By Doug Caruso
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
More than a decade after the Columbus City Council backed off extending health-insurance benefits to the domestic partners of city workers, council members will try it again.
Legislation that could go before the council as early as Monday night would extend health benefits to the gay or unmarried straight partners of city employees starting Feb. 1. Consultants estimate the likely cost would be about $650,000 next year, based on about 70 partners and 19 of their children receiving benefits.
Such benefits were so controversial when the council approved them in 1998 that members repealed them rather than risk defending them on the ballot.
Today, city leaders say times have changed and the city must offer the benefits to compete for talent with employers that already offer them, including Columbus schools, Ohio State University and Nationwide.
Still, the term domestic partner was a tough sell when Mayor Michael B. Coleman sent the legislation to the council in July. Councilman A. Troy Miller, who leads the council's human-resources committee, said last night that he negotiated replacing the words with eligible beneficiaries and a reference to covering "an adult with whom the covered employee shares a permanent residence."
He said he didn't want this to be a "gay issue" or a "straight issue," but one of expanding health coverage for families.
In 1998, opponents of domestic-partner benefits accused the council of hiding the proposal until the last minute and voting on it without holding hearings. The council voted unanimously to approve the benefits on the same night that the proposal was made public. Coleman was council president at the time.
Opponents attacked the manner in which the legislation was approved as much as its content. The council repealed the ordinance after opponents gathered enough signatures to place it on the ballot. If it had lost, only another vote of the public could have brought back the issue.
More than a decade later, it is back.
Miller held a hearing last night, and no one signed up to speak.
"It's really a nonissue anymore," said Chris Cozad, the mayor's liaison to the gay community.
The proposal that Coleman sent to the council in July made two points: to expand city health benefits for the children of city workers up to age 28, and to extend the benefits to domestic partners.
Coleman is making it clear that this is really about the second point: covering domestic partners.
Coleman's proposal would have specifically covered domestic partners. The council's version makes a broader statement about covering an adult living permanently at the employee's home.
Coleman has expressed concern that might go beyond what most employers offer and could cost too much. Would it mean, for example, that the city has to cover a grandparent, parent or roommate of a city employee?
"Candidly, the way the ordinance is structured now, the possibility exists for us to do that," said Chet Christie, the city's human-resources director.
But he said the council's version also will give him the authority to narrow the definition in the city's benefits rulebook. He said he would add rules to require that the city worker had been "in an exclusive relationship with the employee for at least six months and intends to remain in the relationship indefinitely."
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