Gov. Jim Doyle has conceded to give certain health-insurance reform in non-unionized state employee contracts.

Negotiations for the new contracts cannot begin until the agreements from the 2001-’03 span are passed out of the Joint Committee on Employment Relations and into a vote by the full Legislature.

Assembly Speaker Rep. John Gard, R-Peshtigo, the chairman of JCOER, received the brunt of anger and lobbying from state employees from unions such as the Wisconsin State Employees Union and the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers since the February rejection of the pre-negotiated contracts.

In a letter to Doyle April 4, Gard said he was pleased to see regulations that “reflect the framework for dramatic health-care reforms that have been long overdue and are substantially similar to measures [Gard has] advocated in the Legislature for several years.”

Doyle included a three-tiered insurance reform in his budget. Currently, the state pays up to 105 percent of the lowest insurance plan available to state employees in each state. Doyle’s idea would create three different levels of plan efficiency, and as the expense of the plan increased, so would the percentage an employee paid into it.

Gard said the changes Doyle has outlined “will end the days of free health care for state employees and will help make the health-care system in both the public and private sector fairer and more cost-effective.”

Mike Quieto is president of the Teaching Assistants Association at the University of Wisconsin, one of the unions waiting for the approval of employee contracts. He said it was a “myth” that state employees didn’t pay into their health-insurance plans.

Gard said in the letter that the health-care costs faced by state employees were unfair when compared to the benefits packages received by workers employed in the private sector.

Quieto said although public employees of the state may receive more comprehensive benefits packages than those employed by private firms, the difference is balanced by wages.

“The real problem with asking us to pay more for health insurance is that we make less than our counterparts in the private sector,” Quieto said. “There’s a tradition of this for at least 30 years that state employees make less in wages but get decent benefits. State employees across the country implicitly accept less in pay raises in exchange for better benefit plans.”

Doyle has repeatedly said he would resubmit the employee contracts to JCOER if there were any indications the committee would vote to approve them.

Throughout March 2003, state employees have lobbied for support of their contracts by holding rallies and daily demonstrations in the Capitol rotunda.

Quieto said the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers website has compiled a list of legislators who would vote in favor of the contracts if they were passed out of JCOER. The list puts the majority of state senators voting in favor of the contracts and a few Assembly member votes short of a majority.

Quieto said if Doyle reintroduced the contracts, they would likely be approved and put to a vote when the Legislature comes back into session April 29.

“The governor has said he wants to know things will be different if he resubmits the contracts,” Quieto said. “We feel we have at least a five-to-three majority within the committee and possibly a six-to-two vote.”