Two weeks after retiring from the Chicago (IL) Fire Department, former Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff accepted a position as a deputy fire chief in Carol Stream, Illinois.
Hoff, one of the most decorated firefighters in the history of the Chicago Fire Department, can start collecting a pension from the city even as he gets a salary in his new position, according to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times (http://bit.ly/ymHF3H).
The Sun-Times report says that Hoff’s decision to take a new position calls into question his claim that he was retiring to spend more time with his family and “adds fuel to the claim that he quit, in part, to avoid making the staffing and firehouse cuts that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is almost certain to demand.”
Hoff was appointed fire commissioner on June 23, 2010, by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. A 33-year veteran of the department and third-generation firefighter, he has twice been awarded the department’s highest honor for his role in two separate rescues. After more than three decades of firefighting, Hoff, who said he was “deathly against” closing fire stations or reducing the minimum staffing requirement on fire apparatus, retired on the 50th anniversary of his father’s death in a building collapse on Chicago’s South Side.
