If Illinois' current workers' compensation system is any indication, perhaps the Legislature should just drop the pretense and along every major highway crossing into the state put up signs that read, "The Land of Lincoln - Oh, and by the way, businesses not welcome."

If Illinois' current workers' compensation system is any indication, perhaps the Legislature should just drop the pretense and along every major highway crossing into the state put up signs that read, "The Land of Lincoln - Oh, and by the way, businesses not welcome."

If you need a local example to illustrate in real dollar terms just what it means to have the second highest workers' comp costs in America - behind only Alaska, by the governor's own admission - look no further than Morton-based CORE Construction Group Ltd., which operates nine companies in five states.

Marc Collins, associate risk manager for CORE, compared five years' worth of claims between the local construction firm Otto Baum Company and Sun Valley Masonry, another of their holdings in Phoenix, Ariz. The two companies are of similar size, with about the same number of employees. What he discovered was that local claims averaged $32,807 each over that time frame, compared to $6,212 in Arizona. While some of that reflects differences in wages - employers are required to pay two-thirds of an employee's compensation while he's hurt - it most certainly does not account for the more than five-fold difference.

Caterpillar - which obviously deals in much bigger numbers - has an even more dramatic story, one CEO Doug Oberhelman shared with Gov. Pat Quinn when he was in town last week. The Peoria-based company compared an engine manufacturing plant in Illinois to another it has in Indiana. "The jobs are essentially the same. The injury risks are the same. The production work force head count was roughly the same," noted the company. And yet in 2008, "the total incurred cost of the injuries at the Illinois plant was seven times higher than the cost of the injuries at the Indiana plant."

That is borne out statewide. If a hernia suffered on the job costs an employer more than $18,700 in Illinois, the next closest state comes in $6,300 less, with we flatlanders nearly 140 percent higher than the national median. A shoulder or elbow injury? The Illinois employer is out almost $24,000, compared to about $14,300 for the runner-up, 160 percent higher than the median. Need an arthroscopic procedure? Illinois is double its nearest competitor, more than triple the median.

While workers' comp rates have been trending downward across the U.S., Illinois has experienced the opposite. It's not just the wage coverage while injured employees aren't working for months or even years, but the medical bills and often the settlement beyond that (all tax free, by the way). In fact, "even if the medical fee schedule were reduced by 30 percent, Illinois would still have the second highest rates in the nation, but our employers could save up to $500 million," acknowledges the governor's office.

The startling statistics do not end there, unfortunately. State government is an employer, too, with approaching 70,000 full- and part-time workers. And from that pool there are currently 25,000 open workers' comp claims. That's a breathtaking number. It is impossible to believe all of those are legitimate.

Apparently federal investigators have questions, too, as they've launched a criminal probe following reports by the Belleville News-Democrat of alleged abuses of the system at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, where more than half the staff - 389 people, most of them prison guards and including the warden - have been paid some $10 million for on-the-job injuries such as those occasioned by locking and unlocking cell doors. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Meanwhile, a quarter of the 32 arbitrators who decide injury claims for others have filed claims themselves, reported the paper. Subpoenas have been issued, some high-level administrators placed on involuntary leave.

The numbers and anecdotal evidence speak for themselves. That's why Quinn is pushing reforms, and why he's placed them on a fast track. The Democratic governor deserves credit for challenging some traditional Democratic constituencies - trial lawyers, unions - but our sense is his proposal doesn't go far enough. Indeed, some of his proposed fixes speak volumes about how fundamentally broken the system is. He'd cap carpal tunnel disability payments such as those sought by the Menard prison guards. He'd deny claims "by intoxicated workers injured due to their inebriation." (Ya think?) He'd change the makeup and practices of the Workers Compensation Commission, holding them to the same ethics rules applied to judges. (You mean that isn't already the case?)

Meanwhile, Illinois' Chamber of Commerce is backing a dueling bill - Senate Bill 1349 - that goes a bit farther. What's important to the business community is raising the threshold for participation by putting a greater burden on workers to prove their injury was caused on the job rather than, say, at home while they were mowing the grass. Beyond that, companies such as Caterpillar want more say about which doctors can decide, diagnose and treat workers' comp cases.

For now we reserve opinion on those specific proposals, as we'd like to hear more debate. We would say that workers' compensation exists for a reason, and that everyone should want fairness and safety in the workplace. But there is simply no question that the pendulum has swung too far in a very unhealthy direction, making reform necessary and all but inevitable, despite some formidable opposition. Indeed, for once trial lawyers and medical doctors are on the same page, as both stand to forfeit income if these proposals become law. Nonetheless, between the recent state income tax increase, other states trying to poach Illinois businesses, the above-mentioned newspaper revelations and the likes of Caterpillar being much more assertive in expressing their displeasure, public opinion has begun to shift, and justifiably.

Sometimes businesses do cry foul unnecessarily as a negotiating tool to extract legislation favorable to their bottom lines, but you don't have to be carrying Caterpillar's water - the Fortune 100 company can carry its own - to recognize that they have a legitimate gripe in this case. In fact Illinois is a bottom feeder in many a category of national economic competitiveness, workers' comp being no exception and perhaps topping the list.

We trust Illinois isn't consciously trying to commit economic suicide. We trust the members of the unions likely to fight this legislation prefer to have jobs. If so, Springfield will fix this, this session.