North Riverside finds itself struggling under the weight of rising annual pension payments and believes that transferring fire protection services to a private company could save taxpayers $750 thousand during the upcoming budget year. The Village has opted to hold-off on the plan while it negotiates with the local bargaining unit in an attempt to achieve equivalent cost savings.
Why all the talk about privatization or consolidation of municipal fire services in Illinois? Put simply, the cost of fire protection is being priced beyond what some communities can reasonably afford. Cities don't exclusively provide fire protection. They do a lot of other stuff, too. And that stuff, things like police protection, economic development, and infrastructure maintenance, costs money. Taxpayer money. Taxpayers want public services, but they also want reasonable property tax rates. Balancing these conflicting desires requires that cities get creative. Particularly those that are under the state's property tax cap law where there's a ceiling on available revenues unless voters approve a referendum.
So what's driving the expense? Certainly the costs of equipment and salaries plays a role. But so does the "politicization" of the fire profession.
Firefighters are very active politically. They walk precincts for candidates and their unions make sizable political contributions. I'm not suggesting that they should or shouldn't, but their increasing political power ensures that they get things out of Springfield. Much of what they get in the form of legislative enactments costs money or erodes local authority. And these additional costs are pushed onto local property taxpayers. The state doesn't foot the bill for the additional costs that that it creates.
The General Assembly passed at least 28 firefighter union bills from 1993-2014 that were ultimately enacted into law.
Among these were six pension increases, two lump-sum death benefit increases, an expansion of workers’ compensation benefits, three bills that restricted local authority with respect to hiring, promoting, and disciplining firefighters, one bill that entitled disabled firefighters to lifetime taxpayer-funded health insurance benefits, another bill that expanded eligibility for lifetime taxpayer-funded health insurance benefits, a bill awarding firefighters control over local pension boards, a bill granting firefighters an exclusive right to hold municipal office while remaining employed as a firefighter by the same municipality, another bill awarding a special right to solicit charitable contributions outside of the normal regulations of the municipality, legislation allowing arbitrators to decide residency requirements, and two bills that diverted a municipally-imposed tax directly to bodies controlled by firefighters.
In addition to the 28 firefighter bills, the General Assembly met a firefighter union demand by awarding firefighter-controlled pension boards with the power to divert state-shared general purpose revenue to fund firefighter pensions as part of the 2010 pension reform law.
The enactments are listed below by year:
1993
Pension Benefit Increase (P.A. 87-1265)
- Increased minimum retirement pensions for firefighters and surviving spouses from $400-$475 per month.
- Increased general surviving spouse pension from 40% to 54% of the deceased firefighter’s monthly salary.
Creation of Foreign Fire Insurance Boards to Control Spending of Funds (P.A. 89-0063)
- Removed municipal control over revenue collected from locally-imposed foreign fire tax ordinances and mandated that cities annually appropriate the funds to boards consisting of firefighters;
- Provided employee foreign fire insurance boards (and not elected officials) with the power to make decisions concerning the expenditure of fire tax money.
Pension Benefit Increase (P.A. 90-0032)
- Increased benefits for dependent children of firefighters that receive duty or occupational disability benefits.
- Preserved the benefit for a firefighter’s child who is adopted after the death of the firefighter.
- Permitted arbitrators to decide on residency requirements in municipalities other than Chicago.
- PSEBA awards lifetime municipally-funded health insurance premiums for “catastrophically” injured firefighters. In a 2003 decision, the Illinois State Supreme Court defined “catastrophic” to mean when an employee is awarded a duty disability benefit when the injury occurred while responding to an emergency.
Pension Benefit Increase (P.A. 91-0466)
- Reduced the number of years that a firefighter must work from 35 to 30 years to receive their maximum 75% of salary pension.
- Incrementally increased minimum pensions from $475 per month to $1,000 per month.
- Increased duty or occupational disease disability benefits to greater of 65% of salary or the retirement pension earned.
- Added stroke as an occupational disease.
- Increased surviving spouse benefit from 54% of salary to 100% of salary when a firefighter dies in the line of duty.
- Allowed firefighters to earn creditable service toward their pension for up to three years of time spent on disability.
Death Benefit Increase (P.A. 92-0003)
- Increased the one-time lump sum death benefit funded by the state from $100,000 to $118,000 and prospectively authorized the payment to grow 3% each year.
Death Benefit Increase (P.A. 92-0609)
- One year after increasing this state-funded lump-sum benefit, the General Assembly increased it again. This time from $118,000 to $259,038.
Fire Department Promotion Act (P.A. 93-0411)
- Removed firefighter promotions from being a predominantly local matter by creating statutory promotion requirements.
- Expanded eligibility for PSEBA benefits by including EMTs as eligible employees. PSEBA awards lifetime municipally-funded health insurance premiums for firefighters awarded a duty disability benefit for an injury sustained while responding to an emergency.
Pension Benefit Increase (P.A. 93-0689)
- Increased surviving spouse annuity from 54% of final salary to 100% of the pension earned by decedent.
- Incrementally increased the minimum pension for survivors to $1,159.27.
- Retroactively increased children’s annuity by 3% annually.
- Established reciprocity between downstate funds and ability to transfer IMRF service to a downstate fire fund.
Firefighters Allowed to Serve on City Council (P.A. 94-0316)
- Gave firefighters special legal status among local government employees to serve on the city council or village board of the municipality with which they are employed as firefighters.
- Reduction in Permitted Suspension Time (P.A. 94-0188)
- Reduced the amount of time a firefighter could be suspended for disciplinary purposes from 72 hours to 24 duty hours.
- Reconstituted the firefighter pension boards to give local fire unions a 3-2 controlling share of the vote.
Expansion of Scope for Mandatory Bargaining Under Firefighter Promotion Act (P.A. 94-0809)
- Three years after removing local authority by placing promotion procedures in state statute, the firefighter union expanded the reach of the law by requiring that the rank immediately outside of the bargaining unit be subject to the statewide promotion standards.
- Required the State to enforce the provisions of the law that allows firefighters to remain within the municipal group health insurance program following retirement.
- Provided that the annual property tax levied and collected to fund pensions be forwarded by the county directly to the treasurer of the pension board, completely bypassing the municipality that actually has the authority to levy the tax.
Firefighter Workers’ Compensation Benefit Expansion (P.A. 95-0316)
- Provided that conditions related to cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, hearing loss, or hernia are presumed to be workers’ compensation losses.
- Made the process for the removal or discharge of firefighters a mandatory subject of bargaining in all municipalities.
- Prohibition of Substitute Firefighters (P.A. 95-0490)
- Prohibited municipalities from filling shift vacancies with part-time and qualified firefighters from other jurisdictions. A municipality would be required to fill shift vacancies with an off-duty firefighter from that municipality. This would necessitate the payment of overtime wages.
Selection of Promotional Assessors for Firefighter Promotions (P.A. 95-956)
- Another modification to the firefighter promotion law to establish a procedure to select promotional assessors from a roster established by the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The Fire Marshal at the time was the former President of the firefighter union.
- Required that payments of foreign fire insurance funds go directly to the treasurer of the foreign fire insurance board rather than to the municipal treasurer despite the fact that the tax is imposed by municipal ordinance. This is similar to the firefighter union legislation that was enacted into law that sent the property tax revenue raised to fund firefighter pensions directly to the treasurer of the firefighter pension fund.
Firefighter Retiree Pension Increase (P.A. 96-0775)
- Awarded 3% compounded pension increases to firefighters that retired prior to 1977.
Interception of State-Shared Revenue for Pension Funding (P.A. 96-1495)
- Vested firefighter-controlled pension boards with authority to order the Comptroller to intercept state-shared revenues intended for municipal general purpose spending and divert the revenue to the firefighter pension funds. This provision was included within a pension reform bill that reduced pension benefits for new hires first employed on or after January 1, 2011. The intercepts could be triggered if a municipality does not make the full actuarial contribution. Intercept authority begins years before municipalities would begin seeing any significant cost-savings from the reduced pension benefits for “Tier 2” employees.
Firefighter Hiring Requirements (P.A. 97-0251)
Removed firefighter hiring from being a predominantly local matter by creating statutory hiring requirements.
- No Candidate Cost for Fire Promotion Act Review Sessions (P.A. 97-0352)
- Provided that review sessions held after an examination must be held at no cost to a firefighter candidate.
Use of Streets for Charitable Solicitations (P.A. 97-0692)
- Created a right for firefighters to collect charitable contributions in municipal roadways outside of standard municipal regulations. The IML raised concerns that the bill would require municipalities to violate the First Amendment by providing certain individuals with a right not afforded to others.
Surviving Child Benefit Increase (P.A. 98-0391)
- Increased benefit from 12% to 20% of a firefighter’s monthly salary for eligible dependent children of a firefighter that dies without leaving an eligible surviving spouse.
Three firefighter union bills were introduced in the General Assembly in 2014. Two bills would reduce the authority of locally-elected officials to decide how fire services are structured. The remaining bill would remove existing municipal authority to determine fire department staffing levels.
Referendum Requirement for Closing Fire Department (P.A. 98-0666)
- Would require referendum approval before a municipality could close its fire department even if the elected officials can provide equal or greater fire protection for the community through intergovernmental cooperation agreement.
- Would create a petition and referendum process as an alternative to existing municipal intergovernmental cooperation authority for fire service consolidations.
- Would make manning levels a mandatory subject of collective bargaining and interest arbitration.
Each of these bills was approved in relative isolation from one year to the next, but the costs and operational changes to the fire service add up over time. It should be noted that Illinois hasn't seen the same kind of legislative aggressiveness from police unions.
So what's the point? It might be time for a top-to-bottom review of the fire service to examine existing cost-drivers and figure out what the endgame will look like at this rate of legislative change. What will the fire service look like in ten to fifteen years? Do we need as many firefighters when the vast majority of emergency calls are for ambulances? What's the most economical way to structure the fire service? If costs continue to rise, where will the revenue come from to pay for it? The state doesn't have anything at all to do with the day-to-day operation and funding of municipal fire departments. Does the state need to get some "skin in the game" if it intends to continue the imposition of cost increases and operational mandates on locally-run and funded fire departments?
These questions need to be answered if we're going to have a coherent policy toward how we operate and fund fire protection in Illinois.
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