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Trumbull commissioners give employees December off from premiums
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Trumbull County commissioners have signed off on giving their 794 employees who use the county’s health insurance one month off from paying their 10 percent contribution to the plan.
The cost each month to an employee using the most popular family plan is $175.18. The cost for the most-popular single plan is $63.82, according to the Trumbull County Human Resources Department. Each month, those contributions equal about $106,700, the department said.
The decision was formalized in a letter Monday to Auditor Adrian Biviano, asking his office to “take all steps necessary to effectuate this decision.”
Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa said: “With the [employees’] wage freeze for seven years, it’s a reward for service to our employees for doing a good job. We think it’s a good time to do it. It’s a little token of appreciation for all that they do.”
Cantalamessa said the idea was “brought to us” by the HR department, headed by James Keating.
“It was a nice gesture, and the employees appreciated it,” Keating said Friday, noting that it is being done during the Christmas holiday month. But Keating denied that the gesture was his idea.
Commissioner Frank Fuda said all three commissioners agreed to the idea. “It’s not a whole lot of money [per employee], but it’s some money,” Fuda said.
Commissioner Dan Polivka did not return a text message Friday seeking comment.
Cantalamessa and Keating both said the gesture is related to the decision the county commissioners made in August to reduce the amount of money in the health-insurance fund by about $6 million.
A management letter from the Ohio Auditor’s office that came out in June about the same time as the annual county audit, said the county was keeping too much money in its insurance account.
The account holds county money used to pay the county’s self-insurance costs. The balance has risen steadily over the years, reaching $10.25 million at the end of 2014. It was $786,061 at the end of 2005, according to the county auditor’s office.
As a result of the management letter, the commissioners decided in August to “spend down” the health-insurance fund over six to seven months by not putting normal health insurance payments of about $1 million per month in the account and instead putting the money in the general fund.
“In drawing down that fund, it’s something we can give back to them as a little bonus,” Cantalamessa said.
Meanwhile, a review of bargaining agreements and Vindicator files indicates that few, if any, county employees went seven years without a pay raise. Workers represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees went five years without a pay raise – 2010 through 2014. They did receive step increases based on years of service, however.
Their most-recent contracts provided pay raises averaging 30 cents per hour in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The last year employees of the sheriff’s office received pay increases was in 2008, with workers getting only step increases for six years – from 2009 to 2014.
Their newest contract, however, gave them a retroactive pay increase for 2014, plus more money in 2015 and 2016. The raises averaged 38 cents per hour each year, plus two more step increases.