CT Post reporter Dan Tepfer issues this report about the city’s highest wage earners in 2011. John Ramos, fired as school chief last year after throwing in the towel to support a state takeover of education, led the pack followed by a number of city police officials, traditional among the highest earners as a result of police overtime. Tepfer story:
Despite tough economic times, many city employees, especially police officers, took home well-padded pay checks that in some cases were double their base pay as a result of overtime.
According to records obtained through the state Freedom of Information law, the No. 1 earner in the city last year was former Supt. of Schools John Ramos with gross wages of $245,819 after the city bought out the remainder of his contract. Second was Police Chief Joseph Gaudett, who earns a base pay of $134,755 but last year received an additional $89,268 after he and Fire Chief Brian Rooney, who came in fourth on the top earner’s list, were allowed to get their pensions while still on the job.
Last year police department overtime totaled $5.6 million. Mayor Bill Finch repeatedly has said that reining in that figure would be one of his priorities in office. Last April, Finch pledged to cut police department overtime costs by $1.5 million. In December 2010 when he appointed Gaudett chief, Finch said he expected Gaudett would reduce overtime in the department.
And, in fact, budget statistics show that the department overtime, which totaled $7.6 million for 2010-2011, was lower than in 2006-2007 when it came to almost $8 million. But it is higher than 2009-2010 when police overtime cost the city $6.65 million.
No. 3 on the top earners list is Police Lt. Lonnie Blackwell with total gross wages for 2011 of $168,374. Blackwell, who is head of the department’s training academy, received a base pay of $75,585 and an additional payout for the year of $92,789 which city officials confirmed includes overtime.
Blackwell declined comment. Gaudett did not return calls for comment.
Police officers made up 18 of the top 50 city money earners in 2011 and a total of 32 of the top 100.
Police officers are available to work outside overtime assignments, which means they can work at construction sites and other security positions while off-duty. Many of these jobs are reimbursed to the city by the private companies, such as utilities, that hire the officers to man construction sites. Mayoral spokeswoman Elaine Ficarra said much of the overtime pay is outside overtime but said officials can’t break out that amount from the whole.
The mayor’s office declined requests over a two-week period to identify what was outside overtime and what was paid by taxpayers.
Overtime payments are included when police officers’ pensions are calculated. The higher the overall compensation in their final years of service, the higher the pension.
Police Union President Charles Paris declined comment.
Other than Rooney there were no Fire Department personnel on the list of the top 100 wage earners.
Mayor Bill Finch is No. 59 on the list with a base pay of $128,002 and additional payouts of $4,444. His predecessor, John Fabrizi, who is the city’s director of adult education, is No. 55 on the list with total gross wages of $132,517 including other wages totaling $2,557.
City officials also declined to identify how much of the “other wages” listed on the Top 100 list came specifically from overtime.
“A city employee’s gross wages is a combination of their base pay, plus other wages and payouts, which can include the following: overtime, if applicable; outside overtime, if applicable; workers compensation payouts; injury payouts; holiday payouts; furlough adjustments; excess life insurance; longevity pay; uniform allowances; shift differential; acting pay, if the individual is in an acting capacity; retroactive payments; sick day payouts; personal day payouts; and compensatory time,” said Ficarra.
Search the top wage earners from the Post story here.
I respectfully have to decline to comment!
I have heard conflicting reports on whether or not overtime enhanced income is used to factor a person’s pension or is it just the base pay used. JML, can you enlighten me?
Bridgeporteur // Apr 17, 2012 at 6:30 am
To your posting
Bridgeporteur,
I believe you will find the answer is overtime is computed into retirement. Base pay has long ago been forgotten as part of the formula. Obviously this has had a terrible financial impact. And while it is financially wrong, even worse how morally wrong to take this money from Bridgeport taxpayers.
In the PD & FD the pensions are based on the base pay for the position. Overtime does not factor in.
How on earth do we allow the police chief and the fire chief to earn a salary from the city while receiving their pensions AT THE SAME TIME?
I was always told if I came back to work for the city my pension would be subtracted from my new salary. I was told if I were hired under grants or as a consultant my pension would not enter into the equation.
Is it likely the salaries of the police chief and the fire chief are funded by grants or other non-taxpayer sources?
How about this inequity? My wife is a retired public school teacher receiving a generous pension for the 40+ years she taught. She is also an accomplished ‘reading programs’ developer who has implemented her reading systems in public and private school systems throughout New England and the Mid- Atlantic region as far as Baltimore. She typically earns the maximum for social security contributions which because she is self-employed, she pays 2X the normal amount or somewhere around $16,000 per year. She has more than enough ‘quarters’ to qualify for a social security pension.
But because she has a State of Connecticut pension, she gets a greatly reduced amount nowhere near what she would have been entitled to had she not received a teacher’s pension.
Tell me how I can justify the police chief and fire chief receive a pension and a paycheck while she is penalized?
Today’s story is about employees taking money out /em> of Bridgeport. We need more news about money, jobs and uplifting activities coming into Bridgeport. Here’s mine:
Ka-ching, baby. Recent actions have allowed me to go viral in Bridgeport. It wasn’t a sunny day that inflated my ego–it was phone calls from total strangers. Here’s the best part: I didn’t even need a video to do it!
How’s this going to help Bridgeport? It hasn’t yet but wheels were put in motion yesterday when I spoke with someone more bullish on Bridgeport than even I am. Two good ideas are better than one.
How can you be bullish on Bridgeport while supporting all of the back-breaking selfish financial blunders Timpanelli and Testa are ramming down our throats?
When intelligent people plan to invest their funds, they do homework, research, and question what they are unfamiliar with. They ask many questions and expect good answers. They have experience receiving responses from those who would like them to invest, and they check out the answers they receive. If the questions and research stand up, it may lead them to a special opportunity where the return looks great and the risks appear small; wonderful.
We have had much HYPE and HOOPLA in the tradition of PT Barnum. He put his own money up and went broke personally a couple times. So let’s see the color of your OUT-OF-TOWN money. Tell us where you see the opportunity, instead of purring and drooling about the “wheels” that “were put in motion yesterday.”
Fardy and I have used 21st-century tools and graphic images to tell a story about our City that is current. Our Mayor says he has refuted our claims, but everything we have said is dead-on accurate and comes from the documents his administration has published. Given a choice of New Haven, Hartford or Bridgeport, just on the basis of not being able to review the City 12th-month listing of expenses and revenues, I would place Bridgeport in third place on that account. I would wonder why all of the Cities I could invest in showed this most basic level report and here is Bridgeport, without any public comment not revealing annual variances. Not even to their own City Council. In a City that was behind the curve on economic development, in spite of I-95, harbor and potential, it might raise major concerns about how the game is played in Bridgeport. And with our recent leadership record, how do we look to outsiders? Time will tell.
Well presented, succinct and to the point. It is readable and comprehensible by most who choose to read.
Congrats on your video. I think you will motivate some of the brain-dead registered non-voters who have in their power the ability to make the change we need in this town.
While city officials see an opportunity in developing real estate, I see an opportunity developing people right here in Bridgeport CT USA. I already have skin in the game, while your investment is limited to platitudes. The out-of-town money is green and it comes from overseas, where all the dollars are!
kachingbutton.com <– CLICK the button until you reach your goal. Fardy and Lee might not know when to stop–somebody else might not know where to begin. TURN ON YOUR SPEAKERS.
Maybe Bridgeport has bottomed. BTW, I didn’t support back-breaking blunders and nobody rams anything down my throat (you wanna be first?). Learn to capitalize your own name and things might improve–take a lesson from Fardy, he’s getting famous while you practice a tired brand of negativity.
How does a LT in training working steady 5 day week make $92,000 in OT? I have been told there is a lot of discontent about this and there is a petition circulating in the PD about this particular person. This could be an ugly time bomb if it goes forward.
BTW how does Adam Wood make $35K in other wages? Administration people should not be allowed to sell back OT and personal days, they should be forced to take them or lose them. Management should not be making OT.
OIB is morphing into a pension/OT blog. Here’s why I’m writing: Municipal pensions are defined benefit plans which are bad and risk-free. Some people avoid risk and some people chase it. Nobody owns the assets in a defined benefit plan. They just own the rights which are based on time. I own assets which are based on performance. Municipal defined benefit plans are a promise no town can keep–consider yourself lucky if you have one. Things are different in Greece–if it happened there, it can happen here.
Place you will never see ACF or Fluckarella: www .coolestdudeinbridgeport.com
It should be interesting to see what David Walker has to say. He is the special guest on Bridgeport Now TV tonight at 8:30 and the topic is Bridgeport taxes.
GR: Somebody call a cop. We wuz robbed.
Cop: Can you described the perpetrator?
GR: Yes. He wore a uniform, similar to yours. It had BPD on the sleeve. He should have looked quite haggard as if he were working 80 hours a week but come to think about it he looked quite refreshed.
Cop: Gotta go. Just got a call about some missing overtime at the training center.
Pardon me for interrupting, but way back when everyone was caught up in Finch’s Pay Raise Ordinance, I was questioning this whole BS over the retroactive pensions for the Police and Fire Chief but I guess everyone thought that was just Walsh trying to create an issue where one didn’t exist.
This is a RETROACTIVE pension payment. Not only are they allowed to double dip but the city allowed them to go back in time and get it retroactive to when they DIDN’T retire.
And Finch is looking to increase taxes.
Bob, the City taxpayers are paying over a half million dollars a year to two people, the police chief and the fire chief; plus the fire chief only has a high school education. A quarter of a million dollars and only a high school grad. Only In Bridgeport.
As you know Ron, pension plans A and B are now a thing of the past. As of a few weeks ago, a new pension plan is in effect. No longer will pensions be compensated only by “base” pay. The “MERF” plan, run by the state, will include all monies paid to the employees and they can average their three highest 12-month periods to average a percentage of the total!!! Interesting that the City negotiated this. And Brian Rooney is asking for a “disability” pension … delayed until he retires. Can you say TAX FREE?
Calling Budget and Administration Council members. (You may need the June 2011 report for this one. If you ask Tom Sherwood nicely he will probably provide you with a copy. Since he has to close the books before turning them over to Blum Shapiro, this should provide no difficulty at this time.)
You passed a 2011 budget that showed $6,167,798 budgeted for Police Overtime. You had to add nine numbers to come to that figure, but that is easy to do, right? By May 2011, you got your last report and the notes to expenditures indicated Police overtime had already consumed $6,681,347 and that in the final month of the year, the month I keep saying you never get to see, they were projecting another $1,007,118 would be incurred to create an annual deficit of $326,424.
The Police Commission reportedly does not monitor Police OT. So the people giving us the numbers are the same ones administering the Police OT? And to make matters harder for them to decipher in the 2011, 2012, and 2013 budget reports and proposals, you will see those numbers moving to up to nine additional line items per department section (Patrol, Detective, Administration, etc.) 81 numbers to monitor rather than nine? Kind of hard to track? I think it would be for B & A, don’t you?
Tom Sherwood has the monitoring reports he said at the B&A meeting on April 9. Does anybody want to ask for his reports going back several years? Is there a trend that takes better monitoring going on? The folks on the patrol front line seem to indicate so. 2011 went over $326,424, and 2012 is projected to have a deficit 8X as large. Where are the watchdogs? They are not there. Do taxpayers care? Time will tell.
*** Taxpayers would be amazed at the O/T paid, to whom and the ill reasons behind it. While others are laid off, work hours cut, forced $ givebacks, increased Med. benefits payments, etc. … And how many of the top 100 money earners actually live in Bpt? *** City O/T, great budget conversation. ***
In Danielson, 78% consistently turn out to vote in every election, referendum and primary.
They don’t have the issues we have in Bridgeport.
I’m told the same is true in a small town called Washington Depot.
When people vote, corrupt politics doesn’t have a chance.