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Witnesses urge Joint Committee on Public Service to broaden accidental-disability and disease presumptions for public-safety workers
Summary
Witnesses told the Joint Committee on Public Service that bills before the panel would allow traumatic-incident reports and expand presumptions for cancers, infectious disease and Parkinson’s to help firefighters and other public employees access disability or death benefits.
At a hearing of the Joint Committee on Public Service, witnesses urged lawmakers to advance a package of bills that would let public-safety workers use incident reports when applying for accidental disability and create medical presumptions that certain diseases are work-related for firefighters and other public employees.
The measures discussed would change how Chapter 32, Section 7 of state law is applied to post-traumatic stress disorder and would establish presumptions that cancers, infectious diseases and Parkinson’s disease can be job-related for firefighters, supporters said. Proponents said the changes are intended to reflect how mental-health conditions and long-term toxin exposures develop and are documented.
Bill Keith, executive director of PARAC, and Patrick Charles, assistant executive director, told the committee that current application rules for accidental disability are rooted in…
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