Topeka ? Six months after the legislative session ended, the debate remains bitter over proposals for making the first significant changes to the Kansas workers’ compensation system in a decade.

The Legislature’s Special Committee on Commerce and Labor opened hearings Thursday on a bill to limit benefits paid to an employee who re-aggravated a pre-existing injury while on the job. Employers also wouldn’t have to pay workers’ compensation to hurt workers who were laid off for reasons unrelated to their injuries.

The measure passed the Senate this year but stalled in the House.

“This is a travesty,” said Rep. L. Candy Ruff, D-Leavenworth. “We don’t need to reform worker comp. We’re doing just fine.”

But business representatives — and some Republican lawmakers allied with them — believe the pre-existing injury proposal is important to reining in workers’ compensation costs.

Scott Heidner, executive director of the Kansas Self-Insurers Assn., which is pushing for the bill, contends the measure is in keeping with the 1993 reforms, which Heidner said had been eroded over time by court rulings.

“The driver for the self-insured and for all businesses is a fairness issue every bit as much as a cost issue,” Heidner told the committee.

Legislative leaders appointed the committee to review the bill and make recommendations to the 2004 Legislature on whether it should pass.

In 1993, rapidly rising premiums for workers’ compensation insurance and reports of possible abuses in the system led legislators to overhaul the workers’ compensation law. Changes were designed to get more injured workers back on the job and shorten the time it took to settle claims.

Until last year, legislators had not considered any major changes.

Sen. Karin Brownlee, R-Olathe, a supporter of the legislation, said businesses shouldn’t be penalized for an injury unrelated to an employee’s job.