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Sponsor Statement for SB 299
Workers' Compensation Board Panels

An act relating to the establishment of an Additional southcentral panel to the Alaska Workers' Compensation Board and to appointments to that panel.

CSSB 299 would amend the Workers' Compensation Act to provide for an additional panel for the Alaska Workers' Compensation Board in the Southcentral venue. This is needed to help provide more hearings in that area of the state, and will address the need to reduce the lag time between when a worker files a claim and obtaining a hearing. It will also relieve a growing caseload.

The Alaska Workers' Compensation Act requires hearings to be conducted by panels of the Workers' Compensation Board. A panel consists of a labor member and an industry member, with a designee of the commissioner of the department of labor and workforce development. The commissioner's designee is an employee of the State of Alaska, while the other two members are lay volunteers who receive a $50 per day stipend.

The industry seat members of the panels usually work in some management position, while the labor members are usually officers of labor unions. This makes for a very good mix for deciding these types of cases, but panel members also have full time jobs outside of the division, and, as a result, tend to be very busy, with limited time that they can devote to hearings. Consequently, there are only so many hearings that can be conducted with the current complement of panel members. With the adoption of the CS in the Senate Finance committee the effective date of the bill is January 1, 2003.

Enactment of CSSB 299 would provide much needed relief to the Worker's Compensation Board.

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