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Labor Department, commission and committee approve workplace-safety rules for JELCAR review
Summary
The committee voted to forward proposed administrative rules for the New Hampshire Health Care Workplace Safety Commission to JELCAR after a brief discussion of data and confidentiality provisions; the rules were presented by Department of Labor and DHHS officials.
Chairman Mark Pearson and the Health and Human Services Oversight Committee received a presentation Sept. 26 from Commissioner Ken Merrifield of the New Hampshire Department of Labor and staff about proposed administrative rules for the Health Care Workplace Safety Commission. The Department of Labor is now the administrative host for the commission after changes in the prior biennial budget.
Merrifield said the rules were distributed over the summer and the Department of Labor sought committee input before filing with the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JELCAR). "I believe they're identical to what we distributed over the summer," Merrifield said of the package.
Committee members pressed a specific question about whether reports to the commission would include identifiable police reports. Representative Brian Seaworth read statutory language into the record, citing RSA 277-c:25(b): "There shall not be any identifiable personal information included in the report unless contained within an attached police report or other official report of a government entity." That statute, members observed, is reflected in the proposed rules, which largely mirror the enabling language.
After brief discussion, Senator Grama moved to forward the rules to JELCAR for review; Representative Maureen Mooney seconded the motion. The committee voted "aye" and the motion passed; the committee recorded no recommendations for changes as it sent the rules onward.
Committee members asked follow-up questions about record retention and confidentiality. Department staff said their standard record-retention schedule is four years unless different retention schedules are established by the department, and they offered to follow up with the exact RSA citation related to the police-report attachment language.
No substantive changes to the rule text were adopted at the committee meeting; the committee's action was to send the proposed rules to JELCAR with the committee's collaborative review noted in the record.
