The University of Georgia Staff Council (UGASC)
Minutes of the March 5, 2008 meeting
Student Learning Center Room 150 2:30 p.m.

President Scott called the meeting to order @ 2:30 p.m.
LeKeiya Keese called roll. 28 voting staff attending.

• Minutes approved for February 5, 2008 with no additions.

Strategic Planning:  We haven’t met yet, but we are waiting on the draft of the strategic plan and then we are going to meet.

Benefits:  Met on the Feb 19 and Lonnie Brown, School of Law, talked to the group at length about faculty leave.  The request for a study of Faculty studies based on gender is currently with the Provost.  I got put on a sub-committee to talk about shared leaved. But the sub-committee has not met yet.  Tom Gausvik was at the meeting.  I know he’s here to talk about serious things. I would say a couple of comments I thought were interesting, is that probably the indemnity plan will go away.  There will start to be more high deductible types of plans offered.  Eventually types of new hires in the system will not have the same benefits we enjoy. But that is way down the line.  Another interesting thing is that in 10 years we will probably have a 1:1 ratio of retirees to current employed people.  We also talked about the optional retirement plan, but since we can’t participate in that, I won’t go over that either.

None

None

House Bill 815 was basically just a language cleanup.  Do I have any committee reports from Staff Council at this time? 

Elizabeth was kind enough to volunteer to compile a list of recommendations and has put them on a webpage that is sort of affiliated with Staff Council. Although the Executive Council talked and we don’t really want to link because we don’t want it appear that we are endorsing a doctor, dentist, plumber etc.  Those are on the listserv, already know that a doctor was offended by a negative recommendation made about her and she sent an email back to the listserv.  So, if you have a recommendation and would like to participate, you can contact Elizabeth or Guerrimo (sp?).  We are happy to sponsor it on the communications website, but we don’t it linked as if we are endorsing it on staff council. If anyone has any issues, please let me know. 

Dr. White do you want to come down?

Were you guys just talking about what was happening in benefits or was it just a presentation of where they think we are going?

A – Part of it was about the SSN issue and the outsourcing of the flexible spending programs. 

One of the things you said was that benefits might not be as good in the future as they are now.  I guess I think one reason people work at UGA is because of the benefits. I guess maybe we need to take that to the committee, how are we going to attract the people to come here if the salary is lower and the benefits are not as good.

Did the benefits committee talk about ways the Univ Council could work to protect the benefits? 

A – Not directly, but I feel sure they would do that.

Ok, this is Dr. White. 

Dr. Barbara White addressed the group.

I want to go ahead and apologize, I have a meeting at 3:00 pm, but that is no reason to not address the issue of identity management and the issue of SSN. Which everyone in this room is concerned about. So, I want to give you a snapshot of what is going on and where we are.  I have asked if we can be back on your agenda in April where we could really give you an update with regard of where we are.  This is not a simple set of issues. It is not an EITS issue. It is a UGA issue. As the role of Chief Information Officer, I have the role to engage with all the College’s across the campus and the administrative support and the Administration.  I also have the opportunity to work with these issues.  One of these is CORE.  We are in a situation at UGA where as Shawn talks about identity management it is a very separate issue from SSN.  Recognizing that we at UGA use the SSN as an identifier.  It is a piece of info that we are working to address.  Shawn will refer you to an initiative that has been funded and we will be looking at the UGA identify management system. With that said, the SSN being used in our administrative systems, student, hr, finance, financial aid, many of those systems, are 30-35 years old. Those systems were built using the SSN. Many of you know what the term relational or integrated or the ability to talk to one another means.  We do not have that ability for our HR system to talk to our finance system, or our student system to talk to another system.  We are in that type of environment. We would like to be further along, but many University’s across the US are dealing with this. Many of them are going to Enterprise approaches.  Forget the names of products. I think most of the colleagues that know me will tell you, I don’t want the technology driving me. I want our business process and requirements driving the technology.  Enterprise approach is the idea that we are looking at our systems so they can talk to each other and they are not only integrated but they rely on a single source of information.  There are a lot of pieces there when you start talking about any of that of which the SSN is a key piece.  The identify management that Shawn will be addressing in April will address the issue of a single identifier.  We have also received funding to start looking at priority business processes where we can take the SSN out.  We have also been able to take out the SSN from class rolls, grade sheets and testing.  It’s the tip of the iceberg.  That initiative was led by Rebecca Macon and colleagues in my organization. Most recently, Rohan Kahn, who will be with us in April.  My point is, when you start talking about taking SSN out of one of our systems that runs our business processes, the expectation that you can push a button and it goes to all the other systems, that is not accurate. We do not have that capability yet.  I am confident and determined that UGA will some day be able work from an enterprise approach.  Will that happen overnight? Absolutely not. If we went to a commercial program, it would take anywhere from 24-36 months just to convert into that system. So, it’s not an easy piece.  On the other hand, we are not sitting around just not doing anything. I want to be sure we understand what the parameters are, what we have to work with and how we are trying to approach it and what we are doing, as my mom would say, are baby steps until we can begin a full scale conversion of systems. I don’t know when that will be, but we are working hard.  You are raising the right questions.  It’s not that we are trying to shy away from these. We are trying to be proactive and take steps to get solutions. But it’s not simple. It’s not an excuse. It’s just a fact. When you have 25-30 year old systems and 33000 students, and 10000 faculty and staff.  I would like Shawn to brief you on identity management piece. As I said, we have just received a piece of funding to start looking at priority business processes of how to get the SSN out.  Longer term the decision of moving to an enterprise type system that would allow a single point of entering information.  I apologize, some how I did not have this on my calendar. But I do think it’s important you know, it’s not something we take lightly. It is also not an EITS issue, it is a UGA issue. I have been in 5 land grand universities in my career and I think people coming from the campus together like this and trying to help move toward that goal is very positive.  I’d like to get Shawn to come down now. I’m off to the SACS accreditation meeting.  If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

 I started 6 months ago as the director of client services.  This effort is my extra credit project. It doesn’t fall under my area, but these types of things are what I did before coming to UGA.  The identity management project.  You are going to see a 2-prong attack. There is a push to reduce the use of SSN and business processes attack that will focus on changing the business process and remove the social and use the CANN.  Some things we can do without so much technology. In parallel my identity management initiative for the next 9 months will be to establish a 2 base services for identity management architecture.  That will be the directory. We are 99% sure we are going to use the MyID for that and the provisioning system.  I say provisioning system and that is an antiquated term, and that might confuse people but what it is is a system that knows how to distribute identities at its core.  We have a tremendous advantage in that our data sets are really small. We have a great advantage in geoclustering and data processing.  The first strategy is to get those systems that are only for identity management. We are not going to get those systems to track grades or do HR stuff.  After that, there will be a convergence and our next phase will be all about what system we are going to automate the identities in. The side benefit of automating identities is that you can transform any of the data that goes in it, including SSN. It’s aligned with the business of eliminating SSN, but it will not be a core competency.  We can’t just by that from the industry.  We have to buy identity management and get that along with it.  That’s one thing we are shifting.  We are not coming up with a new identifier, one that is better than the CANN or worse than the CANN, it may end up and be the CANN.  It’s really immaterial.  It won’t matter as long as one system is managing it.  The next phase is a needs analysis, requirements analysis and specifications document that we have put to get done. A consultant will come in and we have formed a functional/technical committee and he will be meeting with different groups on campus to determine what all our business processes are around the life cycle of identity and the life cycle of MyID.  The goal is for him produce a detailed set of workflows and screen shots mocked up of what the forms will need to look like for someone to request, approve and receive a MyID.  Sounds simple, but what is on those forms should be enough to get ride of SSN.  When you get a MyID, you will also get an email.  I know that might be kind of hard to grasp, but that’s our first phase. 

Q – It seems to be that one of the things that people are concerned with, is definitely identity management and SSN, but one of the big things I have heard people say is when we outsource like the MetLife, we are giving SSN to 3rd parties.  Then they are asking us to enter our SSN on a system we have no control over. Do your initiatives address that in any way?
A – Certainly not in the first phase. That problem is a federation problem.  The federation is a whole sub discipline with identity management and how to interact with 3rd parties.  There needs to be a mapping and unfortunately some of our vendors have chosen SSN as the way to map. In some cases it’s unavoidable.  You mentioned Met Life, if it is an insurance company that may be the only identifier they can really accept given some of the regulations they are laboring under.  In some instances on campus we will have to store a SSN because it deals with a tax ID and it needs that SSN for some other process. When that happens, we will need to secure those systems. 
Q – It seems that if stuff is going to 3rd parties is there a way to require them to not make SSN.
A – Usually not. When you are dealing with life insurance that is a legal situation and you have to have the SSN for beneficiary purposes. It travels with you even when you leave the University, like TRS. 
Q – I don’t have a problem with them having my SSN.  But when I go to log in, every single time I go to log in every single time it’s my SSN.
A – You should only have to do it one time and then you should be able to change it.
A – There is some technology that we can buy that would allow us to log in using your MyID and that little magic box will go out to that site for you and provide what that site needs behind the scene.  Without a directory or provisioning service it is hard to do. The issue we would run into today would be the MyID is that it’s not all that great on its life cycle. Cleaning up that lifecycle is the basis for federation. 
Q – Can we address the thing with parking services?
A – I can probably answer that.  We heard you loud and clear and we now have a key pad you can enter your SSN.  We are in the same boat as everyone else. I would love to get away from SSN but I can’t because we have to use that. Thanks for your input and we did something about it.
A – Our policy and advice to campus is if you have the time and resources to get away from SSN we recommend you do. If you can use the CANN. You won’t do anything that preclude yourself from being integrated down the road because we are going to single management system that can handle multiple numbers. The second thing is if you are in like parking services, secure it and let people know. If you don’t feel like you can secure it, then get it in the ASSETS program with Stan Gatewood and raise a flag to your administration.   You could do a risk assessment and send it to your administration. 
Q – For April if one of the things can be addressed is if all the systems could be reviewed that are using SSN.  There are all types of Colleges/Units that use different systems.  My concern is if there are new systems that come on board and they include needing SSN and now that dept are unit is stuck with that system that uses that.  Is there a review from IT on those types of systems being used on campus by the units that use SSN. 
A – Ok, that all systems do not include SSN.
Q – Well yeah, needing that identifier number.
A – I feel like I might be losing you.
Q – Well, yeah. I think what you might be saying is you want all these systems reviewed, cataloged. 
A – No is there a plan to make sure that new systems do not allow SSN.
Q – We could definitely tell you that none will be implemented by EITS that way, but we are not in the approval chain for every system that gets implemented on campus.  So, I’m not sure what that mechanism would look like.  I’m not sure. I think we have created the ASSETS program but it’s mainly for cataloging servers, but I don’t know if there is a way to put an ASP or something in there that scans multiple servers, so I’ll ask. 

One other thing. My next project is around the next generation email system. That is in the needs analysis stage. If anyone has any input, we are taking that now.  If you can email that to me spellis@uga.edu, that would be great. Or you can tell me right now.  If you have any suggestions, needs, wants.  We have heard some things, like larger quota, better web interface and we have looked at peers.  We know we have work to do.  Some people want mobile interface capabilities.  Things like that.

Q – I’d like to see spam filter.
A – Do you want better than today or just that it has it or as good as it is today.
A – Better than now.
A  - I have people tell me they send me emails, maybe 2 and I never see them. I don’t know.
A – So it’s your UGA account and the spam filter filtered something it should not have.
A – I don’t know.  I never received and they don’t go in my junk mail
Q – What about the other way? Spam that gets to you that should not.
A – Now it’s a lot better.  I used to get like a 100 and I only get like 10 a day now. 
Q – The calendar part of the UGA mail doesn’t work so well.  I’ve heard it loses data.  A calendar that was integrated would be good. 
Q – We’ve heard from some faculty it takes a long time to access that first page at slow terminals, like hotel rooms, etc because it has a lot of data on it.
I think if they had something really simple for travel that didn’t have a lot of pictures etc. 
A – If you go to preferences and java, you can turn that off where it will just display the messages.
A – I wonder if it would be faster to pop than the web interface.  I don’t know.
Anyone else?
Thank you. 

Tom Gausvik addressed the group. 

One thing about SSN.  Most of what we do is dealing with your benefits.  The information we are sending is by paper a lot, but hopefully by April 1 we will be out of paper.  There is a system that we will be using where we will be using a complete benefits online system. So, the data you go into on the web you will keying into a secure system.  Any information sent out of that system will be sent encrypted.  Right now we’re taking paper copies and faxing it or mailing it. I don’t know if there is a way to retrofit dealing with SS Administration, IMS, Homeland Security, retirement vendors and TRS, I don’t know if there is a way to do that for those firms that hold different numbers others then your SSN as your universal identifier. That’s a problem we had at U of VA.  We are not trying to lower your expectations.  But some of the vendors we use there are legal requirements they have your SSN. We take this very seriously.  All computers in HR were recently scanned and removed from any hard drives. There are only 2 people that can approve or write a report with SSN right now. Any type of report generated can not have SSN without my approval or Duane’s approval.  In the past, that wasn’t the case.  So, right now we are doing away with all the PC in the dept so you can’t store info on the PC.  You must store it on the server.  So, we are taking steps to minimize it. We are sensitive to the issue.  I don’t want my identity stolen anymore than I want anyone elses in this room.

Healthcare.  Right now there is a push for a new 3rd party administrator.  We should be able to bid on it. On the state side, state went to United Health care and they dropped the indemnity plan. I doubt the indemnity plan will survive for another year or two at the most.  The cost is much higher.  The growing number of retirees.  It’s a huge liability in terms of benefits.  Retirees cost 2-3 times the cost of an active employee. There are some serious struggles going on with what to do with healthcare.  We are going to see changes start to address this and keep it financial viable so we have healthcare.  Retirees are driving the cost.  Healthcare will not go down. It will go up, up, up.  What you see happening is movement toward consumer healthcare.  I would expect to see more of that down the road. You will need to more educated about what to purchase for your healthcare. We would like things to be the way they were 10 years ago, 5 years ago or even today, 10 years from now I expect to see something vastly different.  It’s a reality.  State of GA had to book 18 billion liabilities.  USG had to book 2.2. billion for current/expected retirees over the next years.  We need to create trust that will fund that liability.  What I am saying is not to scare you.  You aren’t the only ones. This is not just a phenomenon at UGA. It’s nation wide.  What we see at UGA is people retire when they get to 30 years.  They are usually in their 50’s.  Average age of faculty is 62.  That means they become a retiree and stay on the healthcare and it’s a cost and it’s a huge cost to us.  It probably will not survive without active employees subsidizing it for retirees from now until the future.  Your healthcare cost will go up.  You can implement wellbeing plans, we can all start walking now and that will help some.

Q – Will the ones that have already retired, will that change their benefits?
A –I Don’t know. We are entering a period of time this has not ever happened before. We have never had such a large portion of the population eligible for retirement. 50% of the workforce is eligible to retire right now. They could walk out and have full benefits.  If they did, there would be a crisis. It’s a serious issue for the country.  I’m not saying that in 2009-2010 you will see no health benefits. But you will see the premiums go up. You will continue to see changes in benefits. You will see push towards high deductible plans. For the state of Georgia we are the last holdout for the indemnity plan.  As much as I want to protect a retiree, I do want to protect them because I’ll be there one day; I want to protect the actives.  Because without the actives to foot the bill, there is no fund.  In order to attract people here, it’s hard to find the balance to protect the retiree benefits and have a viable health plan for an active employee. 

We are in the process of raising the minimum hire rate for 2009 and addressing salary compression.  We are working on what we can do to raise the minimum hire rate and put money towards salary compression. It will never be enough. We are compressing salary upwards. My feeling is every dollar we can put in a staff pockets, the better. Salaries are low.  Staff salaries are low and faculty salaries are low.  We are at the bottom of our faculty salaries.  In terms of the local market, we aren’t too bad.  If you look at Atlanta salary, no we aren’t at Atlanta salaries. If you want an Atlanta salary you might want to look at Atlanta. We are putting as much money into it as we can.  Staff and faculty salaries are a priority.

Q – A priority for who?
A – For the institution. We are trying to devote enough resources to it to raise salaries. There is not enough money to address the perception that is out there. If you put 10 million dollars into it, you still wouldn’t address the perceived issue out there.  When we post a job, we get 50-100 applicants for it.  There are people out there waiting to take your job for the lower salary.  You see alumni want to come back to this institution.  People want to stay here.  It’s a good thing, but in terms of our local labor market, we’re actually doing good. 
Q – Why are our salaries less than the Atlanta market? It’s not the cost of living?
A – One, our budget, our ability to pay.  What we can hire at, what we can retain at. If we had difficulty hiring and a high turn over rate, we would probably pay more. Basically, what you want to do is pay a rate that you can recruit and retain.  So, what you have is a situation of a delicate balance.  We have 2-3% turnover rate.
Q – But that staff can identify a turnover rate from one Univ to the next.
A – Oh yeah, we know.  Job security is one of the big things. I can guarantee you, if you wanted to find a higher paying job you could go out and find one
Q – Did you say a 2-3% turnover rate?
A – Yes, not counting retirements.
Q – If we had several universities around us or large corporations creating competition then we might see a difference.  The school of Medicine might create a little competition.  Many businesses feel we don’t have enough skilled workers.  We have 58% graduation rate for Clarke County. 
Q – I’ve always heard that if people move, that counts as a drop out.
A – No, this is just people that enter the 9th grade and drop out between 9th and 12th grade.
A  - We’re trying to do something about it.  This summer we are bringing in 40 apprentices from the middle school. In the fall we’re bringing 100-200 11th and 12 graders out. We are working with the adopt a class and trying to increase graduation rates.

Salary will always be an ongoing issue and we will do the best we can with it. 
Q – You were saying 50-100 apply for jobs.  When a position was open in my last position in my dept, sure 50 applied, but only 8 were qualified.  We had painters, mechanics, etc for an IT position. 
Q – You touched on something about staff retention.  I think everyone would agree that staff are valued because you can leave and you will be replaced before the end of the day the next day but that doesn’t take into account that you are a valued employee. I don’t think that has ever been addressed.
A  - I think what you are giving to the institution is your effort and what you want in return is fair compensation.  The question is what is that compensation.  We have market data that can say what that is.  It comes down to your contribution, perception or reality, the ability to pay, and the ability to recruit/retain.  There are 3 approaches to compensation. You can leave the market, be in the market or lag in the market. There is no reason to leave the market if you have an abundance of people out there willing to take the jobs.  If you have lots of people standing in line willing to take that job, why do you want to pay more than market? The benefits you receive are beyond the base compensation. It can be flexibility of schedule. All of that added in. If we are not a good employer, then why are there so many people wanting a job here? We’re a good employer.

Q – From an institutional standpoint, for the people who want to retire after 30 years, age might somehow factor into this too, this intangible benefit too. If you retain that employee for their quality, if that employee felt valued in their position, then that retirement going out to them might not exist. 

A – We have basically said we have a pay plan in place.  I think it’s in bad need of reform.  It’s probably 30 years old.  I’d like to get out of the pay grades and job classes.  In Virginia we put in a structure that was not vertical anymore, but horizontal. You can receive a pay increase for 4 reasons outside of promotion, merit, changing jobs that sort of thing, you can increase annuity by reclassifying the position, additional education, demonstrated training on the job, retention and internal alignment.  We were spending 1.2 million on 4000 employees in the old pay system. When that went into place we were spending 3 million on the new pay plan. In 5 years we spent 15 million as opposed to 7 million.  There was not enough money in the system to deal with salary compression. We told our depts to deal with it with their money. They said they didn’t have it. They were spending 1.8 million per year.  The issue took care of itself. We are not there. I don’t know when we are going to get there. Most states around us, Florida, SC, have gone to broad banding their pay plan with very innovative pay plans. We are behind the times.  Shannon knows this. We have talked about this before. Part of the expectation of revamping this pay plan is show me the money. We did it without any new money. That’s the dilemma and the risk of doing it.  People felt that if you take away the rungs in the ladder, I’ll never get a pay increase. But as a result of it, more than 2-3 times were being spent a year outside of reclassification and promotion.  Now we get reclassification actions all the time for the simple purpose of getting someone a pay increase. A lot of that is because they don’t want to advance it to a Sr. VP because it’s over 15%. They are looking for an exception. They want to raise it to a high enough level so the minimum is high enough so it’s over 10%, but not over 15 because they don’t want to take it to a Sr. VP for approval.  You can’t imagine how we are chasing our tails in HR by trying to not say no and do what the dept wants. So, there are ways to go about doing this and in the future, hopefully we will be able to do some of this. 

Q – It seems like to me, just looking around, the way to get a salary increase is to change jobs on campus.
A – Yes.  That’s because we have a civil service style system. 
Q – How much turn over is there within the University?
A – Actually not a lot. There is not a lot of internal moving around in the workforce. Not as much as you think. Not what you call job hopping to increase compensation.  I mean there is some. But I look at it as more normal than abnormal. This is a very happy place.  I mean I noticed 2 years ago when I came here, a level of southern hospitality. 
Q – Well we want to make you feel at home.
A – Yeah, but when people are smiling at you but they might not be happy. I said you better go around and ask or they will be talking about you behind your back.  So, I’d rather know if you are happy with something rather than you all just sit out there and smile at me.  If I could go out today and say put 10 million or 20 million into staff salaries, I would. Because I want everyone to be happy and feel like they are being paid for what they are worth. If I could walk around and ask what would you like to be paid.  Honestly, what would you like to be paid and you were honest about it, and I could say fine, I’ll do it.  If you could say I make 35 now and I’d like to make 38 or 40 and I could work with that versus I want to be paid 60.  Then I could say ok, I can work with that. 
Q – I think it makes staff at UGA unhappy if a library associate at UGA makes X number of dollars less than a library associate at GA Tech. I think that makes staff unhappy.
A – I’d like to speak to that.  Maybe I can come back another time.

We are going to implement distance learning and training development. Meaning we will be able to deliver programs on your desktop on your pc.  By pod casting.

Q – Will there be a fee?
A  Not for distance learning.

The University has distance learning software.  That will be in the near future.  We will try to get out more information. We are not eliminating classes themselves. We just aren’t getting enough people. Time is valuable to try to get you to come into the classroom. So, the type of learning you will see is where if you were in school where you could interact with the instructors, but from your office.   Other than that, the one thing I’m going to make a pitch for is we will be looking for people to help us with our 7-8 and 11-12 graders.  It’s a really important program in this institution. We are trying to be a leader in the community in regards to keeping these kids in school.  They will be our future workforce.  I will be calling on departments to find out if you will be a mentor so students can come in.  For junior apprentices, it’s just during the summer. 11th graders come in first block which is first part of the day or the 4th block, which is the end of the day and 12 graders can be a half day.  We have a training plan.  I have 2 people in my office working on this almost full time on community based initiatives. We are trying to connect the dots and make a difference in the school system. 

Q -  We can’t understand why our insurance continues to go up and our raises never are enough to compensate for the yearly increases.  At some point we are not going to be able to hold this.  I know that cost goes up; I mean it goes up for us too.  But there has to be a breaking point at some point, just to allow others to break even.

A – I understand.  It’s a tough nut to crack because we are appropriated. budget from the system that is appropriated from the state. We are told what the premiums are for healthcare.  Speak to your politicians and let them know of your concern. We are in the bottom of the pile.

Let me do this. I’ll try to come to all your meetings. If you can allow me time, maybe 15 minutes to give you a quick update and then field your questions. I can give you some numbers, so you can see the numbers. So you can get a better understanding. So when someone says why is it this way, you can say well, let me give you some info that might help you understand better.

That would be great. 

Q – You answered this ladies question about benefits for retirees might go away and one thing I hear
A – No, they are not going away.
Q – Well, one thing I hear is for current employees and whether those benefits will still be there for them. I think people are scared about the possibility of that. Do you have a sense of whether myself as a 20 year employee in 10 years can count on having those benefits? Do I need to be making other plans. No, truly, I am asking because I do hear a lot about this.
A – In 10 years if we don’t have it already a healthcare crisis. In 10 years we’ll look back and say how did we get in this mess and not do anything about it. I don’t know what the answer is. It is scary. I’ll be happy to sit down and show you the data.  I can’t tell you what the solution is or where the University will be at in 10 years from now. I can tell you, you will probably be more in charge of your own healthcare, in terms of having to pay more for it, you will be an active participate, you will probably have higher deductibles, you will be a consumer of healthcare.  Much like when you go in the store and you decide whether to buy the Kroger brand or the name brand, you will be deciding that down the road.  We are preparing to have a healthcare educator on staff to help educate everyone right now to be a better consumer of healthcare.

Q – The problem I see with that is say you make 25K, you only bring home 20K, how will you pay 1K deductible?
A – One of the things that is being discussed in the system office is tiered health insurance cost. As a higher paid employee, I’d pay more for my healthcare than a lower paid employee.  I get concerned about our lower paid workers, our food service workers and others that can’t afford the healthcare, so they take their children into the emergency room for care.  That concerns me.  I’d imagine there is a lot of uncompensated care going through Athens Regional and St. Mary’s that are UGA employees that can’t afford healthcare and live pay check to pay check.   There is philosophy out there that healthcare is healthcare. We should all pay the same thing. When you start talking about paying tiered healthcare, you start running into the question of well, they are getting the same benefit I am getting, so why shouldn’t I pay the same thing? So, it’s a tough issue.  It’s being discussed.
Q – Well, if you look at it right now, indemnity is paying a bigger percentage right now than the PPO, so the indemnity people are the people that make more money at UGA.
A – Yes, you are right about that. One of the issues with having multiple healthcare plans is you have adverse selection. Healthier people will select the cheaper plans.  Healthcare is very complicated issue and there is not simple answer.  We could spend a week talking about it.  It’s going to take more time.  I can stay here as long as you need, so if you want to stay here and talk to me, that is fine.
Q – I’d like to make a motion to table the discussion because there is still agenda items on here. 
Heather is from the Athens Landtrust and was going to address us briefly. But she has agreed to come back. 

The main thing I want you guys to know that are hearing your benefits are going down is that there are benefits available to you at the state level. One of the main ones is for people trying to buy their first home. There is $7500 for University employees. 
Q – Is it a tax credit or money?
A – It’s a down payment. It’s a check. You basically pay it back if you sell the house. But it lowers your payment. 

I’ll come back and tell you about all the programs in town.  Just keep it in mind.

Q – Is this new?
A – No, it’s been going on forever, but no one knows about it. I have been trying to come since 2003. 

I will come back and tell you about other programs. 

I have one last agenda item. I have had no nominations for the benefits committee on UC.  I would like to nominate Guerrimo (sp?)  Do you accept the nomination?  Yes.  Any other nominations?  If not, Guerrimo.  We do ask that you come to Staff Council and make a report every quarter that would be great. 

President Scott adjourned the meeting at 4:00 p.m.

Next Exec. Committee meeting:

• April 21, 2008, 11:00 a.m. at ICLE Conference room

Next Staff Council meeting:

• April 2, 2008, room 150 SLC.

These minutes are respectfully submitted by Lynn Parham, recording secretary.