Erie County Executive Chris Collins may not force injured county employees to return to the workplace to receive their workers’ compensation checks, the state Workers’ Compensation Board has ruled.

“The policy violates the spirit and intent of the [Workers’ Compensation Law],” the panel said. “It places an additional burden upon an injured worker at a time when the claimant is not medically able to return to the workplace.”

However, the Collins administration said that the state board lacks the authority to halt Erie County’s new policy and that it will continue—for workers who are not

permanently disabled and might be fit for light duty.

“We were not surprised that a board full of Albany bureaucrats would raise objections to getting municipal workers back to work as soon as possible,” said Grant Loomis, a Collins spokesman.

He said the Collins administration does not want the policy to affect all of the approximately 300 county workers collecting workers’ compensation, many of whom are permanently disabled to some degree.

Loomis said Collins wants to call in only the recently injured who might have substantially recovered and can perform light tasks, currently about two dozen people.

Collins wanted workers to receive their checks from their supervisor, who then would ask whether they could return to work in some capacity. The rule was seen as a way to cut into the county’s approximately $11 million annual outlay for workers’ compensation payments.

Loomis said Erie County’s lawyers doubt that the policy violates state law. The county has merely created a new program — “Return to Work” — that the Workers’ Compensation Board may express an opinion about but cannot stop, he said.

As for the contention that the Workers’ Compensation Board cannot halt Erie County’s policy, board spokesman Brian

M. Keegan said the panel clearly has authority to decide matters connected to the Workers’ Compensation Law.

“I find it baffling that Erie County would claim that we have no authority in this matter, because it is exactly what we do,” said Keegan, who agreed that the board would have to seek a court injunction if Erie County persists. “To ignore this ruling puts them at risk of being assessed various penalties and attorney’s fees.”

The board was deciding a challenge filed by an injured county Correctional Facility officer who has been out of work since she was hurt breaking up a fight between inmates in 1997. The officer was found to have a permanent partial disability, and her most recent checks totaled about $390 a week.

While the Collins administration said the policy should not affect permanently disabled workers, she received a notice in June stating that her “biweekly indemnity payment” would no longer arrive by mail. She would have to personally pick up the biweekly payments at Sheriff’s Headquarters.

Workers who failed to show up during a six-hour time frame split over two days during each pay period would have their checks held for their eventual arrival. The county Division of Risk Management would waive the rule only “under limited circumstances,” according to the county’s policy.

The state Workers’ Compensation Board noted that Collins has treaded into powers reserved for the State Legislature, which decided that workers’ compensation payments must be “periodic, prompt, in like manner as wages, and direct.”

The board’s 12 members unanimously found the Collins policy violated all four standards. The board then rescinded the county’s policy and ordered the mailing of any check withheld from injured workers. “To assert post-injury control over the employee by requiring an injured worker to pick up the compensation check at the place of employment overly burdens an injured worker by adding unnecessary traveling costs and potentially places an injured worker at risk of further injury,” the board said.