City Health Care Overhaul Blasted as Deadline Approaches

Mayor Marc Tartaro's calls for swift action on a was met by skepticism from the leadership of Hyattsville Fraternal Order of Police and criticism from City Council members who blasted the process for a lack of transparency and as unnecessarily rushed. 

The overhaul is designed to address a projected $10 million unfunded liability for future retiree health care costs. By June, the liability will have already grown to roughly $1.2 million dollars. 

The latest version of a proposed overhaul for city employee health care benefits was unveiled before a special session of the City Council held last night at the Hyattsville Municipal Building to discuss budget items. During the meeting, City Treasurer Elaine Stookey outlined changes to the health benefits. 

Most controversial for city employees, is proposal to put a dollar cap on the city contribution for health insurance. Currently, Hyattsville picks up the tab for 80 percent of total monthly premium costs. 

Patrick O'Hagan, President of the Hyattsville Fraternal Order of Police, urged city leaders to reconsider overhauling city employee's health care. He based his concerns on what he classified as a historically lackluster approach which the city administration has taken with employee compensation. 

"We have a bad history here in Hyattsville of not keeping current with things, by locking in a dollar amount and abandoning a percentage, we are not going to stay current," said O'Hagan. "The motive may be pure and may be great that we intend to look at this every year, but unfortunately the best predictor of future events is past practices."

If the city declines to go with a cap, Stookey suggested setting up a trust fund to pay down the liability. However, starting a trust fund to cover an existing $1.2 million unfunded liability would require a 4.2 percent across the board cut in budgets for city services. Larger departments, such as the police department would have to take a larger cut. 

Stookey said that a failure to act on the issue soon could come back to bite the city in the future. 

"If we're going to have to go out and do bonds, we may have to go out into the open market and get a bond rating," said Stookey. "One of the things they are going to look at is what we are going to do about our liability."

Stookey also noted that a decision on an overhaul to health care benefits was needed by April 17, when open enrollment starts for municipal employees. 

Council members Candace Hollingsworth (Ward 1) and Tim Hun (Ward 3) tried to explore alternate proposals to the cap-or-trust-fund solutions presented, but Stookey and Tartaro said that any conceivable third-way solutions would prove to be either more of a burden to the city or would negatively affect current and future retiree benefits. 

Tartaro underscored the urgency of the situation. 

"We have to address the liability," said Tartaro. "At this point there are no other options. Everything we have looked at has been more onerous."

"I understand the diffucult position we are in, and the need to act quickly on this," said Councilor Shani Warner (Ward 2). "This could be an enormous amount of money…I'm concerned that we have no more information than we did in January."

That the City Council was being asked to make a decision against before a deadline that was only six days away drew criticism from Councilor Ruth Ann Frazier (Ward 5). 

"We cannot discuss theses items to our satisfaction, and that's not fair to us," said Frazier. "Oh, we have to have this by a certain date? That's unnacceptable. We have been patient, we have sat here, we have been to meetings and this is not right, now all of a sudden to hurry up."

Tartaro responded, noting that the City Council failed to address the unfunded liability last year. After the meeting he said he was afraid the City Council might kick the can down the road again.  

"If we are going to do something about healthcare, we have to do it," said Tartari. "We'll have to be prepared to do something about it next week."