A new professional standards program at Cal Fire is giving the department a mechanism to hand down discipline in a consistent manner across the state for the first time in its history. It’s racking up pay reductions, suspensions and dismissals at a rate that rivals scandal-plagued 2014 – the year when an instructor at its fire academy murdered his mistress and brought intense scrutiny on the department. The program’s advocates says it is long overdue, but the sudden application of harsh discipline is surprising firefighters and raising concerns that Cal Fire is unnecessarily wasting its investment in employees it spent years training. Take the crackdown on academy cadets last fall who at different times after hours had a drink at Amador County bars. Thirty-one of them were dismissed from their jobs and 12 more were suspended for not reporting on their peers.