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COURTESY PHOTOU.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal announced that his bipartisan bill to improve disability and retirement benefits for federal firefighters is included in the final version of this year’s defense policy bill.
He said that puts the benefits bill on the path to becoming law by the end of this month.
The Federal Firefighters Fairness Act, which had already passed the House earlier this year on its own and is part of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, ensures federal firefighters receive the same access to job-related disability and retirement benefits as state, county and municipal firefighters.
The House was scheduled to vote on the National Defense Authorization Act later on Wednesday. That vote had not yet taken place when the News-Press went to press. For an update, see newspress.com.
Democrats, who control the majority in the House until the start of the new term, expect to pass the defense bill and send it to the Senate. Rep. Carbajal’s office predicted the bill would be signed by President Joe Biden before the end of the 117th Congress.
Rep. Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, has been the author and champion of this Federal Firefighters Fairness Act since his first year in Congress.
“Federal firefighters have been on the front lines in California fighting wildfires as we experience longer and more extreme fire seasons, but their threshold to prove work-related illness is much higher than their state or local counterparts here in California and around the nation,” Rep.Carbajal said in a news release. “That’s why I have worked for years to get this bipartisan commonsense bill to improve federal firefighters’ health and retirement benefits across the finish line … I’m grateful to my House and Senate colleagues who saw the importance of this bill and who joined me in advocating that it be included in this bipartisan final package.”
Rep. Carbajal’s measure would create the presumption that federal firefighters who become disabled by serious diseases — including heart disease, lung disease, certain cancers and other infectious diseases — contracted the illness on the job.
Currently federal firefighters do not have the presumption that many local firefighters have, and they are forced to identify specific exposures that may have caused their illness. Rep. Carbajal’s office said this burden of proof makes it difficult for federal firefighters to qualify for workers compensation and disability benefits.
The International Association of Fire Fighters estimates this measure would improve benefits for more than 10,000 firefighters across the U.S.
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
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