Texas House Bill would allow volunteer fire departments to charge for services

by Vince Leibowitz of Capitol Annex

A bill proposed by State Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) would allow volunteer fire departments to charge fees for the assistance it renders to citizens.

The bill, HB 793, is similar to one King filed last year. There are a couple of things to note about this bill.

Number one, although the practice is evidently not codified in Texas law as being permissible, there are already fire departments all across the state directly billing insurance companies (but not citizens) for their services on everything from motor vehicle accidents to house fires.

Number two, as written, the bill would allow volunteer fire departments to actually bill citizens. If you can imagine for one moment your house burning to the ground and then getting a bill for putting out the fire, you can see why that isn’t a good thing. The bill was written the same way last year. However, State Rep. Valinda Bolton authored a committee substitute that mandated that the fee may be billed only to an insurance company. Why king didn’t file a version of the bill this year that conformed to the committee substitute is anyone’s guess.

At any rate, one concern that did arise last session was that fire departments that are contracted with counties or municipalities to bill insurance companies directly for services couldn’t bill direct. Instead, the governmental entity would have to bill, and the fire department would later get the money, and it might cause some problems with existing service agreements.

Fire department folks who support the measure claim it protects fire departments from going bankrupt. Personally, the entire concept of being billed for putting out a fire or using the jaws of life to get someone out of a car is akin to being billed for the bullet used to shoot someone trying to rob your house: it is a necessary government service and tax dollars should cover it. However, in the case of volunteer fire departments–mainly a creature of rural and non-urban areas–there is little or no taxpayer funded support. Some counties may provide a small stipend for VFD’s, but it rarely is anything that helps make ends meet.

A better solution than legislating that it is okay to bill for necessary services the government should provide would be to encourage more rural VFD’s to have emergency service districts established, or to have counties and cities enact what would amount to a very slight tax increase to actually support the work done by VFDs.