A special committee has been appointed to try and resolve the House and Senate disagreements over the budget for the Public Employees Retirement System.
The committee will meet next Monday, June 8th, in the Harvest room in the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner (R-Dickinson) will chair the committee. He says it’s an attempt to find common ground before the Legislature has its reconvened session, tentatively scheduled June 16th.
"We need to do it now," said Warner. "We can't wait until the end of June, because there's a July First deadline for PERS to know whether or not it has a budget."
PERS selects the insurance carrier for the state employee health insurance plan. This year, PERS selected Sanford Health over long-time carrier Blue Cross Blue Shield. When the House amended the bill, it added language to replace two PERS board members with four legislators, and added language that forces bids every two years, and allows a re-bid of the current contract if Sanford's plan differs from the Blues plan. That language was in another bill the Senate killed. And that's been one of the areas of contention in the PERS budget bill -- that caused the Legislature to adjourn without taking final action on the bill.
"You know, the whole purpose of the whole bill was to make sure the plan -- no matter who provides it -- was the same as what our people had before," said House Majority Leader Al Carlson (R-Fargo). "And that's still the goal."
But Wardner says he still has a problem with that language.
"Once you sign a contract, you have to live up to it," said Wardner."So those things, from my standpoint, are going to be tough to find any compromise on, unless there's something I haven't thought about. And there surely could be."
Wardner says there are some other issues. And he says the process will be done in the open – not behind closed doors.
