Ohio Workers’ Comp Advisers Wanted Recommendation, Didn’t Get It

The director of an embattled legislative panel bucked the position held by panel advisers when she declined to make a recommendation on a bill with sweeping consequences for the nation’s largest state-run injured worker insurance fund, the Associated Press has found in a review of state records.

The neutral stance held in an analysis of Senate Bill 213 by the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Council could be critical to the future of the fledgling council. The panel was created to counsel lawmakers in the wake of a wide-ranging workers’ comp investment scandal five years ago.

Analyzing the bill was the first big assignment of the three-member council staff that has since been fired for other reasons.

Records show members of the council’s advisory panel advised the staff on Dec. 1 that it should provide “a formal recommendation regarding the overall merit” of each bill but “not reach a conclusion regarding the balance of effects on stakeholders.”

The staff’s first analysis made no such formal recommendation.

The three women fired have accused council Director Virginia McInerney of religious and age discrimination, retaliation and wrongful discharge. They say McInerney, an evangelical Christian author and speaker, pressured them to pray at work, watch Christian videos and read her book – all allegations McInerney has denied.

Democratic House Insurance Chairman Dan Dodd has convened hearings starting Wednesday on whether the council’s decision to stay neutral was improperly influenced by lawmakers and, short of that, whether a panel that doesn’t make recommendations for up-or-down votes on bills is worth the $1 million-plus spent by taxpayers since 2008.

The bill in the cross hairs would suspend for two years a systematic overhaul by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation of a premium discount program proven good for many Ohio businesses and bad for lots of others. The legislation also prohibits the bureau from handing out surplus cash refunds or rebates to businesses without legislative approval in gubernatorial election years.

State Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina, the bill’s sponsor, sits on the Workers’ Comp Council. His bill cleared the Republican-led Ohio Senate Jan. 27 without the council getting a chance to weigh in.

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation’s chief actuarial officer expressed “grave concerns” over the bill during Senate committee hearings.

“Ohio’s group program is not a model used elsewhere in the United States because we do not have a secret to success,” John Pedrick testified. “The program is widely known and discussed, but only because it does not work and creates instability in the overall workers’ compensation system.”

McInerney said in an AP interview that she felt it wasn’t possible to formally recommend a position on Senate Bill 213 without weighing the impacts on individual stakeholders in the workers’ comp system, as the advisers suggested. Stakeholders include injured workers, employers, the state insurance fund, managed care organizations, third party administrators and medical care providers.

“My job is to, as best as I understand it, follow the directives of the council, which is what I’ve always done,” she said. “The idea that there’s a very thorough document we produced with a tremendous amount of valuable, high-quality information, and for people to be pointing a finger because we didn’t put out a recommendation is oversimplifying. It’s not looking at the entire picture of what we did as a staff.”

That 20-page analysis ended by explaining why the staff had decided not to recommend a yes or no vote on the bill. It said the advisers had “recommended that Council staff not make policy recommendations that are based on balancing stakeholder outcomes.”

Internal emails show staff debated several versions of the paragraph and that McInerney signed off on the final wording. She said she considers it an accurate portrayal of what was decided.

“I can’t stress enough that if the council decides to take a different approach, we will take a different approach,” McInerney said. “At the January council meeting, the fact that the analysis did not contain a recommendaton they could use to vote on was (to be) a subject of discussion.”

She said the council is “in its infant stages” and its future should not be decided on the first analysis it handled.

Senate Bill 213:
http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=128_SB_213

Ohio Workers’ Compensation Council: www.wcc.state.oh.us