BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                  AB 585
                                                                  Page  1

          CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
          AB 585 (Fong)
          As Amended  August 24, 2011
          Majority vote
           
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          |ASSEMBLY:  |78-0 |(May 19, 2011)  |SENATE: |32-3 |(August 30,    |
          |           |     |                |        |     |2011)          |
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           Original Committee Reference:    H. & C.D.  

           SUMMARY  :  Provides that certain workers who serve as 
          firefighters at facilities of the National Aeronautics and Space 
          Administration (NASA) shall receive the benefit that other 
          firefighters have that establishes a rebuttable presumption that 
          cancer was contracted on the job.

           The Senate amendments:  

          1)Delete the Assembly version of the bill, and instead add 
            employees who serve as active firefighting members of a fire 
            department that serves NASA installations, and who receive the 
            same training required of firefighters in California, to the 
            list of employees for whom cancer is rebuttably presumed to be 
            work related.

          2)Add co-authors.

           EXISTING LAW  :

          1)Provides for a comprehensive system of workers' compensation 
            benefits for injuries to employees arising out of or in the 
            course of employment.

          2)Provides that for defined firefighter employees cancer is 
            rebuttably presumed to have arisen out of or in the course of 
            employment.

          3)Provides that, as a matter of federal law, federal employees 
            are not subject to state workers' compensation laws.

          4)Includes defined firefighter employees who are employed by a 
            California business that contracts with the Department of 
            Defense to provide firefighter services on military 








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            installations in the statute defining the presumption noted 
            above.

           AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY  , this bill would have required the 
          Department of Housing and Community Development to provide 
          specified information relating to manufactured housing to county 
          assessors.

           FISCAL EFFECT  :  This bill applies to employees of a private 
          sector business, and therefore there are no fiscal implications 
          to state or local governments.

           COMMENTS  :

          1)According to the proponents, the firefighter employees who 
            would be affected by the bill are not federal government 
            employees, and are therefore subject to all of the labor laws 
            of California.  In this light, it is argued that these 
            firefighters should be treated just like any other firefighter 
            employed in California and subject to California labor law.

          2)The case for the cancer presumption for firefighters was made 
            initially in AB 3011 (Torres, et. al,), Chapter 1568, Statutes 
            1982.  Subsequent studies have established that firefighters 
            suffer a higher incidence of a number of cancers than the 
            population as a whole.  The basic presumption law adopted in 
            1982 was recently modified by AB 2253 (Coto), Chapter 672, 
            Statutes of 2010, by extending the statute of limitations for 
            filing a cancer presumption claim.  This extension was based 
            on research that showed the latency period of many of the 
            cancers suffered by firefighters extended beyond the previous 
            time frame within which the claim needed to be filed.

          3)In 2008, SB 1271 (Cedillo), Chapter 747, Statutes of 2008, 
            extended the presumption, which previously applied only to 
            public sector employees, to the contract firefighters working 
            on military installations.  This bill would further extend the 
            presumption to an additional class of firefighters serving on 
            federal installations as employees of a California business 
            that employs the firefighters and contracts with NASA.  The 
            argument is that these firefighters should be treated just 
            like the other, similarly situated firefighters.  It should be 
            noted that, just like the military installation firefighters, 
            if these firefighters were federal employees, as opposed to 
            private sector employees of a federal contractor, they would 








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            not receive the benefit of the presumption, as federal 
            government-employed firefighters do not receive the benefit of 
            this presumption.


           Analysis prepared by  :    Mark Rakich / INS. / (916) 319-2086


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