Committee Spikes Pinnacol Privatization Invoice| Staff Compensation Information

Wednesday, March 24, 2021 | 41 | 0 | min read

Colorado lawmakers killed a bill that would transform the state-approved Pinnacol Assurance into a mutual insurance holding company.

MP Matt Soper

The State, Civic, Military & Veterans Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives voted 10-1 on Monday to postpone House Bill 1213 indefinitely. The Bill by Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, would have obliged Pinnacol to move to a joint transport company by early 2023.

The committee’s vote does not seem to surprise observers. The Denver Business Journal reported ahead of the committee hearing that the bill would die on Monday.

“I was able to get the business world on board, which was a huge hurdle,” Soper told the Denver Business Journal. “Now I couldn’t get the unions on board.”

The newspaper reports that the Colorado AFL-CIO rejected the proposal because of concerns about the treatment of injured workers by a for-profit company as opposed to a state-owned company. At the same time, House spokesman Alec Garnett, a Denver Democrat, said the state is not as desperate for new revenue as it was when Soper began work on the bill in June.

The bill would have required Pinnacol to pay the state $ 305 million as a condition for switching to a private airline. Pinnacol would also have to remove its workers from the state pension plan, which would cost between $ 40 million and $ 234 million.