By Brett Rowland | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Eighty-six Los Angeles Fire Department employees made more than $400,000 in 2022, including a fire captain who made $712,933 last year.
That fire captain was the highest-paid employee in the city. The captain had a base pay of $169,764 and was paid $502,681 for overtime, along with $19,637 in other pay and personnel benefits of $20,851. In 2021, the highest-paid employee also was a fire captain. That captain made $434,394 in overtime in 2021, for total pay of $598,532.
The fire department spent $817.4 million on payroll in 2022, a 2.4% increase from $798.2 million the year before. Overtime costs in 2022 decreased by 8% to $225 million from $244.9 million the year before.
Last month, the Board of Fire Commissioners requested $904 million for the department’s 2023-24 budget. That includes $838 million for its operating budget, an increase of 7%, or $55 million, according to the final proposal. The budget includes a 4.5% pay increase for sworn firefighters. The fire union agreed to delay that pay hike until 2023 in exchange for a promise from the city to avoid layoffs. That agreement was reached in 2021, according to media reports and union announcements.
Overall, 86 members of the city’s fire department were paid more than $400,000 in 2022, according to the city’s Payroll Explorer. That’s the same number as in 2021.
The average mean wage for a surgeon in California in 2021 was $351,580, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average pay for a fire chief in Los Angeles in 2022 was $320,336.44, according to Payroll Explorer.
The second-largest city in the U.S. employed 3,649 firefighters in 2022.
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They designed a system to be worked this way, the politicians are bought and paid for by the Public Employee unions top tier are cops and fireman. How about the retire at 805 of their final year’s salary? Cause they do. The Ventura County numbers means they retire at over $200K a year after 30 years so we the taxpayer pay them an obscene salary for 30 years and then an obscene pension for another thirty years., Good news is that govt is broke and it will all go bust. Sooner the better!
https://transparentcalifornia.com/ Visit this place. Look up your city and see the abuse!