Topeka ? A Senate-passed bill rewriting two sections of the Kansas workers’ compensation law is not likely to get out of a House committee this year, the panel’s chairman says.

“There’s just no time left,” Commerce and Labor Chairman Don Dahl, R-Hillsboro said during a hearing Wednesday.

Dahl said he wanted committee members to become familiar with the bill before the 2004 session, when the measure “will be at the top of the priority list.”

Backed by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the bill is designed to help drive down the cost of worker’s compensation insurance. Critics say it will cut benefits to injured workers.

The measure clarifies the current requirement that an employer must compensate an employee for a “pre-existing” condition only to the extent that it is aggravated by an on-the-job injury.

If a worker is considered 20 percent disabled because of a high school sports injury but becomes 30 percent disabled after a workplace accident, for example, the benefits are supposed to cover only the difference.

The legislation’s supporters contend current law is vague and that administrative law judges, who handle workers’ comp cases, sometimes order employers to cover the entire cost of an aggravated injury.

The bill contains language that supporters said would guide judges toward more precise benefits that reflect only the proportion of the disability caused by the on-the-job accident.

Critics said the bill would allow companies to ignore the extent to which a worker might have recovered from an old injury before the condition was made worse by a work-related incident.

In addition, the bill provides that if someone is injured at work and placed in a new job at 90 percent pay, he or she cannot file a workers’ compensation claim after being laid off from the second job.

Backers of the proposed change said businesses should not have to pay benefits when a person’s job loss is unrelated to an injury. Opponents countered that the change would encourage businesses to shuffle injured workers into jobs already targeted for layoffs.