Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005 | 11:20 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of former Nevada Test Site workers and other Energy Department employees who are ill may have their claims for compensation quickly resolved through a new Labor Department program.
The department will review all the claims that the Energy Department previously examined, including those deemed ineligible for compensation. Workers will have to wait until the agency publishes regulations, probably in May, detailing how it will compensate them, according to Shelby Hallmark, who is in charge of the Labor Department's worker compensation programs. The process is supposed to be easier under a new law.
President Bush signed the Defense Authorization bill late last year, which transferred a part of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act, a program plagued with delays, from the Energy Department to the Labor Department.
About 2,000 claims have been filed from workers in Nevada, according to the Labor Department's statistics but only 985 have received a final decision. The remaining wait for final decisions on their claims.
Hallmark said he has received 20,000 claim folders from the Energy Department and Labor Department employees are now beginning to review them. Some claims have already been paid out, even without the final regulations in place, to get the program going. He said the department is mainly looking at claims already approved to get payments out as soon as possible.
Hallmark said Nevadans' claims will be processed through the department's Seattle office, but the Worker's Compensation Resource Center in Las Vegas will remain open.
Congress designed the change to eliminate rules that blocked eligible workers from getting money and give responsibility to a department with more experience in worker compensation program, said Kate Kimpan, a former energy fellow on the staff of Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who helped change the law.
This could mean thousands of dollars in payment for lost wages, disability and medical expenses for some Nevada residents that have been waiting for answers since the compensation program's creation in 2000. The change does not guarantee everyone payments, but it is supposed to get answers to people faster.
Those who have already applied for the compensation do not have to submit any new paperwork.
"People do not have to refile or lose their place in line," Kimpan said.
Prior to the change, the Energy Department and the Labor Department split responsibilities under the law designed to help people who are sick from their work at government nuclear facilities, including at least five in Nevada including the Yucca Mountain project, the Nevada Test Site and the Nevada Operations Office also known as the North Las Vegas Facility are eligible.
Applicants must have a disease that may have been caused by a toxic substance they were exposed to during their employment such as asbestosis, liver disease or heavy metal poisoning.
After reviewing an application, if determined the person qualified for the program, the Energy Department forwarded it to a physician's panel. If the panel approved the claim, the Energy Department would not pay the worker any money but would assist him or her in getting worker's compensation from the state.
But an agreement between the state and the Energy Department declared that a positive finding from the physician's panel had no effect on the state's worker compensation decision and Nevada state law requires a worker to have a "willing payor" to agree to give them money for their illness.
Under the new program, the money will come straight from the federal government, eliminating the chance the contractor or other company would not be willing to pay the claims.
"For individual workers, it's momentous," said Nancy Ann Leeder, Nevada's attorney for injured workers.
Leeder represents workers in the state suing for compensation. She said by not forcing workers to get money out of their former employers but straight from the department will reduce litigation.
"I think its beneficial," Leeder said. "It won't be employers arguing against workers anymore, at least theoretically."
Lawmakers and the Government Accountability Office consistently pointed to the Energy Department's slow progress in handling its portion of the program. GAO estimated the Energy Department's backlog of claims would take 13 years to complete.
The department received about 25,000 applications and only had completed around 6,000 claims. The department helped 31 workers receive worker's compensation totaling $703,000 but no claims were paid for 556 applicants from Nevada, according to the department.
Richard Miller with the Government Accountability Project, who closely monitors the compensation process, called the previous plan "a mouse inside the boa constrictor."
"They didn't know what they were doing," Miller said of the Energy Department.
Kimpan said the Energy Department has no expertise in workers' compensation claims processing but the Labor Department does.
California resident Joyce Brooks filed for compensation three years ago for her husband Carl Brooks. He was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in July 1999 and died six months later. He had worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and would travel to work at the Nevada Test Site, Joyce Brooks said.
Carl Brooks worked with beryllium, and Joyce Brooks later discovered he was never tested for beryllium disease, but wondered if that triggered the illness that eventually killed him.
Some earlier claims were denied, but after combing through medical records and old files herself, Joyce Brooks found some new information and forwarded it to the department.
"I wanted to find out what he passed away from, it took him so fast," she said.
She hopes the new process may lead to some payment for her husband. Survivors of the former workers can still receive the benefits.
"It sounds more promising," she said. "It was kind of a promise to my husband."
The Energy Department will still assist in collecting employment records to verify a person worked at a particular site during a particular time, Kimpan said, but everything else will be handled by the Labor Department.
Under the Labor Department's control, there is no estimate yet on how long it will take claims to go through the process, but advocates for the change say it will be faster.
The Labor Department already oversees a separate but related part of the same compensation law that gives a $150,000 lump sum payment and covers medical expenses for workers who contracted chronic beryllium disease, silicosis or radiation-induced cancer from work performed at the Nevada Test Site, the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project and a long list of other department sites across the country.
Labor has received about 61,000 claims and made final decisions on more than 35,000 of them, according to department data as of Jan. 6. It has paid out just over $49 million in medical bills and $980 million in compensation, including $13 million in Nevada.
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