SAN DIEGO - The long-debated idea of merging rural San Diego County fire agencies together was kept alive Monday when a state agency voted to pass off to county supervisors the $13.7 million-a-year question of how to fund it.

Members of the Local Agency Formation Commission voted 6-1 to approve and forward to supervisors a revamped plan that would merge seven East County fire agencies - as well as suggestions that either the county, or voters, pay for the merger. The merger plan would stock 28 backcountry fire stations with three-person crews at all times to cover 1.4 million acres, stretching east from Fallbrook, Valley Center and Ramona, but excluding those districts.

In May, several rural North County agencies asked to be left out because of the lack of funding, but could potentially be included in subsequent mergers.

Without the vote, the merger discussion would have died, despite two years of study by the formation commission, and conceptual approval by voters in 2004.

Proponents have said for years that merging rural agencies would improve fire and emergency medical services by unifying command, communication and training, and give merged agencies more financial clout to buy equipment.

They also said that improving backcountry agencies was not just a rural issue, because recent catastrophes like the 2003 and 2007 firestorms have started in rural areas, and burned out of control into the county's urban core. Although the formation commission officially started studying the merger idea in 2005, fire officials, politicians and communities have debated it for decades.

The next question in the fire merger saga is whether supervisors will like the proposed funding options when they consider them sometime early next year.

Two supervisors who also serve as formation commission board members had differing views.

"I don't believe that my colleagues … are going to go along with this," Horn said. "I think it's too expensive. I just don't think this is the solution."

But Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who has championed the merger issue for several years, said she thought supervisors would - and should - be open to paying for some of the merger cost.

The formation commission estimates that the merged agencies would need $25.5 million a year, but that the cost would be offset by the $4.24 million the targeted agencies now spend, and $8.5 million a year the county now spends on fire protection. Officials also said the total costs were lowered by using a combination of one paid and two volunteer firefighters to staff fire stations.

Jacob said that the county has a responsibility to provide fire service in the backcountry areas, because it used to provide it until abandoning it as too expensive in the 1970s.

However, even Jacob stopped short of saying the county should pay the entire merger amount.

Instead, she said the merger's costs were still unknown - particularly after a group of East County fire chiefs came forward at Monday's hearing and said they could provide three-person coverage at 14 fire stations.

Jacob said the county could consider a range of options, including the East County chiefs' plan, the formation commission's merger, and other ideas.

As for funding, Jacob said she had not given up on a "longshot" state bill, Senate Bill 806, which would allow San Diego County to shift a portion of its property taxes from schools to the merger.

She also said county supervisors could ask the state for money.

"It's the state's responsibility for wildland fire protection," she said.

Formation Commission board member Betty Rexford, a city councilwoman in Poway, said she was happy to pass the funding questions on to the county. But, she said, she would never approve asking city residents to approve a new tax or fee because they were already paying for fire service out of taxes.

Jacob said she would be comfortable asking voters to approve a fee, but only as a last resort.

"If it's a last resort, and the people know that we have done everything possible in trying to get federal and state money … I believe that the people are going to step up and say, 'Yes.' "

More than 80 percent of county voters said they liked the idea of merging rural agencies in November 2004 on Proposition C. But that advisory ballot measure did not ask them to put up any money.

Horn, meanwhile, said he was not against spending more money on fire protection, but that he preferred to spend it on equipment. He said a merger wouldn't help the area defend itself against firestorms such as the ones in October because no amount of firefighters or equipment could stand in front of a wildfire being pushed by 40 mph to 60 mph winds.

But formation commission member Andy Menshek, who is also a fire chief with East County's San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District, said a merger was badly needed.

He said "something changed" in 2000, and that the region was suffering through more and more large fires that were killing people and destroying homes.

"We're the only large county in the state … that doesn't have an organized fire protection in the backcountry. I find it abysmal that we cannot move forward after 20 to 30 years of work … and cannot find funding. It's embarrassing."

- Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.