Union Lobbying and Council Pressure Saved Fire Companies

JAMES VACCA: Wider net 'galvanized' opponents.

Two days before Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn announced a budget agreement that allocated $17 million to the Fire Department to keep 16 fire companies running, Council Fire and Criminal Justice Services Committee Chair James Vacca was in Staten Island protesting the proposed closing of Engine Co. 161.

The Bronx Councilman said it was this kind of continued protest from community members and fire union officials that forced the Council to find the money to avert fire company closings.

As Cuts Grew, So Did Opposition

In December, when the Fire Department announced that it would end night tours at four fire companies except when extra firefighters were available, the only Council Members decrying the move were those whose constituents were affected, including Mr. Vacca, as Ladder Co. 53 on City Island in his Bronx district was one of the four.

But when it emerged that the Bloomberg administration wanted to make those closings full-time and shut another 12 companies to fill the city's budget gap, more Council Members and community leaders started to protest, pushing the Council to find the money, he explained.

STEVE CASSIDY: Tough stance paid off.

"A lot of Council Members who were perhaps not focused on the issue, many of them said, 'This could be me,' and they did not want to take a chance on the unknown," Mr. Vacca said. "I think that galvanized people."

Both the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association lobbied other Council Members for weeks, making the argument that cutting units in one area would slow response times in adjacent areas where units would have to cover the districts that lost a company. The UFA also took out numerous advertisements arguing that closing companies would affect the entire fire grid.

"The elastic net of fire protection around the city would be stretched until it would break," UFOA President John J. McDonnell said.

UFA Nixed Staffing Cut

UFA President Steve Cassidy had driven a hard bargain during the budget negotiations. With the support of Mr. Vacca, he rejected Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta's compromise of reducing staffing at 60 engine companies from five Firefighters to four to produce equivalent savings because the UFA believed that four-person crews jeopardized public and firefighter safety. Mr. Scoppetta had argued that no other fire department in the country operated with five-Firefighter engine companies.

JAMES ODDO: Helped lead charge against cuts.

In its campaign to keep the 16 fire companies running without having to acquiesce to Mr. Scoppetta's proposal, the UFA capitalized on the fact that this is an election year. Mr. Cassidy noted that it was Mr. Vacca and Minority Leader James Oddo—along with Speaker Quinn—who were not only the most vigorous in getting other Council Members to find the money for the FDNY in the budget but held rallies against the cuts in their communities. Further helping them was that Mr. Bloomberg had high hopes of winning Mr. Vacca's east Bronx district and Mr. Oddo's one in Staten Island.

'Election Year Helped Us'

"I think that's why the administration allowed the Council to use the discretionary spending to keep the companies open," Mr. Cassidy said, noting that Mayor Bloomberg balked when the city closed companies in 2003. "Both these Councilmen represent areas [where] the Bloomberg administration expected to do well in the upcoming election. Both of them had the guts to tell their constituents that if the Mayor decided to close their firehouse they should hold him accountable. I told my membership that this was an election year and that was to our advantage."

While the threat of closing fire companies was still on the table, the unions along with Councilman Vacca called on the department to make non-operational cuts, including laying off highly paid staff chiefs, to save money. In particular, Mr. Vacca had called on Mr. Scoppetta to eliminate the five Borough Command positions, as then-Commissioner Thomas Von Essen had done during the Giuliani administration.

"I think the department's taking a gallant effort to find the excesses that they can do without, but it's still very discouraging to find that fire units themselves are always on the chopping block," Mr. McDonnell said. "Fire units themselves in the current climate and the current population of units, they should be sacrosanct."

But Mr. Cassidy believed that although in the end "justice was served," the entire ordeal had left a bad taste in the mouths of firefighters, saying that the FDNY leadership should have fought to keep fire companies open even in the face of citywide budget cuts.

'Contempt' for Top Brass

"Both the Fire Commissioner and the Chief of Department are held in contempt by all Firefighters and fire officers in my opinion," he said. "This just highlighted their willingness to compromise the safety of Firefighters and fire officers to accomplish a political goal."

The UFA president added that despite keeping the fire companies open, the administration had lost public trust because it said that the only way to avert the closings was through a reduction in engine company staffing, when a budget deal preserving the companies was, in the end, agreed upon without this concession.

"How does the Fire Commissioner and the Mayor look right now?" Mr. Cassidy asked.

The budget agreement does not leave the FDNY unscathed, however, as the department will still cut 30 Emergency Medical Service ambulance tours. Councilman Vacca said that this situation could be alleviated, however, through the use of private ambulance companies.

But Patrick J. Bahnken, who as president of Local 2507 of District Council 37 represents Paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians, said that this would mean that revenue that would have gone to the city through FDNY ambulance billing fees would instead be collected by private vendors. He believed there was still time to allocate the necessary funding to restore the EMS tours.

"The lost revenue offsets any savings," Mr. Bahnken said. "So our question is, why do it?"