Proposed legislation that would create a mandatory curriculum of training of public safety dispatchers in Florida failed to win support during this year’s session, and one legislator said part of the reason was the interference of a lobbyist representing the state’s APCO chapter. State Sen. Nancy Detert said lobbyist Richard Pinsky testified against the bill several times. In the end, the bill had no support in the state Senate, and consequently the House failed to move the bill before the legislative session ended for the year. The outcome was a disappointment to Nathan Lee, whose wife Denise was kidnapped and murdered in April 2008. Critics pointed to several incidents of miscommunication by Charlotte County and Sarasota County dispatchers as contributing to her death. After the incident, legislators quickly passed a long-pending bill to establish a training program for the state’s dispatchers, but it was voluntary and offered no funding. Detert said the legislature had several major issues to consider during the session, including the budget, which left little time to debate other issues. She vowed to re-introduce the training bill in the next session. Read a news story about the legislation here.
Download (pdf) the committe-approved version of Detert’s training and certification proposed bill here.
The proposed legislation would require the state’s dispatchers to be certified by Oct. 1, 2012. A legislative analyst wrote, “The bill will have a significant positive fiscal impact from the establishment of certification leisure and biannual renewal fees to be deposited to the Emergency Medical Services Trust Fund within the Department of Health. There would also be an increase in expenditures based of the increase workload but it would not exceed the revenues.” Download (pdf) the full analysis here.
Richard Pinsky is the principle for Pinsky Consulting Group, based in West Palm Beach (Fla.). His other clients have included Palm Beach County firefighters, the National Electrical Contractors Association, CyberCitizens for Justice, and the Florida Arcade Association.
According to the minutes of a 2008 APCO-Florida Board of Officers conference call, Pinsky was being paid $2,500 a month for his services through the first half of 2008. However, the group’s finances didn’t allow his full-time retainer after July 31, 2008, and the group voted to pay him only on a case-by-case basis.
According to Florida state lobbyist records, Pinsky was paid from $4 to $39,996 by APCO-Florida in 2007, and from $1 to $9,999 in 2008. So far in 2009, Pinsky has not reported any income from APCO-Florida.
In Feb. 2007 APCO-Florida officials held a workshop on their attempt to update and improve retirement benefits for the state’s dispatchers. The minutes of the meeting provide some insight into the complexities–and enormous cost–of obtaining legislative approval for a proposed bill. At one point, the minutes state that it might cost $50,000 “to get the bill ‘passed’ in this first committee.” Download (pdf) the minutes here.
APCO-Florida met with the state’s Department of Health, who administers the current voluntary training and certification program, to discuss exactly how it will work. Check this Web page for a better idea of the points of contention in the current law, which may spill over into the proposed legislation, and read these minutes (pdf) for more details on APCO’s work on their own version of a training/certification bill.
The Charlotte Sun newspaper ran an editorial on the lack of legislation.
Lastly, check APCO-Florida’s Legislative Committee Web page.
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