PROVIDENCE — While the state’s part-time legislators still get their health insurance for free unless they “volunteer” to pay for it, their 279 year-round employees are about to join the ranks of state employees paying more this year for their medical, vision and dental coverage.

But they won’t have to pay the increased cost retroactive to August, as required of those state workers represented by the largest of the state employees unions — Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees — who ratified a new four-year contract last month.

Bottom line: Employees currently paying anywhere from 8 percent to 15 percent of the $17,454 a year in premiums for family medical, vision and dental coverage will, in most cases, pay more under a new tiered payment schedule that requires those making more than $90,000 to pay 25 percent of the cost. Exceptions are those making less than $25,000 a year who will continue to pay 8 percent of the premiums for family coverage.

For a state employee at the low end of the income ladder, that amounts to $1,397 annually for family coverage, and for a high-end employee, $4,364 a year.

The decisions were made during the first meeting since February 2006 of a five-member legislative leadership panel, chaired by House Speaker William J. Murphy, that includes the Senate president, the House majority leader and the House and Senate minority leaders.

Marisa White, the director of the legislative business office for the panel, the Joint Committee on Legislative Services, said the increase in the employees’ share of the premiums will cut the legislature’s $3.013-million health insurance tab by an estimated $165,886 after it takes effect on Dec. 12.

Asked why she did not recommend making the payments retroactive to the point when other state employees started paying more, White provided this explanation. She said those other workers were offered an opportunity to shave $500 off their annual health-insurance costs by taking part in a “wellness” program that would have cost the General Assembly $140,000 if every one of its own employees signed up. By her calculations, the cost outweighed the additional $90,000 savings that would have resulted from making the legislative employees pay a larger share of their health insurance premiums retroactively.

But the legislative leaders opted against taking a vote in the current economic climate to give legislative employees the same wage promises the state’s unionized employees have already gotten. After no raise this year, their new contracts promise a 2.5 percent raise next year followed by back-to-back 3 percent raises in each of the two years after that.

House Minority Leader Robert Watson argued that the state’s financial health has deteriorated since those contracts were hammered out over the summer and fall; that outside state government people are losing jobs in big numbers, and those still employed will be “lucky if they see any increase in year-to-year income.”

He argued for a wage and salary freeze until state leaders “get their hands around” the state’s “out-of-control” budget crisis, and said: “we may have to lead the charge.” In one of several moments of unity yesterday, the three Democrats and two Republicans on the panel agreed to table discussion of pay increases for legislative staff indefinitely.

But the panel agreed the staff will have to take an unpaid day off between January and June to save money this year, under the same terms offered other state workers. They can recoup the lost money — or take an extra paid day off — sometime between 2010 and 2012.

kgregg@projo.com