By Steve Plunkett
Domestic partners of city workers may receive even better benefits than their counterparts in Wellington.
City Attorney Diana Grub Frieser reported Aug. 26 on how City Council members could add sexual orientation and gender identification and expression to the city’s equal employment opportunity criteria. Then she asked how soon council members wanted to act.
Mayor Susan Whelchel asked whether the ordinances could be introduced the next day. “That’s what I want to see happen,” she said.
Boca Raton decided to follow Palm Beach County in subsidizing health insurance and other benefits for domestic partners the same as it does married, opposite-sex spouses. Wellington does not. Whelchel had asked Frieser to add the county’s policies to her report.
“The Wellington thing, as I understand it, recognizes the domestic partnership but doesn’t permit the funding of it,” Councilman Michael Mullaugh said. “If we’re going to recognize something we should be willing to pay for it.”
Dave Barkey of the Anti-Defamation League said his group supported Boca Raton giving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees anti-discrimination and domestic partnership rights.
“The city needs to be on the right side of history,” Barkey said. “From our perspective, it’s not just the right thing to do, it’s good for business. … Do we want to be open to all and attract the best and the brightest, or do we want to be exclusionary?”
Councilwoman Constance Scott pushed for Frieser to research the issue in July and introduced the ordinances Aug. 27.
That same day Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest U.S. employer outside of the government, announced it will offer health insurance and vision care to domestic partners of U.S. employees starting next year.
On Aug. 13, the Palm Beach Town Council also voted to offer benefits to domestic partners of employees effective Jan. 1. Municipal workers will be able to insure their registered domestic partners for health and dental insurance. They will also have the same benefits as opposite-sex married employees on bereavement leave, illness in immediate family leave, family and medical leave and domestic partnership leave.
Town staff had recommended against extending benefits it because it will cost $72,510 a year extra.
“Once again, elected officials in Palm Beach County have looked beyond simple dollars and cents and have taken steps to equalize family benefits for their gay and lesbian employees,” Rand Hoch, founder of the nonprofit, nongovernmental Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, said in a statement.
The council began pressuring Boca Raton last fall after City Council members refused to sign a $1.2 million hazardous waste cleanup agreement because it included an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination clause.
Frieser said public hearings on Boca Raton’s ordinances will be Sept. 10.
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