Police ‘deserve’ high pay — firefighters do not
By Richard Rider
Public safety salaries often get lumped together, supposedly reflecting the “critical†need to pay six figure incomes (including overtime, but not counting benefits) for both police and firefighters. But the two occupations are not the same in terms of qualified applicants.
Police work is more demanding, less popular with the public and otherwise not a particularly attractive choice as an occupation — at least by enough qualified applicants. Hence police have a case that they are in high demand relative to the supply of job seekers.
In addition, police can easily leapfrog to different jurisdictions. Much as the police talk about being there “to protect and serve,†it’s their own well being that they are most interested in serving.
So?
That’s the way most employees — public and private — think. It’s human nature.
All I’m saying is that while police (indeed, all government employees) like to portray themselves as selfless public servants, they are just folks looking for good jobs with good pay — like the rest of us.
One of the great mistakes we voters made with much public employment was to design their pension plans so that they are totally portable among government agencies and jurisdictions. As a result, most government employees can switch jurisdictions and lose nothing in pensions. Indeed, for police and firefighters, usually they can switch employers to get only a single year of higher pay — on which their final pension is calculated.
We forgot the purpose of pension plans — to RETAIN employees. Instead, the portability of government pensions encourages our employees to go elsewhere if the grass (money) is greener. And to retire earlier.
Speaking of firefighters, there’s a huge difference in the supply-demand equation between police and firefighters. A union urban firefighter position is perhaps the best job in the world. I won’t go through all the reasons that is true — I’ve covered this ground before. (To read more on firefighters, see my North County Times columns.)
But my opinion on the desirability of firefighting jobs doesn’t matter. What matters is the number of people who show up for these urban semi-secret job openings. In spite of ever-tighter pre-employment firefighter applicant qualifications, cities can easily end up with a lot more applications than they care to process.
Consider this quote from government policy wonk (and good friend) Dr. Steve Frates, in describing the difference in the supply of wannabe firefighters vs. police applicants:
“That’s not the case for firefighters,” Frates said, recalling how a recent [single] opening in the Newport Beach Fire Department drew a crowd of 600 applicants, including some who camped overnight. “What the market is telling us is that you don’t have to offer 3% at 55 to get qualified applicants.”
That “3% at 55†refers to the pension benefits as a per year percent of highest pay, payable as soon as age 55. Of course, as my rant readers know, in California the normal pension for firefighters and police is 3% of pay (90% for 30 years of service) paid as early as age 50.
Bottom line: We’re stuck with paying high salaries and great pensions to police, but we should be paying our firefighters much less — and far lower pensions. With over 26,000 volunteer fire departments around the country, it’s clear that we are overcompensating our union urban firefighters.
Richard Rider is chair of San Diego Tax Fighters. E-mail him at RRider@san.rr.com.