Families of state workers who die on the job won’t lose their benefits days after their loved ones perish under a measure that became law Wednesday.
Gov. John Hickenlooper signed Senate Bill 148, which keeps those benefits in place for a year following a worker’s death, after it sailed through both the Colorado House and Senate with broad bipartisan support.
The measure goes into effect immediately. It was inspired by the 2016 death of Colorado State Patrol Trooper Cody Donahue, who was struck and killed by a vehicle while responding to a crash on the side of Interstate 25 near Castle Rock.
Under old state policy, if a state worker died on the job, his or her family’s benefits — such as health and dental insurance — ended at the end of the month that person passed away.
That happened to Donahue’s family, whose widow, Velma, discovered the mandate when one of her young daughters got sick in the days after the trooper’s death. Velma Donahue was at Wednesday’s bill signing and gave Hickenlooper a hug after he signed it into law.
The law will also cover Colorado Department of Transportation workers and Colorado Department of Corrections employees. It would not apply to local or county governments, which have their own policies but often look to the state for guidance.
The law is the second passed in the wake of Trooper Donahue’s death. The “Move Over for Cody Act” approved by the legislature last year increased penalties for motorists who don’t move over a lane when passing law enforcement vehicles, state highway workers or tow-truck drivers parked on the side of the road.
Also Wednesday, Hickenlooper signed a bill into law giving special legal protections to police horses.
House Bill 1041 says that anyone who commits animal cruelty specifically against a police horse has committed a Class 1 misdemeanor.
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