Media Alert: Op/Ed In The Grand Forks Herald

I’ve got an op/ed in today’s Grand Forks Herald concerning what I consider to be the real scandal at North Dakota’s Workforce Safety & Insurance.
An excerpt:

According to a performance evaluation report dated Nov. 21st, 2006 (and available for download on the WSI Web site), WSI’s Special Investigations Unit spent $1.6 million in 2003 and 2004 on investigations of worker fraud conducted by private investigators. While this may sound like a lot, remember that WSI as a whole was operating in the black, premiums were the lowest in the nation and the fraud rate for worker fraud was among the lowest in the nation.
In 2004 the head of WSI’s Special Investigations Unit, Dave Aberle, was fired (and replaced by the currently indicted Romi Leingang) because this spending was considered too high.
Then in 2005, according to the same report, WSI spent $516,703 and the projection for expenditures in 2006 was $150,000. I don’t know if WSI met that projection or not, but it’s fair to say that as a result of complaints from the lawyers, unions and other special interests, WSI now is spending about 1/10th of what it once was investigating fraud.
From one perspective, that might sound like an enormous savings to WSI. But before you buy into that, ask yourself this question: When the budget for investigating worker fraud drops from $1.6 million to $150,000, does that mean there’s less worker fraud happening or simply that less is being investigated?

Read the whole thing.