Here’s a simple way to find more money to hire more firemen and buy more fire-fighting equipment in Orange County: Cut O.C. firemen’s extravagant pay and benefits from $175,000 a year on average to $150,000. (Some even made as much as $268,000 a year.)
At $150,000, they still would be making double the average family income for a resident in Orange County.
Cutting their pay $25,000 would be a reduction of 1/7th. That would mean their forces could be augmented by that amount — or a little less, if some of the saved money is used for buying new equipment. That would be a substantial increase in any government department, especially one as critical as this one.
Alternatively, why not privatize the fire department?
Myblog's Blog 
October 29, 2007 at 11:54 am |
[…] that more government always is better, but ignore the issue of internal government management. John Seiler has a good blog here about the way firefighters have spent the bulk of their budget on exorbitant pay and benefits. Had […]
November 1, 2007 at 3:26 pm |
John. What is the proper pay for a firefighter? Can you unequivocally guarantee that privatization would lead to lower compensation and better service? The largest provider of private fire protection is the Rural Metro corporation. After years of protecting the city of Scottsdale, AZ they gave up that contract. Their stated reason was that contract no longer fit into their business model. What that means is they couldn’t maintain the response criteria necessary to remain profitable. One of the reasons why many cities are reluctant to privatize fire or EMS services is the track record of the companies providing that service. Rural Metro gave Scottsdale about a year to start a fire department with literally nothing since even the station and communications infrastructure was owned by the corporation. AMR Ambulance gave the city of Newport Beach 72 hours notice it was pulling out of the city and then left 48 hours later. If you don’t understand the significance of those actions I can’t help you.
May 3, 2009 at 12:35 am |
The pay is robbery. They should make them work in LA 2 days a week to give a break to real firefighters. The sheriffs are another robbery pay level much more than troops in Iraq get paid & there is so much corruption similar to Mike Corona.