Volunteer firefighters in Texas are raising questions about why they are not getting access to more than $90 million worth of earmarked funds for their departments.
“The money is earmarked for us, why is it just sitting there?” Capt. Jonathan Reed from the Briar Volunteer Fire Department asked KXAS-TV.
According to state Rep. David Simpson (R), the blame lies within his own party.
“I’d say, ‘Look at the Appropriations Committee,’” Simpson said to the station. “Look at the leadership of the House and Senate.”
The station reported in May 2013 that more than 1,600 volunteer departments around the state had been turned down after requesting money from the Volunteer Fire Department Fund, totalling about $86 million in requests. While lawmakers involved with the allocation of the funds refused to speak to KXAS on camera, state Sen. Tommy Williams (R), who leads the Office of Finance Committee, did issue a statement.
“Nobody gets everything,” Williams’ statement read. “Funding volunteer fire departments had to be weighed along with other potentially life and death items, like Medicaid funding, nursing home funding. The predicament of volunteer fire departments highlights the difficulty we face in prioritizing limited resources among so many worthy and necessary needs.”
Williams did not explain how retaining funds supposedly set aside specifically for more than 1,600 volunteer departments in the state — including West, the site of an April 17, 2013 fertilizer plant explosion that killed five local volunteers — impacted other financial issues.
In a separate statement, state Rep. Myra Crownover (R), a member of the state House Appropriations Committee, pointed out that the most recent state budget diverted an additional $10 million toward the firefighters, calling it “a step in the right direction.”
But even though an ongoing state tax on insurance policies will have raised $91 million by 2014, KXAS reported, the state legislature has ordered the Texas Forest Service (which monitors the account) to only issue $18 million of funds to firefighters over the next two years.
“We’re lying to them,” Simpson told the station. “We’re not being people of integrity.”
Watch KXAS’ report, aired Monday, below.
very simple answer to this problem is to simply let everything burn right to the F&%$in’ ground, and toast marshmallows while you’re there.
Where is the community whose houses you’re trying to save? Oh..I see…. they’re sitting on their fat asses watching Laverne & Shirley and don’t give a sailing shite about your funding? Let their houses burn, and add a little gasoline if you must, because that’s what’s going to be needed for these fat, stupid, lazy, spoiled, brainwashed and immoral Americans to pull their empty heads out of their rectums.
I can’t wait to see these idiots starve, because as long as the stupid bastards can shove another pop-tart into their useless heads they’ll sit right there like trained rats looking no further than their next piece of cheese.
I”m sorry to say it, but the majority of Americans are going to have to suffer greatly before any of them will pry a wedge under their fat asses and get up off the couch. Getting them to think once they’re on their feet may be impossible, because they’re been allowed to be stupid and helpless for too long.
Your average America is a waste of life, a useless eater, and a worthless moron. Don’t cry for them. It’s a life, and a fate that they chose for themselves by deciding to be lazy bastards who refuse to even think for themselves as long as there’s someone on TV to do it for them.
Millions will die of stupidity, and the human race as a whole will be a lot better off for it.