County explores employee benefits, wages as budget process continues

County Human Resources Director Jodi Saffelle, left, has a rapt audience as she traces health insurance variables, including a 12.1% rate hike. Photo/Roger Bianchini

FRONT ROYAL – The Warren County Board of Supervisors discussed the never-ending battle to keep the county government’s workforce competitively compensated during a Tuesday, March 6 work session. The specter of a new compensation study to build upon the last one conducted by consultant Springsted in 2008 was the final topic of a three-pronged work session following a brief meeting.

Other than approval of a routine-business consent agenda, the meeting was highlighted by county fire and rescue’s annual report; a report on the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Parks Trails events and projects; a VDOT update; and a county administrator update on the status of county power outages from last weekend’s gale-force storm. On that last topic, County Administrator Doug Stanley said three locations in the county remain without power and that a total of 3,000 electrical meters in Warren County were down at some point during the storm. Stanley credited the work of the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative for restoring power in many outlying areas of the county.

But back on the work session front of employee pay and benefits, Human Resources Director Jodi Saffelle reviewed three health insurance options before presenting the prospect of the county government issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new compensation study.

Health Care options

Saffelle presented three options for the next budget year in The Local Choice (TLC) Health Benefits Program the county switched to in July of 2016 for FY 2017. That decision came after several so-called “bad years” when a larger number of high-dollar claims were made, leading to a substantive financial loss for the county in the self-funded insurance plan the county had successfully carried for decades.

Two of the three options revolve around how much of an employee contribution hike the county will pick up. The county was hit with a 12.1-percent hike by carrier TLC, though Saffelle noted that was down from an original estimate of a16 to 18-percent hike. The third option involves changes to the current plan structure.

Under Option 1 the County would cover not only its portion of the rate increase, but half of the employees’ 12.1-percent hike. Option 2 would see the full 12.1-percent employee contribution increase passed on to the employees. Unlike the first two, Option 3 involves changes to the existing plan. To summarize, the Key Advantage 250 (buy up) Plan would be eliminated; the Key Advantage 500 (base) Plan would become the “buy up” plan; and the new Key Advantage 1000 would become the new “base plan”.

While the third option appeared to have slightly better rates for both the employer and employee, it ups the amounts of the available deductibles, removing the 250 and adding 1000, with the 500 becoming the lowest available deductible.

Differences in monthly contributions between the plans ranged from a low of four dollars for employee only basic coverage to as high as $45 for full family comprehensive coverage. The monthly contribution difference for employees between the first two options ranged from a plus $4 for employee-only basic to plus $42 for full family comprehensive coverage were the County to choose to pass the full employee rate hike to the employee.

Human Resources Director Saffelle noted there was no recommendation included in her presentation, calling the decision from the board’s perspective “a crapshoot”. Discussion indicated a desire to help the employees if revenues in the coming fiscal year allow so.

Compensation Study

Of the compensation study RFP, Human Resources Director Saffelle proposed the idea of a joint study including the county public school system. Stanley observed what has been oft-stated in the past, Warren County will NEVER be able to compete salary-wise with Fauquier or Loudoun Counties to the east, but DOES need to be competitive regionally in the northern Shenandoah Valley. The county administrator noted the greatest challenge on that front is “the 600-pound gorilla” in the northern valley, Frederick County, because Frederick does find itself competing for employees with those richer counties to the east.

The goal is to get an updated read on, not only the great northern Frederick “gorilla”, but Shenandoah, Page and Rappahannock Counties to the west and south that are on a more level budget and revenue playing field with Warren County.

Staff indicated it was hoped the RFP could be sent out by March, with responses in by June. However, Stanley observed that the entire process was not targeting changes in the coming budget year, but several years down the road.