City Controller: Mayor Failing To Limit Fire Department Overtime

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The city controller says the Nutter administration is failing to reign in fire department overtime. 

The Nutter administration last year decided to trim $3.6 million in fire department overtime by closing stations for a day now and then, with the closures rotated throughout the city.

But a new report from City Controller Alan Butkovitz says fire department overtime is actually up for the first half of the fiscal year by about $1.6 million and he wonders if rolling closures are actually the reason.

"Why is the overtime higher? Have other portions of deployment been triggered, for example, by the brownouts. We don't know," Butkovitz says.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison says delays in hiring new firefighters are the culprit, and without the brownouts, the overtime would have been much worse.

Gillison says, "But for the brownouts, we would have had a higher overtime number, as a result of not being able to hire up as quickly as we thought."

Butkovitz does credit the administration for trimming overtime through all departments by about five percent so far.

Reported by Mike Dunn, KYW Newsradio 1060