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Talk of the bay: Businesses will get big break on workers' comp

Florida business owners are still struggling with high property insurance and taxes, but one major expense will go down next year: workers' compensation assessment rates are set to be cut in half. Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink this week ordered a 50-percent cut in the Workers' Compensation Administration Trust Fund assessment rate. The assessment is paid by workers' comp insurers into a state fund. The rate will drop to 0.25 percent next year from 0.50 percent, and has dropped from 2.56 percent five years ago. The cut could result in nearly $20-million in savings that can be passed on to Florida employers as lower premiums for workers' comp insurance, Sink said. She credited the economy, and efforts to cut down on fraud, in making the fund healthy enough to slash rates again. Also helping: employers who do not comply with workers' comp laws now pay much more in fines than they did a few years ago, which has boosted the fund.

Bonefish Grill looks appetizing

Is Bonefish Grill for sale? Some Wall Street analysts think so, and they consider Orlando rival Darden Restaurants a likely suitor. Bonefish parent OSI Restaurant Partners all but ruled out the idea of selling one or more of its chains last year after a pesky shareholder pushed the idea. But now that the Tampa company is under new ownership - a management-led group took OSI private last month - yesterday's sacred cows may be today's sirloins.

Excuse me, but whose fault is it?

It's time to spin the Florida Property Insurance Wheel-O-Blame. At a Cabinet meeting in April, Florida CFO Alex Sink said her office was getting complaints from policyholders wondering why their rates were not coming down. Gov. Charlie Crist interrupted her with, "like the press told them there would be." Crist later shifted targets and accused the insurance industry of "breaking its promises." The Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America responded Thursday by saying the 24 percent rate reduction touted by regulators last spring "was never a promise made by the insurance industry. This was an estimate from state officials who failed to realistically portray the reductions consumers could expect." While we watch this unfold, regulators have scheduled a rate hearing Tuesday for Florida Farm Bureau Insurance, which wants a 30 percent average statewide increase starting Oct. 1.

. tampabay.com

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[Last modified July 5, 2007, 23:06:58]