The Justin Kropp Safety Act: electrical utilities: AED availability at worksites.

Schiavo’s Justin Kropp Safety Act would require each utility—electrical corporations, electrical cooperatives, and local publicly owned electric utilities—and their independent contractors or subcontractors to have an automated external defibrillator available at every worksite where two or more workers are performing on transmission or distribution lines rated at 601 volts or more, and to adopt a written program of policies and procedures governing AED use and emergency response. The program would require the AED to be maintained for emergency use, and would align with existing obligations to notify the local emergency medical services agency of AED availability and use, as well as with broader safety and injury-prevention practices.

Key mechanisms include conditioning the program on ensuring that any person who renders emergency care with an AED activates the emergency medical system as soon as possible and reports the AED use to the local EMS, while also requiring training for all employees, contractors, and subcontractors in AED use and emergency procedures. The bill would require the utility and its contractors to comply with applicable regulations governing AED placement, maintenance, testing, inspection, and recordkeeping, including biannual testing and regular on-site inspections, and to maintain records of these activities. It also extends civil liability protections to individuals and to utilities or their contractors that acquire an AED for emergency use and make reasonable efforts to comply with the requirements, provided they act in good faith and in accordance with the program; these protections would not apply in cases of gross negligence or willful or wanton misconduct.

In broader terms, the measure creates a new worksite AED program as a discrete addition to the existing safety framework for electrical utilities, and it specifies the definitions and relationships among utilities and their contractors. The act would be a state-mandated local program, with the state indicating that no reimbursement is required for costs incurred by local agencies or school districts, and it would treat violations of the act or related orders as crimes under the applicable statutes. The proposal sits within a regulatory environment that already governs utility safety devices and emergency medical response, and it ties AED readiness at high-risk worksites to the utilities’ broader injury-prevention responsibilities.