BILL COULD LIMIT WORKERS' COMPENSATION FOR PRO ATHLETES.

Byline: Jennifer Kerr Associated Press 

Is Joe Montana, the former San Francisco 49er quarterback who was once the National Football League's highest-paid athlete, just your average worker?

He thinks he is and has filed a workers' compensation claim for his assorted football injuries. But a state senator says Montana and hundreds of other former sports professionals should not get the same tax-free workers' compensation benefits as typical breadwinners injured on the job.

A bill restricting claims from professional athletes is before a Senate committee this week, and Montana himself is spending two days in the Capitol to lobby against the bill.

While lawmakers schmooze with Montana, they also will begin to pay serious attention to the state budget for the 1997-98 fiscal year.

Gov. Pete Wilson's Finance Department plans to release its revised spending and revenue estimates Wednesday for the new fiscal year, which will start in seven weeks.

The new figures, known around the Capitol as the ``May revise,'' will be used by the Assembly and Senate budget subcommittees to pull together their final budget proposals in the next few weeks.

The revised figures are expected to be rosy ones. The legislative analyst reported last week that California's economy is doing so well that tax revenues through June 1998 could be $2 billion more than the Finance Department estimated in January. Most of the ``new'' money would have to go to public schools and community colleges.

California has an $8 billion workers' compensation system that handles 260,000 claims each year. It was designed to provide money to wage earners who lose their income if they are injured on the job and cannot work. Money for the system comes from employer contributions.

A report last summer by the San Diego Union-Tribune found that hundreds of former professional athletes have filed claims since 1990, according to records in the state Division of Labor Relations.

Ron Mix, formerly with the San Diego Chargers, told the newspaper he has represented dozens of athletes in workers' compensation cases and estimated they received an average of $50,000 to $70,000 in lump-sum benefits.

``They are workers like everybody else,'' he said.

About a dozen other states, including Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, impose tough restrictions on how professional athletes can collect compensation.

The bill before the Senate Industrial Relations Committee would limit workers' compensation for professional athletes.

The bill by Sen. Quentin Kopp, I-South San Francisco, would remove from the workers' compensation system players for teams that are subject to the laws of another state or that pay benefits under a union contract. It would also limit a professional athlete's ability to get money for a cumulative injury, the kinds most players are claiming. The bill would also require any benefits granted to be offset by benefits or wages paid by the team.

Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the NFL Players Association and a Hall of Fame guard for the Oakland Raiders during a 16-year playing career that ended in 1983, and Montana will present their case at a Capitol news conference Tuesday. They then plan to lobby lawmakers before the committee hearing Wednesday on Kopp's bill.

In the Assembly, the hottest committee hearing this week is likely to be one today on a bill to make sure no drug users become governor, attorney general or state legislator.

The bill by Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, R-Carlsbad, would require every candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, controller, secretary of state, treasurer, Board of Equalization, school superintendent, insurance commissioner, Senate or Assembly to submit a drug test report before the election. The Assembly Election Committee will be looking at Kaloogian's bill.