RICHMOND – Two bills moving through the General Assembly would authorize volunteer fire departments to charge homeowners’ insurance policies after responding to fire-related emergencies.
One measure is House Bill 1202, sponsored by Del. Joseph Johnson, (D-Abingdon). It unanimously passed the House on Feb. 1.
Sen. Phillip Puckett, (D-Tazewell), is sponsoring an identical proposal – Senate Bill 140. It unanimously passed the Senate on Feb. 3.
Amendments to both bills would require insurers to provide coverage for services provided by volunteer fire departments. The departments could not bill more than the limit of the policy holder’s coverage.
Puckett, a 30-year member of the Lebanon Fire Department in Russell County, said some volunteer departments are facing severe financial problems.
“All the volunteers are trying to do is cover some of their additional expenses that are not being covered by localities,” Puckett said.
Volunteer fire departments, which rely on unpaid trained personnel, are often in rural areas or localities with limited resources. With increased fuel costs and fire equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, survival of these departments depends on a mixture of local and state funds as well as charitable contributions.
“If it wasn’t for private donations, we could not operate for the full year,” said Chief Charlie Robertson of the Rocky Mount Fire Department in Franklin County.
His sentiments were echoed by Ronald McClure, fire chief of the Dublin Fire Department in Pulaski County. His department relies on a mixture of paid and volunteer firefighters.
“We do a fundraiser usually once a year and every other year, and we get some funding from the county and some from the town,” McClure said.
Because of the economy, he said, donations to his department have dropped by a third.
While volunteer departments have tried to collect from homeowners in the past, those attempts have been challenged by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli.
In a 2011 opinion, Cuccinelli determined that state law does not allow volunteer fire departments to bill insurance companies.
That’s why Puckett and Johnson submitted their legislation.
“The purpose of the bill is to try to make fully legal what really has been happening for some time,” said David Bailey of David Bailey Associates, a lobbying firm that represents firefighters at the General Assembly.
Puckett said he wants to assure homeowners that the purpose of the legislation is not to discourage them from calling their local departments for fear of being billed.
“Most volunteer fire departments are saying, ‘Look, we’re here doing this voluntarily, and if you call us, we’re coming.’ ”
Sorry to join the conversation so late but….
@ think again
You are misinformed actually…probably more misguided and warped.
The volunteer fire departments in Loudoun County get a BIG stipend from the county Government. Ashburn for instance received nearly one million dollars. Over all nearly 7 million….if you can support yourselves alone…
Most of the volunteer departments own the apparatus, and not Loudoun County.
Technically yes. But the County has been paying for these apparatus for years. I assume you wanna say you own your house too. WRONG the bank owns your house cause you couldn’t afford it on your own. Even the new ambulance in the Sterling station 24 is being paid for 59% by the county. Here is how that whole thing went down. Not word for word
Sterling - We want you to buy us an ambulance but we are going to paint it how we want and do with it what we want.
County- Sterling, we aren’t going ot gove you money so you can continue to be an outcast company, paint the ambulance green and call it yours. We buy it, it gets the uniform color.
Sterling - WAHHH no fair. Fine we dont want you to buy it. We want to paint it green….so you still have to pay 59% because we do what we want because the public thinks we are actually a responsible organization.
County - You are right, you have your way unfortunately, here is a couple hundred thousand dollars, paint your ambulance whatever you want…
Loudoun County does help with the purchase of new apparatus, but they typically do not foot the entire cost of a new engine, with the exception of the new tankers that are being purchased to fulfill their new tanker ‘taskforce’ initiative.
Wow. Truth. So on top of the millions given to these companies the county still has to help with apparatus?
There are career staff at almost all of the volunteer stations in Loudoun, but they typically only staff the station between 6am and 6pm Monday - Friday.
There are actually career staff at every “station” just not every company. But that is coming.
Every night and every weekend, the stations are usually staffed with volunteers. There are all career stations in the county such as South Riding, etc.
Actually, do your research, exactly 50% of those stations are staffed 24/7 by paid professionals. You can spin it and say that you have more personnel i.e. cover more, but that is mostly because you ride 3 red hats to a truck, 2 to an engine and 4-6 person ambulances. It can be seen in Sterling day and night. And then of course they can’t lift there own patients but that’s a whole other deal.
So your tax dollars may go to help pay the career staff, and go towards the purchase of new equipment at volunteer stations.
Having been in the fire service/EMS for most of my adult life, the fire service is replete with history of charging for its services all the way back to the 1600’s. I don’t like the idea of double dipping however. Either they charge on a pay as you go model..in which case the FD’s will most assuredly screw themselves or we pay through tax revenue. The solution is simply this, we pay a specific tax that is not rolled into the general fund specifically for supporting Fire/EMS. Many communities do this and it alleviates all of the anxiety surrounding this conversation.
Given the greed of the BoS of not just this county, but many counties, I don’t see this happening in Loudoun. I would gladly shift my yearly donation to a set regulated tax rather than rely on the largess of the general public.
Remember this bill is for all of Virginia where populations simply cannot support a fire company either through sufficient tax or donations. Go to Matthews or Wise County and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
@SprawlFighter;
What a completely ignorant comment:
“If paying bills for fire/rescue calls becomes the norm, then its time we just go ahead and make our Fire/Rescue a professional service.”
They are ALL professionals (volunteer or career) and deserve better.
“Already paid” - You must’ve been transported by an ambulance from a neighboring jurisidiction. Loudoun County EMS units don’t charge for transport. If they didn’t ask for your social security number, you aren’t billed for the ride.
Richmond should be the standard bearer…not localities making up their own rules for volunteers… Yet again career staff, probably on duty, giving personal opinions. No wonder we can’t get people to volunteer.
I had to pay well over $700 for a ride in an ambulance for a 5 mile one way trip. We already pay.
It seems to me that we should be grateful to every fire fighter who risk injury and their lives to protect our properties, rather than carping about wasteful spending.
By the way, did you know that historically there were cities where homeowners had to pay annual dues if they wanted a volunteer fire department to save their homes? Also, the fire crew that was first to respond sometimes wasn’t the company the homeowner paid dues to. Apparently that crew would let the thing burn unless the homeowner agreed to pay them.
I may be wrong, but I believe this legislation is limited to all-volunteer staffed fire companies. If that is the case, there isn’t a single fire station in Loudoun that would qualify for insurance reimbursement, as every one of them have paid personnel assigned to them. There are many areas of Virginia where fire fighting is the exclusive responsibility of volunteer stations. They don’t have the taj mahal fire stations and parade-quality equipment you see in Loudoun. They get by on patched up equipment and stations simply because the volunteers in those communities know there is no alternative to self-help. Give ‘em a break, for God’s sake.
County standards above the State minimum makes sense in some areas.
The County says that firefighters need to be trained to at least the First Responder EMS level. The State says that firefighters do not.
When a fire engine is the first unit to arrive on an EMS call, don’t you think that it makes sense for the firefighters to have some sort of basic EMS knowledge?
How much was that new fire station in Purcellville again?
Oh that’s right, $10,500,000. For a Fire Station!
It is time to bolster the volunteer system again. Bill the insurance companies for everything: car wrecks, house fires, hazmat, illness calls. Make sure the money goes to the nonprofit volunteer departments though. The career people on loco have all but gutted the volunteer system into a slow death. It is time for statewide minimum qualifications for all volunteers. Localities should be prohibited from generating their own rogue versions of the state minimums ( eg: 100 hrs training as a state standard, loco career folks have created huge 500 plus hour minimums). No wonder we can’t get anyone to volunteer for what is entirely a volunteer-capable job.
Agreed. You would think that with population growth, the amount of people volunteering would increase proportionally.
However, the influx of transplants in Loudoun has been of the white collar type who think they are too good to be doing blue collar work.
Blame this new VFD charge on a demographic that has saturated many a Loudoun Co community who contribute nada and take mucho.
On a positive note, I heard you get a discount if you pay in beer.
That would suck if the policy pays out and reduces what’s left for me to rebuild. Loudoun is getting too crowded. Time to move again.
I could have overlooked a certain statement/thought pattern in the above article however here is my $.02 For a paid service to be available/funded, the taxpayers pay for the entire cost of new apparatus, fuel, vehicle repairs/routine upkeep, building (construction, upkeep, heating, utilities etc), training, gear (greater than $1000 per firefighter for coat, pants, boots, helmet), firefighting “tools of the trade” such as hose, axes, airpacks and the list goes on and on and on. Stop by your local fire department sometime and check out all the equipment; maybe even ask: how much $ a certain item costs? For volunteer departments, the department pays for all the above listed “stuff” with the exception of a small % of $ received from the municipality/municipalities etc. If everyone wishes for their TAXES to GREATLY INCREASE, let’s go with ALL PAID departments. For ALL PAID departments, it will also mean centralized stations (there won’t be one in every small town) because there isn’t the tax base to support it. Then volunteer department members won’t have to put forth their time, effort and lives for free. They won’t need to volunteer and will have more time with their families and/or pick up overtime at their workplace etc. Maybe it’s time to look at the big picture and realize the money saved by volunteers before they are made to go the way of the dinosaurs (extinct). Once gone, they are not apt to return.
Hey I have a better idea for fund raiser for these FD - why not charge rent (lucketts)for all the campers stored at the FD - you can only park there if you belong - why not charge for it - or charge to wash your cars and waste water -
With increased fuel costs - give me a break then tell these men and women of the FD to stay at the station. Dont drive to Walmart, Target, Kohls, McDonalds, Chick Filet and on top of that while in stores shopping turn your vehicles off - stop wasting gas - someone should do a article on that. The other day while in Leesburg, I seen a female cop go into the hair place by Shenanigans, leave her cruiser running and get her hair cut - Now thats what I say is our tax money being well spent - this goes for all county/state/federal workers. I see this every day in Leesburg. Lets stops being wasteful
I’m so tired of this Public Safety Industrial Complex. My house burns down and the fire department gets the money from my insurance company? Or, put another way, I pay the premium and they collect if there’s a payout? How about the neighbor’s house that burns because my house caught on fire. Is he exempt from this billing by the FD? How about we cut back on the number of “volunteers” and pay for what we need via taxes and be done with it!
SprawlFighter - it’s slowly becoming that way. 39% of the Loudoun County stations already have 24/7 career staff
One can wonder why Arcola needs a fourth ambulance. They already have a spare (third) ambulance sitting in the parking lot ever since Loudoun County gave it back to them and bought their own unit for the South Riding station.
If paying bills for fire/rescue calls becomes the norm, then its time we just go ahead and make our Fire/Rescue a professional service.
Think Again@ You are incorrect. Please explain why the county paid for the following:
The Acquisition of Fire and Rescue Apparatus bond passed with 72 percent of voters voting yes.
.
.
.
“There are three vehicle purchases that will be funded completely by the county: a tanker for Lovettsville (as requested by the Lovettsville Volunteer Fire Department), a pumper for Aldie (requested by the Aldie Volunteer Fire Department) and a tanker for the Western Loudoun Station, endorsed by the Fire and Rescue Commission. If granted, the latter vehicle will be garaged at the pending Rt. 671 fire-rescue facility.
Additional purchases include an ambulance for the Route 28 Station, which may ultimately be set up as a jointly-funded project with the Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad, a pumper for Lovettsville proposed as a 40 percent county contribution and a pumper for Route 28 Station proposed as a 50 percent county contribution.
Finally, both an ambulance for Ashburn and for Arcola are proposed as 59 percent county contributions. The Ashburn ambulance will be garaged at the Ashburn Volunteer Fire-Rescue Station and the latter at the Brambleton Fire-Rescue Station, a pending facility awaiting relocation of the Arcola Fire-Rescue Company.”
http://www.loudountimes.com/index.php/news/article/all_three_referendums_pass123/
@Concerned Firefighter - Thanks for the other side, but if this bill passes, do you really think the AVFD will really sit back and consider to bill or not-to-bill. No one is denying that running a department is expensive. The government is looking at every possible way to get more from the tax payer one way or another.
Over spending is what happened. People based everything on the housing market and not that money is no longer there, instead of curbing spenping or planning ahead, new ways are being thought of to get the same income.
Ok now that some of you are worried that volunteers will be billing you for call, maybe it’s time for some of these dept’s in Loudoun county to start spending a little smarter. What you people dn’t know is how many SUV’s, Trucks (Leesburg, Sterling) and other pieces of equipment these stations are buying that they CAN NOT EVEN STAFF after 1800 when the career staff goes home. Look at Ashburn. drive past their station one time and ask yourself why they need all those vehicles that just sit there? SUV’s for the presidents and secretaries? for what? Leesburg, why did you just get a new truck, but now have to go buy another one? Come on people start knocking on their doors and ask to look a their books. You will be sick to your stomach at the waste. EVERY station in the dept does not need 20 utility vehicles to sit in the parking lots.
As a volunteer firefighter here in Loudoun, I would ask that everyone take a step back for a second. No one has said that we WILL begin charging. This is actually the first that most of us have heard of this bill. As far as I know we, Loudoun County, have not put any effort into reimbursement for services. This is a bill entered for discussion and “possible” implementation. Again, it will only ALLOW this to be done, it does not mandate that it will be done.
If this were to happen I foresee it being done like the billing for medical calls. The county sends a bill to the insurance company. The insurance company pays a set amount based on the law. This will NOT be a subscription service! We will still respond to your emergency even if you cannot pay.
Our departments do get some money from the county. But, as you can imagine, we compete for money with every other governmental function. Schools get the majority of your tax dollars. Public safety gets another large chunk. Unfortunately the cost of providing for fire and EMS services is increasing more than the allocated budgets. The requests for service have increased over the years, the number of large fires has increased, fuel costs are increasing, maintenance costs are increasing, cost of fire appratus is increasing, cost of personal protective equipment is increasing, the only thing decreasing is the amount of available funding.
Just my 2 cents….
@ CommonSense
You are misinformed.
The volunteer fire departments in Loudoun County get a small stipend from the county Government.
Most of the volunteer departments own the apparatus, and not Loudoun County.
Loudoun County does help with the purchase of new apparatus, but they typically do not foot the entire cost of a new engine, with the exception of the new tankers that are being purchased to fulfill their new tanker ‘taskforce’ initiative.
There are career staff at almost all of the volunteer stations in Loudoun, but they typically only staff the station between 6am and 6pm Monday - Friday.
Every night and every weekend, the stations are usually staffed with volunteers. There are all career stations in the county such as South Riding, etc.
So your tax dollars may go to help pay the career staff, and go towards the purchase of new equipment at volunteer stations.
So if someone dials 911, do they have a choice? Press 1 for Career Fire/EMS or Press 2 for Volunteers (that bring an invoice)... This is outrageous! From what others have suggested, we should only pay for services that we use. Okay… I want my money back for not sending kids to public schools. That portion of my taxes were not used by me. I guess the 3rd time convicted DUI abuser quits paying road taxes? Maybe someone serving a prison term while their inherited property continues to increase in value will not need to pay some property tax? Don’t be insane… everyone pays taxes evenly and no county service used to save lives should charge an additional fee. Why does the county provide FREE transportation that many illegals use everyday but an elderly person has to pay for a ride to the ER, after paying their debt to society.
This is stupid. Don’t we already pay taxes to support the fire department? Sure, the people are Volunteers, but the equipment, buildings, etc are paid for by the county via our taxes. So what am I going to be billed for a service that I’ve already funded?
I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of individuals being driven by friends/relatives to emergency room instead of opting for an ambulance ride. I also see homeowners in planned communities demanding that monthly fees paid to their local (volunteer) fire departments be removed from their monthly HOA fees given homeowner premiums will increase.
We should share the cost of buying the safety equipment and training through taxes. The cost of fuel and maintenance and wages, however, should be paid for by consumers of the service. User fees keep people from wasting our shared resources. Insurance companies with profit motive will drive efficiencies that a pure tax-based system would miss.
This article is from the Capital News Service, so the impact on Loudoun is not mentioned. Is a follow-up article by the LTM planned?
How will the insurance companies pay these bills? Raising premiums on home and business owners is equivalent to a tax, except the insurance companies get to make a profit. Like tolls on private roads, this is another way to privatize what has historically been a shared community (government) function: The community helps put out the fire; the insurance company helps rebuild the damaged house or business. I can see why passing a form of these bills may be the only politically acceptable approach, but to me, deciding which functions are to be performed by government and then properly funding them makes more sense.
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