Save the firefighters from themselves!

There are public relations fires, and then there are five-alarm, image-incinerating arson jobs like the one that has engulfed the Clark County Fire Department.

In a valley overwhelmed by economic hardship, Clark County's firefighters are channeling the Strip high rollers and celebrity VIPs who don't tip.

Each year, they pile up enough overtime and callback pay to build several new parks.

This spring, when county leaders were laboring to manage huge revenue shortfalls and other well-paid, unionized workers were agreeing to take smaller pay increases to help out, the firefighters' union gave commissioners and taxpayers the middle-finger salute. They'd keep every dime of their 3 percent cost of living pay raises, their 6 percent step increases and their longevity pay boosts, thank you very much.

And last week, a Review-Journal investigation revealed that Fire Department workers routinely manipulate the schedules and duties of employees in their final years of service, significantly boosting their pay and, as a result, the pension payments they receive upon retirement. In some cases, the practice results in annual pension benefits that exceed a firefighter's final-year base salary.

Illegal? No. Bad faith? Absolutely.

Many workers lucky enough to still have jobs no longer receive matching contributions on their diminished 401(k) accounts. But starting this month, those same battered taxpayers will pick up the 3.5 percentage-point increase in the firefighters' pension contributions. Which means while you struggle to continue saving for your own old age, you're also paying the entire 37 percent match on firefighters' ample annual earnings -- including jacked-up overtime -- so they can retire early.

The department has more six-figure earners than a country club.

These garish, contracted salary and benefit increases are exacting a personal toll around the county. Last week, the County Commission heard emotional testimony from social workers about $9.3 million in proposed cuts to programs that, in particular, provide the poorest elderly with the slightest bit of dignity. Some of those cuts would not have been on the table had firefighters merely agreed to accept smaller pay increases, as police and the county's rank-and-file workers did.

The stories of sick, alone, dementia-stricken seniors were too brutal for commissioners to bear. They couldn't pull the trigger on the cuts. County mangers will have to find other places for savings.

They certainly won't get any help from the firefighters.

It didn't have to be this way. For such a politically powerful group, Clark County's firefighters have terrible political instincts. All across America, from board rooms to dining rooms, frugality is in. Excess is out. Businesses that indulge in luxury and amusement risk being eviscerated as tone-deaf, elitist wastrels.

The firefighters could have called a news conference months ago announcing that not only were firefighters giving up their cost of living raises this year and next, but they'd take reductions in their other contracted pay and benefit increases as well. As a gesture of solidarity with the valley's struggling businesses and families, they could have demanded that their giveback bolster county social services and help the valley's neediest residents.

They could have collected pay raises -- very small raises, but raises nonetheless at a time when many incomes are falling or disappearing altogether. And in return they would have received a decade's worth of political capital, bargaining leverage and public good will. Heroes, indeed.

Instead, the union's leaders folded their arms, sneered and fell back on their favorite loaded question: How much would you pay to save one of your loved ones from a burning building?

It's a preposterous proposition, but it's one I hear frequently. So I'll provide the answer any halfway decent person would give: Everything. If handing over all my assets and worldly possessions would spare my wife and children from suffering the worst kind of death, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would gladly walk away from all I've worked to build wearing only a garbage bag, if that's what it took to keep my family alive, healthy and by my side.

But if firefighters get to ask that one question, then they must answer the logical follow-up: If I'm willing to give everything to save my loved ones, how much of it would Clark County firefighters take? If I should ever call upon them to help me, would they take my IRA? My car? My son's video games? Would they back their engine up to my garage and take everything?

I've known or met a handful of firefighters in my many years here, and I can confidently answer that question for all of them and all of their colleagues: Nothing. I would give everything, and they would take nothing. So let's move beyond outrageous hypotheticals.

These are the indisputable facts: Southern Nevada has long had the highest-paid local government workers in America. Their financial security is guaranteed. Their quality of life continues improving even as yours falls. And this valley, in this economy, can't afford them all anymore.

Yes, firefighters can, on rare occasions, be called on to take sizable risks as part of their jobs. But, statistically speaking, it is far more dangerous to be a construction worker on a Strip hotel project or work the graveyard shift as a cabdriver or a convenience store clerk, and these employees aren't paid nearly as well as firefighters.

Clark County firefighters make boatloads of cash. Their 24-hour shifts enable them to work other jobs or run their own businesses for additional gravy. And no one is suggesting they give any of it up. They simply have been asked to make do with only slightly more than what they have now.

Through their union, they've said "Hell, no." The lowliest of the masses who pay them are suffering because of it.

Our heroes look like heels. Please, somebody kick down the door and save them from themselves.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.