The city administration briefed the City Council on strategy earlier this week during a 2-hour long executive session.
Emily Schuh, the Human Resources director for the city, said that the Council meeting on Monday night was primarily to brief the newest City Council members on contract negotiations and the major issues the city sees coming up as public employee collective bargaining begins in August.
The current contracts with the Fire Fighters union and the Police Guild expire at the end of this year. The city’s other union contract, with the Teamsters Union, won’t expire until 2016.
But, in both cases, Schuh said, the major issue is health insurance for all city employees, not just union employees. Schuh explained that the city is looking how to bring health insurance in line with the standards set by the Affordable Care Act.
The ACA, in an effort to slow growing health care costs and finance expanding coverage, imposes a heavy tax on high-cost health plans, so-called “Cadillac” health plans, in 2018 like the ones the city has for its employees..
A 40 percent excise tax will be assessed beginning in 2018 on the cost of coverage for health plans that exceed a certain annual limit ($10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for self and spouse or family coverage). Health insurance issuers and sponsors of self-funded group health plans must pay the tax of 40 percent of any dollar amount beyond the caps that is considered “excess” health spending.
That means the city would need to pay the 40 percent tax starting in 2018.
As in the past, Schuh said the negotiations will be be in secret and behind closed doors and that it would be a disservice to have transparency. She thought it might be confusing for the public to see offers from the two sides that could set up expectations that don’t play out in the end. The same could be said about how a bill becomes a law via the public legislative process.
The Washington Policy Center, in a formal recommendation in their Policy Guide, says,
“Adopt collective bargaining transparency. State and local employment contracts should not be negotiated in secret. Taxpayers are ultimately responsible for funding these agreements. They should be allowed to monitor the negotiation process and to hold state officials accountable for their actions.”
In fact, if the negotiations do take place in secret, it would seem to be in disagreement with statements made by Laurie Gere while campaigning for Mayor. A statement she made on her Facebook page said, “A strong win will give me the mandate to move ahead with my platform for creating an open transparent government…”
Gere carried the theme forward in her State of the City speech using the words, “Open, Transparent, Accessible,” over and over again.
The Washington Open Public Meetings Act allows collective bargaining to take place in secret, but the Act doesn’t require it. Jason Mercier, Director of the Center for Government Reform at the Washington Policy Center said, the city could request of the unions that collective bargaining sessions be public sessions. He discusses this issue in a Guest Opinion piece in the Seattle Times on June 11, 2014. Taxpayers should be able to monitor public-employee contract negotiations.