Paramedic was Baltimore's Highest Paid Employee Last Year

Baltimore city’s highest-paid employee in the last fiscal year was a Baltimore City Fire Department paramedic, who earned $358,586 — 68% of which came from overtime.

Such high overtime pay among first responders in Baltimore is a symptom of significant understaffing, a longstanding challenge that fire department employees and city leaders say leads to employee burnout and long wait times for emergency help. Most recently, it’s driven agency overspending and pushed Baltimore into a deficit.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and City Council President Zeke Cohen didn’t respond to questions about the staffing challenges, but some council members are calling for action — including improving recruitment and reducing fires in vacant homes.

Though there’s a positive aspect to overtime in terms of increased pay, it can also take a “huge toll on morale,” said Mark Conway, the City Council’s public safety chair. The $245,428 in overtime earned by the fire department paramedic who made the most in the city in fiscal year 2024, David Lunsford, was more than double his annual salary of $113,158.

When a worker’s overtime pay is higher than their base salary, Conway said, “you have to wonder if you can do your job at the highest capacity, and if it is good for your mental health or your partners.”

Conway also noted that overtime hours get racked up by employees working special events, such as Orioles and Ravens games.

Firefighter union president Matthew Coster claimed BCFD is the country’s busiest in terms of calls per capita, based on his own research comparing run volume against population.

“These medics are working extreme amounts of overtime to keep … our units on the street and open,” Coster said. “That’s why we’re pushing, as unions, to get recruitment efforts and staffing up to the proper level” so their members aren’t burned out, injured faster, “and things like that.”

Burned-out paramedics

It’s not uncommon in Baltimore to have to wait 45 minutes or more for paramedics to arrive at the scene of emergencies. Several times, such delays have cost someone’s life, said Kyle Lovell, a former fire department paramedic.

“There’s times that people have been thrown in fire engines and transported to the hospital because the wait would be too long for an ambulance,” he said.

Lovell described a situation when he received a call about a baby who had stopped breathing on the south side of Baltimore City’s harbor. Despite being about 30 minutes away, Lovell was the nearest available BCFD paramedic and stepped up to the task.

“We had to drive all the way from the Alameda Shopping Center to Cherry Hill,” Lovell said. He added that the baby ultimately survived, despite the delay.

Medics work on an eight-day rotating schedule of two 10-hour days, two 14-hour nights and four days off. Lovell usually worked an additional two 14-hour shifts of overtime.

“The money was great, don’t get me wrong. I was paid very well,” Lovell said, noting his base salary was $92,000 around the time he left the department, and he was paid around $50,000 to $60,000 more annually in overtime.

Lovell left the department after eight years for a lower base salary of $60,000 in Wisconsin, saying the extra money in Baltimore ultimately wasn’t worth the feeling of burnout.

Lunsford, the city’s highest-paid employee, “went to work every freaking day,” Lovell said. That included “a few” 24-hour shifts in the past 30 days, said Coster, the union leader.

“He’s definitely a dedicated paramedic to Baltimore City,” Coster said.

Lunsford could not be reached for comment.

“If we didn’t have those employees working those extreme overtime hours, we would be closing down units on a daily basis… We can’t continue to staff the fire department with overtime,” Coster said.

He added, “The unions do not like to push our medics on a 24-hour shift, but sometimes they do it to get the hours out of the way… or if they know they’re going to have a longer time off, they’ll work a 24-hour shift in order to have more time off,” he said.

What can be done

While there have been improvements to recruitment, there’s still more work to be done, said City Council Member Odette Ramos, who previously served on the public safety committee.

“The only way to deal with overtime is to hire people,” she said.

The combination of staffing shortages and the high number of fires stemming from the city’s vacant properties is dangerous for employees, she said. Baltimore has twice the rate of vacant home fires as other areas of the country, The Sun reported in 2022.

The high number of fires is “totally overwhelming for our firefighters,” Ramos said. “I mean, they sometimes have five or six fires that they’re going to [per] shift, which is pretty substantial, and it’s exhausting.”

Last December, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore awarded $50.8 million in grants to clean up vacant housing in Baltimore City — an initiative Ramos welcomes with open arms, in addition to efforts by Mayor Brandon Scott, the Greater Baltimore Committee and others.

“There is still a long way to go,” she said. “We are nowhere near our goals.”

Fire Department spokesperson John Marsh said the department is continuing to address ongoing staffing challenges.

“We recognize the increased demands on our sworn members, particularly regarding overtime,” Marsh said in an email. “Due to staffing shortages, many of our firefighters and EMS providers have taken on additional hours to maintain the high level of service our city depends on.”

Marsh said the department has also boosted recruitment efforts and streamlined the hiring process.

In addition, Ramos said the department is looking at how to deploy EMTs “more efficiently and effectively so that everybody gets a chance to get an EMT and they’re not waiting an hour.”

Conway said the City Council could address the overtime issue by performing oversight and making sure “that everything is on the up-and-up, that there is true accountability when supervisors are signing those overtime slips,” he said.

In addition to reviewing employee salaries, the city also could examine changing schedules so they’re not as taxing, Ramos said.

“Our first responders, they’re so important to our city. We want to make sure they’re getting what they need,” she said.

Lots of work, few breaks

Another recently retired paramedic, Rhonda Johnson, who worked in the department for 34 years, said there were times when she’d reached the end of her shift and was heading back to the fire station, only to receive more calls that she was not allowed to refuse.

“The EMS officers, they’re always going home on time. They’re sleeping at night. They’re sitting down and eating dinner. The firefighters [are] doing the same thing. Not the medics,” she said. “So nobody wants to be a medic in Baltimore City. Once they get the training, they go elsewhere.”

Johnson said she often felt like she needed a “mental break” during her shift.

“I’m telling you, some of these calls out here, we see the worst of the worst,” she said.

Lovell said the fire department has a “no-fail mission.”

“When we fail, people die,” he said. “When people call 911, they are having one of the worst days of their lives, and they have a problem that they cannot solve.”

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