Insurance rates, employee pay again dominate supervisors discussion

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

County employee insurance plans and employee job titles and pay again took up most of a morning planning session for the Floyd County Board of Supervisors Monday.

Both topics were continuations of discussions begun in previous weeks, and both could find resolution at today’s (Tuesday’s) regular board meeting.

The county is facing employee health insurance premium increases of about 26 percent for the coming calendar year. That’s on top of about a 24 percent rate increase that took effect this year.

Most of that increased cost this year was not passed along to the employees, and now supervisors are discussing how much of an increase county employees will share in next year.

At a recent meeting, representatives of Holmes Murphy and Associates, the county’s insurance broker, laid out several different plan possibilities for the supervisors to consider.

Ways to reduce the county’s cost increase involved increasing employee deductibles, going to plans with more restrictive coverage or making employees pay a greater part of the premium cost.

At another meeting, supervisors heard from a representative of the IGHCP — The Iowa Government Health Care Plan — a benefits trust plan that lets cities, counties and a few schools in the state pool their coverage to share risks and get better rates.

Like the county’s current plan, the IGHCP health insurance would be provided through Wellmark.

By moving to the IGHCP, the county could save more than $212,000 over the proposed new rates for the current coverage package, according to a price comparison put together by Floyd County Auditor Gloria Carr.

The county’s total annual health care premium in the various proposals ranges from a high of $1.84 million, to the IGHCP plan at $1.63 million.

All three supervisors seemed to favor moving to the government plan at the meeting Monday morning, although no official action can be taken at a planning session.

Supervisor Doug Kamm said he was a little concerned why the group wanted Floyd County, since it has had two years of very high claims — the reason premiums have increased so steeply.

Carr said the advantage of the government plan is it pools more than 3,000 members when it goes out for rates, whereas the county alone only has a little more than 100 employees. The bigger pool spreads the risk.

The county currently pays the entire monthly premium for single coverage, and pays 75 percent of the monthly family premium cost. The county also self-funds 75 percent of employee deductible costs, reducing the employees’ deductible responsibility to a fourth of the actual amount.

Even going to the less expensive IGHCP coverage, the county’s insurance costs would increase substantially, and shielding employees from the full weight of the increase could potentially cut the county’s health plan fund from an expected balance of about $350,000 at the end of December to $121,000 by June 30, 2020.

Supervisors Mark Kuhn and Linda Tjaden both expressed concern on the health fund dropping so low, and Tjaden asked Carr to come up with numbers for the Tuesday meeting that would keep the balance at $200,000.

Another question if the county goes with the IGHCP would be whether to continue paying for consulting services with Holmes Murphy and Associates at a cost of $23,328 annually.

Supervisors wondered what services they would be getting by keeping the brokerage service in addition to the services that would be provided by the IGHCP.

Also at the meeting Monday, supervisors picked up a discussion that had been prompted by County Treasurer Frank Rottinghaus requesting to create a “specialist” position within his department for a clerk who had taken on many of the duties of an office deputy who had retired.

The supervisors has passed a policy in 2013 restricting departments to just one office deputy through attrition, with the rest of the positions under the elected official being clerks.

Rottinghaus said it was only fair that since his clerk had taken on considerable additional duties she should be compensated for that.

Supervisor Tjaden had helped create a resolution to be discussed today to create a specialist position, but she said Monday she had second thoughts and didn’t like the idea, wondering if the clerk positions could be set with an appropriate maximum pay level to cover additional duties.

Currently the highest paid clerks in the auditor, treasurer and recorder offices receive $21.12 per hour. Rottinghaus had requested his specialist position be paid $25 per hour, although he said Monday he realized at the time he made the request that some negotiation on that amount might take place.

Other county officers — Auditor Carr and Recorder Deb Roberts — had previously said they had also had to shift deputy duties to clerks when their deputies left or retired, and those clerks had not received significant pay increases.

They said that if a specialist position was created they would ask that their clerks be moved to that position, and Monday Carr said if the answer was to increase the pay of the clerk in the Treasurer’s Office, that she would seek similar pay increases for her clerks.

“In my office, I had an existing employee, a deputy who left, and my elections clerk stepped into the role of the deputy who does the claims and real estate side,” Carr said. “So similar circumstances where a clerk stepped into a role of a deputy.”

Rottinghaus said, “Just because that maybe wasn’t done in the way it should have been done doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be taken care of properly.”

Tjaden said the board will discuss the specialist position resolution at the meeting today (which will likely be turned down) and would also make a decision on the treasurer’s request.

Monday afternoon Rottinghaus emailed the Press information showing that at the suggested pay of $25 per hour for 1,950 hours per year (37.5 hours per week), or $48,750 annually, his office would save $15,885 per year in wages and benefits over the cost of the deputy who had retired.

He also said he had asked other counties similar in population to Floyd County what they paid the person who does what his vehicle registration clerk is doing and the range was between about $42,500 and $47,200.

At the current highest rate of $21.12 per hour for clerks, those positions pay $41,184 annually.