside the city council chambers adjacent to one of the windows. That way, when educated members of the public bring to light serious fiscal issues, and make reasonable requests to the council to rectify them, the council can just take the advice, the research, and the problem, open the window, and let it slide.  Rob Cote

Warwick