| Bay Area residents were awakened last night to a 6.0 earthquake in Napa. News reports indicated that Napa County’s old courthouse was among the downtown buildings sustaining major damage. For many years, California has been lucky in not having an earthquake that caused widespread loss of life. But what if a major earthquake struck during work hours, killing or severely injuring scores of workers in a facility operated by one of California’s public entities? Such a scenario is clearly not out of the question, as schools, courthouses, hospitals, municipal administration buildings and other large structures are located in at-risk fault zones up and down California. Such structures could also be at risk for a terrorist incident. Hospitals could be at risk for a severe infectious disease incident. Many California public entities are self-insured. How would they deal with a widespread catastrophic incident? Thinking about this made me turn to a recent study that is currently posted on the CHSWC site for public comment. The study, titled “California Public Sector Self-Insurance” (link to the study can be found at the end of this post) was produced by Mark Priven, an actuary with Bickmore Consulting. Priven’s study examines many aspects of public sector workers’ comp insurance in California, including a section on solvency. Recent municipal bankruptcies of cities such as Vallejo and Stockton have not resulted in defaults on workers’ comp... |
