… “firefighter” in quotes because, not only would most firefighters almost certainly disown Stephen Campbell but, more to the point, it appears that he spent almost as much time on paid injury leave on the North Providence fire department as he did actually fighting fires.

As it’s not usually helpful to either describe or improve an undesirable situation, I generally try to eschew derogatory characterizations. Once in a while, however, such a term is not derogatory but simply accurate. “Unbelievably piggy” is the only way to describe all of this:

Stephen Campbell, a friend of then-Mayor, now RI Sec of State, A. Ralph Mollis, got hired at age 52 as a fire fighter for North Providence.

He was inexplicably very injury prone and wound up taking, during the ten years that he was a “firefighter”, ten distinct paid leaves for injuries he claimed to have suffered on the job.

The result is that he spent 56 months (not weeks), or almost half of his tenure on the fire department, on paid injury leave.

The most recent leave was fourteen months long.

When North Prov Mayor Charlie Lombardi finally said, that’s enough, get back to work (if he could say it then, why didn’t he say it sooner?), Campbell returned to work for two whole days, just long enough … well, let’s let WPRI’s Tim White and Mayor Lombardi tell it.

… Campbell’s final injury happened when he was temporarily filling in for a day at the higher rank of lieutenant, which boosted his pension to the higher salary.

Take it, ProJo’s Mark Reynolds.

On the second day, Campbell served as acting lieutenant on his assigned truck because the company’s lieutenant was absent and Campbell was the most senior firefighter.

Hypothesized contemporaneous stream of conscience: “I’m a lieutenant now??? Yeeeeeessss!!! Oo, ow, I hurt myself again. Oh darn. Disability pension heaven with the lieutenant’s bump, here I come!!!”

Ah, but not before a quick stop by the payroll office. Gotta collect all of that accrued sick, vacation, holiday and other pay. Yes, impossible to believe but true: an employee who spent almost half of his time out on paid “injury” leave … still had paid sick time and longevity pay coming to him.

Of course, the much larger problem here is the piggy facilitators. At the top of this list would be Campbell’s friend, then-Mayor A. Ralph Mollis (hypothesized conversation from eleven-ish years ago: “Get me a job, Ralphie!”) followed closely by various other elected officials, in North Providence and around the state, who think that signing a contract that includes all of the tax-payer funded perks that Campbell has been greedily wallowing in was and is a prudent and responsible move. A. Ralph Mollis gets a second, special mention for failing to see the obvious potential problems with hiring a person in such an age demographic for this position.

In the spirit of tomorrow’s holiday, I am going to place in a closet – temporarily – my (unexpirgated) Yosemite Sam reaction to this outrage and focus on the positive.

Thanks very much to WPRI’s Tim White and the Providence Journal’s Mark Reynolds for showcasing, in all its glutinous ugliness, this gross abuse of tax dollars. We would have no chance without you and your colleagues, traditional and digital, nosing around and exposing this stuff.