🔒EMS workers ask to be included in Lamont’s free tuition proposal

Emergency medical workers are asking to be included in a proposal by Gov. Ned Lamont that offers financial assistance with college tuition and mortgage payments to firefighters and police officers. Lamont’s bill, H.B. 5046, would waive tuition to the state’s public colleges and universities for people who have worked as police officers for at least five years and for people who have served as paid or volunteer firefighters for at least five years. The bill also authorizes the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority to create a mortgage assistance program for police officers and firefighters. But EMS chiefs from a variety of towns have told lawmakers they think EMS workers should be included in the bill. Like police officers and firefighters, they said, the state is facing a shortage of emergency medical technicians to respond to calls for ambulances. EMS providers have been warning for several years that they face rising calls volumes and declining crew numbers. “We too, as EMS providers, are out there on the front lines, day in day out, working long, long hours, trying to save lives … and we want the opportunity to be included [in the bill] if we can,” Kyle Kelley, chief of Naugatuck EMS, told members of the Public Safety and Security Committee on Tuesday. EMS chiefs and workers said local ambulance services compete with hospitals, who can offer better pay, and that workers often face burnout as calls for emergency services increase. Several chiefs said the majority of 911 calls in their communities were now medical. Colin Bassett, chief of Trumbull EMS, said that an aging population, more behavioral health emergencies and a rise in chronic diseases were leading to more calls for medical services. Jacob Fazekas, with Naugatuck EMS, said calls to his association had increased by 150% over the last four and a half years. Advocates for including EMS workers in the bill said they face many of the same career challenges that police and firefighters do — having to work all hours, being exposed to potentially dangerous situations and having to work in high-pressure situations, They said they deserved to have the same benefits being offered to other first responders. “Excluding EMS from recruitment and retention initiatives create [an] unintended imbalance within the public safety system. Police, fire and EMS do not operate in isolation; We function as an integrated response team. When one component is weakened, the entire system is compromised,” said Gregory Allard, president of the Connecticut Ambulance Association. Elizabeth Connolly, who has worked as a paramedic for 18 years, told lawmakers in testimony that she worked anywhere between 60 and 90 hours per week transporting people between hospitals. “We see the same traumatic scenes… the same car accidents, the same injuries, the same terrible acts of human cruelty. … We deserve the same assistance from the state to help recruit new personnel and help retain those in our ranks as our police and fire brethren,” Connolly said. Angela Capinera has been a volunteer emergency medical technician in Stratford for 13 years. She told CT Mirror she was drawn to the work because of its excitement, allowing her to meet different people and have different experiences. “A lot of it is like being the detective, because you are called to the scene and you have to figure out what’s going on,” said Capinera. Capinera, who runs her own academic support business, works one 6-hour shift a week — although sometimes that shift stretches out an extra hour or two. She said if the bill passed to include EMTs, she would take advantage of the free tuition to take classes in anatomy, physics or chemistry, which would help her in her work as an EMT. She also said that the mortgage assistance would have helped her and her husband when they purchased a house over a decade ago. “Getting all first responders those types of benefits will help keep people in the profession,” she said. Unlike police and firefighters, who are paid through municipal budgets, EMS services are reliant on reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, which is often not enough to cover the cost of operating. Geralyn Hoyt, the volunteer service chief and president of Southbury Ambulance Association, said in testimony that the average salary for an EMT is typically between $40,000 and $46,000 annually, compared to around $80,000 for a police officer and $77,660 for a firefighter. Rob Blanchard, a spokesperson for the governor, told CT Mirror that Lamont would support including EMS workers in the bill. Sen. Herron Gaston, D-Bridgeport, said he was “in total support” of the idea but he questioned whether that might “open the floodgates” for other people serving as first responders to also request to be included. “ I got calls from folks from the Department of Correction. ‘Hey, well what about us?’ And then I got calls from 911 operators. ‘Hey, well what about us?’” Gaston said. He said he was concerned this could cause people to leave one first responder profession for another, causing more shortages. Rep. Jason Perillo, R-Shelton, who testified in support of including EMS in the bill, said he believed that other first responders like correction officers and 911 operators should be eligible for similar benefits. “These are the kind of folks that we can help, who we can reward, and where we can make the job a little bit more appealing,” said Perillo.