Allows charter school employees to participate in the State's workers' compensation system. (SD1)

A BILL FOR AN ACT

SECTION 1. The workers' compensation law is established in chapter 386 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes and is granted to all employees suffering injuries arising out of and in the course of their employment. It is not a "benefit" per se, but an entitlement arising from the employment relationship. The legislature finds that the State operates a self-insured workers' compensation system where claims are investigated and processed by state workers. These claims are then paid from legislative appropriations. Meanwhile, public schools are not required to reduce their operational funds to pay for workers' compensation claims for state workers at their schools. Charter school employees deserve the right to participate in this same system as public employees without having the funding for this coverage come from charter school operational funds.

The legislature further finds that the department of human resources development administers a majority of the State's agencies' workers' compensation claims and it would be appropriate to extend the service to new century charter schools. Consequently, to compensate the department of human resources development for the additional workload, the State should provide additional funding equivalent to, but not more than the amount that was funded to the department of education for performing comparable worker's compensation services. To arrive at an appropriate amount, the legislature finds that the current memorandum of agreement between the department of education and the charter school administrative office specifies $25,000 for the processing of the workers' compensation claims. Additionally, the current appropriation amount to charter schools is $37,190,080. The percentage of the agreed amount would equal 0.067 per cent, thus the legislature finds that 0.07 per cent of the charter school budget is a reasonable amount for the department of human resources development to adequately process the charter schools' workers' compensation claims.

The purpose of this Act is to allow charter school employees to participate in the State's workers' compensation system, provided that the department of human resources development shall administer the claims and the charter schools shall be responsible for compiling the preliminary claim form.

SECTION 2. Chapter 302A, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new section to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:

"§302A-   New century charter schools; administration of workers' compensation. The department of human resources development shall administer workers' compensation claims for employees of new century charter schools, who shall be covered by the same self-insured workers' compensation system offered to other public employees and administrative state units, including the processing, investigation, and payment of claims; provided the following:

SECTION 3. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2010.