BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 585 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 585 (Fong) As Amended August 24, 2011 Majority vote ----------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |78-0 |(May 19, 2011) |SENATE: |32-3 |(August 30, | | | | | | |2011) | ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 AB 585 Page 2 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 AB 585 Page 3 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 FN: 0002406