Among the most amazingly short-sighted ideas we've heard in a while arose the other day as Benton County justices of the peace discussed legislative priorities for next year's meeting of the Arkansas General Assembly.

Steve Curry, justice of the peace for District 12, said he wants a state law mandating ambulance services to respond to rural emergency calls regardless of whether they are being paid by the county or other entities. Shirley Sandlin, justice of the peace for District 8, wants a law prohibiting ambulance services from seeking payment from anyone other than patients.

The Benton County Quorum Court has been incapable of finding out a long-term solution for ambulance responses to rural areas, a vital public safety service. Having failed so badly, at least these two now believe the solution is to ask state lawmakers to let the county off the financial hook.

Voters rejected their $85-per household annual fee to provide money the Quorum Court was reticent to find elsewhere. Fair enough. That's a question of how the county will generate the revenue it needs to cover the costs.

Whether the cities should receive money from county government is a separate matter. They absolutely should, and the legislative notions outlined by Curry and Sandlin are dumbfounding. It's the kind of thinking we've heard from rural opponents who have maligned the cities, although they have carried the burden of rural ambulance service for years on their own. One would hope for more reasonable thinking from an elected official. It is unreasonable to expect cities, which face their own financial pressures, to continue to cover the expense of protecting rural areas that are the responsibility of county government.

One aspect of this debate is clearly misunderstood among many, including some decision-makers: The cities are not asking the county to pay a certain amount for each ambulance run. Why? Because the costs for staffing and equipping enough ambulances to cover rural Benton County will exist whether they make 10 runs or 200. Even if not a single run is needed, there is a tremendous cost to keep ambulances and staff ready to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The cities simply expect a county government that relies on their municipal ambulance systems for emergency responses to share in the costs that make those systems possible. If government at some level didn't cover those costs, there wouldn't be ambulances to respond even if an individual was willing to pay $25,000 for the response.

Why is Curry's idea so ludicrous? Well, let's apply it to law enforcement. Why not eliminate the sheriff's office and pass a state law requiring the city's law enforcement officers to respond to rural areas? Why not eliminate volunteer fire departments and pass a state law requiring city fire departments to respond? Because in those instances, people understand those services are not the responsibility of cities.

We couldn't help noticing Springdale's discussion in recent days evaluating the progress toward drawing its service area for ambulances back to the city limits. With the kinds of attacks on cities Curry and others support, they can expect more of the same in the future. So Benton County official can puff up and get self-righteous all they want, but they will ultimately fail their constituents by not working together with cities. They will either encourage a less efficient system that's more costly to county government, or they'll really fail them by ending up with no ambulance service to rural areas at all.

Commentary on 03/30/2014