Digital Extra: The Station Fire

State lawmakers are trying to create a fund that would pay medical bills and death benefits to employees of companies without workers' compensation insurance.

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 24, 2004

BY LYNN ARDITI
Journal Staff Writer

One year after The Station nightclub fire triggered a crackdown on businesses that fail to purchase mandatory workers' compensation insurance, lawmakers have introduced 25 bills relating to injured workers.

Many of the measures are designed to tweak the laws on such mundane matters as reimbursements to transport injured workers to the state's rehabilitation facility or increasing the amount of money paid out for certain injuries.

But one of the more ambitious legislative proposals would offer immediate financial assistance to employees injured or killed at businesses which, like The Station, never purchased coverage.

Introduced at the request of the Rhode Island Trial Lawyers Association, House Bill 7491 would create a fund administered by the state to pay medical bills and death benefits to the uninsured employees or their families while the state prosecutes their employer.

The bill is sponsored by Reps. Robert B. Jacquard, D-Cranston, Joseph P. Moran III, D-Central Falls and Frank A. Montanaro, D-Cranston.

"My practice tells me we can't get to 100-percent compliance" with the state workers' compensation law, said Steven A. Minicucci, immediate past president of the Rhode Island Trial Lawyers Association and chairman of the Station Fire Steering Committee.

Minicucci said he has had a half-dozen cases of uninsured empoloyers come to him since summer. One involved a large company whose coverage had lapsed, Minicucci said, but most of uninsured employers he deals with are small companies -- start-up businesses and landscapers -- with a high rate of turnover.

George Nee, secretary/treasurer of AFL-CIO and chairman of the Workers' Comp Advisory Council, expressed concern about what he described as the unintended ramifications of creating a state-administered fund to help uninsured workers.

"I don't want to create atmosphere where some of the more unscrupulous employers (use the fund as) a back-up system," Nee said.

Other questions that Nee raised related to funding.

"How to get the initial start-up funding? How to deal with actuarial issues of what the cost would be?" Nee said. "Conceptually, everyone agrees something needs to be done. But we'd have to come upon an agreed-upon funding mechanism as to where that money comes from, and how to protect the system" from becoming liable for a major accident.

The bill, which specifically states that "the fund shall not be deemed to be an insurer," would provide the money through the workers' compensation administrative fund.

To pay for the fund, Minicucci said, the state could raise the filing fee for workers' compensation and wait three or four years until enough money had been collected to activate the fund.

"At least if we could say to injured workers: in five years we are going to have something in place," Minicucci said, adding, "we have nothing now."

Lawyers who represent workers in injury cases say that part of the bill's appeal is the idea that the state, with its police powers, would have greater resources -- and more of a motivation -- to go after uninsured employers if the goal was to replenish its own fund.

Currently, private attorneys typically wind up chasing down the uninsured employers to help clients, often with little sucess. Lawyers say many of them turn down worker-injury cases in which there is no coverage simply because the chance of ever getting paid to handle the case is slim.

Nee, of the AFL-CIO, said the Workers' Compensation Advisory Council will review all legislative proposals today and consider if they support any.

"A lot of the bills have been put in for the last 10 or 12 years," Nee said. "Everyone has a wish list."

Last year, Nee was among the backers of legislation to make violators of the state's workers' compensation laws subject to felony charges punishable by penalties of up to $10,000 and two years in prison.

Lynn Arditi can be reached at larditi [at] projo.com