Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, frustrated by the Legislature’s refusal to let cities and towns join the state’s Group Insurance Commission without union approval, announced today he will file a home rule petition that would allow Boston to set health care benefits on its own and supersede union bargaining agreements.
Menino’s announcement is part of a broad campaign by mayors across Massachusetts who are seeking approval from the state to scrap union health benefits they previously negotiated. State lawmakers have been reluctant in the past to buck public employee unions.
At a forum on municipal health reform sponsored by Suffolk University, Menino said creating a city insurance commission using the state’s commission as a template would save the city about $1 million a month on its annual $300 million health care bill.
“If it’s good for the state it’s good for Boston,” Menino said at the school’s Moakley Breakfast Series.
Menino said the combination of rising health care costs and declining aid from the state is prompting the city to lay off workers and cut spending. Unless legislators change the law, he says Boston and other communities will continue to struggle.
Speaking with reporters after the forum, Menino said he’s still open to joining the state Group Insurance Commission if lawmakers eliminate the requirement for approval of 72 percent of the city’s unions. “I just need a vehicle” to reduce health care costs, he said, explaining why he was proposing a home rule petition.
Menino said, like the state plan, he would include union members on a city insurance commission but would not give them veto power over plan design or premiums.
Tommy Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said his members are adamantly opposed to Menino’s plan, even though he was unaware of it until called by a reporter.
“At the end of the day, we will vigorously oppose any degradation of collective bargaining rights,” said Nee.
Nee said Menino has never approached his union about joining the state insurance plan, although he said he sees it as an inferior option to what Boston employees currently have. He said plan design and cost-sharing are a matter of contract negotiations.
“The devil is always in the details in these things, but when you’re taking away somebody’s wages, which is what health insurance is, it should be done in public,” said Nee. “Collective bargaining may be inconvenient for management but it’s been the law for 40 years.”
Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said he had not seen Menino’s proposal but said administration officials gave a similar plan to union officials during contract negotiations recently.
If Menino’s plan is anything like what is before negotiators now, Stutman said, it’s unlikely to fly. “He already gave us something we don’t like,” Stutman said.
Stutman said his union opposes joining the state GIC. “We’re opposed to anything that takes away the right to collectively bargain health insurance plan design and health insurance premiums,” Stutman said. “I obviously don’t think it’s the way to go but I can’t comment until we see it. It’s premature to talk about it.”
Menino’s proposal would require City Council approval and he said he has had talks with “some councilors” but would not say who. Calls for comment to Council President Michael Ross and several other councilors were not immediately returned.
According to the Massachusetts Municipal Association, health insurance costs for cities and towns have increased by 150 percent over the last 10 years while increases for members of the GIC have been less than half that. The MMA says that, if Massachusetts communities were given the same freedom for plan design outside of collective bargaining that the state grants the GIC joined the GIC, they could save $100 million a year. The GIC contains costs by shifting more of health care’s financial burden to workers and using its buying power to bargain for lower prices from health care providers.
In 2008, lawmakers passed a bill allowing cities and towns to join the GIC but mandated they get approval from 72 percent of their unions. The state is exempt from that mandate.
Salem Mayor Kimberly Driscoll, who was on the forum panel with Menino and Mayor Robert Dolan of Melrose, said she has been thwarted by her unions in changing the city’s health benefits because employees have a $5 co-pay for office visits and many don’t want that to increase. She said not one of the city’s unions agreed to join the GIC and several did not even bring it to their membership for a vote.
Already grappling with a $2.5 million cut in local aid and more cuts on the horizon, Driscoll said she’s had to layoff city workers and increase class sizes to make up for the gap, which could have been closed by the annual savings from joining the GIC.
“We left $1 million on the table,” she said.
Dolan was able to get his city’s unions to agree to join GIC by just two votes, making them just one of 20 cities and towns out of the state’s 351 who have joined. Dolan said his annual health care cost increase had been exceeding the city’s $700,000 annual new revenue growth. But now he is saving $3 million a year, which he says has enabled him to hire more teachers and start a city-run ambulance department.
