{"id":18,"date":"2014-06-06T13:01:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T13:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/?page_id=18"},"modified":"2016-12-06T19:36:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T19:36:30","slug":"summary","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/","title":{"rendered":"Summary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Executive Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fire departments in South Carolina, like fire departments across the nation are\u00a0facing significant budget pressure due to a host of factors: declining tax receipts\u00a0and property values exacerbated by increasing number of emergency responses\u00a0and escalating apparatus and equipment cost.<\/p>\n<p>Their choices are raise taxes, cut services or implement a fee for service,\u00a0commonly referred to as cost recovery. Cost recovery allows fire departments to\u00a0bill at-fault driver\u2019s\u2019 insurance for the fire department services they incur, i.e. the\u00a0cost of responding to the accident.<\/p>\n<p>In most states the governing body of the fire department must pass an ordinance\u00a0or resolution authorizing the terms of the cost recovery program.<\/p>\n<p>The three issues most often faced current and potential users of cost recovery\u00a0are:<\/p>\n<p>-Is it legal?<\/p>\n<p>-Is it a form of double taxation?<\/p>\n<p>-Will it cause insurance rates to rise?<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0IS IT LEGAL?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(255, 0, 0);\"><strong>YES.<\/strong> <\/span>Case law supports the principle that \u2013 where a fee is authorized by statute\u00a0\u2013 issued pursuant to statutory prescription, and proportional to the cost of the\u00a0service rendered, it has and will be upheld. South Carolina law gives political\u00a0subdivisions the right (assuming they have passed an ordinance or resolution) to\u00a0recover their fire department response costs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IS IT DOUBLE TAXATION?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(255, 0, 0);\"><strong>NO. <\/strong><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\">T<\/span><\/span>ax dollars pay for the infrastructure and ability of the fire department\u00a0to respond, not the actual cost of the response.<\/p>\n<p>If residents were given a choice between having the at-\u00a0fault drivers, whose negligence caused the accident pay, or raising taxes on all to\u00a0pay for emergency responses, the outcome would be clear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WILL COST RECOVERY CAUSE INSURANCE PREMIUMS TO RISE?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">NO.<\/span> <\/strong>If a driver is negligent and causes an accident (speeding, running red light or\u00a0stop signs, DUI)the drivers premium will go up whether the fire department sends\u00a0his insurance company a bill or not.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore a typical cost recovery invoice is typically less than 3% of the total\u00a0cost of a multi-vehicle accident, hardly enough to impact rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Executive Summary Fire departments in South Carolina, like fire departments across the nation are\u00a0facing significant budget pressure due to a host of factors: declining tax receipts\u00a0and property values exacerbated by increasing number of emergency responses\u00a0and escalating apparatus and equipment cost. Their choices are raise taxes, cut services or implement a fee for service,\u00a0commonly referred to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Summary<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-18","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/costrecoveryfacts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}