BILL NUMBER:  AB 2451
  VETOED	DATE: 09/30/2012




To the Members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 2451 without my signature.

California faces fiscal challenges unparalleled since the Great
Depression.  While much progress has been made to reduce our
structural deficit, balance our budget, reform workers' compensation
and rein in spiraling pension costs - - much work remains.

This measure seeks to redress a problem whose scope is not fully
knowable.  Proponents cite the case of the firefighter who dies a
lingering and painful death from cancer and note that if that death
occurs even one day past an arbitrary statute of limitation -
originally established in 1913 - the surviving dependent family
members are denied substantial death benefits.

Meanwhile opponents decry any expansion of this nearly 100 year old
limitation as wildly fiscally imprudent, opening the doors to fiscal
ruin and damnation of our efforts to restore fiscal sanity to our
state.

What is needed is rational, thoughtful consideration of balancing the
serious fiscal constraints faced at all levels of government against
our shared priority to adequately and fairly compensate the families
of those public safety heroes who succumb to work-related injuries
and disease.

Unfortunately, little more than anecdotal evidence is available to
base such deliberations upon.  If deaths due to cancer for
firefighters and peace officers approximate, let alone exceed, those
of the general population, we can surmise the potential impact of
doubling the statute of limitations.  It could increase costs to the
state by tens of millions of dollars and at the local level by
hundreds of millions.  Alternatively, there is little credible
evidence that the circumstance this measure intends to address occurs
other than rarely, yet tragically.  In the later circumstance the
costs would be modest and reasonable.








I understand that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health is in the midst of one of the largest studies of firefighters
and risks of death from cancer and other job related disease ever
conducted.  It is my sincere hope that this study, as well as data
collected through our comprehensive reform of the workers'
compensation system, will provide a basis to make a more informed
policy and research based decision on this question in the future.

In the interim, I cannot expose state and local governments to the
serious fiscal risks enactment of this measure may entail. I reserve
the option to revisit this question upon the availability of more
thorough research and study of this matter and direct my Department
of Industrial Relations to take all steps necessary to ensure that
the State collects, maintains and studies the relevant data and third
party research upon which to make informed policy decisions on this
matter in the future.

Sincerely,



Edmund G. Brown Jr.