ST. LOUIS • Three administrators of the Firemen’s Retirement System of ºüÀêÊÓƵ have together received more than $40,000 in holiday bonus pay over the past four years, even as city workers have largely gone without a raise.
Every year during the first week in December, the three fire pension employees collected checks ranging from $2,400 to more than $6,000 — paid via the city’s payroll system as overtime.
This year, Susan Degunia, an administrative assistant who makes nearly $70,000 a year, charged the system for 90.4 hours of overtime in the two-week pay period, or $3,032 extra. Marilyn Williams, an administrative secretary who is paid $56,500 a year and is the wife of system board member Bruce Williams, filed for 93.9 hours of overtime, or $2,550.
And Vicky Grass, the system’s $120,000-a-year executive director, signed for 84.2 hours of her own overtime, costing the system $4,857.
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Over the past four years, Grass has been paid more than $20,000 in extra December cash.
Grass said the payments have never been for overtime. They’re actually “vacation buyback,†authorized by pension board policy, she said.
She just records the pay as overtime because it’s easier, she said. “We are not trying to hide anything, in no way, shape or form,†Grass said.
City officials, however, were outraged when city Director of Personnel Richard Frank discovered the payments this week. Frank initially thought salaried employees were getting paid overtime, something not allowed in city departments.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,†Frank told the Post-Dispatch. “I just don’t know what to say. It’s like a bonus.
“I felt like I had an obligation ethically to share this with the administration. I was just appalled.â€
Bonuses, Frank said, are often illegal in the state of Missouri for public sector employees.
But it turns out that the fire pension’s vacation policies allow such buyback payments.
The policy, which was approved in 1989, gives each employee six weeks of paid leave each year, according to system records. Employees can carry over up to six weeks each year, giving them, at max, 12 weeks of vacation they can use in one year under the policy.
And, in December of each year, the system will buy up to two weeks of each employee’s vacation back from them, without any stipulations.
In addition, a 2001 policy gives each employee a $500 bonus on Dec. 1.
The overtime checks, Grass said, were simply two weeks of vacation buyback per employee, plus $500.
She couldn’t immediately explain any discrepancy between that calculation and the actual payments, which were often a little lower and sometimes much higher, and bristled at criticism.
“I have no clear idea where this is coming from, because we’ve been doing it for so long,†Grass said. “We all consider ourselves to be the most fortunate people in the world.â€
By Wednesday, the city’s budget director had inquired about the charges, the city counselor’s office had been asked to investigate and Mayor Francis Slay’s chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, declared that the payments were made at the expense of other city employees.
“They decided to give themselves a Christmas bonus,†Rainford said. “That’s galling.â€
While the pension system is partially funded by city firefighters — they pay 8 percent of their salary each year into the fund — any marked dip in the fund balance is, by law, replenished by the city.
That means, in slender years, tax dollars have to make up for increases in pension administration. This year, the city paid more than $21 million to the fund.
City employees, Rainford noted, this year got their first raise — 2 percent — in several years.
The fire pension system’s three full-time employees administer a fund of more than $390 million. It is a creation of state law, governed by a board of eight local appointees, most of whom are current or former firefighters. Board chairman Len Wiesehan could not be reached for comment Thursday.
The pension system has been under extra scrutiny for more than a year, following a Post-Dispatch investigation revealing widespread misuse of fire disability retirements and dozens of additional benefits rubber-stamped over the years by city officials.
Early this year, Slay introduced a plan to close the current system and open a new one with markedly less expensive payouts. He sought to cut many of the add-on perks and curb a disability pension so rich, his staff felt, that it encouraged firefighters to go out injured.
Moreover, under the new system, the board would be governed by city law — not state law, as it is now — and its employees would be part of the city’s civil service system, which is governed by a lengthy and strict set of rules.
Vacation buybacks would only be allowed under civil service guidelines if the worker was urgently needed yet had to either use his vacation or lose it, Frank said. Frank himself would have to sign off on it.
He said the Fire Department asked for buybacks every year — but he hadn’t authorized such a move in five years.
Now, however, it is unclear whether Grass and her staff will end up in the civil service system. After Slay’s plan passed through the Board of Aldermen, the pension board sued the city over the issue.
