To earn service credit during a calendar year, a volunteer must earn 50 points. To become 100% vested, a participant must earn five (5) years of service credit (this is true in 99% of LOSAPs – some though do have alternative vesting schedules). Therefore, it is possible an individual could be a volunteer for 5…

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We discussed yesterday that all active volunteer firefighters are eligible to participate in a LOSAP in New York State. The next question is – is a waiting period before an eligible volunteer can begin participating? We believe the answer is no. We have reviewed many plans that will not allow a participant to participate in…

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All active volunteer firefighters are eligible to participate in the LOSAP. Article 11-A defined an active volunteer firefighter as “a person who has been approved by the authorities in control of a duly organized volunteer fire company or volunteer fire department as an active volunteer firefighter of such fire company or department and who is…

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Yesterday we discussed how to determine if you should categorize department responses into fire or ambulance. The next question is, how do you determine if the call is an ambulance call or a fire call? There is no 100% correct answer – it is a case-by-case basis that must be determined locally. If the determining…

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In the New York State LOSAP Point System, the department responses category stipulates that calls should be broken into two categories – emergency rescue and first aid squad (ambulance) calls and “all other” calls.  A question was raised about if calls be split into the categories, and if so, how. In this post, we’ll handle…

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Recently, some questions have been raised about which plan is better – the DB or the DC plan. There are a lot of factors to consider when making this determination, and the assumptions you use play a major role. I’m going to look at one example. Let’s consider comparing a $20 DB plan and a…

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A question was raised today about the 50-point threshold here in NY State, and if a sponsor can require more than 50 points to earn service credit and a service award benefit. According to the Office of the State Comptroller, the answer is no.  Opinion 2001-2 states, in part: Section 217(c) of the GML provides…

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Frequently, a department will send a group of firefighters to the county training facility for a drill or other training. Or, a firefighter will be selected to be a delegate to a convention. In these situations, the firefighters are out of town and away from their response area. A question often asked is, if there…

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The recently released report on the Office of the State Comptroller audit of the Jamesport Fire District (you can download it below) has the following to say regarding signing others in for activities: 120 points were supported by attendance records where the member didnot sign themselves in. Instead, the members were marked as present bysomeone…

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Last time we looked at a recent audit report released by the State Comptroller. Here is another section of the report, regarding the Miscellaneous Category: Miscellaneous – GML authorizes a service award program to provide points for“miscellaneous activities,” with one point per activity (up to a maximum of 15points). For this purpose, GML defines “miscellaneous…

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