My crowning achievement in the 2008 Legislative Session was a boring and technical, yet very important alteration to Maryland’s Workers Compensation Statute.  In a nutshell, the bill indexed to the State Weekly Wage a permanent disability benefit available to injured workers, so that it increases a little bit every year.  The legislation will reduce the burden on our court system, create fairness for injured workers, and generally fix a growing gap between the way some injured workers were treated as opposed to others.

The passed bill was the result of intense cooperation between a great deal of interested parties.  Tom Phelan, CEO of IWIF and  a group of insurance interests including the Maryland Defense Council and various Chambers of Commerce, came together with Andy Khan, and a group of workers’ comp claimant led interests including the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association and the Maryland State AFL-CIO to create a wonderful piece of compromise legislation.  Their hard work, alongside of members of the House Economic Matters and Senate Finance Committees, most notably, Delegate Roger Manno created legislation that will have a profound and lasting effect on our state’s Workers Compensation Commission, court system, insurance industry and most importantly, injured workers.

I was proud of the spirit of compromise and cooperation required to get that bill passed, and grateful for the literally years of hard work required to put it together.

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