Free healthcare for councilors to be argued at next workshop

SOUTH PORTLAND — According to South Portland Mayor Patti Smith, the question of whether or not to provide free health insurance to city councilors was scheduled for a workshop debate before Gary Crosby chose to twist the screw.

Crosby didn’t know that, of course, when he rose during a “citizen comment” period at the Feb. 6 council meeting. All Crosby knew was that he never got an answer to the petition he handed Smith on Dec. 19. Signed by 131 South Portland residents, the petition demanded that councilors give up their tax-funded health coverage.

So, Crosby took another tack. He said the same 1969 change in Maine law that broadened the definition of "employee" to elected and appointed officials, for purposes of group health insurance policies, should apply to all citizen committee members, not just councilors, as it has since city fathers voted themselves the benefit in 1977.

“I want my free health insurance,” said Crosby. “Where’s my free health insurance?”

Crosby, a property manager and sometime developer who has run for City Council unsuccessfully in the past, now chairs South Portland’s board of appeals, an appointed position, making him legally eligible for healthcare coverage, he claimed.

The demand was made “tongue-in-cheek,” said Crosby, in case there was any doubt. His real beef, he said, is that the city charter fixes the annual compensation for each councilor at $3,000, paid as an annual stipend, with no mention of any ancillary benefits.

Currently, three councilors accept the health benefit. Tom Coward and Tom Blake each carry family plans, which cost taxpayers $17,418, each. Councilor Maxine Beecher gets individual coverage, at a cost of $8,559. Councilors Rosemarie De Angelis, Gerard Jalbert and Alan Livingston, along with Mayor Smith, have all declined the coverage, although the city appropriates nearly $100,000 in the annual budget, in case any of the councilors change their minds.

If all 82 people now appointed to various volunteer positions in town received the same level of health coverage as Coward and Blake, it would cost $1.28 million, said Crosby.

“A couple of councilors have said the health insurance brings good, qualified people to serve,” said Crosby. “Well, if we want good, qualified people on all of our boards, I assume I, as well as my cohorts, should have free health insurance.”

Crosby’s is only the latest salvo on the healthcare topic. A more serious shot was fired Jan. 23 when retired CPA Albert DiMillo (also an occasional Current columnist) filed suit against the city in Cumberland County Superior Court.

“My hope is that this won’t cost taxpayers anything, because they’ll concede,” said DiMillo, who has asked the court to declare the health benefit a violation of the city charter.

City Attorney Sally Daggett has yet to file an answer to the suit. Instead, said Smith, councilors will address the topic in a workshop session scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27, at the community center on Nelson Road.

“I defer to the attorneys on who is a public official; I really don’t feel like I have the professional background,” said Smith.

However, Smith said councilors could get conflicting professional opinions at the upcoming meeting, as they have in the past.

In January 2009, Daggett said that while the charter does fix councilor compensation at $3,000, it does not expressly state that this stipend is to be the "total" value of all compensation, "exclusive of any other benefits."

De Angelis asked for a second opinion when she became mayor in 2011. In a Nov. 21 memo, attorney William Plouffe, from Portland firm DrummondWoodsum, said giving councilors health insurance coverage "does not comply with the [$3,000] compensation limit" in the charter. However, given a dearth of relevant case law, Plouffe hedged by adding, "the answer is not free from doubt."

Smith said she can’t promise Daggett and Plouffe will be the ones to play point/counterpoint, but said she hopes to have legal scholars present to argue each side of the issue.

“I don’t know who we’re going to have, but I think the fairest thing to do would be to have both sides of the issues represented,” she said. “I will ask the city manager to arrange that.”