A proposed Biden-Harris regulation will force municipalities to choose between safety and solvency.
T he Biden-Harris administration is pushing a sweeping new regulation through the Department of Labor (DOL) that threatens to devastate local budgets across the country. If implemented, it may very well extinguish volunteer fire departments and explode the budgets of career and combination (both career and volunteer) fire departments in all 50 states.
The cost of this unfunded mandate probably far exceeds any potential benefits, but one outcome is certain: This change would increase property taxes and add to the skyrocketing costs of homeownership.
The proposed “Emergency Response Standard,” promulgated through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), would overhaul medical evaluation, certification training, and equipment requirements for local fire departments. OSHA’s stated goals, however laudable, fail to account for the operational realities of the fire service and the financial struggles of American communities.
The proposed rule is yet another example of administrative overreach, spanning approximately 83 pages and incorporating an additional 2,552 pages of ever-changing industry “consensus standards” from the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA). It is worth noting that the NFPA is a captured third-party organization heavily influenced by manufacturers and the International Association of Fire Fighters union.
Mandating these standards is also flawed because the term “consensus standard” is misleading at best. NFPA standards, which are incorporated as “minimums,” are aspirational goals. In Connecticut, no fire department — whether career, volunteer, or combination — is 100 percent compliant with these standards. This discrepancy is not unique to Connecticut; rather, it reflects the reality across the nation.
In July, in submitted comments to OSHA on the proposed rule, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) president John Butler broke down the estimated annual budget increases based on the number of responders in a local fire department: “Smaller departments with fewer than 70 responders will be critically impacted anticipating as much as a 46% increase on annuals budgets and up to 10 years to become fully compliant.” He added that the country’s larger departments would probably face a 10 percent increase to their already much larger budgets.
This proposed rule also disregards the harsh realities that have led to a crisis in volunteer-fire-department staffing. The U.S. Fire Administration emphasized that recruitment and retention issues have reached a critical level, reporting in 2023, “The NFPA, which annually tracks the number of firefighters in the U.S., found that the number of volunteer firefighters in 2020 was 676,900. This is compared to 897,750 in 1984, the year the NFPA began gathering this statistic.”
Moreover, a review of the medical-evaluation requirements alone reveals exorbitant costs that will spike budgets. Estimated medical-evaluation costs based on Greenwich Fire Department data exceed $1,500 per firefighter annually — $750 for a physical, $300 for a medical screening, and $500 for a mental-health evaluation, which averages five hours per firefighter.
Even a relatively small 50-member volunteer fire department will now confront new annual costs of $75,000, and a small city career department such as the one in New Haven, Conn., which has 367 firefighters, would incur $550,500 annually from the new exam requirements alone. Larger cities, many of which are already cash-strapped, would face expenditures exceeding a million dollars.
Efforts to reduce risks for firefighters should continue, but not through federal government diktats. Instead, they should be pursued through commonsense legislation, internal fire department policy, and collective-bargaining agreements in which elected officials and policy-makers can balance firefighter safety and financial implications while considering the unique needs of each community.
Ultimately, the regulation is not just an administrative overreach that would heap financial burdens on municipalities that may be ill-equipped to bear them; it’s an assault on the very fabric of effective fire-service operations and fiscal responsibility. Like virtually all unfunded mandates, it makes empty promises that are likely to increase liability for departments that wouldn’t be able to meet the new standard; it would also create a false sense of security.
Imposing a burdensome regulation that increases time constraints would only exacerbate recruitment and retention issues, especially for volunteers who are already balancing the work-life demands of full-time employment, a tradeoff that OSHA may not be fully considering. The public has another chance to weigh in on the proposal as OSHA will hold a public hearing on November 12.
However, after significant pushback, OSHA has signaled that it may move to “minimize detrimental effects on volunteer fire departments. If supported by the record.” The timing of this memo is suspect, given the looming presidential election, and it’s silent on the concerns of combination fire departments.
By imposing unrealistic standards without adequate support, this regulation, if enacted, will jeopardize the safety of first responders, since departments would need to close or reduce size or staffing in an attempt to stay within budget constraints. Firefighters and taxpayers deserve better from the Biden-Harris administration than an unfunded, unrealistic mandate forced upon taxpayers that will risk the financial stability of our communities.
Bryce Chinault is the director of external affairs of Yankee Institute. He previously worked at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center and the Mercatus Center at GMU.
Frank Ricci is a fellow at Yankee Institute and was the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Ricci v. Destefano. He retired as a battalion chief in New Haven, Conn. He has testified before Congress and is the author of Command Presence.