N.Y. TO STUDY FIREFIGHTERS’ HEALTH PLAN:

Volunteer fire and ambulance corps in New York want to study whether health insurance coverage could be an incentive companies can offer to keep current members and to improve the increasingly challenging process of recruiting new members. Gov. George Pataki has signed legislation creating a commission to report on the feasibility of companies, local governments or the state itself offering full or partial coverage for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians. “We think that this type of thing would not only be a really strong retention item … but that it may get (recruit) the young 18-to-25-year-old who has a tendency to not have coverage,” said Kirby Hannon, legislative director for the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York. Over the last decade, FASNY estimates that membership in volunteer fire companies has sagged from about 175,000 to between 100,000 and 110,000 today. Volunteer EMT numbers have fallen from 70,000 to less than 50,000, Hannon estimated. The trend, which is occurring on a national level as well, puzzles fire and EMT corps because volunteerism overall appears to be up. Experts say fire and EMT companies may be suffering because their headquarters are less often serving as local community centers than they once did, or because residents work elsewhere and are less oriented to their local communities. Nationally, the National Fire Protection Association says the number of fire company volunteers had dropped from 884,600 in 1983 to 816,600 in 2002. About 300,000 others are professionals in fire or EMT companies. Maryland, Delaware and South Carolina have state income tax breaks for volunteer firefighters and EMTs, according to Craig Sharman of the National Volunteer Fire Council. Connecticut localities can offer volunteers property tax breaks.