The Chicago Fire Department could save at least $1.2 million a year and potentially millions more in overtime by hiring civilians to perform 34 administrative jobs that have nothing to do with firefighting or emergency medical service, Inspector General Joe Ferguson said Wednesday.
Three years after urging Mayor Rahm Emanuel to civilianize police jobs to save up to $16.6 million a year and put another 292 police officers on the street, Ferguson outlined a similar cost-cutting recipe for the Chicago Fire Department.
After analyzing the duties and responsibilities of 555 uniformed firefighters and paramedics within the $576.7 million-a-year Fire Department bureaucracy, Ferguson recommended that Emanuel hire civilians to perform 34 of those jobs and eliminate the job of “commissary liaison” altogether. That would save Chicago taxpayers at least $1.2 million a year, reduce annual Fire Department overtime that has topped $40 million in recent years and allow for a “more effective deployment of personnel to improve public safety outcomes” and response times to fire and medical emergencies, Ferguson said.