ALBANY COUNTY — To get and keep workers, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office is increasing the wages of its emergency medical staff, which is widely supported by local leaders of communities that rely on these staff members for health care. 

However, they worry that the cost increases will force them to break their state-set tax caps and may be unsustainable for their comparatively small budgets. 

In the town of Westerlo, for example, Supervisor Matt Kryzak told The Enterprise that, in 2024, the cost for county EMS will jump 30 percent, from roughly $231,000 to just over $300,000.

For a town with a roughly $3.3 million budget, that’s “a lot to absorb,” he said. 

As such, Westerlo and the seven other municipalities that rely on the county EMS — Rensselaerville, Berne, New Scotland, Voorheesville, Bethlehem, Coeymans, and Ravena — are asking that the county create a special district through which it would tax residents directly for emergency medical services, rather than bill the towns, which then issue their own local taxes.

Russ Pokorny, the supervisor of the town of Knox, which does not use county EMS because it’s serviced by the Helderberg Ambulance squad, also signed a letter to the county expressing concern about cost. Pokorny told The Enterprise that he was being “open to the possibility” of relying on the county in the event that Helderberg Ambulance was no longer able to provide service.

To establish a special district, the county needs approval from the state legislature. Assembly John McDonald, of the 108th District, is leading the charge on that front. 

“It’s a much better delivery of the service and I think it’s a much better coordination of the service,” McDonald told The Enterprise of moving from the current contract system to a special district. 

It doesn’t make much difference for residents themselves, he noted, since all that’s happening is the cost would be transferred from their local tax bill to a county tax bill. But, he said, the cost would be more transparent, rather than exist as a line or two buried in a local municipality’s budget that covers the costs of office supplies and employee benefits and everything in between.

“Not many legislative bodies want to take a public vote to raise the tax cap …,” McDonald said, even if it’s for a cost that could be widely supported, like EMS staff. “At the end of the day, the average resident doesn’t know why you need to raise the tax cap; they just know that you voted to raise the tax cap.”

Kryzak said that Westerlo is in a good position to absorb the cost increases since the town has a large fund balance and has been particularly cautious financially since the COVID-19 pandemic threw things into disarray. 

“But there’s a lot of towns,” he said, “that aren’t in that position. It’s going to really blow that tax cap off a lot of people’s budgets.” 

The special district would also negatively impact the county’s budget, as far as its relationship to the state-set levy limit goes, which is what makes the legislation delicate, even though it has no bearing on the actual cost for taxpayers. 

“This is why the legislation hasn’t advanced — hasn’t even been drafted into its final form,” said McDonald, who also said that it came up “a little bit late” for the recently concluded legislative session. 

Kryzak indicated that the positioning for towns right now is awkward at best, since there’s a recognition that the changes in employee compensation being made by the county are necessary, but that the rollout is difficult to bear.

“I just wish we could have gone up 15 percent this year, and then another 15 next year,” he said. “That hurts a little less than 30 [percent] for the first year. My only take is maybe a slower rollout. But I understand sometimes you have to take drastic measures to make things work.” 

McDonald explained that emergency medical services have been stressed by people making more calls, and a growing expectation that services be provided by governments.

At the same time, just as county sheriff’s deputies are often wooed by higher-paying suburban police forces, local towns with their own EMS often pay more than the county.

The idea of forming a separate tax district was broached in 2019 when Albany County moved from part-time to full-time EMS staff.

At that time, Brian Wood, captain of the county’s EMS, said paramedics in Guilderland earned about $28 per hour while paramedics working for the county earned $22 per hour. Guilderland emergency medical technicians earned $20 an hour while county EMTs earned $14.50, he said four years ago, adding he had seen signs at local convenience stores indicating they pay workers more.

Training for an EMT typically takes four to five months, Wood said, while paramedics complete a two-year college course.

“That’s why the sheriff is saying, ‘Listen, I’ve got to attract and retain good people to provide the service at the level you expect,’” McDonald said this week. “And I personally think that having it accurately reflected on a tax bill, where you know exactly what this is all about, I think brings about great accountability and transparency.”

However it’s handled, public EMS has been consistently seen as preferable to switching over to private EMS, which is far more expensive than service through the county. 

McDonald said that, after the city of Cohoes, where he used to be mayor, lost a contract with a low-cost provider because of the declining reimbursement rates, Cohoes contracted with a private service that he said costs “$600,000 to one-million dollars a year, and that’s a cost they have to pay for now that they didn’t have to pay before.”

County service, he said, “is as good and is more cost-effective.”

Albany County spokeswoman Mary Rozak said the county is “looking to do whatever we can to help local municipalities so they can keep their taxes under the cap.”