Governor Quinn appoints the Workers’ Compensation Advisory Board

Governor Quinn announced his 12 appointments to the Workers’ Compensation Advisory Board in a press release today.  HB 1698 included a provision that terminated all of the members serving on the Advisory Board as of the legislation’s effective date.

The 12 Advisory Board members are:

1.    Mitchell W. Abbett (Holten Meat Inc.)

2.    Richard Aleksy (Corti, Aleksy, and Castenada)

3.    Aaron Anderson (Painters Dist. Council #30)

4.    Michael Carrigan (Illinois AFL-CIO)

5.    John Carpenter (Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce)

6.    Mark Denzler (Illinois Manufacturers' Association)

7.    Phillip Gruber (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers)

8.    David Halffield (Sears Holdings Management Corporation)

9.    William Lowry (Nyhan, Bambrick, Kinzie, and Lowry)

10. Mark Prince (Prince Law Firm)

11. Sean T. Stott (Laborers' International Union)

12. David Vite (Illinois Retail Merchants Association)

One of the main responsibilities of the Advisory Board is the make recommendations to the Governor about the initial set of arbitrator appointments. 

As of July 1^st, all of the current Commission arbitrators were terminated due to the new legislation.  The Commission is currently taking applications for the arbitrator positions, and the Governor has not announced when he will begin appointing new, or reappointing former, arbitrators.  There is also a lawsuit from five arbitrators attempting to block the firings and have that section of HB 1698 ruled unconstitutional.