On August 24, 2018, Governor Cuomo signed Senate Bill S8019A which relates to the cost of insurance to provide firefighters with an enhanced cancer disability benefit insurance program. This bill would exempt the cost of volunteer firefighter enhanced cancer disability benefits from the fire district budget spending limitation effective January 1, 2019. Under current law, there are sixteen exemptions to the fire district spending limitation; this bill simply adds the newly adopted volunteer firefighter enhanced cancer disability benefits to the list. This legislation will have no impact on the real property tax levy cap provided for under General Municipal Law Section 3-c. A fire district will be required to follow the current procedure if it wishes to exceed that cap. The fire district budget spending limitation is merely a mechanism to control spending in some but not all budget categories.
