Park and planning employees in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties could have to pay 50 percent more for their health insurance beginning Jan. 1, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission officials warn. Though union contracts require employees to pay 15 percent of their health insurance premiums, they actually paid slightly less — about 13 percent — last year. About 40 percent of the agency’s 1,800 employees are unionized, according to commission Executive Director Patricia Barney.
The subsidy had been possible because of a surplus in the agency’s health care reserve fund, Barney said. As a result of unexpectedly high costs in the last fiscal year, though, the fund is no longer large enough to cover the subsidy.
Because of rising insurance costs, a smaller work force — which means fewer employee contributions to the health care costs — and an increase in insurance claims, the agency spent $6.7 million of the reserve fund last year, $2.7 more than anticipated, Barney said.
The new rates will cost individual employees between $25.82 and $32.95 every two weeks, depending on the plan. Individual employees currently pay between $19.87 and $21.94.
Despite the increase, the new rate is still lower than rates for employees of both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, Barney emphasized. Starting Jan. 1, Montgomery employees will pay between $37.26 and $52.88 every two weeks, according to data from Director of Human Resources Joseph Adler. In Montgomery, employees also pay 25 percent of their premiums.
“We’re bringing our costs up to market,” Barney said. “The medical costs are what medical costs are nationwide.”
However, union leaders say they should have been warned of the increase earlier.
“There was no conversation that the health care fund was in bad shape or that they were going to come out dramatically short,” said Municipal and County Government Employees Organization President Gino Renne. “They couldn’t get the money at the bargaining table with the workers, so this is a backhand way of achieving the same goal.”
Though the commission says the increase in expenses was a surprise, both Renne and Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Young, who represents the Park Police, say the agency should have seen it coming.
“Someone was asleep at the wheel in the Park and Planning Commission,” Young said.
According to Barney, the increase is just one more step the agency has to take to prepare for a tough year to come. With a flat tax base in Montgomery and a declining base in Prince George’s, the agency is expecting a decline in revenue in fiscal 2013.
The commission had surpluses in both counties — about $1.5 million in Montgomery and about $11 million in Prince George’s — last fiscal year as a result of cutbacks made in anticipation of the worsening fiscal outlook.
