ASK GOVERNOR CHRISTIE TO VETO S1650
CONTACT THE GOVERNOR NOW!
The majority leadership and their supporters in both the Assembly and Senate have again passed the EMS bill, S1650. They again ignored Governor Christie's request for an impartial review of the EMS bill before it was acted on and sent it to the Governor for his signature. Please ask the Governor to veto this bill!
Concerns raised by EMS volunteers, the League of Municipalities and many others have still not been addressed. In fact, the bill sponsors and their supporters in the Senate and Assembly have ignored Governor Christie’s request, made when he vetoed the same bill in the last legislative session, for an impartial review by the Commissioner of Health on, among other things, the operational impacts of this bill on EMS volunteers and volunteer EMS agencies as well as the costs that would be incurred by municipalities and the State. Supporters of this bill do not want this review done. They fear what such a review would reveal about this bill, its impact on volunteer squads and the cost of implementation. Yet in the last several weeks key Democrats in the Assembly and Senate have stated that the legislature will have to make painful decisions just to try and fund programs that already exist due to the need to hold the line on costs in the State’s 2014 budget. Where will the 10s of millions of dollars needed to implement S1650 come from? Perhaps by yet another “raid” on the volunteer EMT Training Fund by the same legislators who supported former Governor Corzine’s removal of $4 million from the Fund and now support this ill-conceived legislation.
Please ask yourself where New Jersey would have been had the EMS volunteers not been here when Super Storm Sandy devastated our state. All the concerns, as noted with the previous legislation, are still valid and unanswered. And while there are likely areas of the EMS system that can be improved, it can’t be done with a bill that will make unnecessary changes, cost millions to implement and is likely to do significant, perhaps fatal damage to our EMS volunteer organizations.
Take a moment to contact Governor Christie and ask him to veto S1650. Ask your family, friends, neighbors and township elected officials to do the same. Please, DO IT NOW! Click the link below to send the Governor a letter asking him to VETO S1650!
http://capwiz.com/njsfac/issues/alert/?alertid=62565741&queueid=[capwiz:queue_id]
