By the spring of 2014, Officer Thomas Bean had been off the duty roster of the Newtown Police Department for more than a year. The post traumatic stress disorder he suffered following the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings had disabled him to the point where he could no longer work in his chosen career as a police officer. He had struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts since responding to the mass murder of 20 first graders and six educators. He told the General Assembly’s Public Safety and Security Committee at that time that he faced an uncertain financial future — a future that would be far more secure with common sense workers compensation laws on the books covering PTSD for first responders.

Officer Bean had gone to Hartford looking for help at a time when his prospects for assistance locally looked dim. The Town of Newtown offered two years of disability at half pay and briefly considered terminating his employment. Local officials believed that paying disability to the incapacitated police officer until he was eligible for retirement would be an onerous burden for local taxpayers that went far beyond their obligations under the police union contract.

This month, Mr Bean’s prospects look considerably brighter. In his disability dispute with the town, a state board of mediation and arbitration has awarded him approximately $380,000 in disability payments to carry him until he is eligible for retirement from the police department. Most of that amount will be covered by social security disability payments; a little more than $31,000 will be paid by local taxpayers. And in Hartford, the State Senate voted to expand workers’ compensation for police responding to certain types of fatalities who then suffer from PTSD. Whether or not the House follows through and sends the legislation to the governor’s desk by the time the session adjourns on June 3 remains to be seen.

The public policy issues swirling around Thomas Bean’s life and affliction are shaped, as always, by a political and fiscal calculus that seems to have less to do with our compassion for his plight, and for others like him, than the political/fiscal imperatives driving our elected officials. For example, state senators have limited the cost of their expansion of workers compensation by extending coverage to police suffering mental or emotional problems responding to a death caused by a person but not, say, to those responding to a gruesome fatal car accident. PTSD may result in both cases, but worker compensation payments will only materialize for one. Is this compassion or cost cutting?

The Town of Newtown and other municipalities have a point when they argue that requiring long-term disability payments for police and other first responders has the potential to adversely affect a town’s fiscal health. The legislature has combined the worker compensation expansion with another proposal to cover certain types of cancer among firefighters. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities sees both moves as potentially devastating unfunded mandates for towns and cities.

Still, when we hire and train professionals to answer our calls for help, to run to face the horrific and unthinkable without hesitation, we must seriously consider our obligation to them when their mental and emotional state is damaged to the point that their own lives become nightmares as a result. In the end, it should not be a matter of whether to meet that obligation, but how.