Vouchers and Penalties Regulations - an Update

Monday, July 4, 2005 | 0

SJDB vouchers - Proposed Regulations

The Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit voucher regulations have been approved by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) and certified by the Secretary of State with an implementation date of August 1, 2005. The final version of the voucher regulations and the associated forms and notices can be viewed online (and downloaded) at http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/DWCPropRegs/SupplementalJobDisplacementBenefitRegs.htm. The regulations are available in either Word of PDF format; the forms are available in PDF format only.

Proposed Penalty Regulations

The DWC recently posted draft regulations for L.C. section 5814.6. The proposed sections relevant to the vocational rehabilitation benefit (pre-2004 cases) and the Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit (voucher) are reproduced below. Please note that these are draft regulations only with no proposed implementation date. While it is possible that the final regulations may be significantly different than the items listed below, it should be clear that DWC intends to impose substantial penalties for failure to pay VRMA timely (pre-2004 cases) or failure to comply with the voucher process (2004 - cases). [The comment period ended 6/24/05]

(3) For each finding of a failure to make a timely payment or proper objection to temporary disability benefits or salary continuation payments in lieu of temporary disability; vocational rehabilitation maintenance allowance, or death benefits:

(A) $ 1,000 for 14 days or less of indemnity benefits;

(B) $ 5,000 for 15 days through 42 days of indemnity benefits;

(C) $ 15,000 for more than 42 days of indemnity benefits.

(5) $ 2,500 for each finding of a failure to provide, or to deny responsibility for, a supplemental job displacement benefit voucher in a timely manner to an eligible employee.

(6) $ 1,000 for each finding of a failure to make timely payment to an injured worker as reimbursement for payment for services provided for a supplemental job displacement benefit voucher, or where the failure to pay the training provider causes an interruption in the employees retraining.

It is interesting to note that DWC proposes a $2500 penalty for failure to deny responsibility for an SJDB voucher when the recently approved voucher regulations provide no requirement or vehicle to deny responsibility for a voucher. Section 10133.52 (Notice of Potential Rights) requires the claims administrator to advise injured workers of their possible right to a voucher and section 10133.56 specifies when a voucher must be sent to an eligible injured worker BUT there is no requirement to tell an injured worker that s/he is NOT entitled to a voucher. The closest thing we have to such a requirement is the "Notice of Offer of Modified or Alternative Work" (section 10133.53) or the proposed "Notice of Offer of Work" (section 10003) which is only a proposed regulation.

Contributed by vocational rehabilitation expert Allan Leno, Leno & Associates, (818) 370-8859, allanleno@leno-assoc.com.

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