Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Earned $500K+ Last Year – Including $307,389 in Overtime

A battalion chief for California’s Oakland Fire Department made $530,756 in 2020, even as the department was facing severe cuts.

Battalion Chief Demond Simmons earned a base salary of $185,336, a $38,032 bonus and an enormous $307,389 in overtime, OpenTheBooks.com confirmed with the City of Oakland.

Simmons is also an instructor at the National Fire Academy, an EMS/fire science instructor at the University of Cincinnati, and an EMT instructor and program director at Peralta Community College, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In early 2021, Oakland Fire Department sustained cuts, but about $800,000 was used from $192 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to fully restore fire services, the East Bay Times reported.

To save about $5 million, the department had planned to close three stations at a time from January through June. But both residents and firefighters complained about the danger of doing so after years of catastrophic wildfires, so the city planned to close one fire station at a time, on a rotating basis.

After the cuts were restored, the fire department planned to be fully staffed, according to an internal email that East Bay Times obtained.

The Oakland FD has 509 personnel for fire suppression and emergency response, 25 fire stations, 24 fire engines, seven aerial apparatus, a hazardous materials response team, a technical rescue team, an airport rescue company, a water rescue team and a specialized wild land response apparatus, all responding to more than 70,000 calls annually, of which 80% are for emergency medical services, according to the 2019-2021 budget.

That budget funded fire prevention and emergency services with $17.5 million.

When chiefs earn more in overtime than they make in base salary, the allocation of city resources must be questioned.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.