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Letter to the editor

Victimizing victims

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published June 10, 2007

Few ideas put forward in this tax reform debate are as crass and galling as Tampa Fire Rescue's idea to charge for treating accident victims. Taxpayers are supposed to pay an agency twice for a job the department already gets $50-million a year to perform? Schemes like this are exactly why the public has turned on local government and why it wants to close its pocketbook. The City Council is tone deaf to even entertain the idea.

The fees would range from $450 to work an automobile crash to $2, 400 to extract victims from their cars and fly them to the hospital. The expected haul, $1.7-million annually, would help offset the budget cuts expected from a special legislative session that begins Tuesday to cut property taxes. Fire Chief Dennis Jones calls the charge a "user fee, " which sounds good, but then: How many people asked to get creamed, and when they do, why should they pay extra for rescuers to do their jobs?

It is one thing to charge someone for not returning a library book, or to send out a garbage truck to collect a sofa. But it is offensive to charge the public twice for an agency to perform its primary mission. A department called Fire Rescue should be just that. And it is meaningless that the city would only charge insurers and not pursue those who refused to pay. Whom do they think insurers will pass the costs on to? And if the city has no will to impose this charge across the board, or to collect from people who object to paying, what does that say about the fee's legitimacy? The council, which will consider the matter June 21, should not look on victims as cash cows.

[Last modified June 9, 2007, 19:59:17]