N.D. Workers’ Comp Advocate’s Office to Stay Put

An advocacy office within North Dakota’s workers’ compensation agency should not be moved to the Labor Department, the state House has concluded.

The Office of Independent Review (OIR) takes up cases in which workers’ benefit claims have been denied or a decision has been delayed.

Injured workers have incentives to use the office to resolve disputes with the Workforce Safety and Insurance Agency (WSI), of which the OIR is a part. Its operations are financed by WSI’s budget.

“The problem is the Office of Independent Review isn’t truly independent,” said Rep. Jasper Schneider, D-Fargo, who supported the change. It was defeated Friday in the House, 59-29.

The office’s employees, Schneider said, “base their legal opinions on the same legal counsel who are the people who denied the claim in the first place.”

Rep. George Keiser, R-Bismarck, said he agreed the office’s name was a misnomer, but said transferring it to the Labor Department would increase costs without changing how the office functions.

The Labor Department would need to hire its own attorney to review disputed claims, Keiser predicted.

“What we have accomplished is introducing … a new level of court action, rather than a worker’s adviser program,” Keiser said. “We’ll have more cases going to court. If that’s the outcome we want, this movement, I think, will certainly contribute to that.”

The 2007 Legislature has considered several bills aimed at changing the structure of Workforce Safety and Insurance, including proposals to revamp its board of directors and put the agency back in the governor’s control. It is now supervised by an appointed board.

Schneider said moving the Office of Independent Review to the Labor Department “would help restore some political accountability to the WSI process.”

“This bill would accomplish that in a very small step, without
taking away any powers from WSI, or disrupting the hierarchy of the
board of directors,” Schneider said.