First of all, police and fire personnel contribute 2.5 % of all their pay to the retirement system.  This means their contribution has already been taken from their overtime pay. It is up to management to correct the pension spiking.  The problem is most of the supervisors which control overtime are also in the union.  Employees need permission to work overtime.  Supervisor would get pressure from their unions if they attempted to scale back the overtime.  This is one reason FDR was right when he said public employees should be non-union. The sickleave/overtime game can be corrected if management was willing to stand up to the unions.  In which case the politicians getting union contributions and sign waving would step in to put an end to that effort.