Benton County's rural residents no doubt want ambulance service. Who in their right mind, after all, would voluntarily give up the aid of trained professionals in a moment of medical crisis?
The debate is not about whether the service should exist. Rural residents have enjoyed the benefits of having ambulance responses for years because the cities filled the role of emergency medical provider that the county has not attempted to deliver to its residents.
The core issue is whether a service delivered by a government entity (in this case, ambulance services operated by seven cities in Benton County) should receive funding from another entity (county government) whose constituents benefit from that service. And yes, I know residents are charged a fee for an ambulance when they call one, but that's not the revenue it takes to maintain a reliable system ready to respond to all emergencies.
Several years ago now, following the lead of Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin, leaders of those seven cities told Benton County officials it was time for county government to become a full participant in the costs of a service vital to rural residents. It is not the cities' responsibility to make sure that service exists in the rural areas. That responsibility rests with county government -- the county judge and Quorum Court.
County leaders want ambulance service in rural areas to continue. Their favored option is a tax increase of some kind so the service can be paid for without dipping into spending for other departments, like roads or the sheriff's office. Rural residents don't much care for a tax increase, but they ludicrously believe taxpayers in the cities should accept a property tax increase to help pay for covering rural areas.
City leaders have never said rural residents should go without ambulance service. Rather, as the challenge of responding to growing populations in rural areas intensifies, they've said it's county government's responsibility to pay for that service. That's entirely reasonable.
Still, the cities' desire to shift the responsibility to where it belongs meets with acrimony from rural residents and some county leaders.
Benton County's leadership at least understands the value of having ambulance service to rural areas. Since 2011, the Quorum Court has chosen to provide some money to the city-based ambulance services by dipping into other county revenue while demonstrating an inability to fashion a tax increase the public will favor.
Despite years of discussions, the only real agreement has been on motions to delay, procrastinate, put off a decision for later. More than once, those involved have suggested the county can ill afford to "kick the can down the road" any longer, then they turn right around and start kicking when a consensus proves elusive.
Then, up comes a push for state legislation from Justice of the Peace Steve Curry. He convinced the Quorum Court's Legislative Committee recently to push for a state law that would require ambulance service providers to continue service to rural areas regardless of whether the county provides any funding.
"We ought to put lives before dollars," Curry said.
Of course, Curry favors putting lives before someone else's dollars. When it comes to county dollars and his responsibility to allocate them, Curry appears to value dollars over lives.
What he's proposing is the Obamacare of ambulance funding, except it's not that the county cannot afford ambulance coverage. Curry wants the benefit of having ambulance service in rural areas without any obligation to pay for it.
Let's make this simple: If Benton County government doesn't like the agreement or service the cities are offering and rural residents are antagonistic about providing financial support to city-based ambulance services, its leaders should just reject the entire proposition. Just because the cities have been taking up the slack for otherwise unserved rural areas for years doesn't mean they are the county's only option. County leaders can set about designing a system specific to the needs and sensitivities of its rural residents.
Of course, the smarter justices of the peace recognize the risks involved in that. They remember their study a few years back that estimated it would cost $1 million to set up a county-run ambulance service and $2 million a year to operate it -- far more than the $1.1 million the seven municipalities will charge in 2015. The upside is the county would control it, the county could trust its own financial figures and none of the county's money would go to those money-grubbing municipal ambulance services.
The county can certainly set up that system, and ambulances would still be available to respond to emergencies in which someone has cut off his nose to spite his face.
GREG HARTON IS OPINION PAGE EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA.
Commentary on 08/18/2014