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Staff outline '80/20' school employee insurance proposal and funding request
Summary
LESC staff presented draft language to require districts and charters to pay at least 80% of employee insurance premiums and requested a $73.2 million appropriation to ensure districts can meet the floor; staff said the measure is limited to K‑12 public schools and excludes higher education and retirees.
LESC staff described a draft bill to set a statutory floor requiring school districts and charter schools to pay at least 80% of insurance premiums for public‑school employees enrolled in NMIMSIA. Staff explained the measure would set a uniform minimum while still allowing districts to pay more.
Daniel and other LESC staff said the appropriation attached to the proposal is intended to ensure districts already paying higher shares are made whole: "The LAFC recommendation of $73,200,000 would is enough to return the full amount that some of those districts are paying," Daniel said, adding the approach is to "pay for that policy regardless if someone was already aligned with that policy." Staff also proposed a separate $47,700,000 recommendation to cover employer shares for expected premium increases.
Committee members raised implementation and distribution questions: how the appropriation would be applied when districts have different plan mixes and participation rates, what happens to retirees, and the interaction of the proposal with large self‑insured districts (APS) and NMSIA. Staff said the bill would not apply to higher education or retirees and that LESC staff would work with NMSIA, PED and LFC to study long‑run sustainability and structural issues such as district exemptions.
Members asked for more modeling about average premium costs and the formula by which the $73.2M figure was derived; staff said that estimate came from the insurance authority and that a range of plan designs and lifecycle events (marriage, newborns) make precise forecasting difficult.
