What Cities Need to Know about the ACA’s Employer Mandate Rules By Neil Bomberg, National League of Cities On February 12, 2014, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued its final employer mandate rules governing large employers (those with 50 or more employees) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Known as the “employer shared responsibility” or “employer mandate” rules, these rules require that employers with 50 or more full-time and/or full-time equivalent employees provide those employees and their dependents with affordable health care coverage that meets specified standards, or face financial penalties. When the rules were released, what garnered the most media attention was the portion of the rule that states that employers with 50 to 99 full-time workers have one more year to comply with the law. This means they will not have to comply with the shared responsibility provisions until January 1, 2016, after which they will be subject to any and all penalties and fees if they fail to comply with the ACA. From the perspective of cities, however, this provision may be the least important.
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The rule includes many other provisions, including those pertaining to seasonal employees and volunteer employees including first responders that are very important to cities and will go into effect on January 1, 2015. Specifically, the rule: j Clarifies the meaning of the term governmental entity to include “the government of the United States, any State or political subdivision thereof, any Indian tribal government, or any agency or instrumentality of any of the foregoing.”; j Reiterates that a large employer for purposes of the ACA is one that within the preceding calendar year employed an average of 50 or more full-time and fulltime equivalent employees; j Grants employers a 12 month “look back” period to determine whether an employee is full- or part-time; j Clarifies that the term full-time equivalent employee, or FTE, “means a combination of employees, each of whom individually is not treated as a full-time employee because he or she is not employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week with an employer, but whom, in combination, are counted as the equivalent of a full-time employee solely for purposes
SOUTH DAKOTA MUNICIPALITIES
