North Dakota’s House Republican leader says a legislative committee will look into the operation of the state’s workers compensation agency, which he says has suffered from a lack of public trust. The House Democratic leader says the study is damage control.
Rep. Rick Berg, R-Fargo, said the Legislature’s interim Industry, Business and Labor Committee, of which he is the chairman, will review work by two consultants hired by the Workforce Safety and Insurance agency this week. The first meeting should be scheduled within a month, he said.
Berg is the House majority leader. He announced the study during news conferences Friday in Fargo and Bismarck.
“The ultimate responsibility for what goes on at WSI rests squarely on the Legislature,” Berg said in Bismarck. “It has happened on our watch. It’s time we acknowledge it and move forward.”
Rep. Merle Boucher, D-Rolette, said Berg has “been in a coma on this issue for years,” and said Republicans have killed many bills aimed at correcting problems at the agency.
“If there is a spirit of bipartisanship in Rep. Berg’s proposal, then ideas from both parties should be given full respect,” Boucher said in a statement issued before Berg’s press conference. “With their history of supporting this rogue agency, should the public trust just the Republicans to fix this?”
Berg responded by saying he and Boucher have worked together on providing benefits for injured workers.
“Anyone who questions what we’re doing before they hear what we’re doing _ clearly that’s partisan,” Berg said. “I’m not going to react negatively to Merle. I hope that Merle that will be part of the solution.”
The consultants are examining the agency’s management and personnel practices and its handling of worker injury claims. WSI’s internal auditor has suggested some claims were improperly denied.
Berg said lawmakers must ensure that injured workers are treated fairly and that there is no favoritism in assigning insurance rates to employers.
” think there’s a real lack of public trust,” Berg said in an interview. “As legislators, we’re responsible for the agency. We need to determine what the problems are, and what needs to be done to fix them, and get them on the right track.”
Committee hearings will give the public a chance to suggest ways to improve North Dakota’s workers compensation system, Berg said.
“We need to make sure that during the next 12 months we can examine all of these things, examine the information that’s out there, and separate the truth from the fiction,” he said.
Berg said he personally opposes scrapping the board of directors and placing the governor in charge of the agency, as some Democrats have suggested. But all ideas will be subjected to “sunshine, fresh air and public scrutiny,” he said.
“I think as we’ve talked, what we want to do is move WSI to a higher level,” Berg said. “If changing the governance is an issue, the committee will take it up.”
In recent months, three WSI directors have resigned, including its former chairman, Robert Indvik, who is being investigated for his use of a county cell phone and vehicle for WSI work. Indvik is Bottineau County’s road superintendent.
The agency’s former director, Sandy Blunt, was fired last month. He had been charged with misspending agency funds and conspiring to disclose confidential information, but the allegations were dismissed last October.
At the request of Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, the state Highway Patrol has been investigating whether Todd Flanagan, a WSI fraud investigator, and James Long, its chief of support services, have been victims of job retaliation for discussing problems at the agency. Flanagan was fired and Long has been placed on indefinite leave.
Peter Welte, the Grand Forks County state’s attorney, has agreed to review the investigation after Stenehjem and Richard Riha, the Burleigh County state’s attorney, concluded they may have conflicts of interest in doing so.
Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, said it’s obvious there are problems at the agency, but the overall structure is not falling apart.
“If you would read the newspaper, you would assume that everybody at WSI hates going to work in the morning. It’s not true,” Carlson said. “There are a lot of people who take a great deal or pride in their work at that agency and making sure their customers are properly taken care of.”
Carlson is chairman of the Legislative Council, a committee of lawmakers that oversees the Legislature’s business between sessions. His permission was needed to allow the Industry, Business and Labor Committee’s study of problems at Workforce Safety.
The IBL committee has 17 members, including 11 Republicans and six Democrats.
A separate legislative interim committee, headed by Rep. George Keiser, R-Bismarck, has responsibility for reviewing claims from individual workers to see changes in state law are needed. The worker must consent to the review of his or her case.
At Keiser’s request, Workforce Safety and Insurance recently
invited injured workers whose claims had been denied since Jan. 1,
1995, to resubmit their claims for review. Claims that have already
been reviewed by the courts are ineligible.
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