Pandemic is not the time to cut firefighter budgets
Texas firefighters and paramedics have faced thousands of COVID-19 exposures, quarantines, positive tests and hospitalizations.
We’ve witnessed the suffering of families from Houston to El Paso and from the Rio Grande Valley to the Panhandle. Firefighters also have made the ultimate sacrifice: several have died after contracting COVID-19 in the line of duty. Hundreds more have tested positive for or have been hospitalized by the virus. We know we’re all in this historic, global pandemic fight together.
We are proud to be on the front lines for our communities, but our ability to do this work depends on proper resources.
We urge our state’s cities, counties and emergency services districts (ESDs) to not lose focus on our continuing public safety obligations in these challenging economic times.
As millions of Texas employees and businesses plan for the post-pandemic economy, we see a wide range of budget scenarios developing around the state. Some cities remain financially strong because of sufficient rainy
day funds and effective management. Others lurch from crisis to crisis, using the pandemic to hide the consequences of poor city management and a lack of effective long-term budget planning.
The realities of Texas Property Tax Reform and Transparency Act of 2019 — also known as Texas Senate Bill 2 — are adversely impacting cities as well. This legislation lowered property taxes, but also reduced municipal tax revenues.
With this in mind, as we urge
Texas cities, counties and ESDs to:
• Maintain funding for critical fire and emergency medical services, including staffing and equipment that keep municipalities within national safety standards. Strong safety standard ratings of cities by the International Organization for Standardization, for example, help keep business insurance rates lower, saving billions in premiums. Lapsed standards and increased premiums could hurt business owners at exactly the wrong time.
• Accurately assess and plan for securing COVID-19 resources, including personal protection equipment, as winter intensifies and causes surges in cases and hospitalizations. This includes reviewing planning and spending of federal CARES Act funds in cities that received relief. Some cities have deployed the relief funds effectively. Others have not.
• Ensure that mandatory firefighter and paramedic quarantines comply with state law — and do not financially punish affected front-line personnel. Some cities wrongly forced firefighters and paramedics to use vacation and sick time in quarantine. With few exceptions, most of those cities have reversed course and provided paid administrative leave for mandatory quarantines.
Like our municipalities, the Texas Legislature will face tough decisions as we emerge from the pandemic. While early state revenue forecasts by the state comptrollers office were dire, more recent ones have moderated the likely COVID-19 impact on tax revenues.
Once the revenue issues are resolved in Austin and locally, we should resume the work begun in the last legislative session in which a bipartisan group of lawmakers closed gaps in the workers’ compensation and benefits systems for firefighters injured or killed in the line of duty. For example, we must ensure that injured and ill firefighters with lifelong medical challenges are better covered by workers’ comp. Archaic language and constant reapproval requirements in the current law simply punish firefighters already facing agonizing recoveries and lifelong pain. As legislators showed last session, we can do better.
As we wind down a historically challenging 2020 and look ahead to the new year, Texas firefighters and paramedics remain grateful for the support we have in the communities we serve. In good times and bad, we deliver excellent service, are good stewards of municipal resources and give back to the communities we serve. Let’s keep up that strong momentum by properly resourcing our public safety programs around the state.