AUGUSTA – With a morning full of unanimous votes, the Workers’ Compensation Board kicked off what many described as a new chapter and agreed to raise the amount it bills business to keep the agency going.

On Tuesday, the board met for the first time under the new structure backed by Gov. John Baldacci: three labor members, three management members and Executive Director Paul Dionne as board chairman, and, when needed, the tie-breaking vote.

Directors set a new assessment on businesses each year. Last year, companies paid a 1.97 percent surcharge on top of workers comp insurance premiums. In July, that will go up to 2.02 percent.

The total raised will increase from nearly $8.4 million to $8.5 million, according to the board.

The board also adopted a new term structure for hearing officers, the people who act as judge and jury in disputes between injured workers and insurance companies. The system has nine hearing officers. Salary starts at $72,000. There are more than 1,700 cases pending.

When half the hearing officers’ contracts expired in December 2002, directors couldn’t agree to hire them back. The result: months of tie votes and several lawsuits.

Four are up for reappointment this December.

Looking to avoid a prolonged winter debate, directors voted to hire new hearing officers for three-year terms and make any reappointments for seven-year terms.

If action isn’t taken on a person’s term, once it’s up, they’re out.

Dionne said reaching consensus on this showed the board had “matured an awful lot.”

Directors also heard from Dionne about reports they ordered back in January. The board had awarded a $30,000 contract to a firm named Epic for two actuarial studies – one on whether to extend benefits to injured workers by 52 weeks and another on whether to tweak the limit for how impaired someone has to be to get lifetime benefits. That ratio is supposed to be adjusted so 25 percent of injured people get benefits as long as they’re injured. For everyone else, benefits now run out at seven years.

Epic merged with another firm that had previously done work for the management side of the board two weeks after getting the contract and was told to stop the studies. Directors decided to let Epic plead its case with assurances to remain unbiased, and if it can’t, send those reports back out to bid.

“If (Epic) doesn’t deliver the end product I don’t think we’re obligated to pay anything,” said management director Gary Koocher.

Staff counsel John Rohde updated the board on a number of court cases settled since they last met in February. Among them was a lawsuit involving a construction worker in northern Maine who’d lost his left thumb and index finger in a miter-saw accident on the job. He had the thumb surgically replaced with his big toe and sought compensation from the insurance company for all three digits. The hearing officer said no. The Maine Supreme Court said yes.

While the votes Tuesday were united, and the board itself two members smaller, a sense of humor remained intact.

“Maybe we should have tied on the adjournment,” mused one director as he left the meeting.
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