The Pennsylvania House voted 190-7 yesterday to prohibit municipalities from charging a fee when a police department is called upon to respond to a motor vehicle accident.
The bill now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate, where lobbyists are confident of relatively easy passage due to overwhelming support in the Democratic-controlled lower chamber.
Angela Zaydon, regional manager for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), said a lobbyist for the state municipalities made some half-hearted opposition to the measure at a House hearing earlier this year.
"But when it was impressed on him the double taxation aspect of the bill, his opposition diminished," she said.
Ms. Zaydon said that by billing insurers for emergency police services, local governments are ultimately imposing a hidden double tax on consumers.
Radnor Township in Pennsylvania recently dropped its practice of billing for police services and refunded nearly $47,000 it had collected after complaints and bad publicity regarding the program, she said.
Local governments are increasingly seeking to charge a fee to property-casualty insurers for emergency response costs.
According to PCI, some third-party billing concerns are erroneously advising local municipalities that emergency service costs are covered under insurance contracts in all cases, and insurers, with the assistance of these third parties, are being billed directly by the emergency service providers.
In some cases, this is being done pursuant to local ordinances. In other cases, the billing is being done unilaterally by local public safety officials, PCI said. House Bill 131 would end this practice for police department charges.
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