Broward School Board shakes up insurance committee
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-12-02 12:37:56 | Word Count: 538
Broward School Board members agreed to take themselves off of a once-coveted insurance advisory committee on Tuesday, the result of criticism over climbing health insurance rates and ongoing scrutiny over how the district does business.
The board unanimously agreed with Superintendent Jim Notter's recommendation to no longer have any board members on the committee, where the board up to now had three positions. The committee makes insurance recommendations to Notter, who then brings issues to the School Board.
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``As long as this is something that comes back to the board, I think you don't need to have participation from the board on the front end,'' board member Kevin Tynan said.
With other changes, the committee will shrink from 16 members to 14.
Last week, the three board members on the committee asked to be replaced. The committee switched from two insurance providers to one, Vista Healthplan, last year -- and this year accepted an increase of up to 45 percent in insurance rates for employees' dependents, starting Jan. 1.
The committee has also taken heat for picking Vista in the wake of the September arrest of suspended board member Beverly Gallagher in a federal corruption probe, which has called into question how the district doles out lucrative contracts.
And board member Stephanie Kraft has drawn scrutiny after revealing that her husband worked for influential board lobbyist Neil Sterling, who also represents Vista before the School Board. Kraft has said her vote for Vista to get the district's $1.7 billion health insurance contract came after doing research and comparing options, not because of the lobbyist's influence.
District staff reviewed the makeup of insurance committees in other large Florida school systems and found that none of the groups in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Orange, Hillsborough and Duval counties includes board members.
Broward board members said on Tuesday that they do not need to be on the committee -- as long as they can discuss any changes at length before taking any votes.
``It wasn't until I was on the insurance committee . . . that I understood a lot of things,'' Robin Bartleman said. ``I think staff needs to do a very good job of informing School Board members.''
The Broward Teachers Union had criticized the number of board members on the committee as too high. BTU President Pat Santeramo also has a seat on the committee, though he and Dan Reynolds, head of the Federation of Public Employees, stopped attending meetings in protest earlier this year.
Santeramo said the insurance committee has too many district members and not enough input from employee groups.
The committee has had the same number of voting district members and employee representatives, though additional nonvoting members are staffers and insurance consultants.
To keep the voting balance the same, the board will remove a staffer and add two more Federation of Public Employees representatives in addition to taking out the three School Board members.
