The members of a Montgomery County panel who are paid $12,000 a year to attend monthly meetings to shape fire and rescue policy are facing elimination weeks after voting against a controversial ambulance fee backed by some elected officials.
The nearly 30-year-old Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Commission is outdated and overly expensive, Councilman George Leventhal told The Examiner. Its seven members — two volunteer firefighters, two professional firefighters and three members of the public — receive $1,000 each month to attend a meeting on public safety issues, according to county law.
“We’re paying people $1,000 to show up at meetings that sometimes last 10 minutes,” Leventhal said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
The panel was created in 1979 to coordinate and oversee the rescue efforts of professional and volunteer firefighters, because the county did not have a fire chief at the time. The county has had a fire chief since 2005 charged with drafting county fire and rescue policy, and some argue the commission has become irrelevant.
The board is a “vestige of an earlier era” Leventhal said in a memo to his colleagues.
John Sparks, head of the Montgomery County firefighters union, said in a letter to council members: “Succinctly stated, the Commission does not perform duties and responsibilities which could not otherwise be handled within the existing structure and framework of the Montgomery County government. Despite that circumstance, substantial amounts are budgeted for it and its related administrative services.”
The commission’s chairman, Kevin Maloney, called it a “mistake” to consider axing the group, saying it exists to resolve disputes between volunteer and professional firefighters and dictate a chain of command that prevents chaos on the scene of accidents.
“We might fight in the policy rooms but we don’t fight on the fire grounds,” Maloney said. “That’s in the public’s interest.”
Maloney, who said meetings stretch on for hours and require extensive advance preparation, speculated that the elected officials could be acting in retaliation because the panel had recently voted to oppose creating an ambulance fee in the county, but Leventhal said he was unaware the group had even voted on the topic.
“It isn’t surprising if you’re making $1,000 a month to sit on this commission what your views will be,” Leventhal said. “How could I be retaliating for something I didn’t know about?”
