OR - State Considering Tapping SAIF Corp. Reserve to Cover Pension Deficit
07/26/2017 | 272 | 0 | 0 min read
SAIF Corp.’s $1.6 billion surplus has caught the eye of Oregon lawmakers, who are trying to address a $22 billion shortfall in the state’s public worker pension program.
Oregon State Capitol
A task force created by Gov. Kate Brown to address the Public Employees Retirement System’s unfunded liability discussed selling the state-chartered workers’ compensation carrier during its first meeting Monday. The pension program, PERS, has an unfunded liability of $22 billion, but the governor in a July 18 letter said the goal for the task force is to “consider what ass.
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The North Carolina Industrial Commission’s crackdown on fraud and noncompliance triggered a 175% year-over-year increase in the number of charges for suspected violations of the Workers’ Compensation Act, the agency says.
The Compliance and Fraud Investigative Division said it has built up the unit over the past few years, and in the fiscal year that just ended, it collected more than $1.7 million in penalties from noncompliant employers and issued 412 criminal charges.
In fiscal 2016, the numbers were $1.5 million in penalties and 150 total criminal charges.
“The Ind.
The Superior Court of New Jersey’s Appellate Division last week ordered that a former assistant city attorney for Orange Township be reinstated after he was wrongfully fired for resisting a city official’s demand that he waive a subrogation lien from a workers' compensation carrier against a city employee's third-party recovery.
John P. McGovern alleged that the lien was worth approximately $100,000, and that the city’s business manager, Willis Edwards III, had expressly instructed him not to enforce the lien so that the employee – a friend of Edwards&rsqu.
Headaches, irritability and trouble sleeping are symptoms that may arise from a number of conditions. But increasingly, the symptoms are being attributed to a case of mild traumatic brain injury, an attorney said.
A surge in the number of mild TBI claims has resulted in part from the increased publicity surrounding brain injuries among National Football League players, said insurance defense attorney Christopher Reinkall, a partner with Doherty & Progar LLC in Chicago.
For professional athletes, the issue is often subsequent brain injuries, Reinkall said. Repeated blows to the head may p.
An Ohio appellate court ruled that a jury was properly instructed that it could find a worker’s back injury to be compensable without finding that the injury had occurred on the specific date he alleged.
Case: Cook v. Administrator of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, No. CA2017-01-004, 07/17/2017, published.
Facts and Procedural History: Ricky Cook worked as a painter for Rizzo Bros., a commercial painting company. While painting a stairway in a dorm at Miami University on July 3, 2014, Cook claims he experienced a loud “pop” in his back.
Later that week, Cook al.
I served on a panel at the Colorado workers' compensation conference this spring. It was a tremendous program in an ideal setting at the base of Pikes Peak. Believe it or not, the subject of marijuana came up (in Colorado -- who'd have thought?). Marijuana is a subject about which I have written multiple musings on my blog. A few of those are:
Medical Marijuana.
Marijuana May be a Problem, You Think?
So Federal Law Matters in Colorado.
What Will The Next 30 Years Teach Us?
David Langham
In another post, Measuring Marijuana Intoxication, I discus.
A New York appellate court ruled that a comp carrier had to pay a permanently and totally disabled worker for the home care services being provided by his wife.
Case: Matter of Buckner v. Buckner & Kaurofsky, No. 523833, 07/13/2017, published.
Facts and Procedural History: Raymond Buckner had worked for Buckner & Kourofsky, a workers’ compensation defense firm, before a stroke left him hemiplegic and wheelchair-dependent.
His award of permanent total disability benefits entitled him to home health care services, and his wife was authorized to be the provider of those.
Sulivan On Comp
A worker who held himself out to be the owner of a construction company was not eligible for workers’ compensation benefits, even though he was paid by the hour, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled.
Case: Bentley v. Jonathan Piner Construction, No. COA16-52-2, 07/18/2017.
Facts: Thomas Bentley and his friend George Tucker worked “side jobs” together in and around Newport, North Carolina in 2014. Bentley had printed business cards in the name of Bentley Construction and Maintenance, placed a decal on his truck with the company name and started a website.
A Kentucky woman extradited to New York on charges she stole nearly $40,000 in workers’ compensation benefits meant for her long-dead mother has been sentenced to five years of probation and must pay full restitution.
Sheryl A. Colson, also known as Sheryl McClure, 47, of New Concord, Kentucky, pleaded guilty in May to third-degree larceny.
The state Office of the Workers’ Compensation Fraud Inspector General investigated and found that Colson’s mother, a former nurse at Orange-Ulster Board of Cooperative Educational Services in Goshen, New York, was injured on the job.
An investigator with the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission is under investigation for using his personal email address to send Chicago water department employees racist, sexist and anti-gay emails, The Chicago Tribune reported Monday.
Frank Capuzi, 62, a former Republican committeeman on Chicago’s West Side and the son of former Republican state Rep. Louis F. Capuzi, has worked for the state for 42 years and makes more than $114,000 a year, the newspaper said.
“The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission is currently investigating the highly offensive a.
A scabies outbreak that hit more than 300 inmates has now spread to an estimated 17 employees at a privately run Nashville jail, a lawsuit alleges.
The employees faced retaliation and reprimands in their personnel files if they spoke out or filed workers’ compensation claims, The Tennessean reported.
CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, runs the 1,300-bed Metro-Davidson County Detention Center in Antioch.
The prison company is the defendant in at least three pending lawsuits alleging it failed to properly treat the infestation of the skin-burrowing mite, th.
Under Maine’s new recreational marijuana law, most employers won’t be able to fire workers for testing positive for the substance, but must instead prove they were impaired on the job, a state official said.
And under the state’s existing medical marijuana program, businesses can’t turn down job applicants for using marijuana because they might be using it to treat a medical condition, said Julie Rabinowitz, the Maine Department of Labor’s director of policy, operations and communications.
Rabinowitz spoke on Monday to a state legislative committe.
Two U.S. senators are proposing legislation that would require the U.S. Department of Energy to work with officials in Washington state to create a resource center to educate workers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation about federal and state compensation programs for people injured on the job.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray
Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats from Washington state, inserted language into the Fiscal Year 2018 Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill to address what they called ongoing concerns about the health of workers at the nuclear waste storage.