CA: CHP moves fraud unit leader (Oops! .. tapped to lead a new workers' compensation fraud unit)

Sac Bee ^ | 3/11/05 | John Hill

[NormsRevenge]

A California Highway Patrol chief tapped to lead a new workers' compensation fraud unit filed his own contested injury claim before getting the job, a potential conflict that the appointing commissioner said he didn't know about at the time.

Chief Brian Kilmer made another injury claim after he took over the fraud unit last fall and after he became the subject of a CHP internal investigation.

Kilmer, 44, who returned to work part time this week, has been reassigned to a job reviewing CHP recruitment pending the resolution of his workers' comp cases, CHP Commissioner Mike Brown said Thursday.

"You can't have the fox looking after the henhouse," Brown said.

The case illustrates the complexity of investigating workers' comp abuse in a department with the highest rates of workplace injury claims and medical pensions in the state.

Brown said after considering Kilmer's situation, he informed the members of the newly formed fraud unit that they can't continue to investigate workers' comp cases if they have their own contested claims.

For one thing, he said, a conflict could arise if an investigator's own case were referred to the fraud unit.

"I don't want to have someone with an injury claim looking at people with medical claims," Brown said. "It's a matter of maintaining the integrity of that particular unit."

The potential for conflict is high. A Bee investigation in September revealed that 80 percent of the department's 150 or so chiefs file workers' comp cases within two years of retiring. The workplace injury cases often pave the way for a medical pension shielding half of post-retirement income from taxes, a phenomenon known within the CHP as "Chief's Disease."

[elbucko]

The workplace injury cases often pave the way for a medical pension shielding half of post-retirement income from taxes, a phenomenon known within the CHP as "Chief's Disease."

Just another way that public employee unions have enabled state workers to game the taxpayer. The "Robber Barons" of the 21st. Century can be found on www.California.gov/employees/benefits...