Protecting Workers Health and Jobs

PROTECTING WORKERS HEALTH AND JOBS
by Governor Bob Wise

This week, my Workers' Compensation working group released a comprehensive bill which addresses the many facets of the crisis currently facing this important worker protection system.

Over many long sessions, the group identified the large and small problems that have brought the Workers' Compensation program to the point of near collapse. Its conclusions have made it even clearer to me that we cannot be satisfied with short-term solutions or partial reforms. The proposals contained in the legislation made public this week amount to a significant overhaul in how the Workers' Compensation program is administered, funded and regulated.

These changes are the result of bipartisan cooperation on the part of the working group, and I commend them for their efforts. Together, we are taking necessary steps; inaction could cause injured workers to stop receiving checks in two years, and businesses and taxpayers would be forced to pay the heavy penalty.

We must make sure that businesses are not permitted to conduct operations in West Virginia while ignoring their Workers' Compensation premium obligations. Under the new Employer Violator System, owners of firms who have delinquent or defaulted debts will not be issued permits or licenses by any state agency. Individuals also will be held responsible for firms in which they maintain a significant percentage of ownership.

The Workers' Compensation Division, which will be separated from the Bureau of Employment Programs and re-established as an independent agency, will emphasize rehabilitation of workers and encourage workplace safety. It also will, through its fraud/abuse investigation unit, vigorously enforce the high standards to which businesses, employees and health care providers will be held.

Both workers and employers are being asked to make sacrifices in these changes. Base premium rates for businesses will increase by 15 percent, and maximum Temporary Total Disability (TTD) benefits will be reduced from 70 percent to 66.7 percent of the average weekly wage. The maximum duration of TTD benefits will be two years instead of four. Permanent Total Disability (PTD) will be raised from 40 percent to 50 percent medical impairment on the entire body. These and other new guidelines will apply to all awards issued after the effective date of the legislation.

Two new governing bodies will be created to run and regulate the Workers' Compensation program. The new Board of Managers, made up of qualified individuals with experience in worker safety, economics, and business, will work with the executive director, who will be responsible for all administrative policy. The legislation also abolishes the Board of Appeals and creates an Intermediate Court of Appeals, whose full-time judges will hear only Workers' Compensation cases. I will ask the Supreme Court to review the jurisdiction and selection process of this new court.

While we reform Workers' Compensation for the future, we must still pay for the mistakes of the past. Even with the premium increase and modifications to the benefit structure, the system needs $225 million to cover the expected shortfall by 2005. These funds will come from a penny-per-cigarette tax increase, the Tobacco Settlement Trust Fund, the Black Lung Trust Account and General Revenue funds. Taxpayers, like employers and workers, are being asked to share the heavy burden this crisis represents. However, we must choose to take difficult steps now rather than face a catastrophe in the future. In time, we will look at the sacrifices these changes will bring and realize that they were vital to building the foundations of both worker safety and economic prosperity in the 21st century.