By Brian Lockhart
Staff Writer
May 15, 2007
HARTFORD - Legislation making it easier for police and firefighters to receive workers' compensation for job-related illnesses is heading for a General Assembly vote, despite the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities' claim it will burden cities and towns with millions in added costs.
The bill was passed 13-3 by the joint legislative Planning and Development Committee yesterday after members added an amendment to include ambulance personnel.
"I do have some reservations about it," state Rep. Gerald Fox III, D-Stamford, who voted for the legislation, said afterward.
The proposal would force municipalities to presume a firefighter, police officer or emergency technician diagnosed with hepatitis, meningitis, tuberculosis or certain forms of cancer became infected while on active duty.
Proponents say it would avoid putting families like those of William Miller Jr. through protracted and emotional legal battles to receive benefits.
Miller was a 24-year Stamford firefighter who in 2001 died of liver cancer after contracting hepatitis C on the job. His widow, Mary, who traveled to Hartford to testify for the bill in January, accused the city of questioning her husband's lifestyle rather than acknowledging he was exposed to the disease while at work.
The Miller case is pending.
The legislation also would revive a law, abolished in the mid-1990s, that provides compensation to emergency personnel with hypertension and heart disease.
But the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which yesterday launched a radio advertising campaign against the bill, said the legislation imposes a "no proof necessary" law at the expense of taxpayers, because it entitles a select group of employees to workers' compensation coverage without having to show the origin of their illnesses.
Cases will increase and so will municipalities' insurance premiums rates, the group said.
State Rep. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, shared those concerns.
"It puts the town on the defense," Miner told his Planning and Development Committee colleagues yesterday. "There's a reason we got rid of the heart and hypertension bill . . . Now we're adding bloodborne pathogens, hypertension and cancer. And all you have to do is test clean on a certain date and it's presumed you got it from your employment with the town."
Although he voted against the bill yesterday, Miner successfully proposed two amendments. The first would increase a new $10 million "occupational hazards" account set up by the state to help municipalities offset anticipated costs to $50 million.
The municipalities' association said the bill would cost more than $30 million annually just for hypertension cases. Supporters call that a scare tactic.
"If we're going to pass a bill that's going to impact municipalities, we have an obligation to lessen the impact," Miner said.
State Rep. Bill Aman, R-South Windsor, voted for the bill yesterday but said he hopes both sides of the issue will provide legislators with more realistic cost estimates before it reaches the House and Senate.
"The numbers I'm getting are so far apart I don't know if I can believe either," Aman said. "One side says the costs are very low, the other in the multimillions of dollars."
Miner also suggested the amendment adding ambulance personnel to those workers covered by the legislation.
"Whatever exposures occur to a police and fire person certainly apply to someone who operates an ambulance," he said.
Fox yesterday opposed Miner's first amendment concerning the $50 million but voted to incorporate ambulance staff.
Fox said after the vote that he believes the bill has improved since it appeared earlier this session before the Labor and Public Employees and the Appropriations committees.
"I think it's getting better. I don't think it's yet at the state where it can be finalized," Fox said. "As you could see today, the cost seems to be something that's completely arbitrary."
James Kelley, legislative representative for the Stamford Professional Fire Fighters Association, said he is pleased the legislation is a step closer to being enacted by the General Assembly.
"Our job is more than just fighting fire," Kelley said. "And especially, post-9/11, now people, I believe, understand what we are exposed to."
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