Melissa Bailey Photo
The head of the city firefighters union is crying foul over a decision to reduce the number of captains and increase the number of lieutenants, saying the department is trying to circumvent the promotions process.
The budget for the current fiscal year, which began on July 1, includes a provision that 12 budget lines for fire captain salaries be reduced to $1, freeing up money for the creation of 12 new lieutenant positions.
Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said the city made the change in order to create more supervisory positions in the department, to meet a longstanding need that’s expected to increase.
Jimmy Kottage (pictured), president of New Haven Fire Fighters Local 825, called the move “immoral” and possibly illegal. He said the city should “test from the top on down.” The department should promote lieutenants to fill vacant captain positions, then add lieutenant positions, he said. To do otherwise is unfair to the existing lieutenants, Kottage said.
Kottage said he’s conferring with the union’s lawyer, Karen Torre, on the legality of the budget change. On Wednesday he sent a letter to Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez asking lawmakers to consider amending the budget.
Kottage said the department is engaging in a process known as “underfilling,” in which the department uses money allocated for salaries for members of one rank to create positions at a different rank. Underfilling circumvents the budgetary process, since the department can end up with more lieutenants than the budget allows, paid for out of money allocated for captains’ salaries.
Smuts said that’s precisely what the department is not doing. The department needed supervisors, and it went to the Board of Aldermen to create them through the budget process.
“This is something that allows us to get to the needed amount of supervisors,” agreed Assistant Fire Chief Pat Egan. Promotions testing is expensive and time-consuming, he said. The chief decided it would be better to have a lieutenants exam than a captains test given the limited number of tests the city can do this fiscal year, Egan said.
Smuts said the fire department is racking up a lot of overtime costs as a result of a lack of supervisors. That problem will only get worse as the department hires more “entry-level” firefighters.
“You’ll want to have people in place, particularly on the front line,” he said. “We want to make sure we have enough of them, and this is how we do it.”
Egan said the department could have 45 or 50 more firefighters in seven or eight months, and another 45 or 50 six months after that. “The chief wants consistent folks in those [supervisor] positions, especially when it’s mentoring new employees,” he said.
Smuts said the department plans to have a lieutenant’s exam in the next couple of months.
“If you do a captain’s test, you just move supervisors around,” Smuts said. “The way you get more supervisors is to have a lieutenant’s exam.”
The department plans to have lieutenant and battalion chief exams this year, and captain and deputy chief exams next year. In order to fill the vacant captain positions, next year’s budget will need to increase the salary line items from $1.
In the meantime, more lieutenants means less overtime for the current crop of lieutenants and more competition when it comes time for the captains exam.
Kottage, a lieutenant, said that’s not why he’s opposed to the increase in the number of lieutenants. He said firefighters of all ranks are opposed to it, because it goes against the practice of filling openings from the top down: “The majority of the guys would say it’s not right.”
“It’s a creative way to create underfilling. Just do the process the right way. Do captains, then lieutenants, then you get more supervisors,” Kottage said.
Kottage said another problem with the increase in lieutenants is that it will allow the chief to promote people to “acting captain” at his own discretion, without going through any testing process.
The department is required to have certain numbers of each rank on duty during each shift. If the department doesn’t have enough battalion chiefs, for example, the chief will make someone an “acting battalion chief” for that shift. Such supervisors are paid more for filling the role of a higher rank.
“I do believe he’s circumventing civil service,” Kottage said. He said that would be the case if any of the new lieutenants end up in acting captain spots.
“If Jimmy is concerned about the process by which acting captains are made, he can deal with that separately,” Smuts said. “That’s a separate issue. That doesn’t have anything to do with how many lieutenants there are. It has to do with how many shifts he has as acting captain. That has to do with his own self interest.”
“I think it’s all part of the same issue,” Kottage said. “Whatever they’re trying to say, I think it’s a bunch of bologna. Why would they want to go this route? It’s only going to cause them litigation.”