COLUMBIA - A man no longer has a job at the state Insurance Department after he criticized a company that helps set rates for the state's workers compensation insurance system.

Dean Kruger, the insurance department's chief expert on risks and rates, was asked to resign on Monday, a source familiar with the incident told The Associated Press.

Kruger, who had worked at the department since 1989, would not say whether he resigned or was fired, but did confirm he no longer worked at the agency. The agency would only say Kruger no longer works there.

Kruger had long criticized aspects of the way the National Council on Compensation Insurance made calculations that affected worker's compensation rates in South Carolina.

Earlier this year, Kruger and others raised enough questions about NCCI that legislators ordered the Insurance Department to set up a special study committee that, among other things, would suggest what role the council would have in South Carolina's workers' compensation insurance system in the future.

Kruger drafted the legislative language the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce pushed this year, said Frank Knapp, that group's president. It ultimately became part of the state's budget law.

Without Kruger, "it's almost impossible for the advisory board to really understand the history of the Department of Insurance's relationship with NCCI," Knapp said.

On Wednesday, state Insurance Director Eleanor Kitzman was leading that panel and questioning Kruger's criticism of NCCI.

"It is a criticism that I don't see a lot of objective, what I would consider credible objective, evidence to support it," Kitzman said.

Ann Roberson, the agency's spokeswoman, said Kitzman would not comment on personnel issues or Kruger, who had a salary of $70,844. She said Kitzman was not available for comment Wednesday or Thursday.

Unlike most state workers, Kruger may not be able to appeal his fate. State law allows people in the two tiers below agency directors to be fired without appeal to the state's grievance system.