Wyo budget committee defers decision on school district employee health insurance
January 27, 2010 by Phil Noble
Filed under Recent Posts
by Phil Noble, Cowboy State Free Press Bureau Chief
CHEYENNE–After discussing possible legislation to allow Wyoming school district employees to join the state’s health insurance plan which now covers state government employees, the legislature’s Joint Interim Appropriations Committee deferred a decision on the issue until after the legislative session, which begins in a week and a half.
The committee’s discussion ranged over two days of their budget deliberations, and late yesterday after hearing from health insurance industry representatives and a representative of the Wyoming School Boards Association, the issue appeared dead after a 7-3 show of hands against moving the bill.
During discussion of school facilities funding this morning, though, the issue resurfaced in discussion led by committee co-chair Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Albany County, who asked everyone on the committee to give input on the issue.
At the end of the discussion, Nicholas said, “my recommendation? We put it into an interim study and take care of it then. At least two members of this committee are likely to be on that recalibration committee and we can take care of it then.” The Recalibration committee Nicholas referred to will likely be a legislative group comprised of leadership and some JAC members to look at how to revamp the school funding mechanism the state has used for a few years, which includes block grant funding to districts.
Nicholas said the issue the committee faced had several components. One, he said, is whether to have school districts locked into the state plan after they originally “opted in” to the plan, or whether they could leave after a few years if they liked their previous insurance setup better.
Another is the issue of cost, the co-chair noted. Estimates of the cost of the move if all districts joined the state plan ranged up to $60 million over and above what the legislature is providing to school districts now for health insurance, Nicholas said.
Other issues, Nicholas continued, revolve around the problem that small school districts can’t get health insurance for their employees affordably, while large districts have the advantage of larger insurance pools to spread out the risk.
Sen. Mike Massie, R-Albany County, said of the proposed bill, “calling this the Lazarus bill is not doing it justice. Maybe the Brett Farve bill. We’re making the solution too difficult. Taking it out of the block grant is not right. A more elegant solution might be that if you work for a district more than 25 hours a week, you can join the state plan. What we see in that bill is a sledgehammer. The issue of retirees, recalibration and cost will all go against it on the floor (of the legislature).”
Other committee members said they heard stories from their constituents of how the larger districts were actually making money from the block grants they receive for health insurance, because they only insure the lower risk employees. Smaller districts, they said, lose money because of the smaller pool of employees to cover.
House of Representatives committee co-chair Rep. Rosie Berger, R-Sheridan, seemed to sum up the committee’s feeling. “We’ve discussed this for several years now. We have to be fiscally responsible. I think putting it into recalibration at this point is a good idea.”
