Toledo Blade – Another premium increase for Ohio employers indicates that the state Bureau of Workers’ Compensation continues to stumble while trying to right itself in the wakeof the Coingate scandal.This is not good news for business and industry, which had been enjoying billions of dollars in annual rebates on their workers’ comp insurancepremiums until revelations by The Blade a year ago of political influence and potentially criminal activity involving BWC investments. Disclosure of multimillion-dollar thievery in Tom Noe’s $50million rare-coin scheme, followed by a $228 million loss in a Bermuda hedge fund, put an end to employer rebates and resulted in a conservative new approach that has reduced earnings on the bureau’s$15 billion investment pool. As a result, premiums companies will pay to insure against workers injured on the job are going up 4 percent, on top of increases of 4.4 percent last year and 2 percentthe year before that.
