Pennsylvania Legislators make decisions that affect nearly every areas of our life. We have provided below legislation that was introduced during the Fourth Quarter of 2021 that may affect you and your department. If you have questions and/or concerns about any of this legislation, you should reach our directly to your PA Senator or PA Representative.
October 5, 2021
Solicitation of Funds for Volunteer Fire Companies
Representative Ecker introduced House Bill 1973 to amend the “Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act” to ease the regulatory and financial burden this statute imposes on our volunteer fire companies. For more information, click here.
October 6, 2021
Tax Relief for Volunteer Firefighters Program
Representative Pisciottano introduced House Bill 1990 that creates a program that provides local property tax relief to volunteer firefighters. While past action by the General Assembly granted localities the ability to forgive local property taxes for firefighters, that forgiveness was not reimbursed by the state and therefore was not implemented in fiscally-challenged municipalities. Representative Pisciottano’s proposal would allow property tax forgiveness for firefighters without impacting local municipal budgets by offering tax credits to businesses that donate to designated firefighting organizations in a method similar to the current Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program. For more information, click here.
October 19, 2021
Amending the Sports Raffles Charities Act for Fire Grants and Lottery Fund
Representative Day plans to introduce legislation to amend the Sports Raffles Charities Act (Act 56 of 2019) to further distribute the raffle money for Fire Grants and the Lottery Fund. For more information, click here.
November 3, 2021
ARP Funding for EMS Agencies
Senator Pittman plans to introduced Senate Bill 994 to provide American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funds to cover financial losses suffered by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies during the COVID-19 Pandemic. For more information, click here.
November 8, 2021
Improving Drug Overdose Mapping and Response
Senators Mastriano and Argall plan to introduce legislation to ensure that drug overdose incidents are reported into a mapping system within 24 hours of encounter by first responders. This proposed legislation will require first responders (law enforcement and emergency medical services) to report all overdose incidents into ODMAP within 24 hours of encounter. To avoid any duplication of effort or data points, ODMAP does have the ability to automatically populate reports from other reporting systems currently used by first responders. For more information, click here.
November 10, 2021
Making a COVID Waiver Permanent: Helping our Emergency Responders Help More People
During the governor’s COVID-19 Emergency Declaration, regulations were waived to increase access to healthcare. Under Representative proposed COVID waiver, EMS agencies were permitted to operate as they once were and provided needed regulatory flexibility to meet the public safety needs of their local communities. Representative Hamm’s House Bill 2097 would make this commonsense COVID waiver permanent. Pennsylvania has gone from over 300,000 volunteers in the 1980s to less than 30,000 today – our Volunteers need our support to help them to continue to serve our communities! For more information, click here.
COLA for our retired police officers and firefighters
Representative White plans to introduce legislation similar to the 2002 COLA for our retired police officers and firefighters. This proposed COLA would add an additional $480 annually to the pension of an officer with 20 years’ experience and 20 years in retirement. For more information, click here.
December 14, 2021
Junior Firefighters
Senator Stefano plans to introduce legislation which would help Junior Firefighters to be completely trained prior to turning 18 years old. For more information, click here.
Increasing the Number of EMT’s and Paramedics in Pennsylvania
Representative Roae plans to introduce legislation that will potentially increase the number of EMT’s and paramedics in Pennsylvania. Representative Roae’s proposed legislation would require the PA Department of Health to once again create state written and/or computer examinations for EMT’s, EMR’s and paramedics in order to be licensed by the state which was done prior to 2013. For more information, click here.
