The smoldering issue of firefighter compensation

While the derelict Moulin Rouge was, again, going up in thick, white smoke on Wednesday afternoon -- quite a visual spectacle, but hardly an all-hands-on-deck, women-and-children-first kind of event in the larger realm of breaking news -- my phone rang and a caller suggested I look out the window and across the street.

I replied that our building has no external windows, but I had, in fact, ventured outside earlier to the parking lot to confirm the billowing plume of smoke and had returned to work.

The gentleman on the phone informed me he was a firefighter. I took him at his word.

He proceeded, in a rather agitated manner, to upbraid me and the newspaper for our editorial commentaries over the past few years questioning local governments' practice of annually awarding double-digit or near-double-digit pay and benefits increases to unionized public employees -- the firefighters being among the most richly rewarded.

I did not have the presence of mind to take notes during our several-minute tete-a-tete, so I can only paraphrase his side of the discourse.

He asked: How much is it worth when your business or home is on fire?

He asked, in a rather condescending tone, just what I knew about the dangers and agonies of his job, mentioning the 100-degree heat as an example. To which I could only say that I've been covering fires and assorted disasters for more than 35 years and had at least a vicarious awareness of what the job entails and the risks involved.

He asked whether in my job there was ever a chance I might not survive any given day to go home to my family, implying the job of firefighter poses a constant mortal threat.

He asked: What it is worth to have an EMT timely arrive if your wife were having a heart attack?

Everything, I answered, vaguely wondering whether there was an implied threat to not show up if I failed to accede to the union demands, and whether my everything is enough.

I kept asking him just what he expected the taxpayers to provide him. How much is enough? He never really gave me an answer.

Would he do his job for $75,000 a year instead of $125,000?

That resulted in him quibbling over whether the newspaper had conflated base pay and overtime and misinformed our readers. We didn't.

(Coincidentally, just that morning we interviewed a candidate for municipal office who discussed the consequences of firefighter overtime. The candidate noted that when firefighter overtime increased, the firefighters had less time to pursue their off-duty, private-sector jobs, such as landscaping, and compete against taxpaying companies. Those companies essentially pay the salaries and benefits of their employees, as well as their competitors, including some off-duty firefighters. An interesting cost-benefit ratio question, indeed.)

I asked my caller: If your job is so vital and impossible to value, would $500,000 a year be enough?

Why don't we ingrate taxpayers simply give the firefighters everything we own in compensation for saving our worthless hides day in and day out while risking their own?

I asked: Why are our first responders among the highest paid in the nation? They are, you know. It was in all the papers (see Section A). Are their jobs that much more dangerous or vital here than elsewhere?

Then he accused the newspaper of "constantly attacking firefighters."

That got my dander up, and perhaps caused me to become nearly as agitated as the caller. "We have never attacked firefighters. Never. (OK, we did call the leadership of the county firefighters union selfish brats for refusing to even consider salary concessions during this recession in which taxpayers are being clubbed like baby seals. But is that really attacking? We respect and appreciate the job they do. We are just quibbling over compensation levels. Is that not allowed?) No, we have criticized the commissioners and council members who have awarded consistently high pay raises," I told my unidentified caller.

The newspaper's editorials have questioned how much is enough. At what point will the compounded pay increases consume our entire gross domestic product?

The job of firefighter is vital. But even vital has a price tag. To say we must shut up and pay every penny the unions demand, and like it, is not negotiating. It is extortion.

Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal and writes about the role of the press and access to public information. He may be contacted at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@reviewjournal.com. Read his blog at lvrj.com/blogs/mitchell.