Finance Committee approves $4.2 million transfer to plug health trust deficit

MARLBOROUGH — May 1, 2025 — Marlborough Finance Committee approves $4.8 million in emergency free-cash transfers to cover health trust deficit and bond interest. The panel voted 4-0 on each order requested by Mayor J. Christian Dumas: $4,187,233 into the self-insured health care trust fund and $581,007 to pay June 1 interest on a bond anticipation note. Comptroller-Treasurer Brian Doheny, on the job about a month, said the trust lost $1.8 million in fiscal 2024 and that the third-party administrator had double-counted a discount and missed roughly $2 million in Harvard Pilgrim claims over two years. "Bells and whistles should have been going off, but they weren't," Doheny said. Employee premiums will rise 25 percent for fiscal 2026, and both the administrator and insurance contracts go out to bid before they expire in June 2026. Free cash stood at $13.1 million before the transfers.