A plan empowering mayors and town managers to raise public workers' copays and deductibles without union consent has stalled and will likely die when Beacon Hill lawmakers adjourn next month.
"Plan design" would have given municipal leaders the ability to unilaterally change certain features of public employee health plans outside the collective bargaining process. But when legislators reached a deal Wednesday night to bring the state budget forward, plan design was axed.
It is a victory for public employee unions, but a blow to North Shore mayors and business leaders, who pushed hard for plan design and argued they needed more tools to control runaway health costs. Unions fiercely opposed the bill, claiming it would essentially dishonor agreements inked in good faith between municipal leaders and union bosses.
The bill now faces grim odds.
With time running out for the 186th General Court, plan design is expected to languish in the Legislature when lawmakers break on July 31.
"I can't see it coming up in July," said Senate Majority Leader Fred Berry of Peabody. "I'd say it's pretty much dead now for this session."
For months, Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll had lobbied lawmakers and members of the North Shore Chamber of Commerce to support the bill. Health costs, she warned, are continuing to soar, while community leaders struggle with cuts to local aid and few other options to raise revenues.
"I think it's very disappointing for a lot of folks at the municipal level trying to find ways to balance budgets with less resources and less local aid," Driscoll said. "This would have been a viable tool for local officials."
Driscoll had tried to illustrate the need for plan design by pointing to city unions' refusal last year to agree to increases to their $5 copays. Accepting the changes would have saved the city more than $1 million and potentially halted layoffs.
However, after Driscoll floated a similar proposal by unions this year, the city's teachers approved the increases. A similar tentative deal has been reached with the union representing the Police Department's superior officers, Driscoll said yesterday.
Beverly Mayor Bill Scanlon, who is also president of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said it's possible plan design could re-emerge as a ballot referendum down the road. (The deadline to place a question on the November ballot, however, has already passed.) It could also emerge as a campaign issue in the race for governor.
Unions also launched a heavy lobbying effort to defeat plan design. Such changes would eliminate workers' rights by circumventing the collective bargaining process, they argued. Mayors and town managers, they said, simply wanted to earn concessions from the unions without playing by the rules.
Meanwhile, Driscoll is at a loss to explain why state legislators would take a pass on plan design for the second year in a row.
"I don't think the issue's going away," she said. "As long as health insurance costs continue to rise so sharply and it's such a big part of municipal budgets, we need tools to manage those costs."
That means the fight could resume as soon as a new Legislature is sworn in in January.
"I'm really disappointed that we didn't address it," Berry said. "But I'm not surprised."
Staff writer Chris Cassidy can be reached at ccassidy@salem news.com.
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