Fire union backs Prov pension probe

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The city firefighters union is strongly supportive of Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare's new investigation into questionable disability pensions awarded over the last 10 years, the union's president said Thursday.

Paul Doughty, president of Local 799, told WPRI.com his 10-member executive board met Wednesday and unanimously supported a broad examination of disability pensions in the city, including that of retired firefighter John Sauro.

An undercover Target 12 investigation revealed last week that Sauro, who has been collecting a tax-free disability pension for more than 10 years, is also a dedicated weightlifter. Providence Police detectives have opened an investigation into the case.

"It's really an affront" to all firefighters, Doughty said. "Retirees are brought into question and we get the black eye. The guys that are wearing the badge and the turnout gear, going into the buildings – we're the ones that end up paying for it, fiscally and in the street, the way people talk to us."

"So we're going to speak loudly when appropriate on this," Doughty said, though he also noted, "I'm not supporting witch hunts."

Pare told Target 12 on Monday he has identified up to 100 disability pensions awarded to fire personnel that he wants examined. They were granted in the early 1990s, when eight out of 10 fire retirees were awarded a tax-free pension for an on-the-job injury, he said.

Doughty said it was important that the disability pension investigation isn't limited to Sauro's case. "It needs to be looked at uniformly as a practice," he said. "How are we going to satisfy the taxpayers and the public in general – and the current firefighters – that members out on disability deserve them?"

"So we support vigorous, rigorous diligence, and we think that the retiree has some responsibility to prove that he still has it," Doughty said. "You should be challenged to maintain it by providing any reasonable documentation that the city wants."

But Doughty also said he is concerned that city officials may focus narrowly on Sauro because of the attention his case is getting and "miss the broader issue."

City Councilman John Igliozzi, a member of the Retirement Board, has said he plans to have the board review Sauro's case, and two other members – Kerion O'Mara and Raymond Hull – demanded Wednesday that an independent physician review Sauro's injury.

Doughty said it shouldn't take a news outlet's investigation to prompt the city to take action. "Channel 12 is now going to drive the policy decisions of the retirement system of the city of Providence apparently, and that is a horrible way – it's very reactionary, and it's unfair," he said.

Accidental disability pensions will make up more than half the $29 million the Providence Fire Department spends on pension payments this year, according to an analysis of payroll records by Target 12. City records show 58 percent of all firefighters or their families receive a disability pension for being hurt on the job - 329 out of 569 as of January. All but 10 of those are tax-free.

Target 12 reported last week that 918 retirees collecting accidental disability pensions were asked to recertify their injuries in 2009 and 2010, but only 824 of them responded and no pensions were overturned or reexamined as a result.

Doughty pointed to that as evidence that a three-year-old ordinance requiring an annual review of disability claims is "toothless" and ineffective in practice. The ordinance was passed by Igliozzi and ballyhooed by then-Mayor David Cicilline.

The law requires that retirees collecting accidental disability pensions fill out a "Continuing Statement of Disability." Sauro was recertified after filling out the proper paperwork last year, according to city officials.

The form asks retirees to list the nature of the injury and to say if they have been examined by a doctor in the last year. It then asks them to attach a medical report filled out by a doctor. A letter that accompanies the form tells the retirees they can use a doctor of their choice.

Providence Retirement Board officials say any retiree who fails to respond to the recertification request is asked to fill out the form again the next year.

If the requests are ignored for three years, the pension administrator can forward the retiree's name to the board, which would then have the option of ordering the retiree to have his or her injury examined by a city-picked doctor.

Doughty suggested the ordinance should suspend a retiree's pension if he fails to file the recertification form after being given a 30-day window to comply. As written, he said, the "feel-good ordinance" is "laughable."

"It is a waste of time and a waste of paper," he said.

The city already pays the cost of the retiree's recertification exam, so there is no reason why officials shouldn't require that they be conducted by an independent doctor, he said. He also thinks the policy should include an appeals process.

In addition, the city has allowed the Retrement Board to remain "severely understaffed," leaving it with limited resources to track down fraudulent pensions, Doughty said.

The publicity surrounding Sauro's case has caused deep concern among Providence's firefighters.

"The rank-and-file feels like possibly the action of one firefighter is going to come back on all of us, which is human nature," Doughty said. "But we're powerless to change or enforce anything, and when we speak up on it, we're dismissed."

"John Sauro represents what everyone thinks is wrong with the pension system," he added, "but [city officials] won't go that next step and say, how do we really fix it so that two years from now, there's not another city firefighter doing this?"

tnesi@wpri.com

Target 12 investigator Tim White contributed to this report.

This story has been revised to correct disability pensions' share of all fire department pensions in Providence.