{"id":776,"date":"2021-07-01T11:29:05","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T15:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/?p=776"},"modified":"2021-07-01T11:29:05","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T15:29:05","slug":"timilty-testifies-on-ppe-inventory-bill-s-253","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/timilty-testifies-on-ppe-inventory-bill-s-253\/","title":{"rendered":"Timilty testifies on PPE inventory bill (S.253)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"article-title\" style=\"text-align: center;\">Lawmakers surface pandemic response bills after emergency ends<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>BOSTON (SHNS) \u2013 On Feb. 19, when Rep. Nika Elugardo filed her bill to create a COVID-19 funeral and burial aid fund and Sen. Diana DiZoglio filed legislation that would add an expiration date to states of emergency, Massachusetts was still under the state of emergency declared in March 2020 and the federal government had not yet begun reimbursing funeral costs for the pandemic\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sen. Walter Timilty<\/strong> filed his personal protective equipment data bill (S 253), which would require health care facilities to designate a PPE inventory manager and provide documentation of their supplies, on Feb. 4, when 1,503 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized across Massachusetts. Now, that number is down to 104.<\/p>\n<p>The Legislature\u2019s COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the 34 bills that have been referred to it since it was created near the start of this session.<\/p>\n<div class=\"nlp-ignore-block article-content rich-text\">\n<aside class=\"promo-link\">Many of the bills were filed at an earlier point in the pandemic \u2014 before Massachusetts exited the COVID-19 state of emergency, vaccinations became widespread and case numbers began to decline \u2014 but are only just beginning to emerge at the midway point of the legislative session\u2019s first year.<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>Despite the changed dynamics, several lawmakers asked the committee to still advance their proposals as a way to ensure Massachusetts learns from the past year and a half and prepares for what may come next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile Massachusetts continues to lead in vaccination rates, we must remain vigilant as COVID-19 variants emerge,\u201d said Timilty, a Milton Democrat. \u201cFor instance, health care workers continue to practice medicine in close quarters, caring for infected and in some cases unvaccinated individuals. Finally, we must learn from the experiences of this pandemic to ensure we are prepared for future public health risks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Elugardo\u2019s bill (H 483) would create a COVID-19 Funeral and Burial Assistance Fund, administered by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, to provide grants to low-income families to help defray costs related to COVID-19 deaths.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Emergency Management Agency in April began\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fema.gov%2Fdisasters%2Fcoronavirus%2Feconomic%2Ffuneral-assistance&amp;data=04%7C01%7CNancy.Asiamah%40wwlp.com%7C254f1071564f437339c108d93c05e6ad%7C9e5488e2e83844f6886cc7608242767e%7C0%7C0%7C637606818314078874%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=GshcziDQXxEr5JYy2y2KJvJCjI2FqDsW18cM6I1d5GY%3D&amp;reserved=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">accepting applications<\/a>\u00a0for funeral assistance. Elugardo, a Boston Democrat, said she believed there will still be \u201ca very small number of Massachusetts residents\u201d who will incur expenses in excess of the FEMA aid levels and be unable \u201cto pay even another single dollar because of their poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wonder if we could work together to make some edits to this bill to just provide that type of catch-all,\u201d she told the committee.<\/p>\n<p>Under a DiZoglio bill (S 249) before the panel, a state of emergency would expire 60 days after its declaration, unless the governor requests and the Legislature approves an extension.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, a bill from Billerica Republican Rep. Marc Lombardo would cap a state of emergency at 30 days\u2019 length, unless at least three-fifths of both the House and Senate vote to continue it.<\/p>\n<p>The state of emergency that Gov. Charlie Baker declared on March 10, 2020 lasted for 462 days and became the basis for an array of executive orders, including ones that closed school buildings, limited restaurants to takeout and delivery, restricted gathering sizes, allowed remote public meetings and provided flexibility in health care.<\/p>\n<p>DiZoglio, a Methuen Democrat, said her bill would \u201cbring the Legislature back into the fold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know that the state of emergency has ended, but I don\u2019t believe that we should end the conversation around reining in some of the governor\u2019s authorities and examining those authorities that he had and could have again for an indefinite period of time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gillmeister of the Renew Massachusetts Coalition read the committee a petition, which he said was signed by more than 3,000 registered voters, in support of the Lombardo bill (H 497). The petition said the bill would \u201cplace checks and balances on the governor\u2019s power\u201d and that \u201cno law should provide the governor with an indefinite ability to restrict our rights without review and action by the legislative, judicial or both branches.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The committee is also considering bills (H 499, H 500) filed by Reps. David Rogers and Jon Santiago that would create commissions to investigate the state\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The two bills, which propose different structures for the panel, aim to produce a report that could help guide preparations for future pandemics or other crises.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019d be naive to think there won\u2019t be \u2014 three years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now \u2014 some other pandemic, so I think we need to study how we\u2019ve responded,\u201d said Rogers, a Cambridge Democrat. \u201cI think the state\u2019s been so caught up, understandably, in the day-to-day management that there hasn\u2019t been time yet to kind of step back and look at the totality of the response and learn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wwlp.com\/news\/state-politics\/lawmakers-surface-pandemic-response-bills-after-emergency-ends\/\">https:\/\/www.wwlp.com\/news\/state-politics\/lawmakers-surface-pandemic-response-bills-after-emergency-ends\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawmakers surface pandemic response bills after emergency ends &nbsp; BOSTON (SHNS) \u2013 On Feb. 19, when Rep. Nika Elugardo filed &#8230; <a class=\"cz_readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/timilty-testifies-on-ppe-inventory-bill-s-253\/\"><i class=\"fa fa-angle-right\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/i><span>Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.senatorwaltertimilty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}