North Carolina Industrial Commission Coverage Search Open Again

The North Carolina Industrial Commission has returned to allowing web searches for employers’ Workers Compensation coverage. The website was removed after some very not-so-intelligent legislation that barred anyone from viewing this info.

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The ill-timed legislation was enacted following the discovery by a newspaper reporter that 30,000 + companies were operating without Workers Compensation coverage in North Carolina. One has to wonder how many companies are still operating without coverage in North Carolina.

NC’s Governor Pat McCrory decided to create another governmental group – the GBICC – to assure the flow of info between the Industrial Commission, Department of Insurance, NC Rating Bureau, and other departments that are considered critical in the information flow on WC policyholders. Somehow, this all looks to be very complicated compared to other states WC enforcement such as West Virginia.

I actually never understood why the website was taken down. Some of this information could have been shared and still have complied with the privacy laws.

The website seems to be working just fine. The website may be good for verifying coverage for subcontractors if your company wants to check to make sure the certificate of insurance is valid.

Overall, allowing online searches of Workers Comp data will aid in making sure that employers are not operating without coverage. I hope more companies and individuals will use the website.

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North Carolina Workers Comp Produces Another State Agency

A recent North Carolina House Bill (HB 112) seemed to cover the concerns that Workers Comp data is not being shared between agencies. This situation has been of great concern as 35,000 companies were found to be uninsured for Workers Comp by a newspaper reporter who compared the available databases.I noticed a term in NC HB 112 referred to as the GBICC . After further reading, I located a 66 page document by State Controller David McCoy on the GBICC. The GBICC is an acronym for the Government Business Intelligence Competency Center.

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The GBICC’s initial Workers Comp focus will be on employer’s compliance with insurance and employee misclassification. Misclassification refers to reporting employees as independent contractors to avoid paying Workers Comp insurance and the various associated employment taxes.

Misclassification does not refer to the classification codes that are assigned to each worker or job function at a certain business or organization (i.e. 8810, 7219)

The agencies specifically mentioned in HB 112 are:

North Carolina Industrial Commission
Employment Security Commission
NC Rate Bureau
NC Department of Revenue
NC Department of Labor

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According to passage from the Controller’s report, the GBICC will work on key areas of program management to facilitate improved data sharing and analytics including:

Building consensus and agency “buy-in” for the emerging GBICC initiative to ensure that efforts are focused on appropriate priorities and adding value to the agencies
Establishing working groups of business stakeholders
Establishing a registry of available data for use by all State organizations
Establishing governance policies, procedures, and guidelines to broker data sharing agreements including the creation of a legal advisory group of subject matter experts on state and federal privacy, disclosure and security regulations
Establishing data and metadata standards based on national standards and industry best practices and determine how enterprise data model management and standards will be implemented

I will look over some of the other states’ methods of combining and analyzing employment databases for Workers Comp enforcement. I will post any interesting findings.