Special Committee on Duval Doge Meeting – June 2, 2026
Special Committee on Duval Doge Meeting – June 2, 2026
The Special Committee on Duval Doge, chaired by Councilmember Ron Salem, met on June 2, 2026, to adopt its final report on telehealth, receive an update on the two percent budget lapse, and hear a detailed presentation from the Bailey Group on the city's employee health insurance program. The meeting underscored the need to address rising health costs and the depletion of the self-insured reserve, with recommendations expected at the next meeting.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No public comment cards were submitted, and no public speaking occurred.
Discussion Items
- Telehealth Final Report: Mary Ann presented the final report on telehealth, noting minor non-substantive edits and the removal of a recommendation concerning dual employment review for Dr. Elias, as that analysis was already completed. The report includes recommendations for cost savings to the city, though Councilmember Salem noted that many savings cited are not to the city's budget but to federal programs. Councilmember Diamond called the savings "low-hanging fruit" and moved to adopt the report.
- Two Percent Lapse Update: Council Auditor Philip Peterson reported that no departments had requested restoration of the two percent budget lapse. The savings from this measure are approximately $4 million, which could be scaled if the percentage were increased.
- Bailey Group Presentation – Health Insurance Analysis:
- Demographics: 58.5% of employees have single coverage; 70% have been with the city less than two years. The most popular plan is the HMO (40% enrollment), while only 56 employees are in the high-deductible health plan (HDHP).
- Benchmarking: Employee contributions are well below national benchmarks for similar public sector plans, with the city paying 87% of total costs and employees 13%.
- Funding Rate Gap: Current funding rates are set below actual claims costs. Actuarial projections show a need for a 75% increase in funding rates if rates were set to cover full costs, due to a $70 million projected expense vs. current rates. The self-insured reserve has been depleted, forcing the city to transfer general fund dollars to meet state surplus requirements.
- Strategy: Sherry Big and Mark Bailey recommended adjusting contribution differentials and increasing HSA contributions to drive enrollment into the HDHP, which can lower long-term costs and improve employee health decisions.
- Councilmember Comments: Several members expressed concern about the reserve depletion and the need for the administration to take action. Councilmember Salem noted that fixing health insurance is a priority and parallels past successes with the trash fee and completion grants. Councilmember Lane asked about the timeline for implementing changes.
- Legal Review of Quasi-City Entities: Mary Ann updated that the Office of General Counsel is reviewing whether inclusion of the Northeast Florida Regional Council and First Coast Workforce Development in the city's health plan compromises the city's ERISA exemption. A decision is pending.
Key Outcomes
- Adoption of Final Telehealth Report: The committee unanimously approved the final report on telehealth (motion by Councilmember Diamond, seconded). The report will be forwarded to the Council President.
- Two Percent Lapse: No action taken; the committee will monitor any restoration requests.
- Next Steps on Health Insurance: The Bailey Group will return on June 16, 2026, with specific contribution strategies, stop-loss estimates, and recommendations. The committee aims to complete its Duval Doge work by the end of the year to allow the next Council President flexibility.
- No further meetings until June 16.
Meeting Transcript
Special committee on Duval Doge to order. Let's start with introductions to my far left. Stephen Libby, Council Research. Mary Stefopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Ryan Parks, Council Auditors Office. Philip Peterson, Council Auditor. Good morning, Rory Diamond and George, district 13, the beaches. Good morning, Chris Miller, at large group five. Ron Salem, group two at large. My gay district two. Will Lane and District Three visiting. Councilmember Lane, we appreciate you coming. I know this is an area of interest to you. Um I don't know that we have an update on the P cards. I think the presentation was made at the last meeting. Is anyone else have any questions on the on the P card audit or anything like that? Okay. We'll we'll move on from that. Do I have any P cards? No, I don't. Did you I just want to make sure it was on the record that you didn't have any public speaking? I didn't see any public comment cards, so I assume we didn't have any. No, I don't have any P cards. I don't use them. Telehealth report. Um, Mary Ann or Councilmember Diamond. Mary, thank you. Thank you. Uh, through the chair to the committee, you should have each of you at your seat um a copy of the special the final report um of the special committee on Duval Doge pertaining to telescope health. Um this is the report that was distributed for initial discussion at your last meeting. And what I did is went through and you have a clean copy and a red line, just so you can see the changes that were made and what the final product would look like, which if adopted by the special committee today, I would take the draft watermark off of it at that point, and then it would be available for you, Mr. Chair, to forward to the council president as the report of this committee on that particular matter under your charge. Um the the red line reflects the changes that were made. Most of them were non-substantive changes, they were really just kind of wordsmithing, scrivener's corrections, formatting corrections, etc. What I would direct the commit the special committee's attention to are the recommendations that begin on page 17 of the red line report, as same page on the clean copy, whichever one you're referring to. And those were the items that you had some general discussion on at your last meeting, and I would like to just draw the special committee's attention to those to make sure that I captured the intent of the special committee through its preliminary discussions last time with respect to changes to the recommendations. One of the most stamp substantive changes was that we deleted the recommendation with respect to directing the Office of General Counsel and the F ethics office to review the dual employment matter for Dr. Elias, recognizing that that analysis was done previously, and so the discussion with councilmember Diamond was that it was no longer needed and therefore could be struck from the recommendations. Um, and then just added some additional clarification language with respect to the other recommendations to reflect the committee's discussion last meeting. I had asked um Mr. Peterson to do an analysis of the um dollar amounts for cost savings by telehealth. Are you still working on that, Mr. Peterson? Through the chair or to the chair, yes, sir. We have uh reached out to uh the administration and also to telescope uh to we had some questions about some of the numbers that were presented um to uh the individuals who uh prepared this report. Um we are waiting to hear back from them on uh some of our questions uh that will enable us to have a uh report back to you rather on uh the methods that they use, the numbers where they were pulled from, whether or not we believe it's a proper um presentation, if you will, of the costs that they are claiming. Um, so but we hope to have that for you at the next meeting. Okay, anything we need to do to facilitate that, or you're making good progress. Everyone has been cooperative so far, so I don't think there's anything needed at this point. Okay, perfect.
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