Crash fee plan hits dead end

The city backs off charging insurance companies for services after traffic accidents.

By JANET ZINK
Published June 20, 2007

TAMPA -- Mayor Pam Iorio is abandoning plans to charge drivers' insurance companies when fire rescue personnel pull victims out of smashed cars, arrange airlifts to hospitals and provide other services at accident scenes.

"After looking at the big picture, I decided it wasn't worth going down this road," Iorio said. "People feel their taxes pay for that anyway."

On June 7, the Tampa City Council gave preliminary approval to the plan presented by fire Chief Dennis Jones. A public hearing and final vote on the fees had been scheduled for Thursday, but that was canceled late last week.

Iorio had asked Jones to slice $2.7-million from his budget to accommodate cuts in property tax revenue. He figured the fees, which would have ranged from $450 for an accident investigation to $2, 400 for pulling victims from their vehicles and arranging for air transportation to a hospital, would have generated more than $2-million for the city. Charges would have gone directly to at-fault drivers' insurance companies.

"I give the fire chief credit for trying to think outside the box," Iorio said.

The fire department had been looking at such a program for several years, said fire rescue spokesman Bill Wade. But the new fees didn't sit well in light of statewide discussions about the high cost of insurance and property taxes.

"Tampa Fire Rescue coming forward with new fees was just bad timing," he said.

The fire department had also proposed raising charges for transporting patients to local hospitals from the current rate of $330 to $500 plus $5 a mile to $600 and $10 a mile.

That idea has also been shelved, at least temporarily, Wade said.

"The ambulance transport fee will be revisited in the near future, " he said.

Iorio said she will adjust the goals of her budget cuts so that the fire and police departments, which were slated for a combined $9.7-million hit, won't have to reduce their budgets so much.

"We want to minimize those essential service cuts," Iorio said. "Yes, we have fewer revenues, but those services the public depends on every single day, we want to impact the very least."

The police and fire departments have large budgets - $122-million and $55-million, respectively -- and they should be able to handle modest cuts, she said.

Iorio said she considered charging the fee only to city nonresidents, who cause about 40 percent of the car accidents in Tampa. That change would have generated about $1-million for the city.

Iorio said the diminishing returns and general ill will toward the idea prompted her to nix the fee for fire rescue services altogether.

County Commissioner Rose Ferlita said charging only nonresidents would have been a disaster for city-county relations.

"Public safety should be seamless," she said. "It shouldn't depend on where you live but what services you get generically."

Janet Zink can be reached at jzink@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3401.

[Last modified June 20, 2007, 00:35:05]