H.297 expands presumption of work-related PTSD.

By Brooke Burns

A new House bill aims to simplify the process of getting worker’s compensation for state employees suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Under current law, first responders employed by the state don’t have to prove a PTSD diagnosis is related to their work when seeking workers’ compensation. H.297, sponsored by Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, D/P-Burlington, seeks to add a litany of other state employees to the law whose jobs may expose them to distressing situations. 

Those would include most employees of the Department of Corrections, the Family Services Division of the Department for Children and Families, the Vermont Veterans’ Home, the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs and state-operated psychiatric units. Public safety operators are included too.

The bill was introduced back in May 2023 but has appeared in House Committee on General and Housing meetings four times since the 2024 session began. 

“There’s a presumption that this injury is related to work, and so the individual doesn’t have to show that it’s work related,” said legislative counsel Damien Leonard in a Jan. 10 meeting of the committee. “It’s up to the employer to show that it’s not if they want the claim denied.” 

Current law requires employees to submit official incident reports for other categories of workers’ compensation, such as physical injury, within 72 hours. But the bill would significantly extend the eligibility of many of those employees far after an inciting, traumatic event. Under the bill, if such an employee is diagnosed with PTSD within three years of their work with the state, they’d be eligible for workers’ compensation. 

In a Jan. 25 committee meeting, employees of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs testified to the stressful and highly emotional nature of jobs like theirs, which can lead to PTSD and other mental struggles. 

“As a department, if we have 2,000 or 2,500 pending criminal cases, my office has probably dealt with another 1,000 cases that are dealing with child cruelty, animal cruelty, profound mental health or developmental disability cases,” Windham County State’s Attorney Tracey Shriver said during that meeting. “It’s climbed quite a bit with the drug epidemic — I take at least three to four untimely death calls a week.”

Shriver said under current law, her employees are less likely to seek compensation that would allow them to take time off. 

“I think providing the workers’ compensation for those types of situations takes some of that stress off of the individual saying they can’t take that time off, for their own income or in their own head,” Shriver said. “And being able to access workers’ comp, I think, would give me as the supervisor the opportunity to say, ‘Tammy, you don’t need to worry about it, take care of you.’”

Tammy Loveland, a victim advocate for the Windham County prosecutor’s office, told lawmakers about disturbing photos and case descriptions she sees as part of her job.

“There’s no escaping this, and you can’t unread what you read for details and affidavits,” Loveland said. “You can’t unsee those photos. And I’ve been here 26 years and had six other advocates, or seven, that have worked with me and have never been able to maintain long periods of time here — in large part because of the information that they’re reading — and they’re just not able to cope with it.”

The bill is not without critics. In the same meeting, Agency of Administration risk management operations director Rebecca White called the bill unnecessary because the state’s existing workers’ compensation system is fair.

“One of the fundamental principles of workers’ comp in general is that the employee has to make their case, which is not hard,” White said. “All you do is file the claim, you have the medical proof and it’s the doctor who would say, ‘Yeah, PTSD was caused by the job.’”

According to a report published in 2022 by White’s office, state employees submitted 12,417 workers’ compensation claims between 2010 and 2021. In that 11-year span, only 86 claims were about stress or PTSD, the report says, a “negligible” count.

Out of those 86 claims, only 32 were accepted, all related to workplace violence or a violent event. 

If passed, H.297 will go into effect July 1.

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