Compulsory Healthcare Changes an Integral Part of Woonsocket's $125 Million Budget

Critics of the Woonsocket Budget Commission's intent to exercise its authority to compel benefits changes on city, school and police employees called the resulting numbers in the proposed $125 million budget unrealistic at last Thursday's Budget Commission meeting.

The proposal, which is still subject to change, carries a $3.6 million deficit, which will be ammortized during the next five years in the Budget Commission's 5-year plan.

The benefits changes include moving all city employees under one unified health insurance plan and previously announced changes to retireee benefits. The move accounts for millions in savings in the 5-year-plan.

After continued lack of progress on negotiation, The Budget Commission voted on April 19 to compel the changes on the city's expired contracts if they, or some other equal savings, are not negotiated by June 30. 

Since the Budget Commssion is prohibited from changing the terms of existing contracts, the firefighters union is not part of the change. Negotiations with the firefighters continues, as it does with the unions holding expired contracts, according to officials. Budget Commission members say they'd prefer to continue negotiating with all the city's unions to either make those changes or other modifications that create similar savings. But, said Budget Commission members Mayor Leo Fontaine and Council President John Ward, the Commission will compel the changes as a "Plan B" option if negotiations don't create them. 

While negotiations with the unions has dragged recently, said Budget Commission Chairman Bill Sequino, "This may speed them up a bit."

"We're putting things in the budget that are not realistic to the point of solid numbers," said City Councilman Bob Moreau. He said the situation reminded him of when experts told them the Woonsocket School Department could operate on $59 million, but the department wound up spending millions more. "I can see it, it's going to happen again in this budget, because we're using non-realistic numbers," Moreau said. He said it would be better to set the budget on current conditions, get concessions later and then adjust the budget during the fiscal year.

Councilman Albert Brien agreed. "It does unilateral implementation of certain conditions that really belong in the collective bargaining arena," Brien said. He said that will result in, "...a budget that is clearly going to be challenged..."The Director of Revenue (Rosemary Booth Galoogly) mentioned yesterday that they do expect a challenge. And a challenge of course will generate enormous legal fees."

"These are real numbers," said Budget Commissioner Peder Schaefer, "They're not made up numbers." Though they are not definite, he said, budgets are routinely based on reasonable expectations that aren't guaranteed.

School Committee member Eleanor Nadeau, who along with Committeeman John Donlon voted against the School Department budget because it was based on healthcare savings still unnegotiated with teachers, also disagreed with basing the budget on the Budget Commission's authority to make the contract changes. "The reason we did that is because we did not feel these were realistic figures," Nadeau said.

Galoogly said the Budget Commission does have the authority to make the changes to the expired contracts, though she and the Budget Commission members would rather find an agreement with the unions for the changes. "It's very difficult, but it's necessary if we're going to save Woonsocket," Galoogly said.

When the Budget Commission voted to make the changes April 19, Fontaine said that should something prevent them from making those changes, such as a court injunction, then the Commission would have to vote to acknowledge they can't enact the city's 5-year plan, making recievership the next likely step.