County employee health premium issue coming up for a vote next month.

At last night's regular meeting of the Camden County Board of Commissioners, in the public comments section, I reminded the commissioners that when they last addressed the issue of a years overdue increase in the employees' share of the total cost of the county's generous health plan on June 6th, the consensus was to raise the percentage of their contribution effective January 1, 2010. I reminded them that January was not that far away and encouraged them to put it on the agenda for an up or down vote at their first meeting in November (3rd). At the conclusion of my remarks, Chairman Rainer said they were already on it. This morning, I got a phone call from County Administrator Steve Howard. Steve confirmed that, indeed, it will be on the agenda for a vote on November 3rd and gave me a little background. Since the meeting on June 6th, there have been numerous meetings between himself, Staci Bowick, and the employees' health insurance committee. Mr. Howard's first step was to expand the membership of that committee to include some of the employees who were most vocal in their opposition to the long overdue adjustment. He reports that the committee, when presented with the facts, gradually came to the realization that they had, in fact, been getting an overly generous, sweetheart deal (my characterization, not his) for years. They have accepted the need for an adjustment. Once again, it remains to be seen if the will and political courage of Commissioners Sears, Rainer, and Zell can hold out through the vote on November 3rd. We taxpayers know that we can count on Commissioners Berry and Keene on this issue. Stay tuned. 6:50 PM sandy feller Saint Marys, GA Reply » Report Abuse Judge it! #3 18 min ago as a potential commission candidate how do you reconcile increasing health plan fees at the same time as no raises. isn't that a unilateral reduction in compensation? Glad you asked, Kingfish. No, assuming they pass the modest increase of the percentage of the total premium paid by the employees, that will be a long overdue correction of an abuse of the generosity of the 99.9% of the taxpayers who do not work for the county. What has happened is that over the years, a gutless BOC has found that they can purchase the votes of the employees - or at least a vocal minority of them - by giving into their political pressure to continue to give them a Cadillac plan at a Cadillac cost to the taxpayers, but a used Yugo cost to the employees. As you well know, this was slipped in below the radar of the taxpayers for years until I believe it was Steve Howard who outed it. You also know it is the right thing to do - and was the right thing to do when you were a commissioner. Alas, insofar as you have of late proven yourself to be the biggest, unprincipled vote whore in the county, I'm not surprised that you would use this in your pathetic and losing campaign to revive your pied piper, man-of-the-people persona. Trust me - it's not working. Thank you also for giving me the opportunity to repeat what I told Commissioner Zell at the oyster roast and reiterated to Steve Howard this morning. I can understand the need to occasionally withhold raises during really tough times for county revenues. However, I believe that the county employee COLAS should remain inviolate. As I told Steve this morning, insofar as to the extent of the CPI (in years when it increases) the employees are seeing an actual reduction in purchasing power tantamount to a pay decrease, I, for one, as both a taxpayer and potential future commissioner, would not be opposed to a modest (i.e., a small fraction of a mill) tax increase, if necessary, to maintain COLAS in even the worst of times. It is not only a matter of fairness, but it makes good business sense in light of the economics of employee turnover versus retention. 10/22 @ 4:11 PM: A different perspective. It was about 3:50 PM today. Cojack had just walked up from the foot of the bed and nuzzled my cheek to let me know that it was time to end our nap and give him his afternoon treat. That's when the phone rang. It was an animated Jodi Gregory. It seems that Ray Dyal had printed a copy of my post so far and brought it to her at work. Turns out she is on the employee benefits committee, or whatever they are calling the committee which ostensibly has input to the administration on the employee group health premiums. Jodi tells me that there is anything but support on that committee for an adjustment of the employees percentage of the premium load. She did concede that there is probably a better appreciation now of how it needs to be adjusted upward but that the employee consensus is that until they all get raises - the way some of the higher paid people have - that there should be no increase. She said that whereas she and her family would not be particularly burdened by it, the lowest paid employees would be disproportionately effected. She cited the road department personnel, specifically. She went on to say that virtually every suggestion made in the meetings with the administration by the committee members had been immediately shot down. Moreover, she said it appeared that the administration and the commissioners were determined to carry out the adjustment in spite of the wishes of the committee. The very instant that I put the phone back into the charger, it rang again. It was Steve Howard. He began to say that I had perhaps misunderstood him during our conversation the other day. I stopped him and said "You've just been talking to Jodi Gregory, right?" He had. He went on to say that the impression I had given that all agreed with the coming adjustment was an overstatement of the situation. Now, here's my take on it. In the current, pre-Obama state of health insurance, in ANY group health plan where the premiums are equal for any employee and their dependents, across the board, it is axiomatic that the health premiums will be a much smaller burden, percentage of total compensation wise, to the CEO and much more onerous to the lowest paid employee. Unless we opt to turn the county government into a socialist work program, it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. That's life. While I sympathize with the fact that there have been no across-the-board pay increases since 2006 (according to Jodi), that does not preclude the justification of pay increases for upper management types who were given more hats to wear and more responsibility as a result of Mr. Howard's streamlining realignments of duties. There are some skill sets that command higher compensation than others. That's life. At least, we don't have a caste system. If you're a low end employee, you can always better your lot through education. Frankly, the idea of having an employees' health benefit committee decide premium issues is an absurdity on the face of it. I worked in the insurance industry for 20 plus years. I never encountered one. I've never been asked by any other private employer if I approved of the boss' executive decision vis-a-vis the health plan and the percentage of the premium he is willing to pay. The fact is that the employees have been laboring under the assumption that by making the threat of voting for some populist, vote-whoring ass like Sandy Feller rather than the incumbents, they can eternally cow the BOC into all but giving them their benefits at no cost. Unfortunately, they may yet be right. I guess we will all learn on November 3rd whether the incumbents will do right by the taxpayers as well as by the employees. That's right - they have done wrong by the employees by giving in to them to assure their votes all these years. Now, even an extremely modest adjustment seems callous when it is in fact the long overdue responsible thing to do. In the future, hopefully both the employees and the commissioners will realize that PAY and BENEFITS should be two entirely separate issues which stand on their own bottoms. Are some employees currently paid below market rates? Perhaps, but the way to deal with that is a compensation study and raises where needed, not an under-the-political-radar premium giveaway.