Porter County
Auditor Robert Wichlinski said his office has looked under every stone in
the County’s specialty funds, trying to find extra money to plug the funding
gap in the employee health insurance.
The backlog had
peaked at about $1.3 million last month and, as of Tuesday, about $400,000
remains unpaid.
“We’ve exhausted
every point of revenue to meet the health care projections,” Wichlinski told
the Commissioners at their meeting Tuesday.
Under a motion
called for by the board President John Evans, R-North, he
and fellow Commissioners Laura Blaney, D-South, and Nancy Adams, R-Center,
voted unanimously in favor of setting aside $5 million of interest money,
generated from funds from the sale of Porter Memorial Hospital.
Before the vote,
Wichlinski estimated an additional $3.6 million will be needed to get
through the year for employee insurance based on current claims. Evans
suggested the request for hospital interest be increased to $5 million in
case the amount goes beyond Wichlinski’s estimate.
Any money left over
would go back to the fund at the end of the year, Evans said. It could also
be rolled over to help pay for next year’s health insurance costs,
Wichlinski said.
The Commissioners,
who are ultimately responsible for employee health insurance and benefits,
will go to the County Council at their upcoming meeting, on Tuesday, Aug.
26, asking members to appropriate the money.
Evans said a
majority of Council members last fall had approved the final 2014 budgets
with the insurance item severely under budget, which is why there is a
shortfall.
According to the
Council’s Budget and Financial Specialist Vicki Urbanik, the hospital
interest fund held $9,459,875 as of this morning. Insurance payouts in
general average about $1 million per month, she said.