A new ordinance in Passaic allows the city to collect a fee when firefighters respond to an emergency, with the exception of structure fires. So who gets the bill? Insurance companies.
Bill Ballinger, President of Allstate New Jersey Insurance, considers this a form of double taxation. He says, “Allstate New Jersey opposes these fees cause we believe our policyholders shouldn’t have to pay services they already paid through municipal and fire district taxes.”
City officials did not return our calls for comment, but in a letter to residents, the mayor said “this (proposal) will help raise important revenue to reimburse the city’s fire department for materials and supplies.” The new fees come at a time when costs and fire calls are on the rise, according to the mayor.
Bill Ballinger of Allstate New Jersey says he understands the financial constraints fire departments face because he is also the fire chief of a volunteer fire company.
“The cost of running a fire department is a very real issue. However, putting our residents in a position where they have to make a contemplation of can we afford calling the fire department, can we afford calling public safety. is not something we believe in,” said Ballinger.
So what happens if the insurance company won’t pay the fee? The mayor’s letter states that local residents and policyholders are not involved in any way with the cost recovery process. And the city will only submit a claim if the insurance policy includes a provision to cover these costs.
But Deana Lykns of the Insurance Council of NJ says in other states the bill is typically sent to policy holders because most insurance providers don’t include these fees in their policies.
Allstate New Jersey is one of the few that does reimburse homeowners for emergency response fees. But Ballinger doesn’t believe any claims have been filed yet seeking this reimbursement.
Passaic officials claim municipalities in other states with similar cost recovery programs haven’t faced premium increases or insurability problems. But Ballinger says it’s likely these costs would be passed on to consumers.
Thirteen states have banned municipal accident response fees. However, these fees are permitted in about two dozen states, including New Jersey. State senator Anthony Bucco plans to introduce legislation that would put a cap on these fees.
Said Bucco, “I don’t think they’re warranted because you’re already paying for these fees through property taxes.”
Arthur Ondish, the president of New Jersey League of Municipalities, says the league doesn’t take a position on this issue .. but he points out tight budgets have forced local officials to find new ways to pay for services.
According to Ondish, “every municipality is looking to save money where ever they can. They’re re-evaluating the way they do things, the processes, the services they provide.”
Passaic’s emergency fee ordinance goes into effect next month.
Desire Taylor files this report from Passaic.
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This article is so full of mis-information, it is disgusting! 13 states have banned police department billing, not fire department billing, because if the police department can just give you a bill instead of issuing a citation, then it skirts the judicial process, since you hyave the right to your day in court with a citation. Also, every policy in New Jersey is required to have a “Fire Department Service Charge” clause in the policy. These insurance companies that say they don’t cover it must be saying that they are writing bogus coverage in New Jersey. This is how FD expenses were meant to be paid — its one reason that the state does not heavily fund fire departments when tax dollars don’t keep pace with new technologies and skyrocketing costs.
The part about people not calling 911 because they don’t want a bill to go to their insurance company is patently false. They used to say that about ambulance billing too, but anyone, and I mean everyone familiar with the EMS industry will very readily tell you that abuse of the EMS system (people using it as a taxi-service, frequent fliers for non-emergency conditions, etc.), is much more prevalent in this post-billing age then it ever was before. There simply isn’t a correlation, and it is just a scare tactic by the Insurance Industrial Complex to try and keep them from having to pay the hard working taxpayers despite the fact that they have been paid premiums for these charges. If this does NOT go through, the money will stay in the insurance companies’ pockets and act as a back-door tax on the consumer levied by the greedy insurance companies.
I am glad to see that the public is not being fooled by the propaganda the Insurance Industry tries to shove down our throats so they can keep collecting our hard earned dollars to keep paying those huge bonuses to themselves. If you look at the most lucrative industry in the United States, I can guarantee that it is either the fire industry or insurance industry. Which one do you think it is? Bingo!Benjamin Franklin setup our first insurance venue in Philadelphia and he also organized the 1st fire company to do what? To save his insurance company money, by mitigating losses, insuring he didn’t have to pay out as much to his policy holders. When it became too time consuming to continue outfitting his own fire companies as his policy holder base grew, it made great common sense to simply began reimbursing independently run fire companies who responded to local fires and then requested reimbursement from Mr. Benjamin s company. (who reimbursed them gladly). This served to save Mr. Benjamin much time, and especially money because the cost to outfit a fire department far outweighs the cost to simply reimburse a department for their expenses incurred during response. At some point the government became involved and setup “boundaries” which became our fire districts of today. Somewhere along the way, due to certain red-tape, fire departments no longer “remembered” to request reimbursement from insurance providers (no doubt due to pressure from special interest groups funding political platforms). Funding of fire departments was no longer the responsibility of insurance companies who are the main beneficiary. It instead became the responsibility of the policy holders to not only pay for their policy provision, but also to taxes to support the fire departments who “worked” for insurance companies. On top of that, nowadays, not only do we pay taxes to fund fire departments, and pay insurance premiums, but most of us also pay an extra provision amount for the legacy “fire department response reimbursement” provision, that never was meant to be paid out in the first place. What a deal these insurance companies have devised for themselves isn’t it? Or could we call it a scheme? Either way the results are the same, we all pay and they don’t, simple math! Lets change the system and put it back the way it was meant to be, lets make Benjamin Franklin proud and stop allowing big business to pervert his original good intentions into something sinister and self serving!!