Here’s a great example of why citizens seem to be so poorly informed about the state of their communities, states, the country, and the world today:
The reporter obviously spent a lot of time gathering statements, but she also very clearly has an agenda of vilifying the federal government. The article is 17 paragraphs long, but in those paragraphs, the regulations themselves are only described as
The proposed Emergency Response Standard, would update the current Fire Brigade standard in place since 1980. OSHA says the revisions are needed to improve firefighter and emergency responder safety relating to, for example, chronic illnesses, heart attacks, and exposure to hazardous materials.
Meredith Savitt, April 17, 2024
No specifics are given. And no one quoted explains why it would be so burdensome to comply. No one supporting the regulations is quoted, no federal officials, no one from our elected representatives’ offices.
There’s also no discussion of whether the regulations address real problems. Presumably the numerous fire chiefs quoted in the article do care about the impact “chronic illnesses, heart attacks, and exposure to hazardous materials” have on their firefighters.
So I read the whole article, but the only thing I’ve really learned is that the volunteer fire departments feel it would be too expensive to transition to paid departments, and that they think the regulations are impossible to comply with for unspecified reasons. Here again, details are sketchy: just how big is “a 48% increase in [our county] property taxes”? I know how big my property tax bill is, but I also know a sizeable majority of that is school taxes, and a majority of the rest is paid to my Town, not the County.
It’s easy to imagine reasons why Fire Chiefs might legitimately oppose regulations. Maybe they already do everything the regulations require, but they don’t have the staff to document it. Maybe the regulations cover situations local volunteer firefighters won’t reasonably encounter (the training for which could be expensive). Conversely, it’s also easy to imagine very legitimate reasons for updating regulations involving chronic illness and exposure of hazardous materials. Our understanding of those challenges has changed dramatically in the last 40 years.
But the article doesn’t address any of those things. As a citizen, I’m not better informed than I was before reading the article. I like the idea of volunteer fire departments, but in a world where structures and vehicles are larger than they’ve been before, and the ubiquity of rechargeable batteries (some as heavy as a small car), maybe they’re no longer a practical way to provide protection against fire and other emergencies, particularly in a Town of 85,000 people.
Good reporting could facilitate discussions like these among citizens and policy makers. This article misses that opportunity.