Panel Gives Final Nod to D. C. City’s DP Benefits
Bush has indicated he’ll sign appropriations bill allowing partners law

by Lou Chibbaro Jr.

The District of Columbia’s domestic partners law cleared its final hurdle in Congress on Dec. 4 when a House-Senate conference committee approved a D.C. appropriations bill that eliminates a nine-year-old restriction that prevented the city from allowing its employees to purchase health insurance for their same-sex partners.

The House and Senate were expected to ratify the action by the conference panel before the end of the week. President Bush, who didn’t object to lifting the federally imposed ban on the domestic partners measure, has said he will sign the bill as soon as it reaches the White House.

D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams (D) has pledged to take immediate steps to implement the domestic partners law and will seek advice from the gay community on details surrounding its implementation. Williams on Dec. 4 told the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, a local gay group, that he is considering setting up a domestic partner registry in the city’s Office of Vital Records, according to Stein Club President Kurt Vorndran.

The law allows same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners of D.C. government employees to be included in the city’s employee health insurance plan if the partners pay their own monthly premiums. The law also allows all domestic partners living in the city to register their relationship with the District government and requires hospitals, nursing homes, and other health and social services agencies to confer spousal rights to domestic partners of their patients or clients.

"We need to take a moment to recognize this as a historic development," said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay political group.

Stachelberg noted that D.C. joins 115 other cities, counties, and towns throughout the nation that offer domestic partner benefits to employees. Gay advocacy groups note that about one-third of the nation’s Fortune 500 corporations also offer domestic partner benefits to their employees.

While the conference panel cleared the way for the domestic partners measure, it sided with a proposal by the Republican-controlled House to keep in place language that prohibits D.C. from using its funds to operate clean needle exchange programs aimed at curtailing the spread of AIDS. The panel also backed a House proposal to renew language from last year’s bill that bars the city from carrying out a voter-approved initiative that would have legalized doctor-prescribed marijuana for AIDS and chemotherapy patients.

The language the conference committee agreed to on the medical marijuana issue states, "The Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998, also known as Initiative 59 approved by the electors of the District of Columbia on November 3, 1998, shall not take effect."

In addition, the conference panel sided with yet another House proposal that bars the city from enforcing a decision by the D.C. Human Rights Commission ordering the Boy Scouts to reinstate two openly gay Scout leaders. The commission earlier this year ruled that the Boy Scouts policy of barring gay Scouts and Scout leaders violates the city’s human rights law, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Capitol Hill sources said Democratic leaders in the Senate most likely acquiesced to the GOP House on the needle exchange and Boy Scouts proposals out of fear of jeopardizing a carefully crafted $5.3 billion D.C. budget for fiscal year 2002. House Republicans accepted all of the spending proposals submitted by Mayor Williams and the D.C. Council and agreed to drop about a dozen, non-funding-related restrictions on various city programs that Congress imposed on the city in past years.

"It’s a much better bill than we’ve had before," said Paul Strauss, one of the city’s two elected "shadow" senators whose duties include lobbying Congress on behalf of the city’s interests. "But it’s not a good bill because it continues to infringe on home rule."

Strauss said House Republican leaders, including House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), refused to budge on the needle exchange and Boy Scouts issue. Capitol Hill sources said the opposition in Congress to the medical marijuana legalization was so strong that most Democrats chose not to push that issue.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on D.C., resisted efforts to add the needle exchange and Boy Scouts restrictions in the Senate version of the appropriations bill, but she agreed to requests by Republicans to retain the medical marijuana ban in the Senate bill.

Gay activists have credited Landrieu with taking the lead role in the fight to remove the ban on the D.C. domestic partners law. In committee meetings and in speeches on the Senate floor, Landrieu defended the city’s right to adopt domestic partner and needle exchange programs, saying Congress should not impose its will on the city’s locally elected government.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said he followed Landrieu’s recommendations on yielding to the House on the needle exchange and Boy Scouts issues.

"We made a lot of progress in some other areas, and it was [her] decision that we should take what we can get this time and build on what we’ve been able to do," Daschle said during a Dec. 5 press briefing. "I’m very pleased with the many victories she’s been able to achieve in this legislation. The domestic partners legislation is resolved."

During a Senate markup hearing last month, Landrieu said that while she was uncertain about the final outcome of the needle exchange issue, she was pleased that needle exchange opponents agreed to lift a set of restrictions Congress imposed last year on needle distribution. Last year’s D.C. appropriations bill included a clause barring privately funded organizations -- which have continued to carry out D.C. needle exchange efforts -- from distributing needles in locations within 1,000 feet of churches, schools, and parks. Advocacy groups said the restriction prevented the needle exchange effort from operating in locations where many of the city’s injection drug users congregate. City health officials have said injection drug users have the highest rate of new HIV infections.

Cornelius Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, said the conference panel’s decision to retain the ban on D.C. funding for needle exchange programs would have a "devastating" effect on the city’s ability to reduce the spread of HIV within a high-risk population group.

"Yes, the Republicans in the House prevailed on this," Baker said. "But the Senate chose to give in to the House, so the Senate has to be held accountable, just as the House must be held accountable."

Baker said Whitman-Walker would provide $75,000 to Prevention Works, the organization that has been carrying out a local needle exchange program funded solely by private contributions. He said Whitman-Walker’s contribution comes at a time when a sharp drop-off in contributions to the Clinic due to the terrorist attacks and an economic recession has forced the Clinic to confront potential cuts in its own programs.