| TO: | Honorable David Dewhurst , Lieutenant Governor, Senate Honorable Joe Straus, Speaker of the House, House of Representatives |
| FROM: | John S. O'Brien, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
| IN RE: | SB1011 by Estes (Relating to the continuation and functions of the Texas Commission on Fire Protection.), Conference Committee Report |
The Texas Commission on Fire Protection (TCFP) is subject to the Sunset Act and will be abolished on September 1, 2009, unless continued by the Legislature. The bill continues the agency for the standard 12-year period and contains the following Sunset Commission recommendations and other provisions:
· Repeals TCFP's Fire Department Emergency Program and transfers funding for the grant program to the Texas Forest Service (TFS), maintaining the existing eligibility of departments without regard to the number of paid personnel.
· Establishes the TCFP Sunset date as September 1, 2021.
· Broadens the population threshold for members on the Commission representing political subdivisions to 100,000.
· Defines “volunteer fire fighter” and “volunteer fire chief” to mean a person who is a member of a nonprofit volunteer fire department, or who is also employed full-time in the fire service to allow volunteers who are also employed full time to serve on the Commission.
· Requires TCFP to conduct fingerprint-based state and national criminal background checks of all applicants for certifications if not separately provided by applicants or fire departments, and to collect a fee in an amount necessary to recover costs. Provides authority to raise fees for certification and fingerprinting in order to recover associated costs.
· Requires fire departments to submit continuing education records to TCFP at the time of certification renewal.
· Authorizes TCFP to establish a risk-based approach to conducting inspections and provides risk criteria to guide TCFP.
· Requires TCFP to timely open a complaint case on a violation found during an inspection.
· Requires TCFP to establish an enforcement matrix in rule to guide TCFP in determining penalty amounts or disciplinary actions for regulated entities and certified personnel.
· Authorizes TCFP to issue a default order when a regulated entity does not respond to attempts to resolve the violation.
· Requires TCFP to develop a method for analyzing trends in complaints and violations.
· Authorizes TCFP to temporarily suspend a certification.
· Requires TCFP to review fire fighter injury information and make recommendations to the State Fire Marshal's Office for reducing these injuries. Allows TCFP, based on these investigations, to provide technical assistance to identified fire departments.
· Requires the Commission, in a declared disaster, to coordinate with appropriate state and federal agencies, including the governor’s office of homeland security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
· Applies and updates other standard Sunset Across-the-Board recommendations.
The majority of the bill would become effective September 1, 2009. The transfer of the Fire Department Emergency Program; the agency’s ability to collect fees for fingerprint-based criminal history background checks; and authority to increase fees would become effective January 1, 2010.
The bill would provide TCFP with the ability to increase certification fees and collect additional fees for fingerprinting to cover the costs of these procedures. This analysis assumes that the provisions of the bill would require one additional FTE related to submittal of education records, reviewing complaint data, and reviewing firefighter injury information. However, the transfer of the Fire Department Emergency Program to the Texas Forest Service would free up one FTE, which could be assigned the duties of the new provisions of the bill. The agency was also appropriated seven additional FTEs in the budget process, which could also be partially utilized for this purpose. This analysis assumes no significant fiscal impact to the State with the passage of the bill.
| Source Agencies: |
| LBB Staff: | JOB, DB, AI
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