Bill > S1597

Introduced Session

This bill revises the law governing workers' compensation coverage for certain injuries to volunteer and professional public safety and law enforcement personnel. Under current law, there is a rebuttable presumption that any cardiovascular or cerebrovascular injury or death which occurs to individuals who are volunteer and professional public safety and law enforcement personnel while those individuals are engaged in a response to an emergency is compensable if that injury or death occurs while the individual is responding, under orders from competent authority, to an emergency. This bill expands the individuals that are covered by the presumption to include any recognized emergency management member doing volunteer duty. It is also removes the requirement that the individual must be responding to orders under competent authority in order to recover, and provides that individuals are covered by the presumption when remediating from an emergency. The bill provides that the presumption of compensability is rebuttable by use of casual factors such as horseplay, skylarking, self-infliction, voluntary intoxication, and illicit drug use. The bill provides that any cardiovascular or cerebrovascular injury or death-related incident resulting in a dispute as to compensability is to be decided coincidentally with the United States Department of Justice, Public Safety Officers' Benefits Program findings.

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Joe Cryan (D)*,  Steven Oroho (R)*, 

Referred to Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee (on 05/21/2018)