A little-understood late bill that will make sweeping changes to worker’s compensation law passed the Senate today despite charges that the proposal had been negotiated in the dark.

“We understand that sometimes negotiating a bill does take time,” said Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield. “Let’s wait until next session, let’s give the members of this body ample time to have a full and well-briefed committee hearing and debate on the floor.”

Senate Bill 258 is an omnibus measure that was introduced late in the session. It makes a variety of changes to workers-comp law that strengthen the hand of claimants and claimants’ attorneys at the expense, critics say, of employers’ ability to defend against fraudulent claims.

“This (worker’s compensation) system has served us well for several years now. Costs were spiraling, employers could barely afford worker’s compensation insurance. We instituted major reforms, we helped slow those costs, and that’s been a success story,” said Mitchell. “Why should we rush this (change) through now?”

“This bill threatens to undo the worthwhile reforms in the worker’s compensation area.”

Members of the state’s business community complained that they were not involved in the process and that the bill was too technical and sweeping in scope to be adequately debated in the last week of the session.

“This is a major technical bill, there are two weeks until the end of session, and we can’t give you our full analysis today,” said Virginia Morrison Love during committee testimony. “We only saw an outline of the bill on Thursday.”

Love represents the Colorado Competitive Council, a consortium of employers and chambers of commerce throughout the state that is affiliated with the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Critics argue that the changes in the bill inhibit employers' ability to defend themselves against specious injury claims by workers-comp lawyers. Specifically, a provision in the bill requires that physicians who are called in to be expert witnesses to review or rebut a workers-comp case must be paid according to the same fee schedule that they would receive as workers-comp doctors.

Critics argue that this deters expert witnesses from agreeing to review cases. In most professions, expert testimony is paid a significantly higher rate than their normal wages in order to compensate them for the time away from work and liability, the bill’s critics said.