By Patrick Butler
The last Interim Chancellor, Raul Rodriguez, turned down the RBOA request to pay the basic charge for Medicare ($165. per month) saying that such payments were prohibited by the old CTA and AFT contract language. I replied to Raul in writing (and was never answered) that those same contracts also, in section 1.1.1 clearly state that the contract only covers current employees of the District. The Rodda Act of 1975 also gives the unions power to make contracts only for current employees. However, to avoid that DO argument, at the Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting of April 11, 2023, I restated the request, speaking for myself, that the BOT instruct the RBOA Trust to pay the primary beneficiaries of that Trust $170 per month to cover all of the increases in the costs of medical coverage from the time the unions agreed to end the supplement to Medicare for new employees.
About six retired faculty attended the meeting and we were limited to two minutes per speaker. The speakers, Alice Gosak, Jim Potterton, Linda Roy, Walter Soellner, received applause as they told of their medical problems and costs. They had all agreed not to mention Medicare, just the flat $170 payment request. The California Federation of Teachers president attended. No action was taken at that April Board meeting as this was done during Public Comments.
We had hoped that the item would be on the May BOT agenda but it was not. My guess is the BOT is split 3-3 on the matter and the new interim Chancellor and vice-chancellor are just following the Trust consultants’ advice not to make the payments.