By Deena Winter
The Minnesota Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS — About 30 Minneapolis Fire Department employees, or roughly 7% of the 435-member force, are out on leave due to post-traumatic stress disorder, pushing up overtime costs and stretching resources.
PTSD has been an issue for Minneapolis police officers and firefighters since the 2020 riots over George Floyd’s killing by a police officer. But in the past year, firefighters have been going on leave in higher numbers.
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Luke Scardigli, finance director for the Minneapolis Fire Department, recently told a City Council committee that the number of fire employees struggling with PTSD has grown incrementally over time, but “became prevalent” last year and the trend has continued this year.
“It certainly hasn’t shown signs of decreasing,” he told the city budget committee last week.
When a fire employee is out, other workers have to work overtime to backfill, he said. Council Member Linea Palmisano said that creates a “resource gap.”
Heavy overtime has pushed the Fire Department over budget by some $6 million to $7 million in recent years, Scardigli said. The department is projected to be over budget again this year, along with the Police Department.
Assistant Fire Chief Wes Van Vickle said the events that caused PTSD included the Annunciation Catholic Church mass shooting and Operation Metro Surge, the 12-week federal immigration crackdown that began in December.
“We seem to have spikes during those events,” Van Vickle said.
After Floyd’s killing sparked massive protests and violence, hundreds of Minneapolis police officers and firefighters left their jobs. Most retired early due to PTSD and got disability pensions and workers’ compensation settlements. That exodus led to a surge in overtime spending that continues to plague the fire and police departments.
Public safety workers who retire early due to disability get at least 60% of their salary tax free for five years or until they turn 55, when it converts to regular retirement.
By mid-2022, the state was paying more than $875,000 per month in disability pensions to 169 former Minneapolis police officers who’d retired since 2020.
The issue goes beyond Minneapolis. So many workers were leaving that it was putting a financial strain on cities, so state lawmakers passed a law requiring workers to first get up to 32 weeks of mental health treatment — PTSD leave — before they can apply for disability retirement benefits.
The point of the law was to get some people back to work, if possible, and continue paying them while they got help. Some are returning to work and others are retiring.
The cost of wages during PTSD leave is reimbursed to cities by the state Department of Public Safety. Scardigli said the state reimbursed the Minneapolis Fire Department about $600,000 last year for that type of leave.
Separately, Minnesota law mandates that when a first responder is diagnosed with PTSD, it’s presumed to be job-related for workers’ comp claims.
When police and firefighters retire early due to PTSD, often they hire a law firm to negotiate a lump sum workers’ comp settlement for a fraction of the expected total liability. Between 2020 and 2022, the city of Minneapolis paid more than $22.2 million in workers’ comp settlements to police officers, mostly due to PTSD.
Minneapolis is self-insured, which means each department pays premiums into a fund to provide insurance and workers’ compensation payouts. Minneapolis taxpayers ultimately help foot the bill.
City attorneys have said settling the workers’ comp cases is cheaper than going to trial, where there’s no guarantee the city would win and it could end up paying more.
In 2022, some of the more progressive Minneapolis City Council members began voting against what became routine six-figure settlements of workers’ compensation claims, calling the claims “egregious” and “unsustainable.”
The workers’ comp settlements continue to trickle to the City Council for approval, and some council members still routinely vote against them. Several workers’ comp settlements for Fire Department employees are on the agenda for the next council meeting.
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The Good Neighbor Firefighter Safety Program awarded 150 volunteer fire departments $10,000 grants for equipment to improve firefighter safety, emergency response and community preparedness
