Final insurance contract signed by Fiscal Court -- despite continuing questions
Nov. 14—Pulaski Fiscal Court finished up its last bit of business concerning county employees' health insurance enrollment, but not without a few questions and complaints from those in county government who have not been completely on board with the agent selection process.
Over the past several meetings, a divide was established between four magistrates — Mike Strunk, Mike Wilson, Jimmy Wheeldon and Jason Turpen — who are satisfied with continuing to use Neikirk Insurance as its agent on record, and the duo of Magistrate Mark Ranshaw and County Judge-Executive Marshall Todd who wanted to place the county's insurance out for bids.
Ultimately Fiscal Court voted to remain with Neikirk Insurance, although Ranshaw and Todd continued to express concern about the choice.
At Tuesday's meeting, Kelly Wilson of Neikirk Insurance returned asking the court to approve and sign a third-party administrator contract, which she said was the only piece of business left to deal with after the county's open enrollment period.
Kelly Wilson called it a "standard, boiler-plate contract" that had no additional fees connected to commissions for Neikirk Insurance.
"We still intend to fully uphold the promises we made in the prior court meeting in regards to providing both carrier bills and our bill," she said.
However, while Magistrate Strunk made the motion to approve the contract and Mike Wilson seconded it, Ranshaw asked for some of the wording to be changed.
Ranshaw quoted the contract as saying, "'This agreement shall continue until terminated by either party by giving written notice of termination.' I think this agreement needs to be looked at and approved by the court every year, so we won't have these issues going year to year before we find out ... that we didn't find things that we didn't know about."
Instead, Ranshaw produced a contract with alternate wording he said was created by Judge Todd. That contract contained wording that required the service to be reviewed every year.
Ranshaw made the motion to approve the contract with the changed wording, but when none of the other magistrates offered a second, Judge Todd seconded the motion himself.
In the end, only Ranshaw and Todd voted for the amended contract, with all other magistrates voting no. Likewise, Ranshaw was the only magistrate to vote "No" for the original contract, with all four other magistrates approving it.
As part of the discussion, Ranshaw said he also wanted the government to pay the insurance bills directly to the insurance carriers themselves rather than sending the money to the agent Neikirk Insurance.
"This is my problem: we as a community, we as the people in this county, we get insurance bills and we pay them directly," Ranshaw said. "We don't pay our insurance agent every month. We pay our car insurance, our house insurance and everything directly. I think that would help us have better oversight on everything instead of paying one agency."
He added that that was how he understood the county to pay its liability insurance, sending the money directly to the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACo).
"But that isn't how a third party administrator works," responded Kelly Wilson. "When you pay KACo, KACo turns around and then, don't they pay Anthem?"
"KACo carries their own liability insurance," Ranshaw said.
Whereupon Pulaski County Attorney Martin Hatfield spoke up, saying, "KACo's like an agent though. ... They're their own agent."
Carla Slavey can be reached at cslavey@somerset-kentucky.com
