Tag: health insurance

City Sees No Increase In Health Insurance Premiums For Second Straight Year. Odd Considering We Had a “Deadly Plague” Last Year.

Great news for taxpayers, as Baylor Scott White held the line on health insurance costs for City employees. I’m pretty sure this happened last year as well.

Weird, because BEFORE that, the City got jammed with massive increases almost yearly and nobody seemed to care (they saw an 11.8% increase in 2014/2015 – then they saw a 13% increase in 2017/2018).

Then in April 2020, I started asking uncomfortable questions. I asked if we ever looked around for better insurance. I asked for data going back ten years on City employee health insurance claims and why they had DOUBLED in one year! I fought with City attorney JC “Stonewall” Brown in order to get access to that data – data that City Finance Director Moreno had ALREADY talked about in the press.

Come to think of it, I never DID get all that information. JC Brown (and by extension, Mayor “Transparency” Talbert) was a huge pain in the ass in denying me much of the info, saying:

“as a courtesy to you, the staff searched for data and asked that I provide you with the limited information that remained available to the staff.  I provided that to you via my correspondence dated March 23rd. No additional data will be provided“

This is the attorney that bills the City about $7,000 every month for various little projects, btw – talking to me about doing me courtesies.

Bottom line is that a lot of info was requested of BSW about claims amounts and how premiums are set. Lo and behold! That very same year BSW decides to hold premiums unchanged…then they did it again this year!

It’s almost as if somebody over there realized “uh oh, these guys are starting to realize they are being bent over by us.”

You know what ELSE is funny? Last year was supposedly a deadly pandemic year. I remember Rhonda Witcher clutching her pearls in the Radiogram about how “hospitals were being overrun!” and I remember a tearful Mayor Transparency Talbert crying on Facebook when she caught it herself. I remember daily tearful counting of every person who passed away – including many in their 80s and 90s who actually lived in a nursing home two counties over.

The City has 110 full-time employees – many of them older and very out of shape. According to the non-stop wailing about “the deadly pandemic”, we should have seen more than a few City employees in the hospital and the ICU with Covid – racking up HUGE medical bills, right?

In short, Covid was a perfect excuse to jack health premiums through the roof – as an ACTUAL reaction to the giant hospital bills the City employees were surely running up during the “pandemic”. We should have seen at least one or two City employees drop dead of Covid too, statistically.

Yet none of that happened.

That’s because the math doesn’t lie. I know two people in the insurance industry, both with 25 years of experience – and BOTH of them told me that life insurance premiums have not reacted at all to the “deadly pandemic” last year. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth and kids in masks and morons keeping their kids out of school was ALL FOR NOTHING. The insurance numbers prove it unequivocally.

Transparency In City Government Is a Bad Joke

I had a good laugh a few weeks ago when Mayor Talbert opined at the end of a City council meeting [go to the 1:26:45 mark and listen for 45 seconds] about how citizens should be able to ask department heads anything and get answers…that there should be complete transparency.

Her exact words: “I feel like (City) staff and Council oughta be tasked with being accountable to answer on the spot…and..uh…I would be comfortable doing that….that’s transparency at its finest…is…you know…we don’t put off a question, we answer it on the spot”

I chuckled because every single time I ask a department head (IT, LEDC, Finance, etc) OR even Finley himself a question that might actually make them look negligent, incompetent or profligate, ‘transparency’ goes right out the window. This is evidenced by my past questions about the no-bid Azbell A/V contract, the LEDC and ‘business park’ contracts, employee discipline questions, ransomware attack questions…..the list literally goes on and on.

In fact, this ENTIRE BLOG only exists because I asked IT DIRECTOR Monica Wright (July of 2018) a simple question about what appeared to be a ridiculously overpriced NO-BID audio/visual system from Azbell Electronics for the new Council chambers. Her response? To copy and paste a couple sentences from the Azbell bid sheet! When I pressed her, Finley took over immediately and shut down all lines of inquiry. Seems to be a pattern with all “department heads” – they aren’t actually ‘head’ of jack shit, but rather a Finley Finger Puppet dancing to his tune.

Well, I have apparently opened an whole NEW can of worms regarding the City’s health insurance premiums and payouts. I had recently politely requested information that is WELL WITHIN my rights as a taxpaying citizen and guess what? Finance Department head Yvonne Moreno and City manager Finley ‘Elmo” deGraffenreid are once again hiding behind their City attorney and stonewalling me.

When that happens, I just KNOW I am on to a big stinky pile of dogshit they prefer to keep hidden. Good thing I still have MY lawyer on retainer.

Details coming up very shortly! I know you all need SOMETHING to keep you entertained during quarantine. Until then, let’s watch Finley ‘Elmo’ deGraffenreid make the Seven Goldfish dance to his tune…

Ideas For The New Budget – Part II

I have previously cited plenty of examples of waste in the city budget and why I think it happens. What to do about it? Here are a few ideas:

  • Eliminate the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. Mandy Walsh may be the nicest lady on the planet (I do not know her) but she is costing the city over $100,000 per year to go to conventions and attend a monthly LEDC meeting. The LEDC has wasted over a million dollars on the “business park” which is a complete disaster and not a legitimate function of any small government. After eliminating the LEDC, private citizens will still open up Burger Kings, MOJO Coffee shops, antique stores and new hotels and some old businesses will still fail. That is the nature of free-market capitalism. We don’t need a group of 5 or 6 “planners” wasting six figures to do that. The world of Lampasas will keep on spinning after LEDC is gone and the city will save a TON of money.
  • Start looking SERIOUSLY at alternatives to the current health care plan or provider. Lampasas seems to spend around $12,000 to $14,000 PER EMPLOYEE while other cities our size seem to spend more like $7,000 to $8,000 per employee. That is insane. Gary Cox needs to get on the horn to Harker Heights, Crockett, Princeton, Kaufman and other cities and ask their managers how they do it. I saw one city that used a Texas Municipal League program for their health care. Why don’t we? Hell, Kristy and Monica ALONE cost the city $25,905 for insurance (line item 505-5115). A 30% reduction in these costs would bring us in line with other cities our size and save OVER a quarter of a million dollars PER YEAR.
  • PLEASE FORGET about the civic center idea. We don’t need another “Old City Hall” debacle on our hands wasting hundreds of thousands per year in operating costs and interest payments. A cursory Google search shows many cities lose a ton of money on this type of project. The fact that Bruce “Always Wrong” Haywood wants one should be reason enough to bury it forever.

Implementing just these few ideas could easily save the city up to HALF A MILLION PER YEAR. That sounds like a lot, and it is. However, it only represents LESS THAN 2% of our $27,000,000 budget. I know most American families (including me) have had to cut spending at LEAST a few percent when times are tight. Don’t tell me the Lampasas City government can’t do the same and get by with 98.15% of what they spent last year.

I implore City Council to at least consider these proposals. They are all well-researched and well-documented.

City Now Spends Quarter of a Million per MONTH on City Employee Benefits

Packets for the May 13th City Council meeting have been posted on-line. Of great interest to me are the large checks written monthly for health insurance premiums and retirement contributions.

For the first time (that I ever remember seeing) these now total OVER $250,000 PER MONTH – a run-rate of $3 MILLION per year.

Check #150608 to Scott & White – $118,245.76

Check #150616 to Texas Municipal Retirement System – $141,536.69

For a grand total of $259,782.45 for the month of April 2019….an annual run-rate of $3,117,389.40 or over $28,000 per employee (assuming 110 employees)

Do YOU, fellow tax slave, get to put away over $2,300 per MONTH for your retirement and health insurance? I highly doubt it.

So how fast has this expense item exploded over the last two administrations? I have that data too. EXACTLY four years ago, the numbers were as follows (page 65):

May 2015: Scott and White $86,307.20

May 2015: Texas Municipal Retirement System $78,120.81

For a grand total of $164,428.01 – a difference of $95,354.44 per MONTH. This represents an INCREASE of 58% in just four short years – or 14.5% increase PER YEAR!!

Now, the dummies in charge might not know about the Rule of 72, but I learned it in grade school. That rate of increase implies a DOUBLING of benefits every 5 years or so (5.12 to be precise). To say that is unsustainable is a huge understatement.

Will any “leaders” have the balls to cut spending? Or will it be more of the same?

Fun Fact: Harker Heights Spends FAR Less on Government Salaries and Benefits Than Lampasas Does

When I see our city government write a check for around $116,000 every single month to Scott and White (page 39 of City Council packet) for their gold-plated health care plan, I get to wondering if other cities are reaming their taxpayers just as hard. So I went looking.

Harker Heights is just about 35 miles down the road, so I figured that was a good place to start. They are 400% bigger than Lampasas, but located in the same general area. I was mainly curious about the city manager and information systems expenses, since that is where we seem to spend an exorbitant sum. They don’t break out those departments in quite the same way Lampasas does, but I was still able to find some startling facts.

Harker Heights lumps a bunch of people into the “Administration” department. According to their latest budget, that department includes 21 full-time employees (see pages 77 and 78 of the 2017/2018 approved budget) – including such titles as City Manager, Assistant City Manager, Human Resource Director, Technology Director, Assistant City Secretary, Human Resource Clerk, Records Management Coordinator, etc, etc.

For those 20 or 21 people (depending of whether you use the 2017 actual or the 2018 estimated number of employees), the City of Harker Heights spent the following (page 80 of approved budget):

  1. Salaries: $818,900
  2. Overtime $8,000
  3. Worker’s comp $6,500
  4. Health Insurance $76,900
  5. Social security $63,300
  6. Retirement $124,400

Somehow they managed to spend only slightly over $1,000,000 for salaries and benefits for those TWENTY important people! Amazing. Health insurance was only $77,000 for those employees for the entire year – or less than $4,000 per employee.

Lampasas now spends almost $1,400,000 per year on health insurance ($116,000 per month multiplied by 12) for roughly 110 employees – or over $12,000 per employee. Truly amazing.

The retirement number, even if you include the Social Security line item, works out to just over $9,300 per employee….as compared to over $14,000 for our “important people” (see below).

Let’s look at just FOUR of our “important people” as we have in the past.

All figures are taken from the most recent approved budget:

City Manager and Information Systems combined (4 employees):

  1. Salary $349,000 ($87,000 each)
  2. Insurance $49,689 ($12,422 each)
  3. Retirement $56,389 ($14,097 each)

Health insurance for just those four people is costing the city almost $50,000 per year…yet Harker Heights manages to provide insurance for their entire 20-person “Administration Department” (which includes many of the same titles) for only 50% more. Incredible.

I noticed that elections for Lampasas city council, mayor, etc are fast approaching and that many of the current members have re-filed and plan to run again. Here is a thought for those running: maybe this time around, you can all ask a few more questions about the huge sums of money being spent in our town and maybe take ten or twenty minutes to do a little research to see if all the stuff Finley throws on your plate is legit….rather than unanimously approving everything on the table? You know….stuff like $100,000 for an A/V system that originally bid out at $34,000. Or why we spend $1.4 million a year on health insurance.

Just a thought.