Some Firefighters Also Taking Advantage Of Disability Pay

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 17, 2012 4:55PM

The Sun-Times excellent series on police officers receiving disability pay, some for decades while starting new careers and seemingly capable of holding a gun, today takes a look at the Chicago Fire Department and firefighters who may or may not be suffering from legitimate disabilities. And the pay they're receiving is all tax free and comes from the firefighters pension.

The Sun-Times reports 390 firefighters are on disability, at a cost of $27 million a year paid out from the Chicago Firemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund. Those disability payments increased by 16 percent last year. It's worth noting that not only are more firefighters are on disability, but the Fire Department has less than half the number of employees as the Police Department.

The Sun-Times article focuses on one high-ranking member of the Fire Department, Pat Kehoe. Kehoe, who's collecting $91,113 in disability pay and is eligible for free health insurance from the city, appeared in an ad for Rahm Emanuel's campaign for mayor last year. He was identified in the ad as a "retired Chicago firefighter."

Kehoe, who was injured responding to an explosion in 2009, sued the state because his disability pay was based on his rank of a battalion chief, not his district chief title when he was hurt. He dropped the suit before the Emanuel ad premiered.

The Emanuel administration, which is already in damage control mode as a result of the Sun-times series, can't be happy with this development. Here's what Emanuel's press secretary Sarah Hamilton had to say to the Sun-Times today.

“Emanuel had no knowledge that Kehoe was . . . on disability” when the campaign commercial first aired.

Compounding matters, fewer firefighters return to work than do policemen. According to the pension fund, only eight firefighters have returned to work since 2003. Firefighters and paramedics must be "100 percent capable of performing full duties" in order to return to work. Twenty-Five percent of the firefighters on disability pay are paramedics, including an EMT battalion chief who went on disability pay last July at a cost of $100,820 a year. Finally, since there's no retirement age for paramedics, they can continue to collect disability pay, and receive free health care from the city, past the age of 63.