Legislation Seeks to Lower Cost Local Governments Pay for Employee Insurance

Ohio State Representative David Thomas recently introduced legislation designed to lower the cost local governments pay for employees’ insurance while streamlining the administrative process to save the state’s taxpayer dollars.

According to a statement from the Ohio House of Representatives, the proposed bill “gives permissive authority to local governments to elect to join the State Department of Administrative Services Health Insurance pool.”

The legislation, which awaits a bill number and committee assignment, would enable local government employees to purchase insurance “in a much larger pool of applicants, driving down costs for the local taxpayer and applying uniform benefits for our local employees,” the statement read.

“As I discuss cost savings measures with local governments often the expense of insurance is a common theme for both employees and the taxpayer,” Thomas said in a statement.

“It is usually our smaller local governments that struggle to keep these costs in check due to less payers in their insurance pool, but even larger local entities would benefit from this arrangement.

“The same health insurance we all enjoy should be available for our local government public servants,” Thomas continued. “Each entity can decide if it is better for the taxpayer if they would opt into the state plan or stick with their current plan.”