Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Sheriff Mac McNeill spearheaded recent legislation that resulted in higher salaries for deputies and correctional officers (Cos) in Florida’s 29 fiscally constrained counties, including Jefferson.
Now he’s involved in an effort with Property Appraiser Angela Gray to even the playing field even more for his deputies and Cos, and in the process the other county employees.
The idea is to have the county assume a greater portion of the cost of employees’ health insurance coverage. McNeill explained the rationale for the request to the Jefferson County Commission at a budget workshop on Thursday evening, July 28.
“This is something we’ve been looking at for a while,” McNeill said, noting that he, Gray and others had discussed the issue at length. “We lose a lot of employees, one because of the salaries, and the other because of health coverage.”
McNeill said that as a result of the discussions, he had taken it upon himself to check around and see how other counties in the area were handling their health insurance coverage. He found, he said, that they also broke the coverage
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into four categories: employee, employee and spouse, employee and children, and employee and family, commonly called full family coverage.
McNeill said that he would focus only on the full family coverage so as not to confuse the issue with too many numbers. He then proceeded to give the cost per employee for the full family coverage plan in several of the surrounding counties.
In Leon County, he said, the cost for full family coverage was $442 monthly per employee and the county paid the rest, which he guessed was between $1,800 and $2,000, as it likely was for the other counties.
In Gadsden County, he said, the family coverage plan was $472 monthly per employee, and again the county paid the rest. He went down the line: $385 in Taylor County; $380 in Liberty County; $387 in Wakulla County; and $180 for state employees.
In comparison, McNeill said, Jefferson County employees paid $1,128 monthly for the full family coverage plan.
“So we can see how far off we are from other counties,” McNeill said, adding that only Monticello, Madison County and the City of Madison were in the same boat as Jefferson County in terms of the high cost of health insurance to employees.
“Our people can’t afford that,” McNeill said. “You got people making $25,000 a year and about half their salaries are going for health coverage. We’re looking at all these other counties because they’re our competition.”
McNeill used his department and the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office for comparison, given the two counties’ small sizes and fiscally constrained situations.
“Us and Liberty County now make the exact same salary, thanks to the adjustment we just got,” McNeill said. “But if I’ve got a deputy with a family, and they’ve got a deputy with a family, their deputy makes $8,000 more a year than my deputy because what it costs them here to pay for the health care.”
Clerk of Court Kirk Reams offered that based on preliminary figures from a survey his office had conducted, the estimated cost if the county implemented what the sheriff was suggesting, would be about $534,000 annually, assuming that the county paid the full amount of the employees’ coverage.
McNeill conceded that $534,000 was a lot of money. Even so, he believed that it was worth doing it, he said. The $534,000, moreover, was assuming that the county would pay the entire cost, which no other county did, he said.
“It’s something I think we need to look at,” McNeill said. “My thought is, if we come in right at $400, if that’s what we can get to, or whatever, per employee per family coverage, that’s good number. That’s right around there. Most of the other counties are $380 to $420. If we fall right around there, we’ll be extremely competitive.”
He offered another possible scenario that the commission could embrace to lower the county’s costs.
In his office, he said, employees who had spouses who worked for the state were offered a $300 monthly stipend to get off the county’s health insurance program and join their spouses’ state family coverage plan. This not only provided the employee with extra money monthly, it reduced the county’s greater share for providing the employee with health insurance, he said.
“A lot of the money I turn back to the county comes from this pot of money,” McNeill said. “Because the savings per employee adds up over 12 months. I think the county can do the same thing. You give the employee a raise and save the county money. And the employees get the same health insurance, which is Capital Health Plan. So it’s not like it’s hurting them.”
McNeill suggested that the commission might want also to implement the proposed change in small bites instead of all at once.
“If it’s something you’re willing to move forward with, maybe we can break it up over two years,” he said. “A little bit this year, and next year we take the rest, until we get to that number that we want to get to.”
The board appeared amenable to the proposition. The way the discussion was left, the Clerk of Court Office was to canvass county employees to determine how many would participate in the health plan if the county agreed to absorb the greater share of the cost. The clerk was then to work up the numbers and present cost estimates to the commission at its next budget hearing on this Thursday.