PROVIDENCE — The St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island Retirement Plan, in receivership and requiring $43 million to fully fund, may cut benefits to participants by as much as 40 percent. Some of those affected plan to protest outside Providence Superior Court and the the Roman Catholic Diocese offices Wednesday.
Judge Brian Stern is expected to hear from parties in the matter Wednesday morning in Superior Court. Ray Sullivan, spokesman for the United Nurses & Allied Professionals, said he expects a few dozen members to join the first part of the protest outside the court Wednesday morning.
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“They’re angry. They want answers,” Sullivan said.
Judge Michael Silverstein placed the St. Joseph Health Services defined-benefit pension in temporary receivership in August after it was learned that the fund was headed towards insolvency. More than 2,700 current and former workers at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, in North Providence, are affected.
The hospitals were sold by the diocese to the California-based for-profit corporation, Prospect Medical Holdings, three years ago. Since that time, a three-member board of directors at St. Joseph Health Services of Rhode Island has been responsible for all investment and management decisions regarding the pension fund. One of the three board members is Rev. Timothy Reilly, chancellor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, who was Bishop Thomas J. Tobin’s hand-picked appointee.
Tobin noted the Roman Catholic Diocese has not managed the hospitals or the pension fund since the sale.
“It’s important for people to understand that since CharterCare was formed and even more clearly in 2014 when all of this was purchased by Prospect, the diocese has not been involved in the management of those hospitals,” Tobin said.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin said that though his office oversaw the sale of the hospitals in 2014 as mandated by the Hospital Conversion Act, the law limited his authority, and did not allow him to review the pension.
“While each agency is guided by criteria within the HCA, in general, the review by the Attorney General’s Office, restricted by legislative statute, is limited to governance of the new entity, the charitable assets, and conflicts of interest,” Kilmartin said in a statement.
Even so, he said, the parties provided the R.I. Department of Health and Kilmartin assurance through the asset purchase agreement that the pension fund would receive an injection of $14 million, bringing the pension fund to 90 percent funded.
“I am very concerned and have many questions as to how the pension fund could be insolvent just three years after being funded at 90 percent. While the Attorney General’s Office is not directly or indirectly involved with the management of the pension fund, we have engaged with counsel for the petitioner and the court-appointed receiver, and will be closely monitoring the legal process, and assessing where we have legal standing to intervene,” Kilmartin said.
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkowski@PBN.com.
