General Assembly Passes a ‘Clean’ BWC Budget; PTSD Language is Removed

This week, the House and Senate finalized House Bill 80, the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) budget. Last month, the General Assembly failed to pass the bill and instead approved a short-term funding solution, while the two chambers continued to negotiate on key differences.

Approved in early June, the House version of HB 80 was loaded with major policy changes that would have had detrimental impacts on the manufacturing community — including provisions to allow expanded PTSD coverage and benefits; changes to the settlement process; and new employee misclassification definitions.

The Senate eliminated the harmful House provisions in their version of HB 80. In the conference committee, the House and Senate agreed to the Senate version, while an amendment to include PTSD was defeated. The OMA worked to remove the harmful provisions to protect Ohio manufacturing. 7/17/2019