A Senate committee on Thursday passed out a bill requiring state agencies to bid for workers' compensation coverage.

SB180, sponsored by Sen. Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, got the unanimous vote from the Senate Business and Labor Standing Committee and the endorsement of several people from the insurance industry.

The bill eliminates the requirement that state agencies pay the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah for workers' compensation coverage and requires them to seek competitive bids for workers' compensation insurance at least every three years.

Jim Werbeckes, vice president of government and regulatory affairs for the Employers Compensation Insurance Co., formerly the state fund of Nevada, said the bill would allow his company to grow its business in Utah and ensure that Utah would get a fair deal on its workers' compensation insurance.

"This legislation is a great opportunity for private industry to come in and try to bid on this work," he told the committee. "The legislation does not require the state to change businesses, but it just gives us an opportunity to come up and place a bid on this business."

Gary Thorup, a Salt Lake attorney representing the Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America, also spoke for the bill.

"We believe it's important that competition in the state of Utah for workers' compensation coverage be opened up," Thorup said. "Currently the Workers Compensation Fund has about 67 percent of the Utah market. One of our companies, Liberty Mutual, is the second-largest workers' compensation writer in the state of Utah, with less than 4 percent, so anything you can do to encourage the markets to be opened up and allow free competition, we believe would be appropriate."

A couple of other insurance company representatives also advocated the bill's passage.

Paul Rogers, representing the WCF, said the agency has been neutral several times during the past decade when asked by the state and other parties about opening up the business.

"We want the record to be very clear, that WCF doesn't think that it has a right to anyone's business, that it has to earn that business," Rogers said. "And therefore we're supportive of the concept of the legislation, that being that if WCF wins through a competitive process or loses, that's the way we win or lose most of the business we're involved with today, and the state should be no different."

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