Committee rejects, approves workers’ comp bills

(April 11, 2006) The legislature’s Appropriations Committee has rejected a bill that would have significantly increased workers' comp costs in Connecticut, but the committee gave its OK to another bill that will repeal a key system reform and also increase costs.

The committee failed to take action on SB-217, which would have caused “significant additional costs,” says the Office of Fiscal Analysis, by extending the maximum number of weeks that a commissioner may award in discretionary benefits for partial permanent disabilities up to 10 years. NCCI has not yet issued a fiscal impact statement on this measure, but the repeal of this key reform likely would cause devastating cost increases.

The bill was an attempt to repeal a key system reform by removing the obligation, under current law, to choose the lesser of two options — discretionary benefits for the statutory duration of the claimants’ permanent partial disability benefits, or 520 weeks of discretionary benefits.

SB-217 died when the committee failed to take action on it.

However, the committee approved SB-25, which increases workers’ compensation costs by $8 million, according to the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). It eliminates the Social Security offset for workers’ comp benefits. Offsets are logical safeguards that help maintain the integrity of the workers’ compensation system, which is designed to be a wage-replacement system.

By allowing individuals to collect more than their weekly wage replacement, the bill creates a significant disincentive for people who were not collecting Social Security prior to their injury to return to work.

SB-25 was sent to the full Senate.

At a time when job growth in the state is very slow, state lawmakers should be careful not to increase employers’ already high costs. The workers’ compensation reforms, helped get the state out of the big recession in the early 1990s and should definitely not be repealed. These bills would only make the situation worse:

Increasing worker's comp costs is something the state cannot afford — our workers’ comp costs are already ninth-highest in the nation, according to a new report from Actuarial and Technical Solutions Inc.

Another workers’ comp measure, SB-461, died in the Judiciary Committee. It would have required employers to provide their employees, in writing, information about the availability of workers' compensation. The bill died when the committee took no action on it.