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Editorial: State should give crime victims full assistance

Tue., April 28, 2015

The sun never sets on the grief and scars of felony crime victims, but 2010 budget cuts that reduced potential state assistance by almost 75 percent will; on July 1.

That is, unless the warring parties in Olympia backtrack on budgets that restore full funding to the Crime Victims Compensation Program, which made up to $190,000 available for medical care, counseling, lost wages and funeral expenses until the recession squeezed state spending. Benefits have been limited to medical expenses, and capped at $50,000 the last five years.

About $31.4 million in state and federal dollars funds the program.

The Department of Labor and Industries was handling about 7,000 victim cases prior to the recession, when claims ballooned to around 9,000: more than the state could fully fund. Besides imposing the cap, coverage of partial disability was eliminated, as was payment made to modify homes for patients.

By the 2014 fiscal year, claims had fallen back to 5,958, a drop officials attribute in part to the availability of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which provided an alternative method of paying medical expenses.

For some domestic violence victims – many in low-income households – the lower benefit may not have been worth the risk of breaking off a relationship with the family breadwinner. No one is compensated who will not cooperate with investigating authorities. They have up to one year to file a police report, and up to five years after that to file a claim with L&I.

Even the insured may benefit because the victims compensation program is comprehensive; picking up, for example, all the costs of forensic testing. If the victim has insurance, the state covers expenses beyond those private and public plans do. Ideally, the victim pays nothing out of pocket.

The legislature gave L&I responsibility for the program because most claims are processed much like those submitted for workers’ compensation, and its network includes most of Washington’s medical providers.

With the cap expiring, the department is expanding its outreach efforts; meeting with social service providers who may encounter crime victims unaware there may be money to help them recover their health, or wages lost while they healed.

Next week, six months after a shooting that took the lives of five students, plus that of the shooter, L&I will be back at Marysville-Pilchuck High School to remind traumatized students, parents and staff that the state may be able to cover expenses related to the incident and its aftermath. The department was at the school two days after the shootings distributing applications for assistance.

Some involved may need extended counseling. Claims involving children may be closed, but reopened later if symptoms of trauma recur.

With the violent crime rate in Washington having fallen six out of the last seven years through 2013, the best prognosis would be less need for victim assistance. But for the very few who suffer extreme harm, more help is on the way.