Baker County receives $74,000 refund [Baker City Herald, Ore.]

Mar. 15--Despite the recession and dwindling tax revenues, the Baker County Board of Commissioners received some positive news about a $74,000 refund coming from the city/county insurance trust.

Commission Chairman Fred Warner Jr. said the $74,000 is Baker County's share of $5 million in refunds of unspent reserves the statewide insurance trust has built up over the past 10 years and is refunding to participating city and county governments.

Warner said the insurance trust board, which he chairs, voted at its last meeting to return surplus reserve funds back to the year 2000 as a credit on insurance premiums paid by Baker County and other participating government entities.

In addition to returning the surplus reserve funds, Warner said due to lower than anticipated liability claims for auto accidents and other things, the board voted to lower premiums to reflect the lower than anticipated claims.

"We pay about $200,000 a year for our liability insurance. That will be one-third less," Warner said, adding that Baker City will also get back "a big chunk too."

He said the refunds are a "one time thing" at this point.

"We have almost $100 million in reserves," Warner said. "We are trying to help our members" with this "one-time thing."

He said the insurance trust is a nonprofit entity established by participating cities and counties to control insurance costs.

"Our claims are going down. We're making money, so we're trying to give it back to members," Warner said last week.

He said cities and counties are also likely to see a reduction in health insurance costs as a result of a decision by the insurance trust board to make a move to self-insured health insurance.

He said the decision to switch to self-insured health insurance by the city/county insurance trust was made based on 25 years of data on health claims.

"It's pretty steady what we pay out," Warner said.

He said the pool of city/county governments generate around $50 million a year in revenues for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which could generate some additional refund checks to cities and counties by self-insuring health insurance.

"Supposedly Blue Cross Blue Shield is nonprofit, but they always seem to get a bunch of our money," Warner said.

Warner's announcement about the liability refund being provided by the insurance trust, and potential for future revenues to cities and counties by going with a self-insured health insurance accompanied a discussion about county budget preparations gearing up for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Warner said each of the county department heads were asked to prepare proposed budgets for their departments by the end of February for consideration and approval by the commission this spring.

However, at the March 3 commission meeting, Warner suggested a change in the way department heads present their budgets to commissioners.

Instead of bringing in the heads of each department and having them describe their budget requests to commissioners and the other three members of the budget committee, Warner called for a streamlined process in which the budgets would simply be submitted for review and discussion by the budget committee.

Warner also suggested that budget board members have the option of calling department heads in as needed for explanations of specific budget items they have questions about.

Warner said he already told department heads to produce bare-bones budgets, reflecting the reality that taxes and other revenues are down because of the recession.

"In our talks with department heads, we have said we are not going to expand programs. We don't have a lot of money," Warner said.

"Seventy-five percent of the budget will be for maintenance (of existing programs) and carry over," Warner said.

He said about 45 percent of the county budget goes to the sheriff's department and county jail.

Warner said he's planning to schedule some half-day and full-day work sessions on the budget starting in early May. That will give the six-member budget committee time to review the department budgets prior to deliberating as a group.

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