Update: Watch entire hearing on DC Fire & EMS Department overtime spending. More fireworks between Rubin & Mendelson.
Click here to watch the entire hearing. Chief Rubin’s testimony begins at the one-hour mark.
“I do take exception to you saying things in such a negative tone and in a negative way”. The words of DC Fire & EMS Chief Dennis Rubin as he scolded Councilmember Phil Mendelson for his line of questioning at a hearing earlier today on the department’s overtime spending. The two have clashed many times in the past and today was no exception.
Mendelson has long complained about Chief Rubin greatly over spending his overtime budget. The chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary has held monthly hearings focusing on OT and has proposed greatly slashing next year’s overtime budget. The chief believes such a move will mean fewer firefighters, EMTs and paramedics on the street to answer calls.
Today was their first public meeting since Mendelson sent a letter requesting Rubin be investigated for over spending his budget and the chief’s emailed response to the department listing his concerns over the councilmember’s preliminary cuts to the FY 2011 budget. You can read both documents here.
The flash point today came over the department’s upstaffing during the blizzards of the past winter. Chief Rubin took offense to Mendelson calling the snows an “orgy of opportunity”.
The D.C. Council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary has approved an initial budget that would cut $5.2 million in overtime pay for the fire department, or an 82 percent decrease from the current fiscal year. The move comes in response to projections that the fire department is on track to double its current overtime budget of about $6 million.
Rubin said his department is short-staffed by more than 170 employees, and there is “nothing that anyone can do besides fill the seats with overtime or close a fire company.”
“That’s not a threat … but it’s a statement of fact,” Rubin said.
Nonsense, said Committee Chairman Phil Mendelson, who has been an outspoken critic of the department’s chronic overtime problems.
“It’s a management issue,” Mendelson said. “He doesn’t need more money.”
