It’s easy to figure out who’s behind Initiative 1082. Dial the number on the initiative’s filing documents and a friendly voice answers: “Hello, BIAW, how may I help you?” Or look up who’s donated the most money to get the initiative on the ballot this fall, and you’ll find the same thing: It’s the conservative Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW), in for $500,000 so far.
What, exactly, would I-1082 do? That’s the more complicated answer.
Put in the most simple terms, this initiative would privatize Washington State’s publicly run workers’ compensation program.
For years, the BIAW made a ton of money from Washington’s current workers’ comp arrangement. Taking full advantage of an opening provided by the legislature, it was able to get the state to kick millions in unclaimed workers’ comp dollars into its coffers every year—money the BIAW has then used to fund conservative causes ranging from campaigns for Dino Rossi and Rob McKenna to trying to stack the state supreme court with conservative justices to fighting against environmental legislation. However, due to tighter audits on payouts, this way of doing business has recently become much less lucrative for the BIAW.
Enter I-1082, the BIAW’s new and improved way to get Washington State workers to fund its conservative agenda. If passed, it would end the state’s monopoly on workers’ compensation insurance—right now, all workers pay into one pot, and all workers stand to benefit from it if they get injured on the job—and instead allow private insurance companies like, say, Liberty Mutual (which has donated $300,000 to the initiative effort) to provide workers’ comp insurance. Its backers are scheduled to turn in enough signatures to make the fall ballot on July 30.
The BIAW says the current system is broken and an archaic outlier in a country where most states don’t have a public monopoly on workers’ comp. The No on I-1082 people—who have only raised about $536,000 so far, about half of what the Yes campaign has—pull out studies and more to prove that Washington’s system is just fine, thank you. They also have a raft of reasons to be wary of I-1082’s fine print.
For example: It would let private insurers set rates outside the regulatory reach of the state (Washington insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler opposes it for this reason), and in the short run would raise the amount small businesses and their workers have to pay for insurance. Most of all, it would conveniently allow groups like the BIAW to pool a bunch of Washington businesses into one giant association and then collect a nice fee (which can eventually go into its political coffers) for getting that association’s membership connected with a large private insurer like Liberty Mutual. “And we probably will,” said spokesperson Amy Brackenbury. “We’ve been pretty clear about that.”
“How much does BIAW stand to gain?” asked Alex Fryer, the No on I-1082 spokesperson. “No one can say exactly, but potentially millions of dollars.” 
This is insanity. What has privatization taught us about the Republican aganda. They want to rob the public blind, again!
Another right wing scheme to rob the public blind. Haven’t they done the same thing before? Remember the Savings and Loan scandal? Republicans robbed the public blind! Remember the financial collapse caused by Republican deregulation, again, robbed the public blind? Remember how Haliburton robbed us? They are all about getting their hands on the public’s money and ROBBING US BLIND! I hope we’re stupid enough to vote for this. We never learn.
So, basically, they’re looting the state for BILLIONS of dollars.
Typical socialist Republicants – privatize profit, socialize risk, rip off the middle class taxpayer.
Didn’t the Governor just announce a task force to determine what programs the state should no longer be running? There are only four states that don’t have private insurance as an option for workers’ compensation. And the initiative doesn’t eliminate the state’s ability to offer workers’ comp – if the state labor and industries can do better than private insurance, go get ’em.
No doubt this would lead to similar shenanigans seen in the health care industry (e.g. “providers” looking for any reason, no matter how flimsy, to deny someone their worker’s comp). Privatization like this leads to humanity being thrown under the bus in favor of the bottom lines of corporations. This initiative is trying to fix something that isn’t broken.
This story is so full of inaccuracies it’s funny. To say that “all workers pay into the same pot” is totally false. Employers pay the vast majority of premiums and in most cases 100%. Then there are the Self-Insured employers who foot 100% of the cost.
2nd the BIAW hasn’t looted anything. Their members participate in a voluntary rebate program based upon safety and lower cost.
All this bill does is allow competition. L&I can keep doing what it does. If employers can find a better price for the same coverage they can choose to leave, which is what will happen because the current monopoly is going broke.
@4 – If that was ALL the initiative did, then why ALSO exempt the private insurers who take over this service from insurance regulation?
@6 – then why exempt the private sector from regulations that other insurers have to follow?
@4 & @6 – You really don’t know how L&I works in Washington, do you?
I suggest you go here and learn: http://www.lni.wa.gov/ClaimsIns/Insuranc…
@4 and @6,
They need to exempt to be able to follow RCW 51. The same practices that fall under the insurance commissioner will not coincide with the current Workers’ Comp rules.
All I can say is that employers deserve a choice in who they pay to insure their employees. To be beholden to an inefficient monopoly only invites totally unregulated cost increases. Competition helps keep the price stable and lower.
well…you sure wouldn’t want to privatize any industry that government could do, would you. Karl Marx