BATON ROUGE- East Baton Rouge city-parish government employees will not see an increase in their health insurance premiums.
    
The Metro Council on Wednesday refused to raise health insurance premiums for city employees. The decision will force the city to pull money from its reserves.
    
The city-parish has already lost some $2 million since April because it's been paying more for health claims than it has been receiving from employee health contributions.
    
To offset the problem, the city offered to pay $3.5 million extra for health insurance from its tax pools and asked for city employees to pay 8 percent higher premiums.
    
The Metro Council could not generate enough votes to increase the premiums, forcing City Administrative Officer William Daniel to say the city will pull the $1.3 million from the health insurance reserves.