Posted on: Friday, March 11, 2005
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ISLAND VOICES: WORKERS' COMP
Hold your horses, Lingle
| • | Nelson Befitel: Let's use common sense |
By Rep. Marcus R. Oshiro
House majority leader
The Advertiser's recent criticism of House efforts to preclude the Lingle administration's attempted end-run of the Legislature over the issue of workers' compensation reform ("Workers' comp law in need of cooperation," March 1) misconstrues the rationale of House Bill 1773 as a partisan vendetta.
However sincere Gov. Linda Lingle's intentions might be in seeking relief for employers beset by high insurance premiums, it is extraordinarily inappropriate for any governor to seek to gain by rule what could not be previously achieved through legislation. Such crude attempts to circumvent legislators' intent violate one of the most fundamental tenets of our democracy, which reserves to the Legislature exclusively the right to formulate public policy and enact law.
In January 2004, the Lingle administration submitted an omnibus bill (House Bill 2486) to the Legislature to overhaul the present workers' compensation system. Had it been enacted, this measure would have: extensively amended basic statutory definitions like "attending physician"; insensitively excluded mental injury or illness from consideration for compensation; arbitrarily capped medical benefits; prematurely terminated temporary disability benefits; inexplicably restricted access to emergency care; severely limited or prohibited rehabilitation services; and unnecessarily mandated the arbitration of any disputed claims.
Advertiser library photo Hawai'i legislators declined to pursue Gov. Lingle's dubious avenue of "reform." Instead, the stakeholders — business owners and working people alike — were brought together to discuss the issue and fashion a reasonable, satisfactory and durable solution that would restore an injured worker's health as quickly as possible and facilitate his or her prompt return to the workplace.
Rather than endorse these inclusive efforts, the Lingle administration has instead sought to short-circuit the legislative process by imposing its own "solution" through the administrative rules process. However, its suggested amendments to the Hawai'i Administrative Rules suspiciously resembled the very same statutory proposals first considered and then rejected by the Legislature last year.
Testifying at the Labor Department's Feb. 7 administrative hearing on these proposed changes, Hawai'i AFL-CIO head Harold Dias Jr. bluntly informed Labor Department Director Nelson Befitel that such amendments would unconstitutionally usurp the Legislature's prerogative to enact laws regarding public policy and would further undermine the good-faith efforts of participating employers and workers alike in seeking common ground on a matter vital to everyone's long-term best interests.
Should Gov. Lingle agree to respect the integrity of the legislative process, the current controversy surrounding House Bill 1773 would undoubtedly become moot. But until such assurances are offered, it is certainly in the public interest for legislators to defend their constitutionally guaranteed right to define public policy.
Further, it is most decidedly adverse to that same public interest for any governor — regardless of political party — to supplant arbitrarily his or her personal will on such public matters over the expressed collective judgment of the people's elected representatives.
Rep. Marcus R. Oshiro represents the Wahiawa, Whitmore and Launani Valley areas.
Even then, such so-called "reforms" held no guarantee to Hawai'i's employers that insurance providers would reduce their premiums. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's much-touted efforts at workers' compensation reform last year, which like Gov. Lingle's 2004 proposal targeted recipient healthcare benefits, provided little if any relief to his state's employers. Many in California have since concluded that Gov. Schwarzenegger's "solution" amounted to little more than a high-profile public relations ploy that cynically played employers and employees against each other, while filling the governor's campaign coffers with contributions from the state's corporate establishment.
The Legislature opened its doors on Jan. 19 to continued contention over workers' compensation legislation.
