Binding arbitration and money grabs are part of what put Bay State cities and towns in their current financial fix, which makes the health insurance "compromise" proposed by the public employee unions Monday almost worse than no solution at all.
Yesterday, mayors, town managers, selectmen and other municipal officials descended on Beacon Hill to advocate for the same flexibility the state has to design the health insurance plans offered its employees. They need relief and they need it now — before the start of the next fiscal year July 1 and without any requirement that they "share" the savings with their employees.
In fact, Andy Bagley of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation told the commonwealth's mayors when they gathered in Salem last month, "the notion that there are savings to share just doesn't make any sense."
Indeed, the "plan design" authority advocated by municipal officials won't produce a giant cache of money to be spent elsewhere, it will simply slow the rate at which their health insurance costs have been growing.
The Public Employees' Municipal Health Coalition's demands for sharing in the "savings" produced by plan design, along with a 45-day negotiation period followed by third-party review if the parties can't agree on a new plan, are tantamount to the legislatively imposed veto that has stymied cost-saving efforts to date.
"It's pretty much a repackaged framework from over the last couple of years," Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, observed. "There really isn't much in terms of lasting reform and taxpayer relief."
Unlike what's been happening in some Midwestern states, the collective bargaining rights of public employees here in the Bay State remain secure for now. But patience may be wearing thin with a Democratic leadership on Beacon Hill that appears to take its marching orders from the unions.
With health care costs consuming an ever-greater share of every city and town budget, failure by the Legislature to enact real reform will mean reductions in services and layoffs of teachers — as is now being contemplated in Danvers — and other personnel.
It's time for legislators to bite the bullet and, with or without union approval, provide municipalities — and their taxpayers — with genuine relief in the next fiscal year.
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