FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 2, 2025

City of Morgantown Requests Funding to Maintain Life and Health Insurance Plan

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — In an effort to maintain the City of Morgantown’s Life and Health Fund, City Council will consider utilizing its Financial Stabilization Fund to ensure the continuation of healthcare benefits for city employees. This agenda item will be discussed at the next regular City Council meeting on January 7, 2025.

The Life and Health Fund supports the city’s self-funded insurance plan, which provides healthcare benefits to eligible employees. The plan's flexibility allows the city to tailor benefits to meet the specific needs of its staff. Over time, this can lead to cost savings, as the city pays only for actual healthcare claims incurred, rather than paying premiums to an insurer. However, self-funded insurance plans commonly experience cyclical fluctuations in healthcare costs due to claim variability, utilization trends, stop-loss insurance, etc.

To address year-to-year fluctuations in costs, the City of Morgantown maintains a Financial Stabilization Fund to support the general fund when necessary, as referenced in West Virginia State Code §8-37-2. The code also states that the governing body of a municipality may appropriate money from the Financial Stabilization Fund upon a majority vote for any other purposes deemed appropriate.

According to City Finance Director Jonathan Furgison, the city is currently using the general fund to offset rising healthcare costs.

“To cover the peak in healthcare costs this past year, we temporarily borrowed $1.45 million from the general fund,” Furgison said. “To repay the borrowed funds and replenish the Life and Health Fund reserves, we plan to seek Council approval to transfer $3,315,040 from the Financial Stabilization Fund to the general fund to maintain benefit services.”

Furgison added that this transfer will safeguard the city’s financial health and secure current healthcare benefits for city employees. Looking ahead, he is optimistic that using historical and predictive analytics will facilitate better forecasting of future fluctuations during high-cost periods.

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