A Senate panel has rejected efforts to allow public sector employees from getting workers compensation if they contradict COVID-19 while on the job.
For teachers, firefighters and police who get Covid-19 while on the clock, workers comp is off the table. The Senate Finance Committee says it’s just too expensive to let these public sector employees collect worker’s compensation if they contract the virus on the job.
“I think everybody in this committee would like to do this," Republican Senator Steve Newman of Bedford County said Thursday. "But the financial impact on this, not only on the state but the localities are so enormous that we’d certainly need to take a couple of months to look at it. And we can certainly do that in January.”
The bill was introduced by Delegate Jay Jones, a Democrat from Norfolk. He was able to get it through the House. But it hit a brick wall in Senate Finance. “I think we all value the work that these folks are doing, and we owe it to them to give them an opportunity to recover," Jones argued. "They were the ones who were putting themselves on the line over the last seven months or so to try to make sure that we were all functioning and running on all cylinders.”
He says he’ll be back at it for the regular session of the General Assembly, which is only three months away.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
