Protect Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act

Approximately 750,000 volunteer firefighters serve in 20,000 all-volunteer and 5,000 combination careervolunteer fire departments throughout the United States. Many communities rely exclusively upon volunteer fire departments for fire protection and emergency medical services. . The Problem: ACA Employer Mandate May Harm Volunteer Fire Departments and Other Volunteer Emergency Services Agencies Many volunteer fire and emergency medical personnel receive nominal benefits, which boost recruitment and retention by demonstrating that their efforts are appreciated. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and section 457(e) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) allow volunteers firefighters and emergency medical personnel to be nominally compensated for their service. However, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also tends to treat volunteers firefighters and emergency medical personnel as employees of the agencies that they serve for the purpose of taxing their nominal benefits. This leads to some confusion as to whether the classification of volunteer firefighters as employees will also apply for the purposes of the Employer Shared Responsibility Provision of the ACA. Without clarification, volunteer responders will likely be counted as full-time employees, even if they spend most of their time on-call and working other full-time jobs. Many emergency response agencies do not have the resources to provide generous pay or benefits todaythat is precisely why the volunteers are so important! Unless the provision for employee is clarified, starting in 2015, fire departments and other emergency response units that rely heavily on volunteers will be forced to eliminate emergency responders and/or reduce training and emergency response hours in order to drop below the 50 employee threshold. Should these volunteers be deemed employees, the cost of complying with the Employer Mandate would be impossible to cover, often exceeding the entire budget of a local agency. The Solution: Use Proper Definition of Full-Time Employee to Distinguish Between Paid Emergency Service Workers and Volunteers This legislation amends the definition of full-time employee to ensure that qualified emergency services volunteers are not counted in determining the number of full-time employees at a given employer for the purposes of the Employer Mandate. This legislation uses the existing standards in the Internal Revenue Code for bona fide volunteers performing fire fighting and prevention services, emergency medical services, or ambulance services. Properly distinguishing between full-time, paid emergency responders and volunteers is necessary if we want to protect essential emergency response agencies that keep our communities safe and protect over one-third of the U.S. population. Cost: CBO has not scored this bill, but we expect the impact to be negligible. Support: This legislation has been endorsed by: International Association of Fire Chiefs, National Volunteer Fire Council, and Congressional Fire Services Institute.

If you have any questions, please contact Elizabeth Falcone in Senator Warners office at Elizabeth_Falcone@warner.senate.gov or Beau Tremitiere in Senator Manchins office at beau_tremitiere@manchin.senate.gov.

The following figures are based on projections from the National Fire Protection Associations 2010 Survey of the Needs of the US Fire Service. The data show the number of fire departments in each state that are staffed by 100 % volunteers (All Volunteer) or 1-50 % volunteers (Mostly Volunteer).

State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Mostly-Volunteer Depts. All-Volunteer Depts. Total Depts. 86 686 874 73 133 210 77 34 215 60 608 732 227 226 745 129 113 315 53 168 254 15 8 27 80 131 435 233 249 626 There are only four departments in HI, three all-career and one mostly-career 92 77 187 197 783 1,157 101 625 802 82 728 846 73 526 653 137 497 691 207 149 430 114 261 405 9 159 181 108 77 363 306 547 962 101 660 776 75 338 532 143 410 678 47 285 351 14 439 475 30 52 106 112 93 237 53 350 476 35 206 275 44 897 1,029 234 536 834 9 329 342 365 627 1,227 124 305 498 173 124 325 156 1,807 2,019 28 16 73 119 104 281 8 331 342 71 231 403 159 1,030 1,488 34 134 188 21 202 234 53 387 503 80 106 224 33 372 442 105 645 800 4 108 120

If you have any questions, please contact Elizabeth Falcone in Senator Warners office at Elizabeth_Falcone@warner.senate.gov or Beau Tremitiere in Senator Manchins office at beau_tremitiere@manchin.senate.gov.