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PROVIDENCE -- The campaign to make all of Rhode Island's part-time lawmakers pay a portion of their 100 percent taxpayer-provided health, dental and vision-care coverage begins anew today with a State House hearing.
The House Finance Committee has scheduled a 1 p.m. hearing on Rep. Amy Rice's reintroduced bill to require all state legislators to pay 10 percent of the premiums for their health benefits, which currently cost $17,908.32 for each family plan and $6,408.48 for each individual plan.
The bill, which cleared the House last year, only to die in the Senate for lack of action, would also terminate the $2,002 waiver payments given lawmakers who forgo the state-paid health benefits.
Many already contribute something voluntarily toward the cost of their health-care benefits, including 17 of the 38 senators and 42 of the 75 House members. One pays 7.5 percent, another 20 percent. But the majority voluntarily contribute 10 percent. They include House Speaker William J. Murphy, House Majority Leader Gordon Fox, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed and both the House and Senate Minority Leaders Robert Watson and Dennis Algiere.
Another 5 senators and 14 representatives receive the $2,002, with a handful forgoing a portion of it as a symbolic statement.
But 21 of the state's part-time lawmakers get their health coverage for free.
In the Senate, they include, Senate Majority Leader Daniel Connors, Senate Majority Whip Dominick Ruggerio, and their fellow Sens. Leo Blais, Frank Ciccone, Elizabeth Crowley, James Doyle, Hanna Gallo, Charles Levesque, John McBurney III, Juan Pichardo and Michael Pinga, according to the Joint Committee on Legislative Services.
In the House, they include: House Finance chairman Steven Costantino, House Corporations Committee chairman Brian Kennedy, and Reps. Grace Diaz, Peter Palumbo, Peter Petrarca, William San Bento, David Segal, Agostinho Silva, Thomas Slater and Timothy Williamson, who chairs the House's pension-study commission.
The package includes the same UnitedHealthcare, Delta Dental and VSO (Vision Service Plan) benefits provided to full-time state employees. The difference? Full-time state workers currently contribute up to between 12 percent and 25 percent of their pay for the same benefit package.
Sponsors for the bill to require 10 percent contributions, along with Rice, D-Portsmouth, are Reps. Raymond Gallison, D-Bristol, Watson, R-East Greenwich, John Savage, R-East Providence, and Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown.
The bill sailed through the House easily last year, then ran aground in the Senate with Paiva Weed -- who has since made the leap from majority leader to the Senate's first woman president -- saying that she believes "that it should be a voluntary decision. It certainly defeats whatever power of example that they are attempting to demonstrate by mandating it, rather than having it be voluntary.''
With the state facing a potential deficit this year of at least $357 million, the debate over legislative co-shares for health benefits is likely to take on a significance that goes beyond the $1.3 million annual cost.
"It's about everyone sharing some of the pain,'' and "taking into account that many people are struggling out there,'' said Fox, House majority leader, last year.
