PENNSYLVANIA (WTAJ) — Governor Josh Shapiro has signed six bills into Pennsylvania law, centered around midwives, pensions, dental school faculty, the Accessibility Advisory Board and PEMA.

The first new law, HB 797, originally authored by Rep. Jessica Benham, closes a loophole in firefighter pensions. More specifically, the law repeals the remarriage provision in pension law, ensuring that surviving spouses have access to pension payments even if they remarry.

HB 1251, authored by Rep. Gina Curry, now allows nurse-midwives to make referrals for physical therapy and to sign fetal death certificates. Previously, only physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants could refer patients for physical therapy.

The next new law, SB 507, also focuses on midwives and the right to practice medicine. The “Midwifery Modernization Act,” authored by Sen. Rosemary Brown, now provides licensure for certified midwives in Pennsylvania, allowing midwives to prescribe treatment for opioid disorder and modernizes the current collaborative agreement structure.

The law only removes a collaborative agreement when a CNM or CM is employed by a multidisciplinary professional group, licensed freestanding birth center or a hospital system. A midwife without those parameters would still require a formal collaborative agreement.

HB 2163, introduced by Rep. Maureen Madden, eases restrictions on dental school faculty, something Madden argued in her original memo to be “outdated and restrictive.” Previous law- limits where and for how long faculty from another state or another country can practice or demonstrate their skills.

Now, under the new law, the scope of where a dentist with a restricted faculty license may practice is expanded to include clinical facilities owned and operated by a dental school or an affiliated nonprofit academic health care center. It also allows those licensees to practice for continuing education purposes for up to one year without a Pennsylvania license.

SB 848, authored by Sen. Carolyn Comitta, amends the Administrative Code of 1929 and adds representatives to the State Planning Board from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Additionally, the new law also amends Section 451(b)(2) by increasing the number of members constituting a quorum from 13 to 14.

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The final new law, SB 867, introduced by Sen. Christine Tartaglione, resolves a “dilemma” in Pennsylvania’s Accessibility Code. More specifically, it provides a framework for the Accessibility Advisory Board to review codes as contained in new editions of the International Code Council.

Previously, the Department of Labor and Industry no longer possessed the authority to automatically enforce the most recent accessibility code standards and instead reverted to enforcing the adopted 2018 standards.

The lack of authority came after a ruling that the automatic promulgation of regulations to adopt the most recently published accessibility codes by the ICC was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority.

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