DC 37 withdraws support of Council members backing city retirees on health care

District Council 37, the city’s largest public-sector union, has once again gone on the offensive against City Council members opposed to switching municipal retirees to a privately administered health plan. 

According to minutes of a March 19 meeting, the union’s delegates approved a resolution “after much discussion” stopping donations to Council members who support legislation that would preserve the roughly 250,000 retirees’ current no-fee traditional Medicare and supplemental insurance. 

The delegates also voted to “unendorse” Brooklyn Council Member Alexa Avilés because of her support for the bill. 

When similar legislation was proposed in 2023, DC 37’s executive director, Henry Garrido, threatened to revoke the union’s support from Council candidates backing the bill. "Money, endorsements — everything,” he said during a call with members of the union’s executive board in September of that year. “Field ops, what we do, phone banks, all the stuff that we do for all the electeds is going to have to be questioned.”

Garrido has aggressively pressed for the switch, in large part because the savings derived from moving the retirees to a private plan would replenish the Joint Health Insurance Premium Stabilization Fund, which props up municipal unions’ health and welfare-fund benefits. 

First floated during the de Blasio administration, the proposed switch, supported by the majority of municipal unions, is intended to reduce the city's skyrocketing health care costs. City officials have said a privately administered plan would save the city $600 million annually, although critics dispute the figure. Opponents also note that that amount would account for just over 0.5 percent of the city budget. 

The delegates’ meeting minutes say the current bill, known as Intro 1096, introduced by downtown Manhattan Council Member Christopher Marte, “does not identify a single source of funding.” 

They also note that the union is opposed to the legislation “because as we see it,” it would have to be funded by premiums paid by active members and pre-Medicare retirees of up to $1,500. “We have enough waste in the system and that needs to be cleaned up,” the minutes say. 

But Marianne Pizzitola, the president of the Organization of Public Service Retirees, which is spearheading opposition to the proposed switch, disputed those assertions, calling them deliberate fabrications. 

“It’s a false narrative,” she said, adding that the bill is in fact funded, simply because the city, according to its charter, is obliged to fund the full cost of health coverage offered to city employees, retirees and their dependents.

“Everything Garrido is saying in those minutes is an absolute lie. And then to be threatening the very people ... who are elected by constituents to choose between union endorsement and support at the expense of retirees is just aborrent,” Pizzitola said. “Unions were supposed to protect employees and retirees. What Henry is doing is literally throwing retirees under the bus to benefit active workers at the expense of their life and their health care.”

Donald Nesbit, the vice president of DC 37 Local 372, which represents more than 20,000 Board of Education employees, and who made the motion to unendorse Avilés, did not respond to requests for comment. Garrido and the union also did not reply to a request for comment. 

Council Member Christopher Marte at an Oct. 23 rally at which he announced legislation that would preserve city retirees’ current health benefits. Delegates from the city’s largest public-sector union, DC 37, voted to withdraw the union's endorsement of a Council member supporting the bill. Marianne Pizzitola, the president of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, is at left.

Richard Khavkine/The Chief

$$$, and organizational clout

Marte’s bill is the second such effort by a Council member to preserve city retirees’ access to their traditional Medicare, which is widely thought to be far superior to privately managed Medicare Advantage plans. Former Council Member Charles Barron’s bill, introduced in June 2023, received little support and died without a hearing.

Through a spokesperson, Marte declined to address the DC 37 delegates’ motions. 

Aside from Marte and Avilés, another 13 Council members are listed as the bill’s co-sponsors. While that’s several more than backed the legislation when Marte introduced it in October, it remains far short of a majority of Council members and significantly from the 34 members who would be required to override a near-certain veto from Mayor Eric Adams, who has also pushed for the switch. 

None of the Council members backing the bill appear to have received contributions from the union this election cycle. In fact, DC 37 had made few contributions to candidates running for Council through the mid-March filing period. (The filing deadline to disclose contributions made and received from March 14 through May 19 is May 23.) 

What DC 37, as the city’s largest municipal union, can provide candidates is organizational clout, with its get-out-the-vote effort a potentially significant advantage for those backed by the union. 

Among those who hope to benefit is Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who last month received top billing in the union’s three-person, ranked-choice endorsement for mayor, despite her relatively late entry into the contest. Adams, who wields considerable influence in setting the Council’s agenda, resisted efforts to calendar either Barron’s or Marte’s bills. 

Along with their mayoral endorsements, DC 37 also released a list of endorsements for City Council. That list did not include any of the 13 candidates who support Marte’s bill.

Avilés, who is facing a primary challenge from Ling Ye, a former staffer for Representatives Dan Goldman and Nydia Velazquez, did not respond to requests for comment sent to her press representative. 

Avilés received 40 percent of the vote in the first of five rounds of ranked-choice voting in the 2023 Democratic primary, eventually prevailing with 65 percent of the vote in the final round. She took 80 percent of the vote in the general election. 

Tiffany Cabán, who is not listed as a supporter of Marte’s legislation, is the only one among 18 Council members who supported Barron’s bill to receive DC 37’s endorsement this year.