By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Levy County Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) received an unexpected pay raise to $15 an hour this month thanks to the Florida Legislature passing a surprise bill in late June, but paramedics didn’t benefit from the legislation.

            The pay of paramedics remained the same.

            The new law passed by the Legislature resulted in pay inequities, according to the International Association of Firefighters Local 4069, which represents the paramedic and EMT crews working on Levy County ambulances.

            County Coordinator Wilbur Dean administratively raised the pay of ambulance EMTs to $15 per hour on Oct. 1 to comply with the Legislature’s decision. The law increased the hourly pay of anyone that works to provide Medicaid services. Ambulances carry Medicaid patients.

            Paramedics already make $16 per hour and the law didn’t benefit them.

            The pay increase will cost the county $65-$70,000 annually. It was another unfunded state mandate imposed on the county commission by the Legislature, according to Wayne Helsby, the county’s labor attorney.

            Paramedics are required to have a higher level of training than EMTs. They can administer drugs on the scene under a medical doctor’s supervision and operate many lifesaving devices.

            Due to the new state law, EMTs make a dollar per hour less than a paramedic. The law also resulted in newly hired EMTs making the same base salary as the EMTs that have worked for the county for a long time.

            Ryan Tietjen, president of IAFF Local 4069, said a lot of paramedics are upset with the pay inequities.

            Tietjen met with the union bargaining team for the Levy County Commission Monday to find out if the county was willing to work with the union to iron out pay issues faster than usual. The county was in no hurry to move forward. The county team included Dean, Helsby, Department of Public Safety Director Mitch Harrell, and Alesha Rinaudo, office manager for Harrell.

            Helsby said the usual procedure when union negotiations are reopened in the middle of a contract is to wait until the spring to take action. However, he said the union has the right to file a request to begin bargaining as early as this month.

            Tietjen agreed that typically the two sides wait until spring to reopen negotiations, in part due to the holidays, but he said IAFF will probably move forward immediately with its request for a more equitable pay arrangement due to the urgency of the situation. He said he would hate to see paramedics starting to leave the county again.

            “We’ve got to do something about this because people are not going to want to stick around making a dollar more than an EMT,” Tietjen said.

            Tietjen gave the county several options for ironing out the pay issues, including raising the pay of paramedics and EMTs by $1 per hour across the board, or raising pay by 58 cents per hour across the board, and giving senior paramedics the right to bid on which ambulance stations they work from. Senior paramedics believe their years of service should give them the right to choose their favorite station.

            The 58 cents per hour number was the average increase for all EMTs and paramedics. Not all ambulance personnel started working for Levy County at the same time. They are at different pay levels.  Fifty-eight cents would be the average increase, according to Tietjen.

            The request for senior paramedics to be able to choose their station assignment was raised during the previous contract negotiations but was turned down by the county. Harrell said the county was losing paramedics and EMTs who were forced to take unattractive station assignments and weren’t able to move to better stations for extended periods of time because they lacked seniority. Harrell has switched to a system of rotating station assignments.

            The Levy County Department of Public Safety was forced to park one of its ambulances for nearly half a year due to a lack of paramedics to run calls. It cranked up the seventh ambulance again about a month-and-a-half ago and parked the ambulance at the Chiefland EMS station rather than at the Fanning Springs station, where it had been stationed previously. Chiefland is a physically more attractive station and is centrally located in the high-volume Chiefland area.

            County commissioners responded to the paramedic shortage late last year by raising the pay of paramedics and EMTs by $4 an hour across the board to make salaries more attractive. EMTs were already on course to make $15 per hour by October of 2023 under the new contract. The Legislature’s decision in late June moved up the time schedule.

            But the new pay schedule, according to Tietjen, has left the ambulance service with pay inequities that could result in paramedics leaving Levy County again and forcing the county to park the seventh ambulance.

            “It might happen again. There’s a lot of people upset. I felt it was time to be proactive and talk to them and hope they would operate in good faith, but they don’t want to do that,” Tietjen said.

            Commissioners dealt with the new pay schedule for ambulance workers at an executive session held prior to the Oct. 4 meeting of the board. Chairman Rock Meeks said the county posted a notice on a door at the Levy County Government Center commission meeting room announcing the meeting.

            He said commissioners met in the closed-door session for about 8 minutes before the start of the regular board meeting. Commissioners are allowed to meet with legal staff behind closed doors to discuss union contract strategies, but they are required to post a written notice of the executive session in a place where it can be easily seen by members of the public.

            Meeks said the meeting notice was torn down at the end of the executive session.

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt October 17, 2022; Posted October 17, 2022