Debate on city health care moves behind closed doors

SOUTH PORTLAND — The South Portland City Council in the last week has taken the debate on whether councilors should receive health insurance coverage behind closed doors.

Councilors on Monday held an executive session on the matter, its second such meeting in a week. The issue is the subject of both a lawsuit against the city and a petition signed by residents claiming that the benefit is provided in violation of the city charter.

Following Monday’s meeting, the council directed City Attorney Sally Daggett to both mount a defense, and seek a summary judgment.

“There may well be some on the council who don’t think the city should provide councilors with health insurance,” said Councilor Gerard Jalbert on Tuesday. “The problem is, Jim Gailey is named as a co-defendant. So, to not defend it, that’s just leaving your city manager out there hanging in the wind.”

At issue is whether South Portland should offer city councilors 100 percent health coverage, as it has since 1977, even though the charter limits compensation to $3,000. Daggett argued in 2009 that nothing in the charter expressly states that the $3,000 stipend is the "total" value of all compensation, "exclusive of any other benefits."

But in a Nov. 21 memo, attorney William Plouffe, from Portland firm DrummondWoodsum, answered a second-opinion call from then-Mayor Rosemarie De Angelis, saying the health care benefit "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."

Three councilors now accept the health benefit. Tow Coward and Tom Blake each carry family plans, which cost $17,418 each. Councilor Maxine Beecher gets individual coverage, at a cost of $8,559. De Angelis has declined the coverage, as have Councilors Gerard Jalbert and Alan Livingston, and Mayor Patti Smith. Still, the city appropriates nearly $100,000 each year, in case any change their minds.

On Jan. 23, Al DiMillo, a retired CPA and occasional Current columnist, made good on a threat to bring the matter to a head. When the council failed to respond, or even comment, on his promise to file suit unless all councilors declined coverage, DiMillo asked that a Maine Superior Court Justice declare the benefit null and void for them, as least until officially permitted by a charter amendment.

In a legal response filed last week, Daggett asks the court to dismiss DiMillo’s suit, claiming he does not have legal standing to sue the city, a charge DiMillo, who’s acting on his own behalf without benefit of an attorney, denies. He has standing, he claims, on the simple basis of being a taxpayer.

On Wednesday, Feb. 22, the City Council met in executive session with Daggett for about 35 minutes to discuss the suit. According to Jalbert, Daggett suggested at that meeting that Monday’s previously scheduled workshop on the health insurance issue also go behind closed doors.

“It was felt that any public discussion of the issue could be seen as an admission, of sorts,” he said.
City Manager Jim Gailey declined to say why the workshop session was being closed to the public. However, Mayor Patti Smith indicated that the intent was to discuss the general issue of whether or not councilors should continue to receive the benefit, as previously planned, without confining themselves to the DiMillo lawsuit.

“I think the suit obviously encompasses that larger question,” she said. “It’s inherent, I’ll put it that way.

“I think some people are disappointed that we are not having a public session on the matter of councilor compensation,” said Smith. “It’s unfortunate, but things change with time and if we didn’t have a pending lawsuit we might be in a public forum, but we aren’t. So, that is why we are going into executive session.”

At the meeting, one resident said he had expected the private meetings.

“See, this is why I tried to get Al to hold off on filing his suit, because I knew they’d use it as an excuse to do something like this,” said Gary Crosby.

Crosby, a property manager and sometime developer who has run for City Council unsuccessfully in the past and now chairs South Portland’s board of appeals, has dogged the council on the compensation issue. He started by submitting a petition with nearly 200 signatures. When that did not seem to garner much play, he made a “tongue-in-cheek” demand that he and the 81 other appointed officials in the city also get full insurance coverage.

That demand, he said, was made to highlight the potential $1.3 million cost to the city, if, like councilors, all appointees were classified as employees, as allowed by law, for insurance purposes. Still, Crosby says he does not begrudge the councilors health care coverage, or, alternately, a raise in order that they can buy private policies. His issue, he has said, is that until expressly permitted in the charter, the benefit is “being given illegally.”