Yesterday I posted on the hiring of a former state trooper as head of North Dakota’s Workforce Safety and Insurance (WSI) entity – the state’s sole work comp agency. For those unfamiliar with ND, they are one of the few states where the state is the exclusive provider of workers comp insurance – they, and Ohio and Washington, are ‘monopolistic’ states.
A bit of googling brought up a bit more information about the new boss – Bryan Klipfel. His background is law enforcement, he does not appear to have any comp experience, and was actively involved in the investigation of the former head of the agency, Charles Blunt. Blunt was terminated after an investigation into an alleged theft of state funds. Blunt was subsequently convicted by a jury of one felony charge of misappropriating state funds.
A quick google of the Blunt case raises more questions than answers. After watching the fiasco at the Ohio fund brought on by a few criminals in the executive suite, I was prepared for another orgy of self-dealing at the public trough.
Apparently not. In fact there aren’t any charges that Blunt took money himself, but rather authorized sick leave for an executive that may not have been ill, and, according to a news report, used somewhere around $26,000 of “WSI funds to pay for employee meals and drinks and buying illegal gifts and trinkets for staff…”.
Ok, so Blunt made a few bad decisions and/or didn’t follow all the rules by the book. But a felony conviction for a sick leave authorization and some apparently inexpensive ‘gifts’?
Boy those Dakotans are brutal. But even if they are, I can’t imagine Blunt was the only exec in the entire history of WSI to run afoul of the employee handbook. So, why the big expensive investigation?
I’m really curious. The investigator who has no experience in work comp and no P and L experience (never ran a business) is the head of a big comp insurer after helping convict the former occupant of his new office of using state funds to pay for meals, sick leave, and gifts?
Mar
12
Joe, as I said in my comment on your previous post, there is a long, sad story behind this. By the time Blunt became executive director he was walking into a snake pit. The previous two executive directors had been forced out after soap-opera missteps and follies. The self-appointed foes of the organization kept up their usual drumbeat of (usually inaccurate and misguided) attacks, and the atmosphere was decidedly toxic. Some people who have had an axe to grind with the organization since before Blunt even moved to the state seized an opportunity to ruin his life over some well-intentioned and minor expenditures that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in a for-profit company. I don’t know whether Blunt was a good executive, but his fate is the latest unfortunate reflection of a truly dysfunctional situation. Again, what is always overlooked amidst the mudslinging is that North Dakota has an exceptionally good workers compensation system: it has the lowest cost by a wide margin, provides decent benefits (including outstanding voc rehab benefits), and (at least when I was there) is truly committed to caring for injured workers. It would be to everyone’s benefit if the stakeholders could stop focusing on scoring points against each other and start focusing on preserving and improving a fundamentally sound system.
The facts are the facts in Blunt’s case, although his issues for being convicted of a felony are not the fault of previous CEO’s of WSI, but of Sandy Blunt’s own ego. He put it out to the employees that he was above the law, and used intimidation to shut them up, along with his “buddy” executives at WSI.
As for the other commenter saying WSI is caring for injured workers, you must be talking about the ones with minor injuries, because we have so many cases of seriously injured workers being mistreated that it is not hard to find story after story in blogs, websites, and court cases in ND by searching WSI. Injured workers that demand a lot of treatment are forced off the system by WSI using manipulation of the laws in their favor. Take Bill No. 1171 that was passed in 2005, originally set up to help injured workers receive long term benefits if they are unable to work is now used to force injured workers off they system by cutting their benefits in two years. There is so much more, I don’t even have time to talk about it all here.