Volunteer firefighters are the lifeblood of many communities’ fire protection services nationwide, and York County is no exception. The rural communities here have very few paid staff members ”“ in some cases, none ”“ and depend on trained residents to respond to emergency calls. In fact, Maine has one of the country’s highest percentages of volunteer and on-call firefighters. It’s a system that has worked for generations in towns where the population is too small to support a paid, 24/7 fire force.
Fire departments such as these have faced challenges keeping up their staffing numbers in recent years, with chiefs citing a variety of factors: The concept of volunteerism and community involvement is less prevalent than it was in the past, leading to lower numbers of volunteers to begin with, and the long-time members are aging out. Training requirements have increased to the point that volunteering is a much heftier commitment ”“ one that some people with families and work demands have rejected as being too much.
And lastly, fewer people work within the towns, as farming culture subsides and jobs are consolidated in population centers, so they are too far away during the day to respond. As well, most do not work for a company that will accommodate their fire service, so if they’re up half the night on a fire or rescue call, they still have to go to work in the morning.
With all these factors against them, volunteer fire departments did not need an additional obstacle to promoting volunteerism, which is why we’re glad to hear that the U.S. Department of Treasury and Internal Revenue Service clarified this past Friday that volunteer emergency responders will not fall under the mandates of the new health care law.
This issue, left unclear in the Affordable Care Act’s wording, was causing consternation among small fire departments nationwide, and we’re glad the government did not hesitate to address it, and to find that volunteer firefighters are exempt.
These volunteers have long been considered employees of the department, for reasons such as taxes, stipends and other benefits to entice them to the work. Due to that classification, some were worried that the ACA would require the departments to offer them health insurance ”“ a prospect that would come with a significant cost that could lead to financial hardship for many departments.
The health care law requires employers with 50 or more employees, who work 30 hours or more per week, to provide health insurance for them. Many departments are too small to hit the 50-employee threshold, even with volunteers, but others who depend almost entirely on a large corps of volunteers were getting worried. Their only option would have been to reduce the number of hours each volunteer can serve, regardless of the community’s need, and reduce benefits for volunteers. The former would undoubtedly result in decreased levels of service unless more volunteers could be recruited, and the latter would make recruitment even more difficult than it is with the current challenges.
While it’s unclear whether pressure from Congress had an impact on the IRS decision, we’d like to applaud our U.S. Senators, Susan Collins and Angus King, for being among those to introduce an act to address the issue back in December. The Protect Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act would have “amended the Affordable Care Act to make it clear that volunteer emergency service workers are not required to be counted as full-time equivalent employees for purposes of health care coverage,” according to an announcement from the senators.
The ACA is meant to extend health care to all, but its provisions are not feasible in every instance, which is why the thresholds were put in place, and we’re glad to see this common-sense decision not to count these volunteers as employees in this case. Most of them have insurance options through other avenues and this is the right decision to help protect this time-honored ”“ and affordable ”“ method of fire protection for rural areas.
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Today’s editorial was written by Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski on behalf of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Kristen by calling 282-1535, ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.
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