'nother win for Arnold...

From the LA Times

...Since July 2003, when the state began overhauling a program that is routinely listed by employers as the most onerous aspect of doing business in California, premiums on workers' comp policies now have fallen an average of 26.5%.

"Do I believe we've turned a corner? Hugely," said Seth Marshall, vice president of Santa Monica Seafood Co. Marshall's Rancho Dominguez firm, which employs about 200 people, saw its workers' comp insurance bill fall by about 45% in July.

The big reason is increased competition among insurers. Many had fled the state or gone out of business since the late 1990s as the state's system for treating victims of workplace injuries was hamstrung by rising costs and skyrocketing premiums.

Stabilizing the $24-billion-a-year program through legislative cost cutting and streamlining has attracted 15 new insurers to the California market in the last two years...

...The decline in rates, combined with another cut of at least 5% expected in January, fulfills a pledge made by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who predicted that the workers' comp bill he shepherded through the Legislature in April 2004 would lower premiums by 30%....