From the Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago’s Inspector General is recommending that 54 firefighters assigned to the city’s Fire Prevention Bureau be terminated for allegedly falsifying mileage used to reimburse them for driving their personal vehicles to inspections. Those 54 firefighters represent half the bureau’s employees.

Nick Russell, deputy commissioner of the Fire Prevention Bureau, and Sal Marquez, the deputy chief who works under him, already have been demoted for exercising lax supervision.

The alleged fraud cost Chicago taxpayers more than $100,000 in 2009 alone, but has been going on for years, the sources said.

Sources said Inspector General Joe Ferguson is recommending that Mayor Rahm Emanuel use the mass firings as an opportunity to fold the Fire Prevention Bureau’s inspection functions into the building department. Read the entire article here.