Time for RI legislators to pay for perks?
05:10 PM EST on Friday, March 6, 2009
By Katherine Gregg
Journal State House Bureau
PROVIDENCE - A campaign began anew yesterday to make the state's $14,089-a-year part-time lawmakers pay a portion of the cost of their health coverage.
Rhode Island lawmakers currently get free health, dental and vision-care benefits.
Some voluntarily pay a portion of the premiums, but others do not. One of two bills considered by the House Finance Committee yesterday would require all of them to pay 10 percent - and the other one 20 percent - of the premiums for their health packages, which currently cost the taxpayers a total of $17,908.32 for each family plan, and $6,408.48 for each individual plan.
The legislation would also terminate the $2,002 waiver payments given lawmakers who forgo the state-paid health benefits. Similar legislation cleared the House last year only to die in the Senate for lack of action.
Extra
Interactive graphic: Who's paying a share of their health insurance costs and who's not?
House bill 5035 would require legislators to pay 10 percent of their health insurance costs, and H5474 would impose a 20 percent share of the costs
Your Turn: Should state legislators pay part of their health insurance costs?
The amount of money at issue is not huge within the $6.9-billion state budget, acknowledged one of the sponsors of this year's premium-sharing bill, freshman Rep. Brian C. Newberry, a North Smithfield Republican.
"Rather this bill is about symbolism," Newberry wrote the House Finance Committee, in advance of yesterday's hearing on his bill. "It is about showing an appreciation for the reality that our constituents live when it comes to health insurance. No one gets a fully paid for package anymore.
"In my industry, it is customary for employees to pay 30 percent and in many cases, firms do not even offer... family coverage," wrote Newberry, a partner in the law firm of Donovan Hatem LLP.
And with premium-sharing emerging as one of "the biggest bones of contention in union negotiations ... we ought not to place ourselves in a better position than those we serve. It engenders anger and resentment, and well it should," he told his colleagues in a letter read aloud by Rep. John Savage, R-East Providence, in his absence yesterday.
But no action was taken yesterday on either bill, which promise savings ranging from $100,570 to $195,504 depending on how much the lawmakers are asked to contribute. In fact, House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino cut short the reading, saying it was "not fair" to have his committee to sit through it without the opportunity to question Newberry about his statements.
Many already pay a portion of their health-care premiums voluntarily, including 17 of the 38 Senators and 42 of the 75 House members. One pays 7.5 percent, another 20 percent. But most already contribute 10 percent. They include House Speaker William J. Murphy, House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed and both the House and Senate minority leaders. Another 5 Senators and 14 House members receive the $2,002 waiver payment, with a handful forgoing a portion of it as a symbolic statement.
But 21 of the state's part-time lawmakers get their health coverage for free, at a total cost to taxpayers of more than $307,000.
In the Senate, they include Majority Leader Daniel Connors, D-Cumberland; Majority Whip Dominick Ruggerio, D-Providence, and fellow Senators Leo Blais, R-Coventry; Frank Ciccone, D-Providence; Elizabeth Crowley, D-Central Falls; James Doyle, D-Pawtucket; Hanna Gallo, D-Cranston; Charles Levesque, D-Portsmouth; John McBurney III, D-Pawtucket, Juan Pichardo, D-Providence, and Michael Pinga, D-West Warwick, according to the Joint Committee on Legislative Services.
In the House, they include Finance Committee Chairman Costantino, D-Providence; Corporations Committee Chairman Brian Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, and Representatives Grace Diaz, D-Providence; Peter Palumbo, D-Cranston; Peter Petrarca, D-Lincoln; William San Bento, D-Pawtucket; David Segal, D-Providence; Agostinho Silva, D-Central Falls; Thomas Slater, D-Providence, and Timothy Williamson, D-West Warwick, who chairs the House's pension-study commission.
Their free package includes the same UnitedHealthcare, Delta Dental and VSO (Vision Service Plan) benefits provided full-time state employees. The difference? Full-time state workers currently contribute as much as 12 percent to 25 percent of their pay for the benefits.
Newberry's bill to require 20 percent contributions starting in January 2011 - and withhold the waiver payments from legislators who receive their health insurance from another government entity - was co-sponsored by freshman Representatives John Edwards, D-Tiverton, and Mary Ann Shallcross Smith, D-Lincoln. The bill to require 10 percent contributions immediately was co-sponsored by Representatives Amy Rice, D-Portsmouth; Raymond Gallison, D-Bristol; Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown; Savage, R-East Providence; and House Minority Leader Robert Watson, R-East Greenwich.
The bill sailed through the House easily last year, then ran aground in the Senate with Paiva Weed, who has since made the leap from majority leader to Senate president, saying that she believes "that it should be a voluntary decision. It certainly defeats whatever power of example that they are attempting to demonstrate by mandating it, rather than having it be voluntary."
None of the cosponsors except Savage made it to yesterday's hearing. But with the state facing a potential deficit this year of at least $357 million, the debate over legislative co-shares is unlikely to die quietly.
"It's about everyone sharing some of the pain" and "taking into account that many people are struggling out there," Fox, the House majority leader, said last year.
Bet this never happens in our lives...I sure might like a benefit that is free -so give it back or pay anything ...not from these takers and takers
