Speaker Chopp should stop blocking workers' comp reform

THE state budget is a boulder in the road, and workers' compensation reform is the lever for moving it. Plenty of hands are willing to push. A clear majority of the Legislature supports reform. Gov. Chris Gregoire supports it. One man blocks it: Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, D-Seattle. He should let it move.

The reform he blocks would set up a new system for employees who have been injured at work and will not be doing their old job any more. Now the workers' comp system gives them a pension and tells them they are done working for life. The new idea is to allow them to take a lump sum and find different work.

Now the system pensions them. It has been handing out more than 1,000 new lifetime pensions a year, a practice that has become expensive, requiring big increases in taxes on employers. That is a problem — and for labor, too, because a payroll tax is a tax on the creation of jobs.

The cost of workers' comp is making Washington less competitive as a state. It is a drag on recovery.

The Washington State Labor Council denounces voluntary settlements as a crime against the worker. They are not. They are voluntary, an option for the worker — and 44 other states have them. Oregon has them, and Oregon is hardly an anti-worker state.

Gregoire has proposed a voluntary-settlement option for workers 55 and older. We believe the option makes even more sense for workers 54 and under, because younger workers are less likely to want to retire.

The Democratic-controlled Senate thought so, too, and expanded the option in its bill, ESB 5566. It passed the bill 34-15 on a bipartisan vote.

In the House, Rep. Deb Eddy, D-Kirkland, thought the Senate's bill did not have enough safeguards for workers, and added some to a modified bill, HB 2109.

The House bill is fine. The House has the votes to pass it, and we are told the Senate will accept it.

Speaker Chopp should let the bill come to the floor so that the people's business can be done.