Fire Department Senior Staff Make Up Half Of Highest-Paid Sacramento City Employees

Of the 50 highest-paid city of Sacramento employees, more than half work for the Fire Department. All made more than $200,000 in 2017 and in some cases, $300,000.

City Manager Howard Chan tops the list at $332,000 in salary, retirement and health benefits according to the California State Controller's website.

Second on the list is a fire captain/paramedic who made $323,000.

The department says firefighters work and sleep at a station for two days and then are off for four. The department can mandate a three-day shift but no more.

According to Captain Keith Wade, spokesman for the department, employees can volunteer to fill as many vacant shifts as are available.

"We do not have an actual set maximum amount of hours that a person can work,” he said, “They can volunteer and then the captain who is the direct supervisor and/or the battalion chief — if it's the captain who's volunteering to work — they do an assessment of the person who's volunteering to work to make sure there's no safety issue at that point with working so many hours."

Of the 27 firefighters on the list, all are fire captains, battalion chiefs or engineers, except for the one firefighter paramedic who added $142,000 in overtime pay to his $84,000 salary.

A 2017 city audit of the department found overtime expenditures doubled from 2012 to 2015.

The fire department says it has 61 vacancies, and expects to fill 51 this year. More than 30 are expected to come from the February academy and another 21 are going through the academy now.

The police chief for Regional Transit is fourth on the list. In a full year, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn would also be in the top-five.

Tenth is a tree maintenance worker who made $236,800. The state says he made about $8,200 in salary and $226,000 from a lump sum payment.

When asked about the payout, a city spokesperson said only that the amount is from a "personnel issue."

In total, the city paid nearly $313 million in salaries in 2017 and contributed more than $93 million in health and retirement benefits.