Business rips state paperwork rules

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 10:09 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- There's a rising fear among some casinos and other businesses that the state is on its way to creating a bloated bureaucracy to regulate the three-way insurance system arriving in July 1999.

This is leading to concern that the state may ask that the date be delayed when private insurance companies can compete with the State Industrial Insurance System for writing policies for business to cover injured workers.

But Ron Swirczek, director of the state Division of Industrial Relations, is assuring business owners the regulatory system will be reasonable and that things are on schedule for the start-up of competition.

SIIS now has policies with more than 46,000 employers. Private insurance companies will be allowed to enter the market next year.

Kara Kelley, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, told a legislative oversight committee Friday that its members were concerned that the information system being created by the state was bogged down and there would be a request that the July 1999 date be postponed.

She complained about the "vastness of the information system being created" and added that employers will be overburdened with new paperwork.

"There is no rhyme nor reason for gathering such a large realm of information," said Kelley, whose organization has 5,800 members.

Kelley and other speakers said the industrial relations division is considering requiring a lot of information from employers and others that was not submitted in the past.

But Sen. Raymond Shaffer, D-North Las Vegas, said the whole purpose of the system is to look out for the injured worker.

"We're losing sight of what we're doing," he said.

Danny Thompson, political leader for the Nevada State AFL-CIO, said the agency must have the tools to oversee this new system to protect the worker from injury.

"You don't tie the hands of a police officer," he said.

Swirczek said he's not trying to set up a Hitler-type regulatory system and no decisions have been made on how much information it will require. He added employers will not have to submit anything more than they have in the past.

But large firms that are running their own industrial insurance system may have to provide additional information. Swirczek said there's been a law on the books but it's never been enforced that the self-insured companies must submit this information.

He said under the regulatory system to be devised, "everybody will play under the same rules."

Linda Collins, president of the Nevada Self-Insured Association and an employee of the Mirage, said the proposal before Swirczek will create a large hardship on the self-insured casinos and other companies.

The companies will end up having to hire more people to supply the information that includes data about the injury, the treatment and rehabilitation of the injured worker, Collins said.