The Evil Socialism of Fire Departments

[clb09]

http://www.haroldsleft.com/2009/08/socialism-of-firemen.html


For too long now, fire departments across the United States have been socialist organizations, resulting in taxes on the American people.

FACT: Most Americans never use the socialized services of the fire department. The Obama administration has been very clear about keeping the status quo when it comes to taxpayer-funded fire departments.

It is time to open the fire department up to private industry. We have the best fire departments in the world in the US, but that doesn't mean that anyone (even non-US citizens) should be able to dial up and have fires put out, etc. There are private companies (Halliburtion, Etc.) who could step in tomorrow and take over every fire department in America and charge the consumer directly.

[brandon]

I know the article is tounge in cheek, but I'm sure service/response time would go up and cost would go down if they were privatized.

Where I live property taxes are like $3,000/year on a $180,000 house. It's getting out of control...

[Long_Lamkin]

It's like, say, having a tax to provide milk to everybody but never drinking milk. I don't see why more people would support this.

[jm1776]

We live in a wooded, sparsely populated county. The county fire department basically offers insurance. You can optionally pay $50.00/year. If you keep the $50.00/year current and they respond to a fire on your property there is no charge. If you don't pay the $50.00 yearly and they respond to fire on your property you pay the cost of putting out your fire.

[TastyWheat]

We live in a wooded, sparsely populated county. The county fire department basically offers insurance. You can optionally pay $50.00/year. If you keep the $50.00/year current and they respond to a fire on your property there is no charge. If you don't pay the $50.00 yearly and they respond to fire on your property you pay the cost of putting out your fire.
That makes perfect sense to me. If a fire department charged for its services it would only make sense that some kind of insurance program would pay for [at least part of] the bill. Furthermore, I'm sure the availability and response time would improve because whoever gets there first will get the money. However, and this seems like an extremely rare occurrence, if somebody seriously didn't want their house to be saved there could be all kinds of legal action back and forth.

[brandon]

I started a discussion on the facebook group

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=111256528714&ref=mf

[dr. hfn]

This is totally unproductive and marginalizing.

[pcosmar]

We have a volunteer Fire dept. But even then, by the response time involved in a rural setting, they don't help much. I have insurance on my home, and take due care with fire.

btw, I have wood stoves to heat this house, that has been here since 1921. :)

[RevolutionSD]

Agreed but let's not bring Halliburton into this discussion! It's bad enough that the Bush Administration hijacked the word "privatize".

[Epic]

I'm pretty sure Halliburton doesn't receive much money from the customer - they usually just get contracts from government.

So that's not really privatization.

And yes, fire departments should be privatized - the pensions for firefighters are killer and have bankrupted some localities (Vallejo, CA, etc.)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/21/MN35V5V9I.DTL

[nobody's_hero]

I volunteer.

I will say that the ideas put forth in this thread thus far about privatization and user-fees are not new. Long before I first got my helmet covered in soot, insurance companies did reimburse fire departments for the fires they put out. It was competitive (so much so that in rare cases, competing engine companies would arrive on scene and argue about whose fire it was to put out). If you didn't have insurance, well . . .

I'm sure that at some point along the course of history, someone who didn't have insurance, and didn't want to pay for it, went to the government to see about getting a taxpayer-funded fire department, and the private fire department went the way of the private roads, never to be seen or heard from again (well, in Georgia, there is one private volunteer fire department near Savannah, GA—Southside Fire Dept., if I recall correctly).

Color me biased, but I don't believe that everything about a taxpayer fire department is necessarily bad. The fire service today encompasses a lot more than just fighting fires. This year, we've run more auto accident calls than fire calls. Before the year is up, we'll have responded to more medical calls than auto accidents, wildland fires, and structure fires combined.

There are some growing problems, though. We have a plethora of "safety" programs that usually involve giving child car seats to "impoverished" families (who drive up in brand new Escalades but somehow couldn't afford a $200 infant car seat). Giving out $13 smoke detectors to people who live in quarter million dollar homes. If only people knew how bad these programs are abused . . .

And somewhere else along the line, the local-government aspect of fire-fighting got lost. Post-Katrina, FEMA (of all organizations) has started a whole line of painfully redundant training programs related to chain of command. We now have federal grants that come with a whole bunch of attached strings (One personnel grant requires that you must hire an ungodly amount of minorities if you accept funding to hire more firefighters—even if none apply—with no regard to previous training or qualification).

I do feel that if we are to suffer at the hands of a taxpayer-funded fire department, then control of it should be kept as local as possible. For one, I think it would be a good idea to have elections for local fire chiefs in much the same way that local sherriffs are elected. I can't speak for all departments, but ours tries to be as responsible to the taxpayer as possible—but there are ways to get the people more directly involved.



But at a time when everything is becoming nationalized, I'd keep a garden hose handy. :D

[LibForestPaul]

Volunteer fire departments are ripoff...big time...here.

over 1/5 of prop tax goes to volunteer fire dept. We have huge fire houses with several bays...for a small frickin town.
The police arent even as bad. At least the tax money goes to their salaries. I have no idea where the money is going for fire department which is all volunteer. The tax for the two departments are the same?!? WTF?!?

[nobody's_hero]

Volunteer fire departments are ripoff...big time...here.

over 1/5 of prop tax goes to volunteer fire dept. We have huge fire houses with several bays...for a small frickin town.
The police arent even as bad. At least the tax money goes to their salaries. I have no idea where the money is going for fire department which is all volunteer. The tax for the two departments are the same?!? WTF?!?

Sorry to hear that. You should be able to question your city council members/county commissioners about where the money is going. You may have a "paid-on-call" fire department, which is not strictly 'volunteer' in the sense of the word, but rather, its members are paid per call they respond to. Some departments issue a yearly stipend for training. These departments are usually those that cannot afford to hire a full staff of personnel, but struggle to keep volunteers from walking out when the adjacent fire department offers full pay and benefits.

[Dunedain]

That makes perfect sense to me. If a fire department charged for its services it would only make sense that some kind of insurance program would pay for [at least part of] the bill. Furthermore, I'm sure the availability and response time would improve because whoever gets there first will get the money. However, and this seems like an extremely rare occurrence, if somebody seriously didn't want their house to be saved there could be all kinds of legal action back and forth.

I'm sure large scale privatization of firefighting services would be consider "racist" or "sexist" somehow. Imagine the headlines when private companies start avoid servicing low income areas. Lots of work for less pay. Or when most of the firefighters that end up being qualified are white and mostly male and not some "wise Latina".