Workers’ comp rates plunge

Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state legislative leaders said last week that rates for workers”™ compensation insurance will decline by more than 20.5 percent and save New York businesses about $1 billion in the 2007-2008 fiscal year.
The figure is based on the workers”™ comp reform deal struck earlier this year, said Spitzer”™s office.
New York state Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo has ordered a 20.5 percent decline in workers”™ compensation insurance rates for the fiscal year beginning July 15.  In March, when the governor and legislative leaders announced the agreement designed to lower the cost of workers”™ compensation insurance while increasing the weekly benefits for workers, Spitzer projected the result would be a rate decline of 10 percent to 15 percent.
Spitzer said Dinallo”™s order was “based on a careful analysis of the impact of the reforms and market trends.”
The governor lauded the reform deal as historic.
“I”™m proud to say that the reforms we instituted have already produced the biggest single-year decline in workers”™ compensation rates since at least 1975, the first year for which data is currently available,” Spitzer said in a written statement. “That amounts to even more cost savings for employers than we expected, while increasing the weekly benefits for injured workers. I thank Superintendent Dinallo, the Legislature, the business community and the unions for their continued cooperation that has led to this result.”
Paul Vitale, vice president for government and community relations at The Business Council of Westchester, said workers”™ comp reform was “a key agenda item” the Business Council had been advocating for years.
“It”™s a win-win for business and employees,” he said.
Shortly after being elected, Spitzer invited Kenneth Adams, president of The Business Council of New York State Inc., and Denis M. Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, to a meeting in Manhattan to discuss reforming the system that had been criticized by both sides. Adams and Hughes met over the next several months, along with representatives of Spitzer and key legislators.
“This process was well begun earlier this year with the reform deal, and this news and continuing efforts to achieve administrative reforms show that we are on a good track,” said Adams.