FRANKLIN COUNTY,
Franklin County will meet to talk about the amount of money the County will contribute to employee benefit packages.
Tis is the second time Franklin County will be discussing VEBA benefits.
The discussion will focus on how much the county will pat for health insurance for employees.
“One of the major issues that we’re seeing is the system has created haves and have nots. Employees who have families are not eligible for any VEBA, because the premiums cost more than our contribution amount. We currently have 59
employees who are paid nearly $1,600 dollars a month to not take insurance. That’s more than $1.1 million dollars we are paying for employees to not to take insurance. While nothing has been changed at this point, we are taking a good look at the financial impacts, and how we bring about some reasonable parity to the system, because it’s clearly out of balance. We’d like to be able to find a way to provide a cost of living raise each year, and perhaps shifting the system around would allow that. We’re looking at all options,” said Mike Gonzalez, Franklin County Administrator.
VEBA stands for Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association, VEBA is an employer-funded trust agreement often paired with HRAs.
The Money accumulated is typically used to pay medical bills or health devices.
“I would like to bring in an expert to look at how we distribute VEBA for our employees. It gets quite complex when you’re dealing with unions on this issue. It’s different than how we work on benefits packages with non-union members. We need to be conscious that we have a process that’s working for all of our employees. Before we make any decision, we regret, I want to make sure all of our employees aren’t taken care of,” said Gonzalez.
