Council sick of health care question

After nearly a year, the fate of the South Portland councilors’ benefit will be decided Sept. 5

SOUTH PORTLAND — The South Portland City Council got one step closer to terminating its own health care coverage Monday, setting Sept. 5 as the date for a final vote, but not before some harsh words were exchanged.

The insurance coverage, which councilors have enjoyed since 1977, has been a topic of growing controversy since 2008, when local attorney Dan Mooers first raised the issue. At that time, he challenged that the benefit is illegal because it is not mentioned in the city charter, which limits councilor compensation to a $3,000 annual stipend.

“Without any question in my mind, the action of putting councilors on medical insurance some 35 years ago was an illegal vote because it violated the charter,” said Mooers last week, via email. “In my opinion, every year in which the council adopts a budget with contains specific expenditures for their personal benefit, each councilor for whom money is allocated violates both the South Portland conflict of interest ordinance and the state of Maine conflict of interest statute.”

Four councilors take advantage of the benefit. Tom Blake and Tom Coward have family plans, for which the city covers 85 percent of the premium, to the tune of $14,418. Councilor Maxine Beecher has an individual plan, with 100 percent of the premium borne by taxpayers. It will cost $3,566 through the end of her term in November. Councilor Gerard Jalbert signed up this past month for an individual plan through Jan. 1, when he will become eligible for insurance through his employer. That five months of coverage will cost $3,319. Councilors Rosemarie De Angelis and Alan Livingston, along with Mayor Patti Smith, have all declined coverage.

By contrast, Dr. Frank Morong, who sat on the City Council in 1977, said full medical coverage at that time cost “probably $200 or $300 a year.” On Monday, Morong joined eight other audience members in urging the council to end, or at least phase out, the benefit.

“Instead of banging this around for two or three more years, the solution in fairly simple,” he said. “Eliminate it totally, but give a window of opportunity to the end of their term for those people who are caught, so they can get [alternate] coverage.”

That was the proposal put forth by Smith, but De Angelis would have none of it.

“I’m not disappointed, I’m appalled,” she said, berating her fellow councilors for declining to end the benefit immediately, across the board.

“This is a $101,000 line-item liability for this city that the residents never voted on. That’s all that matters,” said De Angelis.

Talk of phasing out the benefit, which centered on fairness and the low per-household cost to taxpayers – about $3.13 to the average hom­­eowner – amounted to “a bunch of malarkey,” she said, reserving particular scorn for Jalbert’s “absurd” proposal to phase out both the health benefit and stipends. That idea, she intimated, was a “red herring” meant to gum up the works and prevent a decision before the end of the year.

“It’s not really mysterious how we’re splitting down this council,” she said. “Those who are covering their own backs and making sure they’re OK, moving [the debate] here and moving it there and just taking more time, are just outrageous.”

Meanwhile, Councilor Tom Coward, who has been the staunchest supporter of maintaining t­he status quo, appeared to have trouble keeping his seat when Albert DiMillo, from his place in the rear of the audience, called him a “compulsive liar.”

At the time, Coward was claiming that most of the commentary from his constituents has run counter to the prevailing wisdom, in favor of funding health insurance for councilors.

“I’m still not convinced there’s any great public interest in changing the status quo,” he said.

For his part, DiMillo, a columnist for The Current, seemed to doubt Coward’s recounting of the resident comments he’s received since the council’s Aug. 13 meeting, uttering the word “liar” sotto voce at least three times. On the final utterance, Coward seemed to rock in his chair, bracing his hand on the table’s edge.

After several tense seconds of silence in the room, Coward ignored DiMillo, pressing on with his argument that any drive to cut the health benefit should be tied to a larger conversation on how councilors are to be compensated for their work.

DiMillo has not previously been so easy to ignore. In January, he sued the city in Cumberland County Unified Court, in an attempt to force the council’s hand. Following a public debate in 2009 after Mooers’ tried to drag the largely unheralded benefit into the open, De Angelis tried to resurrect discussion in November 2011, in her final meeting as mayor. The council at that time appeared disinterested in addressing the topic at all, prompting DiMillo’s suit, which he dropped in late June on the promise from Smith of a public workshop.

Smith began Monday’s meeting by mirroring Morong’s idea to phase out the insurance plan. Councilors should have access to the benefit until the end of their terms of office, she said, but future members of the governing board should be denied coverage. But De Angelis strongly disagreed.

“We’re going to allow those who have it to continue because they came on with that rule? I don’t care what rule they came on with,” she said. “I do not care at all. The public never voted on this. That is really the issue.

“The public has no obligation to pay a penny going forward from tonight,” said De Angelis. “I believe we are violating the charter right now and the charter is the law of this city.”

When the charter was adopted in 1963, it stipulated, "The annual compensation of Councilmen shall be $600." The pay rate was bumped to $1,000 by the state Legislature in 1965, and then by local voters to $1,500 in 1971. In 1977 the City Council voted to take advantage of a 1969 change in Maine law that broadened the definition of "employee" to elected and appointed officials for purposes of group health insurance policies. The council at that time voted itself full health insurance coverage and the benefit has since been part of every annual budget.

Morong said Monday that he could not specifically recall how debate on the topic fell on the issue in 1977. However, he said, “We must have had advice from legal counsel,” suggesting the benefit had been deemed to pass muster despite charter language on compensation.

In 1986, voters set the stipend at $3,000, where it's remained ever since, but no reference has made to the health benefit during that year’s charter commission. Marilyn Riley, a frequent audience speaker on the topic, has claimed few voters at that time knew the benefit even existed. 

“The people did not create this problem, the council created this problem,” said De Angelis.

“I will support nothing,” she began, interrupting herself to react to certain members of the council, who did not seem especially captivated by her powers of persuasion. “Shake your heads, do whatever you want, I don’t care. I’m going to stand with the public on this. We are violating the public charter right now and the only right thing to do is to eliminate the health insurance.”

Calling Smith’s proposal “more divisive” even than the current system, De Angelis said, “I will never support this plan.”

Ultimately, after more than an hour of debate, a slim majority of four did lend support, including Smith, Blake, Beecher and Livingston. Blake’s support appeared weakest, however, as he continued to link his vote to the formation of a blue-ribbon panel to look into the question of compensation and expense reimbursement for councilors and all other elected and appointed officials in the city, possibly leading to a charter revision process.

But that idea will not be addressed at the Sept. 5 meeting, Smith instead reserved it for separate consideration at a future workshop, yet to be scheduled.

“So, how will the votes fall at the next meeting?” asked Smith, rhetorically, after Monday’s session. “I don’t know, but we’re finally going to have a vote and see where it falls.”

“It’s very frustrating that we can’t get this done,” agreed Livingston. “I want to get on to other city business and get this over with.”