More dissembling: Abuses abound, but who will act?

It has been firmly established some Clark County firefighters colluded to manipulate provisions in their union contract to pad their pay checks and inflate their pensions, which arguably might constitute criminal misappropriation of taxpayer funds.

Start talking about prosecution, and the dissembling begins.

Assistant County Manager Ed Finger at a Tuesday County Commission meeting called a series of e-mails discussing said collusion “circumstantial.”

Commissioner Larry Brown said, “My concern today is that we might be chasing shadows, if we start going backwards for whatever reasons, for a culture of abuse, for stretching it to the point of contractual obligation that meets the legal definition.”

Sheriff Doug Gillespie in an earlier interview said, “Fraud and embezzlement are complex cases” that can be tough to prove. “The county is the victim in this particular case. They are the holder of the information.”

Mr. Finger says the information the sheriff has requested would require the county to do an in-depth audit of three to five years of sick leave at a cost of about $200,000.

For 75 cents the county could’ve purchased a copy of the July 5, 2009, Review-Journal in which special projects editor A.D. Hopkins spelled out statistical evidence county firefighters were routinely “spiking” their final three years of salaries with perks such as callback pay, which requires time-and-half for firefighters called back less than 12 hours after a shift. Callback pay is used in calculating pensions. Overtime is not.

The story listed a recently retired fire engineer who was paid $28,019 in callback the year before his retirement and a captain whose callback pay allowed him to earn a pension of $104,000 a year from job with a base pay of $89,000.

The county has released e-mails between firefighters indicating some schedule sick leave in order to set up callback for another firefighter.

One firefighter in 2009 worked only 63 of his 121 scheduled 24-hour shifts, took 48 days of paid sick leave, took 11 days of vacation, and worked 92 shifts on overtime and/or callback, earning $232,187 for the year. He has since retired.

In a Q&A with Mr. Finger Tuesday, Commissioner Steve Sisolak solicited a response showing the scope of the problem for the taxpayer. Asked the largest amount of callback a firefighter had been paid in one year, the assistant county manager replied $80,000, though he quickly noted that not all of that was necessarily due to someone taking sick leave.

At the commissioner’s prodding, Mr. Finger said that if that amount were paid in each of the three years prior to retirement, a firefighter retiring with 75 percent of salary would get an extra $60,000 a year in pension. To which Mr. Sisolak calculated: If this person were to retire at 50 and live to 90, the added pension would be $2.4 million.

“I understand we can’t go back and find out if someone was really sick on July 2 of 2010,” Commissioner Sisolak said. “I can tell you that some of the investigative law enforcement agencies do have the ability to go back and to search phone logs and credit card receipts, the way that they prove any other crime that’s committed,” noting they also have subpoena power.

The county has spread sheets showing the pay by category of every firefighter going back years. Simply sort the data in descending order of dollars in callback pay, not sick leave, and start issuing those subpoenas and asking questions under oath.