Posted: | June 10, 2014 10:41 AM |
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From: | Senator Bob Mensch |
To: | All Senate members |
Subject: | VLAP Loan Legislative Fix |
In the very near future, I will be introducing legislation to amend Title 35 (Health and Safety) to make a much needed adjustment to the Volunteer Loan and Assistance Program" (VLAP) which provides 2% loans to Volunteer Fire and EMS departments. As you may recall, this General Assembly enacted Act 129 of 2013, which increased the maximum VLAP program loan amounts to make them comparable to the value of today's dollar. When Act 129 was passed last year, it was unknown at the time that in 1994, Act 134, known as the Farm Safety and Occupational Health Act, existed; whereby Section 11 of the act authorized the PA Emergency Management Agency to issue loans under this program for heavy duty rescue trucks in the amount of $150,000. Under the act we passed last year, the amounts of the loans were increased by 200%. Heavy duty rescue vehicles were increased from $100,000 to $200,000. Unfortunately, this same 200% increase was not made for heavy duty rescue trucks, which would have been increased from $150,000 to $300,000 had it been known at the time that Section 11 of Act 134 existed. To that end, my proposal will fix this inconsistency in the statute and clarify that the loan amounts for heavy duty rescue trucks along with aerial apparatus will be up to $300,000, as was originally intended when Act 129 of 2013 was enacted. |
Introduced as SB1423