Firefighters battle a blaze in Bridgeport in 2022. The Ohio General Assembly recently updated a law that would have put training requirements on first responders that local departments said would have been unnecessarily onerous. (File Photo)

Local first responders made their voices heard when Ohio House Bill 509 was signed into law at the beginning of the year — and lawmakers heard them.

HB 509 would have changed regulations on professional licenses and certifications and required continuing education to be offered only through an accredited institution. This would have put a burden on the many firefighters who took their training close to home.

Gov. Mike DeWine recently signed Ohio House Bill 52 into law. This legislation restores the law related to emergency medical services training and continuing education programs, set to take effect at the end of the year.

Alan Ketzell, president of the Belmont County Fire and Squad Officers Association, said first responders were happy to hear about the change.

“Very good for the Ohio first responders. Will be a plus for the continuing education for first responders in our region by not handcuffing our members to have to travel to an accredited institution in our area, which there are only one for EMS in Belmont County. This will keep our first responders in our communities and available for incidents and not traveling for their continuing education,” he said in a text message, adding that local first responders had appraised their legislators of the situation.

“We had all of our first responders send letters for politicians,” he texted. “A lot of letters, emails, phone calls.”

Ohio Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport, said the law would have impacted first responders across the state.

“It wasn’t just rural, it was going to affect a lot of first responders because it was going to affect their ability to get training at their local area, and it was a priority for me and several of my colleagues, because it was going to cost a lot of our first responders a lot of money, and it was also going to take away opportunity for them to get that training locally and close to home and be affordable,” he said. “We heard from a lot of different responders, both rural and urban areas.”

He said the legislation was well-intentioned.

“Everybody realized very quickly that there had been a mistake made,” Jones said. “We wanted to correct it as quickly as we could.”

Ohio Rep. Ron Ferguson, R-Wintersville, said numerous constituents contacted his office.

“House Bill 509 passed in December and that is what put some of these local fire departments in potentially a tough situation. Ultimately in practice it never affected them because the bill never took effect before it was remedied. Thankfully, people that know best — those in the field — reached out. Many did reach out to my office,” he said. “Those really raised my attention to it. … It was really just an opportunity of people taking note of the political process, and thankfully you have people that stay on top of the changes and when the legislature misses the mark, then they reach out and are proactive about a solution.”

Patty Phillips, squad captain with the Smith Township Volunteer Fire Department, said this was a win for enabling local training.

“It’s doing away with the stuff in House Bill 509 that limited what we could do for continuing education hours, so that’s going to put it back to where we could do our in-house continuing education and make it a lot easier for the first responders to keep up their education, so it’s a wonderful thing.”

Belmont Fire Department Squad Capt. Kaye Hall said local residents picked up on the law’s problems.

“We did reach out to our representatives and wrote letters to get that repealed and it has worked,” she said. “It’ll be beneficial to small departments like Belmont because we won’t have to go to a certified training facility. We can just have people in-house like we’ve been doing in the past, so it’ll be cost-saving and time-saving.”

She added that local departments pursue frequent training. Recently Barnesville, Belmont and Bethesda first responders attended a K-9 CPR presentation at the Barnesville firehouse.

“That was the problem. They weren’t familiar with what they were affecting us with,” she said. “I give credit to the representatives — especially our representatives. I think they realized right off the get-go that it wasn’t going to work.”

Ty Wilson, administrative president of the Colerain Fire Department, is happy the issue was corrected.

“We definitely sent some letters. I know I had talked to Ron Ferguson’s office myself. They were interested and just really didn’t understand how that part of the bill was going to make obtaining the continuing education hours more difficult. They were very receptive,” he said. “Everybody got together and made the changes that we needed.”