Scary Monster of Sustinet Haunts Union Talks

The tentative concession deal negotiated between Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration and state employee unions is dead. But suspicions it was linked the SustiNet plan to create state-run insurance live on, complicating chances of striking a new deal to avert up to 6,500 layoffs.

One element of the rumors about SustiNet is easy to debunk: SustiNet does not exist, at least not as a health-insurance program. One simple, incontrovertible fact is that there is no SustiNet coverage plan into which state employees can be enticed or forced.

But from there, the picture gets fuzzy.

SustiNet supporters say their goal--creating a state-run insurance plan to sell to the public, using leverage from the state employee health plan and other state-funded insurance programs to negotiate lower rates--can be achieved in the coming years.

Some modest pieces of the SustiNet plan became law this month without Malloy's signature. Nothing in the law creates insurance to sell to the public, but it does create an advisory board charged with, among other things, developing a business plan for alternatives to private insurance. It also allows municipalities and some nonprofits to buy health insurance through the state, possibly through the state employee health plan. Union approval is required for anything that modifies the state employee health plan.

Union leaders have been longtime backers of SustiNet. But they say it was not connected to the concession deal.

SustiNet "has nothing to do with the tentative agreement," said Sal Luciano, executive director of Council 4 AFSCME, the largest state employee union, and a member of the board that developed SustiNet. His union was one of four that voted against ratification.

"That was never, ever a consideration that happened in my discussions with labor," said Mark Ojakian, the Malloy administration's chief negotiator on the concession deal. "That was never envisioned at any point in the process, and it just blatantly is not true."

In fact, Malloy has been critical of SustiNet, disappointing the plan's supporters.

In an effort to dispel rumors before union members voted, Ojakian and Daniel E. Livingston, the unions' chief negotiator, signed a statement saying that under the agreement, health care could not be changed again without employee approval until 2022, regardless of anything the General Assembly passed.

Moises Padilla, a correction officer and vice president of an AFSCME local, said the clarification was too little, too late.

"It was so far ingrained by then, it didn't matter," Padilla said.

And as they try to move forward, union leaders face a major challenge: If union members believe they were involved in a plan to sneak changes into their health plan, can the leaders say anything to convince them otherwise?

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