\u201cI\u2019d like to explain to you about the Subsequent Injury Fund.\u201d<\/p>\n
I used to joke that this sentence could clear a room.\u00a0 If you were the host of a party and your guests weren\u2019t getting the hint that it was time to leave, you could mention the Subsequent Injury Fund and they\u2019d be gone like a shot.\u00a0 I actually did this more than once.<\/p>\n
Even the name invites confusion.\u00a0 Subsequent to what?\u00a0 Injured when?\u00a0 No wonder hardly anybody paid attention.<\/p>\n
The Subsequent Injury Fund has been gone since 1996.\u00a0 I tell the story now because it\u2019s a cautionary tale about earmarked funds. \u00a0In case you didn\u2019t notice, a few major issues in the recent legislative session, such as the early childhood education proposal, involved earmarked funding.<\/p>\n
The New Mexico Subsequent Injury Fund (SIF), like similar programs in many states, was a workers’ compensation program, established to encourage employers to hire workers with physical disabilities.\u00a0 These programs were started after the Korean War to help injured veterans.<\/p>\n
When a worker is injured at work, the employer\u2019s insurance pays the costs.\u00a0 Those costs are then reflected in the employer\u2019s future insurance premiums. \u00a0With the SIF, if a previously injured worker was injured again at work, the costs would be divided between the employer\u2019s insurance and the SIF. The impact on the employer\u2019s insurance would be less.<\/p>\n
The SIF was funded by an assessment on insurance companies, so most employers weren\u2019t aware of it though, indirectly, they were paying for it.\u00a0 New Mexico\u2019s SIF had weird rules that made it quite difficult to make a claim against the fund.<\/p>\n
The fund was administered by the Insurance Department under the old Corporation Commission.\u00a0 The amount of money it contained was generally not disclosed to the public, under the justification that it was a trust fund and not taxpayer money.\u00a0 I heard gossip that the fund\u2019s chief function was providing legal work for a few attorneys who were friends of the commissioners.<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act created new rules for hiring workers with disabilities. \u00a0The SIF and programs like it became obsolete.\u00a0 \u00a0Talk began within the small workers’ compensation community about terminating the program, raising the question of what to do with the money.<\/p>\n
Voila!\u00a0 The late Senator Eddie Lopez was a state finance wizard who knew where funds like this were buried.\u00a0 In 1995, the Chama Land and Cattle Company offered to sell its magnificent land holdings to the state, and Senator Lopez introduced a bill to use the SIF to buy the land.\u00a0 We learned at last that the fund had more than $10 million.<\/p>\n
For decades, no one speaking for the public had raised a single question about how the money was being spent, where it came from or how much there was. Suddenly a few of the people who should have been watchdogging this program all along woke up and started hollering, \u201cBy gum, that\u2019s our money and you can\u2019t steal it for some land purchase!\u201d\u00a0 For a few days we heard sputters of red-faced indignation.<\/p>\n
One real kicker was that Senator Lopez\u2019 bill would have terminated the SIF program but not the assessment on the insurance companies.\u00a0 It took a close reading of the bill to figure this out.\u00a0 The money flow would have continued, to be tapped by legislators for any purpose.<\/p>\n
That bill didn\u2019t pass.\u00a0 The Chama purchase was funded another way.\u00a0 The following year the SIF was terminated and the money was dispersed into the general fund.\u00a0 Nobody asked for, and nobody provided, an accounting of how the money had been spent all those years.\u00a0\u00a0 A year later we amended the state constitution to replace the Corporation Commission with the Public Regulation Commission.<\/p>\n
We citizens are not terribly good at watching the money.\u00a0 That\u2019s one reason I worry about new proposals for earmarked funds.<\/p>\n
Triple Spaced Again, \u00a9 New Mexico News Services 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI\u2019d like to explain to you about the Subsequent Injury Fund.\u201d I used to joke that this sentence could clear a room.\u00a0 If you were the host of a party and your guests weren\u2019t getting the hint that it was … Continue reading