Insurers Kept From Calif. WC Confabs

By Caroline McDonald

NU Online News Service, Jan. 24, 1:49 p.m. EST? An insurance trade group representative said today that the industry has been allowed no voice in the negotiations underway now to craft a revised workers' compensation bill in California.

"We have primarily been blocked out of these negotiations on the bill," said Mark Webb, vice president, state affairs for the American Insurance Association at the California capital in Sacramento.

He and other industry representatives were waiting on tenterhooks today as the California Assembly met behind closed doors on the workers' comp measure.

"I feel like I'm waiting for news from the delivery room," said Mr. Webb. Mr. Webb expressed his anxiety while Senate Bill 1156 was the subject of discussion, he said, "between the administration and primarily the Senate leadership."

Though few details are emerging, Mr. Webb said "apparently the issue right now is the treatment of the governor's desire to provide some form of tax credit to employers who engage in certain types of return to work activities."

Mr. Webb continued that given the state's fiscal problems "I think there is some concern being expressed by legislative leadership that this may not be the best idea."

Whether other issues that have concerned the insurance and business communities--such as reforms to cut costs and make the state's workers' comp system more efficient--have been addressed is anyone's guess, Mr. Webb said.

Insurance lobbyists, while being kept outside the negotiations on the bill, "have tried to make our feelings known to individual participants in the negotiations, primarily with the administration. We are as much in the dark as the rest of the world as to how those issues will be treated in the work product from the legislature."

Present in the negotiation process are labor, applicants' attorneys and various representatives from the administration, he said. "It's an odd way to make a bill, but that's the hand we've been dealt."

Mr. Webb said he believes a decision will be reached this week.

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Insurers Kept From Calif. WC Confabs

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