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OPINIONS
Editorial: On the city insurance battle and MU's green fee
This week, Cabell Circuit Court Judge John Cummings ordered the city to continue to pay for the more expensive health insurance coverage for retired police officers and firefighters.
Purchase this photoIf the latest ruling in a legal dispute between the City of Huntington and its police and firefighters unions stands, the city's financial picture just got a lot worse.
And it already was bad.
In a court battle that started in the summer, Cabell Circuit Judge John Cummings ordered this week that the city must continue to pay for more expensive health insurance coverage for retired police officers and firefighters. He had ruled in late June that Mayor David Felinton could implement new insurance coverage for active employees, but that the city would have to continue coverage under the previous plan for retirees for four months or until the city and unions agree on something else. No agreement occurred, and the four-month extension granted in June for retirees' coverage ran out in October.
The judge's order instructs the city to provide the more expensive insurance plan for retirees permanently.
The issue stems from the city's efforts to curb health insurance costs, which have risen substantially in recent years. The City Council set a budget number of $5.6 million for health insurance, less than it paid for insurance the previous year and told the mayor to live within it. Felinton tried, and announced in June that he would unilaterally implement the only insurance plan he could find to fit within that budget. For active city employees, though, the new plan meant they would have to pay about six times higher than the $12 or $25 a month they pay now for single or family coverage.
The upshot of this week's ruling? A bigger deficit in the budget, to the tune of about $2 million, city officials say. The four-month extension of the old plan for retirees already was requiring cuts in this year's budget, and making the more expensive coverage permanent will undoubtedly lead to more. Rising personnel costs -- for pensions as well as health insurance -- already had contributed to a severe pinch on city finances.
We'll wait to see how this further curtails what taxpayers receive for their money.
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Marshall University students went green this week, and that's not a reference to donning the school colors for homecoming week.
In voting Monday and Tuesday, students approved a mandatory fee to fund "green" projects such as campus-wide recycling. The $5-per-semester fee would take effect starting in the Fall 2009 semester, and could generate about $90,000 a year, according to Marshall Dean of Student Affairs Steve Hensley. The money will be added to a $65,000 grant from the state and is intended primarily to start a recycling program, but may include other projects.
Imposing the fee must await approval of the university's Board of Governors, but that shouldn't be a problem. After all, this was a student-driven initiative supported by the Sierra Student Coalition and the Student Government Association and backed by 69 percent of students who voted.
Mandatory fees for environmental causes are not exactly new on college campuses, according to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, but the Marshall effort is rare in that the idea for the fee came entirely from students, according to Lalena Price, chairwoman of the Greening Marshall Committee.
So congratulations are in order to Marshall's students, who were willing to put some money behind an initiative that speaks well for them and the university as a whole and should make a difference for the local environment.
