Debate over firefighters’ cancer benefits revived
The debate over what benefits should be paid to firefighters who develop cancer after battling caustic flames was reignited by Connecticut lawmakers on Tuesday, who advanced a bill that would ease the path for them to claim full workers’ compensation benefits.
The legislation would create a “rebuttable presumption” that a firefighter’s cancer diagnosis is linked to their occupation for the purposes of workers’ compensation claims. It is the result of growing concerns among firefighters and researchers that the burning of modern, synthetic materials used in many buildings — as well as some of the specially-designed gear worn to protect them from the flames — are linked to disabling and deadly cancers.
By creating the presumption that a cancer is a result of their hazardous jobs, the law would make it more difficult for firefighters to have their workers’ compensation claims denied.
Connecticut is one of only two states without a law creating such a presumption, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters, a labor union whose members wrote dozens of letters to Connecticut lawmakers this month, urging them to pass legislation to change the law.
“I have witnessed seven brother firefighters from my station alone battle cancer. Sadly not all of them were able to win the fight,” wrote one firefighter, Stamford’s Donald E. Lowndes Jr., in testimony submitted to the committee. “They devoted themselves to helping
others day in and day out sacrificing everything in the process… Firefighters who contract occupational cancer should receive the same benefits that they would receive for any other occupational injury or illness.”
Both insurers and municipalities have raised objections to the creation of a legal presumption linking cancer with firefighters’ work, citing the potential costs of having to pay workers’ compensation claims — which can include medical, job retraining and other discretionary benefits — due to cancers that may not be
work-related.
Attempting to address those concerns, the bill would allow the presumption of a link between cancer and firefighting to be rebutted by evidence that the employee had cancer at the time they joined the fire service, failed to submit annual physical examinations, used tobacco or failed to use respiratory protection.
In 2016, lawmakers passed a compromise bill to create a firefighters’ cancer relief account funded by a one-cent surcharge on phone bills. The account would be
used to compensate firefighters for lost wages that resulted from a cancer diagnosis, with eligibility beginning in 2022.
Lawmakers followed up last year to provide additional funding into the cancer relief account by having municipalities pay $10 annually for each volunteer or career firefighter. That legislation also mandated the development of remediation plans for toxic substances in firefighting equipment, as well as the Workers’ Compensation Commission to maintain records on compensation claims related to firefighters’
with cancer diagnoses.
On Tuesday, several Republicans on the Labor and Public Employees Committee described the passage of that bill as part of a compromise agreement between firefighters and municipalities, which they argued would be undone by additional legislation.
“I don’t think that it’s appropriate,” said state Sen. Rob Sampson, RWolcott, the ranking member on the committee. “After years and years of discussion and debate, and a failure for us to come to a conclusion, we finally did pass a law that everybody was happy with and that I thought moved the ball substantially in the favor of firefighters.”
The Senate co-chair of the committee, state Sen. Julie Kushner, D- Danbury, responded that last year’s bill was not part of a broader deal, but was “a question of what we could get passed.”
“There is such a limit on what can be paid out of the cancer relief fund,” Kushner said. ‘Essentially it’s just paying wage replacement for firefighters.”
The committee voted along mostly party lines Tuesday to advance the legislation, with one Republican joining Democrats in support of the bill.
As of Tuesday, the cancer relief fund established in 2016 had over $2.1 million in the account, according to a spokesman for the Department of Administrative Services. Legislative analysts have yet to draft an estimate for the costs associated with the legislation as a result of additional workers’ compensation claims.
In its annual report to lawmakers required by last year’s legislation, the Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Commission said it was able to identify one likely claim made by a firefighter related to a cancer diagnosis. The report period covered the final six months of 2022, after the law went into effect.
The Senate chair of the Appropriations Committee, state Sen. Cathy Osten, D- Sprague, said Tuesday that she did not anticipate the bill being re-referred to her committee, meaning its next stop will likely be the Senate floor.