A group of New Hampshire towns have banded together to demand the Local Government Center return a chunk of their insurance premiums. Last summer, a hearing officer ruled that for years, the LGC had overcharged communities for its health insurance program. And the LGC was ordered to return more than $52 million to members.
But for these towns, the situation isn’t so clear-cut.
Peterborough, Durham, and ten other towns have written a letter to the state’s Bureau of Securities Regulation. These-towns are no longer buying their insurance through the LGC. But they still want their cut of the $52 million order, and they want the bureau to investigate. The problem is the LGC basically wants to give communities back their money through credit on buying more insurance. But that doesn’t work if, like Peterborough, you’re not insured through the LGC anymore.
Peterborough Town Administrator Pamela Brenner says she doesn’t know how much her town should get back, “But regardless of if it’s a dollar or a hundred thousand dollars, it’s owed to the residents of Peterborough, and for that matter…to the employees who paid 20-percent of the premium.”
The LGC contends the order only covers members who had LGC insurance when the order was issued last summer. Peterborough and the other communities left before that. So the LGC says it doesn’t owe them anything at all. The 12 town coalition calls that interpretation "discriminatory."
