Proposed penalties for failure to cooperate with comp audits

Legislation prefiled in New York to be introduced Wednesday would modify the state’s workers compensation law to penalize employers who don’t cooperate with workers comp audits and offer some safety training incentives.  

AB 308 would modify New York law to require that employers who refuse to provide reasonable access to their payroll books and other documentation, as required for annual or biannual reviews, pay an additional workers comp premium of three times the most recent estimated annual premium. 

Documentation employers are expected to provide at the time of an audit includes original payroll records, employee records, checkbooks, cash disbursements and receipts, the general ledger, contract, tax returns and original certificates of insurance.

The bill also states that employers who knowingly misrepresent or conceal payroll, employee duties or other information that would affect the experience rating modification factor would be considered to have committed insurance fraud. 

The legislation would not apply to self-insured employers or those who are members of a workers comp group self-insured trust. 

S.B. 381 would provide 10% workers comp premium reduction for landscape businesses who show that more than half their employees successfully completed a 10-hour Occupational Safety and Health Administration-approved construction safety course for landscaping. 

Lawmakers also prefiled A.B. 359, which would require the state’s workers compensation board to appoint the state’s uninsured employers fund as the workers comp insurer in cases where the identity of the responsible insurer for an employer cannot be determined within 10 days of the filing of claim.