Posted on 01/24/2012 8:06:09 AM PST by MichCapCon
Salem Township employees don’t contribute anything to their health care costs.
And they won’t have to contribute up to 20 percent of their health care costs as a new state law mandates after the Salem Township board voted 7-0 to exempt itself from the law. Municipalities need a two-thirds vote from the governing body to be exempt from the law.
The Publicly Funded Health Insurance Contribution Act (Public Act 152) states that as of Jan. 1, 2012, “a public employer shall pay not more than 80% of the total annual costs of all of the medical benefit plans it offers or contributes to for its employees and elected public officials.”
The township's resolution states: “Salem Township further believes that the determination of compensation and benefits for the township employees are most properly under the venue of township’s elected representatives, and not the State of Michigan or its officials.”
Salem Township Supervisor Robert Heyl defended the vote in an email.
“We exempted ourselves to allow us time to work on a complete benefits package for our employees,” Heyl said. “Our only union employees are the paid on-call firefighters, and none of them have opted for health insurance. Our other employees currently do not contribute to health insurance. This will more than likely change.”
Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said no private-sector businesses would contemplate paying 100 percent of health care costs.
“Does government exist to serve the people, or the other way around?” asked McHugh. “Township officials who vote for excessive benefits show they're confused about who really deserves their loyalty — taxpayers or government employees and their unions.”
The average Michigan private-sector worker pays 21 percent of their health insurance, and the average federal employee in Michigan pays about 25 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfidential.com ...
Wonderful!
I hereby declare that I am exempt from state speed limit laws as well as the state tax code.
How liberating.
Let the looting of the public’s money continue!
Did 2/3rds of you agree?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.......That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..............Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,
I don’t have a problem with this. If Salem is so flush with cash that they have money for this, then fine. I would, though, bar them from any state bailout or funding supplement.
.gov = grifters with guns
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