Former state workers may lose injury benefits

AUGUSTA – A state initiative could end benefits to former state employees who have long received workers’ compensation.

The state is conducting an audit of old claims to find ways to limit the state’s liability, according to Frank Johnson, executive director of the Division of Employee Health and Benefits in the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

“In some cases, we might want to confer with the claimant and their attorney to talk about settling in a lump sum or over a couple of payments,” Johnson said. “We may take a look and see if there are some people who got lost in the shuffle and now have work capacity, but no one followed up with them. Or, after investigating the claims, they may no longer be valid.”

The Legislature established a special study commission to look at the workers’ compensation program for injured state employees. The commission recommended reviewing old claims for injuries suffered before 1993.

State agencies paid for claims out of their regular budgets before 1996 because the state did not have a central workers’ compensation fund, Johnson said. But the agencies couldn’t manage the cases well and older claims were neglected, he said.

The companies contracted to conduct the audit, Northern General Services and Dunlap Claims, have reviewed about 600 case files, according to Johnson.

Clayton York is among those cases. He has been receiving benefits for more than 20 years for a back injury he suffered while working for the Department of Transportation. The state told the South China man that it wants to end his benefits despite a 1996 agreement in which the state agreed to leave him alone in exchange for a 20 percent cut in his workers’ compensation benefits.

York, 73, who retired from DOT after 25 years, receives retirement benefits of about $550 a month. He also receives $224 a month in Social Security benefits from his time working as a truck driver for a construction company.

York, who lost three ribs and half his stomach to esophageal cancer in recent years, said the state has been harassing him for a year and a half, claiming that his initial injury didn’t occur on the job.

“I’ve got all my doctors’ records way back to 1972,” he said. “It’s going to hurt me bad. I got to pay my taxes and insurance on the car so I can get back and forth to the doctors. When I signed those papers, they said they would leave me alone, and I think they should stick to that agreement.”

York’s attorney, Harry Starbranch, specializes in workers’ compensation and Social Security cases. He said most older state employees who received workers’ compensation were not able to build retirement credits with the Maine State Retirement System. State workers do not contribute to Social Security and do not receive those benefits, he said.

“These are people who have been on workmens’ compensation for 20 to 30 years, and now all of a sudden the state wants to throw them off when they are in their 70s,” Starbranch said. “For some of these people all they have is workmens’ comp. The state decided it could save money. Sure they can, but they’re wrecking people’s lives.”

The contract with the two claims management firms expires in June and the state will decide whether it will be extended.

“The intent, certainly, is not to put people in jeopardy, but resolve those old cases,” Johnson said. “We won’t be denying medical services or weekly comp services for cases where there’s no question of validity to claims.”