ALBANY, N.Y. — Volunteer fire and ambulance corps in New York want to study whether health insurance coverage could be an incentive companies can offer to keep current members and to improve the increasingly challenging process of recruiting new members.

Gov. George Pataki has signed legislation creating a commission to report by the end of next year on the feasibility of companies, local governments or the state itself offering full or partial coverage for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians. The task force will be made up of government and volunteer services officials.

“We think that this type of thing would not only be a really strong retention item … but that it may get (recruit) the young 18-to-25-year-old who has a tendency to not have coverage," said Kirby Hannon, legislative director for the Firemen's Association of the State of New York.

Hannon said the task force will study a range of options that lower or eliminate health care coverage costs for the volunteers while being affordable for taxpayers and an effective inducement for people to stay in companies or to join them in the first place.

Over the last decade, FASNY estimates that membership in volunteer fire companies has sagged from about 175,000 to between 100,000 and 110,000 today. Volunteer EMT numbers have fallen from 70,000 to less than 50,000, Hannon estimated.

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