There are few things that will get a fire chief’s heart racing faster than a phone call from the Department of Retirement Systems (DRS) telling you that they believe your agency has people improperly enrolled in the LEOFF system. After asking fellow state chiefs for advice, and after getting several concerned replies from colleagues asking if they might be next to get a visit from DRS, Executive Director Wayne Senter asked if I would write a short article for the WFCA newsletter to update everyone on the DRS’s efforts to make certain that LEOFF enrollees are eligible to remain in the program.
As some of you may know, we recently finalized a three year long trial merger in my agency. As part of this finalization, we officially absorbed all Washougal fire employees in to the city of Camas. During this process, the DRS requested several job descriptions be sent to them for evaluation. The one that piqued their interest was that of our Division Chief/Fire Marshal. The person occupying this position had been in LEOFF for years and had been the Washougal fire chief before the merger. Camas always fills prevention slots from combat line ranks, so we’ve never hired civilian personnel as some agencies do. Despite this, the DRS opinion, as related to our HR Director, was that fire marshals do not qualify for LEOFF enrollment because their primary duties are not “suppression,” nor supervising people in suppression. Regardless of his previous enrollment, DRS stated that our fire marshal should have been removed from LEOFF and put in PERS when he moved to the fire marshal’s office. Despite our protests, DRS stated their interpretation would be official unless we felt our fire marshal’s current job description was not accurate and needed to be updated.