PITTSBURGH — 11 Investigates has learned that the City of Pittsburgh is still not paying healthcare costs for widows of retired police officers, even after losing multiple appeals.
11 Investigates first told you about this controversy years ago, when the Police Officer Union filed a grievance after discovering the city had been denying those payments.
Chief Investigator Rick Earle spoke with a woman who lost her husband, a retired Pittsburgh Police officer, back in February and discovered two weeks later that the city was pulling in her healthcare payment.
Earle: What was your reaction when you were told this?
Mary Sansone: I was shocked. I just lost my husband. We had to make funeral arrangements, and I had 12 days with the grieving process that they didn’t give me to find health insurance.
After losing her husband of 67 years to Parkinson’s disease in February, Mary Sansone was blindsided when the city of Pittsburgh informed her she would no longer be covered under her husband’s health insurance.
Earle: So this puts an extra financial burden on you?
Sansone: A lot of stress, a lot of stress which I didn’t anticipate. I mean, the bigger loss was losing Joe, but then after that, you sit and think what you don’t have coming in that you should.
Earle: And you just assumed the benefits would continue, right?
Sansone: Yep, so I hope this helps other widows.
Sansone’s daughter reached out to 11 Investigates after watching our story on this same issue four years ago, after the police union learned the city was denying payments to widows and filed a grievance, starting a lengthy legal battle.
Earle spoke with Bob Swartzwelder, the President of the Police Officer Union, in October 2022 after a court hearing on the issue.
Swartzwelder had recently learned that another widow of a retired Pittsburgh police officer was not receiving her healthcare benefits.
Swartzwelder said he filed the initial grievance against the Peduto administration after discovering they were denying payments.
Swartzwelder said the Gainey administration continued the fight.
“This poor widow and other widows currently do not have benefits. It’s outrageous. The Gainey administration should be ashamed of themselves. The Law Department should be ashamed of themselves,” Swartzwelder said at the time.
The city claimed in court documents that the contract doesn’t specifically address widows of retirees, and that there’s been a longstanding practice of providing medical coverage for spouses only during the retiree’s lifetime.
But the union disagreed, claiming the benefit is clearly covered by the contractual agreement.
Swartzwelder said the city, which under the Gainey administration filed another appeal last December, has lost every appeal so far and should be paying.
Swartzwelder estimated that widows are owed more than $4 million in back pay to cover healthcare costs.
“They put on that uniform not knowing if they were going to come home, neither did we, so we suffered along with those officers when they got on the job,” Sansone said.
Sansone’s husband, Joe, retired in 1993 after more than 35 years on the force.
“He loved the fact that he was helping people that were there living life just like everybody,” said Deb Jenkins, Sansone’s daughter.
Sansone, who’s on Medicare, is now paying $270.00 a month for her supplemental insurance, which the city used to cover.
Sansone is now hoping the new administration under Mayor Corey O’Connor will take a different approach.
“I feel that he’s (Mayor O’Connor) a compassionate man and I’m hoping that compassion rolls over to us. I hope,” said Sansone.
The Police Union president said the latest appeal was actually filed by the previous administration back in December, and he referred to that as a Hail Mary pass and a last-ditch effort.
Earle reached out to the new mayor’s administration, and they are now looking into all of this.
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