Governor Spikes Appropriation for Occupational Disease Study

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee rejected funding for a study of occupational disease claims the in the $43.7 billion budget he signed last week. Inslee used his line item veto authority to remove from the final budget a provision that would have appropriated $250,000 for the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to commission a study of occupational disease claims, including the best practices for determining whether a claim should be compensable. “The 2011 Legislature directed the department to contract with a research entity to study the frequency and severity of occupati...