ELY- How to sustain rural emergency medical services topped the agenda on Monday during the annual meeting of the Community Economic Development Joint Powers Board here. The influential board is comprised of local units of government, including the cities of Ely and Winton, Morse and Fall Lake townships and the Ely School District and their annual meeting regularly draws both state and federal officials to the area to hear, and frequently act, on local concerns.
Morse Town Supervisor Bob Berrini presided over Monday’s meeting and kept the sometimes ungainly meeting focused on its agenda.
Rural EMS funding has been at the top of mind for local officials for the past two years so it was no surprise it topped Monday’s agenda. “Rural EMS — we are at a crisis level,” said Peter Makowski, from U.S. Sen. Tina Smith’s office, summing up the situation.
Berrini followed up Makowski’s observation, noting his so-far unsuccessful efforts as a member of the board of the nonprofit Ely Area Ambulance Service to gain additional funding sources to keep the service afloat. He noted that the EAAS service area includes portions of the federally owned and managed Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“I’ve been working for years with Rep. Pete Stauber,” Berrini said, “on getting more money for [serving] the Boundary Waters with EMTs, ambulances, and everything … It’s costing a lot of money sending our people up there all the time. We are losing money. We cannot go back to the people all the time for money … We need some money from the federal government [but there’s been] nothing for six years.”
As a nonprofit, the EAAS is not eligible to receive federal payments in lieu of taxes, or PILT. Those funds, which are designed to help pay for local services like fire, EMS, and roads, can only be disbursed to local governments.
Berrini listed other areas where the federal government provides too little help to local ambulance service, such as through its 26 cents per mile one-way-only reimbursement rate and inadequate Medicare payments which don’t cover costs. “We need help up here,” he said. Berrini did give credit where it was due. “I want to thank Sen. Klobuchar here. She worked with us over three years to help us get $1.3 million for our ambulance building, so thank you.”
Former Ely Mayor Chuck Novak, who serves on the EAAS board, said he had to leave early to attend back-to-back ambulance meetings because the service may not be able to make its payroll this month, an issue that the ambulance service has struggled with in recent years.
“This issue has been on the table for years,” said Novak. “Politicians say, ‘I know everything about it.’ Well, if you knew everything about it, why wasn’t there an apportionment of the $17 billion surplus in the state last year? Why wasn’t there something out of the federal government for local emergency services? … It would have been nice to get some recognition last year. It’s been talked about for over a decade. This year, it looks like we got some hope. But you know, we’ve learned in politics, talk is cheap sometimes.”
Third District Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, who was present at Monday’s meeting responded, describing how EMS funding lost out to other priorities, such as help for nursing homes and police retention, in the last legislative session, but promised it was at the top of his priority list for the coming session. “I just kind of want to highlight for you that there are these other challenges. And the more we have backup (from other communities) to promote (EMS), the easier it’s going to be for us,” to get more EMS funding.
“Part of the problem is that I don’t think the general public, very honestly, realizes the crisis in rural EMS,” commented Makowski, noting that the lack of recognition by the public makes it difficult for lawmakers to fight for funding in the face of the issues-du-jour that grab the public’s and lawmakers’ attention.
IRRR Commissioner Ida Rukavina noted an implicit theme at Monday’s meeting, namely the struggle of rural Minnesota in general and the Iron Range specifically to compete for recognition and funding from state and federal lawmakers. Makowski noted that lawmakers are frequently swayed by the weight of emails, calls and testimony from the public on issues, but Rukavina noted that’s a recipe for rural neglect. “You still have to have legislators realizing it’s not about the numbers and quantity of calls—because if it is about that … rural areas are going to lose, because we don’t have the population to make the number of calls (to lawmakers), and our lives are at stake. There has to be some realization that we will never (generate) the volume of calls or emails to get the message across at the state and federal level that our lives matter.”
Proposal for change
Newly elected Lake County Commissioner Joe Baltich, who is also a new member of the EAAS board, suggested using a different model statewide to fund EMS services. “From a business standpoint, I just think maybe we should look at (EMS funding) a little differently.”
He described two existing funding examples as possible templates to build what he called the Minnesota EMS Fund.
“The Schools Minerals Trust Fund. It’s a trust that’s been in operation since 1849. (For) any minerals mined in the state, a royalty is paid into that fund. It has over $4 billion in it … Another organization that’s really good at managing money is the Public Employee Retirement Account … So ,they take money, they reinvest it very well for their employees over a quite a long period of time.”
Baltich didn’t suggest his proposed fund follow these exact models. He mentioned the two funds as examples of different business-like ways that already work and suggested something similar for helping Minnesota’s ailing EMS system.
Baltich also took aim at some of the state’s priorities, like funding stadiums in the Twin Cities that don’t benefit rural residents. He also suggested using a royalty on non-ferrous mining, which doesn’t currently exist in Minnesota, or using tax revenue from the sale of cannabis products, to fund EMS.
Hauschild thanked Baltich for his ideas and “for being proactive” in seeking better ways to fund the EMS system. Rep. Dave Lislegard agreed that some change in approach is clearly needed. “We can’t continue to go down this trajectory” with losing EMS services because of broken funding models,” he said.
Editor’s Note: Monday’s meeting also addressed concerns about wolves, housing, childcare, and the possible annexation of Fall Lake Township to the Ely School District. Those topics will be the subject of a story in the Dec. 22 edition of the Timberjay.