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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 24, 2023 12:46 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Timothy P. Kearney and Sen. Lisa Baker |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Allowing Counties Option to Create Fire Service-Support Authorities |
| In the near future, we plan on introducing legislation that will support Pennsylvania’s thousands of volunteer and career firefighters to sustain and improve their level of service to their communities, by authorizing the creation of regional authorities for administrative financial support. This legislation will be similar to SB 698 of last session, but will be exclusively focused on fire service. Legislation to authorize authorities to support EMS services will be introduced separately. According to the SR 6 Report, one of the big factors contributing to the decline of volunteer firefighters is the recent growth of administrative duties such as data reporting, accounting, HR, grant writing, fund raising, and other business responsibilities that firefighters are tasked with. These are significant burdens that require great time and attention, and while firefighters undergo extensive training to respond to emergencies, there is never enough time or capacity to manage all the administration requirements. Firefighters volunteer their time to protect our homes and communities, not to do paperwork and master audit compliance, nonprofit development, or asset management and finance – among other tasks. To attract more volunteers and help sustain our great fire companies, we need to let firefighters focus on what they do best: saving lives, fighting fires, and serving their communities. By creating regional authorities that can provide back-office services, funding, and other business-related services to fire companies, local governments can help their companies stabilize and thrive once again. This legislation would amend the Municipal Authorities Act to allow counties or groups of municipalities to form regional municipal authorities to provide administrative services to existing fire companies and municipal departments. This could include grant writing, financial accounting, equipment procurement, recruitment, marketing, budgeting, and plenty of other responsibilities that all companies currently do individually today. Municipalities would have the option to join, and while many municipalities may want to continue as they are, regional authorities would create an affordable economy of scale and lower the cost of services to municipalities that choose to participate. This legislation would also fully protect the employment and bargaining rights of career firefighters and the identity and legacies of our volunteer companies. Unlike mergers or consolidations, a regional authority would provide shared resources for existing companies, not be a new company with its own firefighters. Please join us in building on the work the Legislature has already done to enact the SR 6 report recommendations and in responding to the crisis facing our fire companies. |
Introduced as SB502