Putting The Compensation in the State Compensation Insurance Fund

Interesting news item today about California's State Compensation Insurance Fund, or SCIF. SCIF is the California Workers' Compensation fund, a public-private hybrid that competes with private insurance companies to write Workers' Compensation insurance in the Golden State.

The news report is about Janet Frank, a recently-departed "reformer" who had been brought in to attempt to clean up some earlier scandals at SCIF. It turns out that Ms. Franks' own compensation for her work was considerable, something like $1.6 million for two years work. Ms. Franks left SCIF then, saying she needed to care for her mother. But two months after leaving SCIF, she took a job as President of Zenith National Insurance, a SCIF competitor.

At a time when California, like many states, is closing schools and laying off employees in droves, this is an interesting tale of how one person managed to do quite well working for the state, at least for a while. Nice work if you can get it, I guess.