Say Anything Blog

An independent, external auditor has reviewed the way North Dakota’s worker’s compensation agency does its job and concluded that, despite constant nay-saying from state Democrats, the agency actually does a pretty good job.  There’s room for improvement, of course, but there’s no evidence that injured workers are being treated like “al Qaeda” as certain prominent Democrats are suggesting.

You can read the entire report here.

A reader emails:

So the third party consultant says today in their report that injured workers are by and large treated fairly in their claims payment at WSI.

So, the Democrats will wait until tomorrow [when a second audit report is issued]……..but they don’t have anything to complain about in this report.  Hmmm….what will they drum up now?

My guess is that ND Democrats - who are as politically invested in the idea of WSI being a corrupt agency in shambles as their national party is invested in failure in Iraq - will find some way to either try and discredit this audit or ignore it completely.  Because for the Dems this isn’t so much about fixing perceived problems at WSI as its about having a convenient issue to demagogue as they take on Republicans in the upcoming elections.

Oh, and turning WSI back into a gravy train for injured worker attorneys like Mark Schneider (he of the “al Qaeda” comment) and his nephew Jasper Schneider, himself a candidate for the state insurance commissioner spot campaigning on...you guessed it...worker’s compensation issues.  The Schneiders have made millions representing injured workers.  At one point they were making well over $400,000/year paid by Workforce Safety for representing injured workers.  Now they’re making just tens of thousands of dollars a year ($58,747 in 2007 according to numbers from WSI) and can’t be very happy about their falling profits.

Which is why Jasper wants to get himself put in charge of WSI, and thus in a position to turn the agency back into a honey pot for lawyers across the state.