The Montgomery County Council rejected an ambulance fee proposed by County Executive Ike Leggett on Tuesday, defeating the measure Leggett has pushed hard for more than a year.
But proponents of the fee quickly condemned the council’s vote and pledged to work to change the council’s mind.
“This issue is very alive,” Assistant Fire Chief Scott Graham said.
“It remains a good idea,” added Leggett’s spokesman Patrick Lacefield. “We think it’s a better idea than raising people’s taxes or having to cut fire and rescue services.”
The council voted 5-3, with Council member Nancy Floreen, D-at large, abstaining, to kill Leggett’s proposed regulations, which would have required a person who used a county ambulance to provide information to the county for billing purposes. Leggett’s proposed legislation would also set the prices for ambulance fees between $300 and $800, and charge $8.75 per mile of ambulance travel.
Moments before the final vote, Floreen was on the losing side of a 5-4 vote against delaying action on the proposed regulations for six months.
The County Council tabled a bill last November that would have given the county the legal authority to institute ambulance fees. It also refused to include the fee in its budget earlier this year, even though Leggett included it in his.
Leggett has repeatedly made the case that ambulance fees, which are common in neighboring jurisdictions, would only be paid for by insurance companies and the federal government, and not by the poor and elderly. The fees would generate about $12.5 million a year, which Leggett and other proponents of the fee said the county could ill-afford to turn down.
“The council this year was able to fund only 14 of the 30 needed ambulances,” Graham said. “We gave them a revenue source for the remaining units … a non-tax revenue source.”
But opponents of the fee have been adamant that some residents, including the elderly on fixed incomes or the uninsured, would think twice before dialing 911 and asking for help.
“Please do not discriminatorily impale fees upon citizens of Montgomery County who involuntarily are crime victims or victims of medical emergencies for utilizing basic government emergency response services, which are the basic duty of government to provide,” Steven Semler, president-elect of the Kensington Volunteer Fire Department, said in a letter to the council.
