Dominick DeRubbio is not one of the 312 men and women who expected to enter the city’s fire academy this summer. He is, however, one of the more than 30,000 who took the 2007 entrance exam. He placed just over 2,000th and had expected to be a firefighter by now.
That’s because between 2001 and 2008 the department graduated an average 900 new firefighters a year, in three classes. But the last class was in 2008 because of a hiring freeze. And while the freeze is over, hiring is still on hold following a judge’s ruling that the 2007 test was biased against blacks and Latinos. The latest ruling has DeRubbio wondering if he’ll ever become a firefighter.
“When I was a child I dreamed about going on to the fire department. And this really has taken away that dream. This really…it’s nonsense,” DeRubbio said. “The judge really killed the dream of many FDNY hopefuls.”
Judge Nicholas Garaufis had ruled that two previous exams — 1999 and 2002 — were discriminatory. The FDNY changed the written exam in 2007 and staged an aggressive recruitment campaign, and 35 percent of the candidates who passed were minorities. But the judge found the test was still discriminatory. The city disagrees, and says it needs more firefighters because the department is about 300 members understaffed. To make up for the shortfall, the city expects to pay an average of $2 million a month in overtime.
“Last year, 10 engine companies were on the block; this year, 20 engine companies on the block. And going forward in this budget process as our city budget worsens, they’ll be more engine companies on the block. His rulings are making our job of protecting this department even worse,” said City Councilman James Oddo.
Oddo says he’s worried about the impact the judge’s ruling will have on the city financially and from a public safety perspective.
“There needs to be a standard, there needs to be an objective criteria and you have to get the best of the best. And he’s proposing a thinly veiled effort to socially engineer this department and I think it’s misguided and perverted,” Oddo said.
The city is already in the process of planning an appeal. Meanwhile, those hoping to become firefighters are in limbo as it all gets sorted out.
08/12/2010
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