As might be expected my reports on Mayor Mary Clare Higgins’ health insurance policy change drew a couple of inquiries.
One came from Doris Montgomery, long time Florence resident. Apparently Ms. Montgomery served the city for eighteen years as a cafeteria worker, leaving the position in 2002 at the age of fifty due to health issues. Though she feels she likely could have collected disability insurance, she opted to wait until she was fifty-five in order to retire from the city formally and apply for the pension and health benefits she was informed by a city agent that she had vested. In a telephone interview Ms. Montgomery stated that she thought she was under-paid for most of the years she toiled, as the position garnered little more than minimum wage, but she also thought that the benefits she was accruing would pay off in the long run so she stayed put until she no longer could.
This speaks to my perseverance in questioning Higgins regarding adequate notification of current employees. As is commonly the case they could be basing their life decisions in part on whether they think they have a certain work benefit vested or not.
When Ms. Montgomery resigned her position on September 5, 2002 she went to the city Treasurer’s office, the office that formerly administered the health benefit. There she was given a letter from city agent Assistant Treasurer Heidi S. Sawicki which reads as follows:
"This is a follow-up to our conversation of last week. Upon your retirement, you will be eligible to join the city’s health insurance plan as a retiree. If you choose not to participate at that particular time, you will have the opportunity to join once a year, during our open enrollment period, usually in the month of May.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact our office."
That was it, short and sweet. At the top of the formal city letterhead are the names of Helen Marusek-Treasurer, Heidi S. Sawicki-Assistant Treasurer, and Carolyn Horrigan-Benefits Coordinator.
It appears from the letter that Ms. Montgomery inquired on the status of her benefits from the Treasurer’s Office during the week before she tendered her resignation and was given this letter for her records. This does not appear to me to be a "folklore" policy.
A little over fours years later Ms. Montgomery received another letter dated October 31, 2006 from the city, this time from Glenda G. Stoddard, Director, Human Resources, the department that now administers the benefit. It reads as follows:
"This letter is to inform you that we have implemented a new policy relative to employee and retiree eligibility for the City of Northampton’s Group Health Insurance benefits. The content of this policy supersedes any other policy or information you may have. I have enclosed a copy of the policy for your review. This policy can be changed and updated as the needs of the City dictate.
Please call me if you have any questions."
That was it, another short but not so sweet correspondence received almost a year after Higgins had changed the policy. After reading through the policy Ms. Montgomery realized that her benefits had been taken away retroactively because she hadn’t directly retired from the city. Further the city provided no advance opportunity to enroll in its health plan, rather the benefit was truncated without notice.
This is interesting because according to Higgins when I asked her about notifying current employees of the policy change she answered in part, "…any time somebody is leaving they always check in with various offices." Precisely what Ms. Montgomery did when she left the city’s employ, but look how it’s turning out for her! Moreover, Higgins added, "I know that we notified everybody in writing who had ten years or more in the plan who was incurring on our health insurance. We notified them that that change was going to happen." Sounds like she was implying that there was advance notice thereby providing some time for people to enroll before the policy changed, but that was simply not the case.
Ms. Montgomery informed me that she made three visits to city hall after she was notified of the change in 2006 in order to speak with the mayor, though she could not remember the dates. She said each time the mayor was unavailable and added that the mayor did not get back to her. Ms. Montgomery also said she called the mayor’s office several times and again, the mayor did not respond. She said she was referred to the Human Resources department by the mayor’s staff and that personnel there informed her that she no longer qualified for the benefit.
Here’s what the mayor said in contradiction of this scenario, "…I will say to you that we’re looking at individual cases as they come forward and if there is an individual case that seems like they didn’t quite understand it, we’re going to look at that and try and make it fair." She further added, "…if somebody comes forward saying, we retired and were given this and then this happened and so on, we’re going to work with them. But I’m not going to necessarily work with somebody who worked for the city ten or twelve, fifteen years ‘just go work someplace else for twenty years and then come back’ that they are necessarily going to get on our health insurance." Ms. Montgomery worked for the city for eighteen years and left about five years ago, hardly the scenario described by Higgins as justification for the policy change, yet Higgins does not seem interested in working with Ms. Montgomery to "make it fair."
Though she changed the policy unilaterally, during our July 16, 2007 interview Higgins implicated several past and present employees that played a role in crafting this policy. She cited John Musante, former Finance Director and current Treasurer/Finance Director for the town of Amherst, Glenda Stoddard, current Human Resources Director, and Janet Sheppard, current City Solicitor. She added that it was not within the Insurance Advisory Committee’s purview to approve or not approve her policy shift.
Still we are left with unanswered questions:
Where is the legal opinion that Higgins stated she secured prior to her policy reformulation?
Have all current city employees actually been duly notified?
How many past employees does this policy impact?
Why is the mayor hiding information and citing the Freedom of Information Act? (How often have we heard developers address the Planning Board in this way, "I’ve been working with the Planning Department on this design proposal…" yet they are not charged for city staff time to my knowledge. How is it that the city will charge for the staff time of some individuals when asked to provide information for public dissemination but not for others who are helping to design a subdivision? Exactly who is it the taxpayers are subsidizing?)
