Volunteer Lends Voice In Favor of Ambulance Fee

A volunteer paramedic joined career firefighters on Monday in speaking in favor of an ambulance fee that Montgomery County says it needs to continue to pay for emergency services.

"I think this is important because the money is needed," Pamela Boe said at a news conference outside the county Public Services Training Academy in Rockville. "We're not billing people, we're not even billing co-pays. We're already paying into our insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. It's not getting reimbursed. And it's about time that that started happening."

County leaders and career firefighters, including County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and county fire Chief Richard Bowers, support the fee, which they say will generate $14 million a year in revenue. Insurance companies would be charged $400 to $800 per ambulance ride for county residents.

Without the fee, officials say, the county will be forced to cut 89 firefighters and paramedics.

Boe, a self-described stay-at-home mom from Dickerson who "once a week goes and rides on the paramedic unit," ran afoul of her fellow volunteer firefighters and paramedic with her support for the fee, which will be "Question A" on county ballots on Tuesday.

The Montgomery County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association opposes the fee, saying it will increase insurance rates, cause some people not to call for an ambulance and leave county taxpayers to make up for uncollected fees from the uninsured.

Boe posted an editorial on her Facebook page that went viral and then appeared on Wednesday in The Gazette.

On Oct. 25, she received an email from John T. Bentivoglio, a volunteer firefighter and attorney who represents MCVFRA, asking that Boe retract her letter.

Bentivoglio wrote that he was "troubled at [Boe's] vitriolic comments about the Association's Executive Director, Eric Bernard."

Bernard was acting under his responsibility as executive director to express the volunteer association's opposition to the fee, Bentivoglio wrote.

Boe said she saw the email, which see released to media on Monday, as a "veiled threat" to stop her from supporting something that is "already done."

In May, the County Council voted 5 to 4 in favor of the fee. Since then Bernard, whose salary is paid by the county, "has spent quite a bit of taxpayer money to do nothing but fight something that's already done," Boe said on Monday.

The volunteer association was scheduled to take the latest step in that fight on Monday in a Rockville court. On Friday, the MCVFRA filed a lawsuit asking a judge to stop Leggett and Bowers from using county resources to campaign for the fee.

Bowers defended the campaign in support of the fee.

"It's law, it's county policy, therefore [the campaign] is permissible and we are doing education regarding Question A," Bowers said on Monday.