th<\/sup>, 2020 and to police officers and firefighters who were previously denied duty disability benefits that would be entitled to it under the bill\u2019s implementation.<\/p>\nAccording to a 2022 report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Foundation, COVID-19 was \u201cthe number one cause of law enforcement deaths in 2022.\u201d COVID has taken the lives of several Illinois police officers from the Chicago Police Department, Aurora Police Department, Cook County Sheriff\u2019s Office, and more.<\/p>\n
Rep. Stephens has fought to protect first responders and has worked to protect first responders facing the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020. He joined a bipartisan coalition of state legislators in supporting an agreement on workers compensation benefits to be paid when first responders contract COVID-19 on the job and entitle families of firefighters and police officers to full death benefits should they have died as a result from COVID-19.<\/p>\n
Rep. Stephens is a member of the House Police & Fire Committee. HB 3162 will be sent to the Senate for debate and consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SPRINGFIELD \u2013 On Thursday, pension legislation that will establish a presumption that Chicago firefighters or police officers who obtained a disability from contracting COVID-19 were injured in the line of duty and are entitled to duty disability benefits unanimously passed the House of Representatives. House Assistant Minority Leader Brad Stephens (R-Rosemont) was a chief co-sponsor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/repbradstephens.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}