County, Fire and Rescue Association found in violation of 2018 insurance agreement

‘There’s concern on the county side that there is exposure to liability, probably to all of us, by not following these terms’

The Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors and the Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association have been in violation of an agreement made in 2018 that could leave both bodies open to legal liability.

The volunteer fire and rescue companies in Rappahannock have always purchased their own insurance policies, said County Administrator Garrey Curry, but the 2018 agreement requires the county to provide that coverage for the companies.

The Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors and the Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association met in a joint meeting on Sunday to discuss the oversight, and members said they expect it to be at least a six-month long process, potentially a year, before it's completely amended.

“It was negotiated in the months/ years before I arrived in town and as such, I was not intimately familiar with the requirements,” Curry wrote in an email. “It replaced an agreement that was dated October 1998, which did not mention who was responsible for insurance … Only during the last year or so when questions about insurance were brought up by the VFRA and some volunteer company representatives did I review the specific language about the insurance. Since that time I have been trying to align practice with the language in the agreement.”

The agreement says that the county “shall provide insurance which shall cover injury or death suffered during the performance of authorized duties by respective Company members.” It goes on to say that the county needs to provide companies with health/accident and disability insurance; worker’s compensation; vehicle/equipment insurance; liability insurance and building/property insurance.

The county has always provided funding for the companies to pay for insurance, but has never played a role in providing insurance to the companies.

“There's concern on the county side that there is exposure to liability, probably to all of us, by not following these terms,” Curry said. “If there was an accidental lapse in policy or something, and there was an uncovered loss, the person that is related to that uncovered loss might have cause to go after all of us in this room, because you're not following the terms of the agreement.”

The current insurance policies in place have to be renewed by July 1, and Curry and members of the Board are asking companies to take an inventory of what policies are working and where there could be improvement, and the value of emergency and non- emergency vehicles and equipment.

Members of the VFRA had concerns about coverage for individuals who are doing non- emergency work around the departments, and if those individuals would still be covered under a workers compensation policy. Curry said that the companies will likely still have the same insurance policies, it will just be a matter of transitioning policies to the county’s control.

The VFRA will convene its insurance committee and meet with representatives from other companies before meeting again with the county Board of Supervisors.

“I think it would be nice to transition things as soon as possible from this liability perspective,” Curry said. “I think it's also reasonable to think that transition will happen on July 1. … we have some very weird … uncovered loss and we’re all pointing fingers … That would be terrible. The likelihood of that happening is probably very, very, very slim.”