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Date: 7/25/2023
CHICOPEE — The vice president of HUB International Limited, the insurance broker working with the city of Chicopee, explained the situation facing Chicopee is one that is common with many municipalities — sometimes a city or town is not informed if a former employee receiving benefits has passed on.
Marc Criscitelli explained at a press conference with Mayor John Vieau on July 17 that when someone dies, “the city isn’t the first call.”
Vieau detailed the steps the city has taken since last November when the city auditor “discovered a small portion of the benefits data was not reconciled.”
Addressing charges of potential criminal corruption, Vieau asserted, “No one is investigating this because there is nothing to investigate.”
The mayor said the reconciliation issues resulted from “a perfect storm for human error regarding interdepartmental communication on terminated employees and death notices.”
Vieau added the “tremendous turnover in both the Human Resources and the Treasurer’s departments, leaving both departments stretched very thin at various times.”
Vieau is going to ask the City Council to add another benefits coordinator to the Human Resources Department to ensure there is greater scrutiny in the future. When asked about the pay for the position Vieau said it would be between $45,000 and $50,000.
Vieau also introduced the new Human Resources Director Stephen Zajchowski, a city native with 26 years in the field. Vieau said the goal is to add four more employees to the department and allow Zajchowski to build a team.
At this point, an audit of the city’s dental insurance program has revealed 54 people on the rolls who should not be. Kathy Breton, assistant vice president of employee benefits of HUB International, said these “small errors … have been corrected.”
The losses to the city due to “the non-terminated individuals are limited to an administrative fee of $6.77 per month,” Vieau noted.
She believes the audit of the health insurance program will see about the same number of errors. Breton added the city should receive at least part of the money back.
Vieau said the overall amount of the $15 million city health insurance budget that has been compromised by the errors will be less than 1% of the budget.
The mayor noted, “The larger the municipality, the more tough it is to control.”
He added the same thing happens in the private sector as well.
“This is very common. It happens in other communities,” he said.
At the June 27 City Council meeting, Councilors Derek Dobosz, Delmarina López, Mary Beth Pniak-Costello and William Courchesne did not support the fiscal year 2024 budget because of their questions about the health insurance reconciliation issues.
Vieau said, “Not once did any of those certain city councilors reach out to me on the financial team for information on the status of the reconciliation.”
Following the press conference, Lopez, who is running against Vieau for mayor, issued the following statement: “I believe that we must provide the public full information when their tax dollars are mismanaged. These are public funds, and our residents need to know where their hard-earned dollars are going. If this mismanagement of funds was known by the administration months ago, our taxpayers, through the City Council, deserved to know right away. Despite the statements made by Mayor Vieau during today’s press conference, the way this situation was handled by his administration lacked transparency.”