THE COMP PANIC

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court revived Workers’ Compensation as a political issue that will not go away with the end of the current legislative session. The eventual agreement in Augusta this week will be temporary, with the best chance for a long-term solution a more thorough examination of the costs of any changes, a renewed sense of responsibility for the state’s workers’ comp board and a lot less panic.

Last February, the court reaffirmed in its Kotch decision the idea of whole-body injury, looking at the cumulative effect of separate injuries rather than just the separate injuries themselves; it said comp allowed that computation whether or not the previous injuries were work-related and whether or not one injury worsened the other. The Legislature and the governor’s office have accepted this as an accurate but unwanted interpretation of the current comp laws.

There is broad agreement that non-work injuries should not be included under workers’ comp; the two-week fight came when Gov. King’s proposal to amend the law included provisions to change the whole-body language and return to a body-part by body-part accounting of injury. Rep. David Etnier’s offered an amendment that got rid of the non-work provision but kept the remaining part of the ruling; Sen. Marge Kilkelly countered with a prospective version of the Etnier amendment that also depended on labor and management setting a new injury threshold for permanent benefits. Variations on these themes floated through the State House yesterday with the feeling that if both sides in this debate could be made equally unhappy a compromise would have been achieved.

But two underlying problems suggest this can’t happen. The high cost of comp – is Maine seventh highest in the nation or 10th? Does it matter? – means that business owners believe, with justification, they cannot afford any increase. The hyped rhetoric of the debate – Gov. King referred at one point to the court ruling as a “catastrophe” – means that the pro-labor side sees much of the proposed legislation as a means to create panic and reverse deserved benefits. This latter side, for instance, plainly doubts the accuracy of the cost numbers generated by the National Council on Compensation Insurance, a national group being used as a cudgel by the management side.

High cost, legislation presented in a panic and serious distrust might produce a good law or it might produce a large mess. Bet on the large mess, and bet further that the current standoff on the comp board – represented by four from management and four from labor – will get worse as a result. This is a real loss because the point of the parity on the board was that everyone was in the system together and together the areas of disagreement would be worked out. Lawmakers currently are ignoring this idea.

They would do better to agree to a temporary fix of a year at most and plan to reconvene in a calmer fashion next winter, numbers carefully gathered, details fully considered, maybe even a bipartisan legislative report suggesting alternatives to the current choices. Otherwise, the victory for the prevailing side this week will be short-lived.