Intro. 1096 Sponsor Says, ‘This is a Budget Fight’; Calls Out City ‘Lies’
NYC Council Member Chris Marte at the podium during Thursday night’s retiree town hall at the Manny Cantor Center on the Lower East Side.
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City Council Member Chris Marte—sponsor of the bill protecting municipal retiree health care—dismissed attacks on the legislation as outright “lies” Thursday night on the Lower East Side and predicted the measure will ultimately pass.
“Retirees are only being placed on Medicare Advantage to bail out the unions,” he said. “Something the City should be doing without cutting retirees’ or active workers’ health care. Intro. 1096 will help us to get there. Taking the retirees out of this fight and putting the responsibility of funding the Stabilization Fund solely on the Mayor and City Council. This is a budget fight. Just like we wouldn’t cut funding for schools or libraries, we shouldn’t be cutting funding for active workers.”
Intro. 1096, if enacted, would prevent current Mayor Eric Adams—and any chief executive following him—from stripping 250,000 retired city workers of their Traditional Medicare benefits and forcing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.
The bill, however, is being staunchly opposed by Mayor Adams and City Council Speaker—and mayoral hopeful—Adrienne Adams who, along with the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] contend that Intro. 1096 violates collective bargaining rights and would be deemed illegal.
It has 16 cosponsors at the time of the writing after Council Member and candidate for City Comptroller Justin Brannan [D-47th District] recently signed onto the bill. City Council Members Darlene Mealy [D-41st District] and Kamillah Hanks [D-49th District] were also Intro. 1096 supporters—but they quickly retreated and reversed course under pressure.
District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido has been leading a scorched earth campaign against Intro. 1096 and anyone supportive of it—Speaker Adams, it should be noted, is Garrido’s top choice for mayor in the upcoming June 24 Democratic Mayoral primary.
And while Garrido and Mayor Adams continue to press Medicare Advantage as an urgent cost-saving measure and an enhancement to retiree’s Traditional Medicare and MediGap coverage—Speaker Adams keeps insisting that the City Council has no role in the fight—and, in fact, only “threatens further complications” if it took some kind of action.
Council Member Marte, however, told municipal retirees gathered at the the Manny Cantor Center at 197 East Broadway on June 5, that retiree health care has always been decided by the New York City Council—and that passing Intro. 1096 now would only be following “decades of precedent.”
“[Active workers] may have heard from [their] unions that if this Medicare Advantage plan does not go through you’ll have to start paying an extra $1,500 a year in for your health insurance,” he said. “Or that you may have to add premiums to your health care. This is misleading.”
NYC Laborers Local 924 President Kyle Simmons [with mic] addresses panelists [l to r] Michelle Keller, Chris Marte, Marianne Pizzitola, and Neal Frumkin.
Council Member Marte insisted the City’s public sector unions wouldn’t have to charge active workers more for health care if the City of New York funded the [Health] Stabilization Fund—the now-depleted pot of money that actually paid for active workers’ premiums and benefits.
“But,” he added, “Mayor Adams and Speaker Adrienne Adams have not wanted to find an alternative funding source. They put all their eggs in one basket—and that is the Medicare Advantage plan.”
Council Member Marte further expanded the history, “During the [Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration, the MLC realized that it was spending more money than the City was giving [the Health Stabilization Fund]. Because of this, the [Health] Stabilization Fund was losing money so they decided to get more money for that fund by putting retirees on a Medicare Advantage plan. By doing that the City wouldn’t have to pay that 20 percent of Medicare Part B reimbursement—instead, the entire cost of the health insurance would just be paid for by the federal government.”
And like an episode of Scooby-Doo, the City of New York and the MLC would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddlesome retirees fighting back in the streets and winning 11 favorable decisions in court.
A spokesperson for Speaker Adams later told Work-Bites Council Member Marte’s assertions are “simply not true.”
“The Speaker never said this and had no role in these decisions,” the spokesperson said in an email. “These healthcare decisions, like all such determinations for the municipal workforce, were made by the mayor’s office and the city’s municipal labor unions in an agreement between those two parties.”
The spokesperson further insisted, “The Council had no role in Medicare Advantage, and it is entirely inaccurate to claim that retiree healthcare has always been decided by the Council.”
“Speaker Adams supports quality healthcare choices for retirees and city workers, and has repeatedly urged the mayor’s office to stop prolonging the court battles and resolve these issues as the entity of city government with authority over the decision. Council interference in the dispute would only add another lawsuit and further delay resolution for all affected parties,” the spokesperson concluded.
The Mayor’s Office responded by saying, “The city and its unions have negotiated retiree health care benefits for decades, and the claim that the City Council has always made decisions on the issue is false and uninformed.”
“Additionally, Medicare Advantage has been one part of a broader effort to find health care savings—not our entire plan as the councilmember claims—which is evidenced by the fact that we are in negotiations for a new health plan for both active and pre-Medicare retirees as we speak,” First Deputy Press Secretary Liz Garcia told Work-Bites in an email. “We look forward to negotiating a plan that considers the needs of both current and former public servants as well as taxpayers.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include a response from Speaker Adrienne Adam’s office.