Industrial Commission asks for staff and IRIS support as vacancies and reverted funds loom

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Jan. 23 reviewed the Industrial Commission’s budget request, including a series of staffing enhancements and ongoing contract support for IRIS, the agency’s records modernization project.

Noah Peterson, budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, told the committee the commission has 130.25 full-time positions budgeted — 70.5 in the compensation program, 47.25 in rehabilitation and 12.5 in the crime victims compensation program — and that “as of August of this year, they had 12 vacant positions.”

The budget analyst said the agency reverted $4,555,000 last fiscal year. “The main driver of this was trustee and benefit payments, and that came in at $3,000,000,” Peterson said. He added that $2,400,000 of the trustee-and-benefits reversion came from the crime victims compensation program.

Why it matters: committee members pressed the agency on whether reverted funds could be repurposed to fill persistent vacancies. Director George Gutierrez told lawmakers the bulk of the reversion represented trustee and benefit payments earmarked for statutory programs and said the commission lacks unilateral authority to redirect those expenditures. “If there’s a path to switch that money from trustee and benefits to other areas of the commission, we don’t have the authority to do that on our own,” Gutierrez said.

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