http://www.southernvoice.com/southernvoice/news/record.html?record=18205   

by Lou Chibbaro Jr.

Mayor vetoes DP contract requirement
by Laura Douglas-Brown

Friday, 14 December 2001

Mayor Bill Campbell on Tuesday vetoed legislation passed by the City Council last week that would have required private businesses to offer domestic partner benefits to be eligible for city contracts.

"The mayor is very supportive of the concept, but in his decision-making he had to do what he thought was best for the entire city," said Gregory Pridgeon, Campbell’s chief of staff. "He thinks the legislation needs more work and some modifications."

Campbell "agonized over" deciding to veto the legislation, but he was concerned about the impact on small businesses, Pridgeon said.

"Some larger companies that would be involved, it wouldn’t be as much of a burden on them, but some of the smaller companies would have great difficulty, so there should be some exceptions," he said.

The Atlanta City Council voted 12-1 on Dec. 3 in favor of the ordinance that would have required private companies to offer domestic partner benefits to be eligible for city contracts, if the company offers benefits to heterosexual spouses.

Little more than one paragraph, the proposed law contained no exceptions and stated that the city "shall not enter into contracts of any kind with any business" that does not offer equal benefits for domestic partners and spouses.

"The mayor certainly believes all people should be treated fairly regardless of sexual orientation or marital status, and he has been a strong supporter of the rights of the gay and lesbian community," Pridgeon said.

"We hope this veto, which had tremendous rationale, will not turn the gay and lesbian community against the mayor at the end of his term," he said.

Campbell took office in 1994 and has served two terms as Atlanta’s mayor, with strong support from gay voters. He was not eligible to run for re-election this year due to term limits, and he will leave office Jan. 7 when Mayor-elect Shirley Franklin is inaugurated.

During Campbell’s tenure, the City of Atlanta twice defended its policy of offering DP benefits to its own employees to the state Supreme Court, winning a landmark decision in 1997.

In 1999, the city also successfully sued Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine over his refusal to grant approval for insurance companies to offer DP benefits.

Campbell supported the concept of an equal benefits ordinance during his 1997 re-election campaign, even stating in an interview with Southern Voice that he would "consider" issuing an executive order to enact the policy.

But until this week’s veto of the measure passed by the City Council, Campbell had taken no public action on the issue. And prior to the veto, his staff had not responded to specific questions about the mayor’s position and strategies for implementing the policy, saying only that he continued to "consider" it.

Measure passed ‘in haste’?

The equal benefits ordinance was introduced by City Council member Michael Bond on Oct. 10, after a promise made to a gay business organization during a campaign forum. The measure then languished in the City Council’s finance/executive committee over concerns it was too vague.

Bond, who lost his bid for City Council president to gay fellow Council member Cathy Woolard, pulled the EBO from the committee for a floor vote before the full City Council during last week’s marathon 12-hour meeting, the last before the new mayor and new City Council members take office in January.

"Due to the lateness of the hour, folks were not paying as close attention as they should, and they passed the legislation in haste," Pridgeon said. "It had good intentions but the legislation didn’t get the kind of… changes that would be more fair."

Bond, the bill’s sponsor, originally introduced legislation asking the city’s law department to draft an EBO.

"I think they took offense at that," he said this week.

The law department then agreed to draft the measure voluntarily, and submitted the one paragraph measure that the council later passed.

Bond said this week he had hoped to introduce amendments to the legislation before the City Council passed it, but "we basically ran out of time" at the meeting.

He also hinted at frustration the law department did not produce a more detailed ordinance.

"They said they gave it their best effort… but I would have liked to see it more fleshed out," he said.

Campbell did not work with Bond or the law department on the legislation in order to address concerns before passage, Pridgeon said.

Waivers for small businesses?

Like Campbell, Bond said he wanted to include waivers in the EBO for smaller companies.

"The larger the company, the more apt they are to offer the benefits," Bond said.

But the handful of other governments around the country that have enacted EBOs did not include waivers for small companies.

Enacted in 1997, San Francisco’s highly successful EBO, the first in the country, served as a model for others around the nation, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley and San Mateo County in California, as well as Seattle, Wash.

"I don’t think [a waiver for small companies] is necessary," said Cynthia Goldstein, contract compliance officer for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, which monitors the EBO there.

More than 90 percent of the companies that have complied with San Francisco’s EBO have fewer than 500 employees, she said.

Enrollment in DP medical benefits programs tends to be low -- about 3 percent of employees when the benefits are offered to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and less than 1 percent when offered to same-sex only, Goldstein said.

And most small companies pass on the bulk of costs for benefits, especially for dependents, directly to the employees.

"For smaller businesses, compliance with this ordinance is usually quite easy," she said. "The costs associated with extending domestic partner benefits are minimal, and there is no financial basis for that kind of exclusion."

But San Francisco’s ordinance does include other waivers not incorporated in the Atlanta measure vetoed by Campbell. The San Francisco EBO applies only to businesses with more than $5,000 in city contracts annually, and it allows contractors to offer domestic partners a "cash equivalent" if they are unable to provide the benefits.

The San Francisco law also allows exemptions "primarily where a contractor is the sole provider of a needed good or service, or where there is an emergency that threatens the public health or safety," according to an overview prepared by the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

Since the legislation took effect in 1997, "multiple hundreds" of waivers have been granted, Goldstein said.

"The most common reason is a company is the sole provider of needed goods and services and refuses to comply," she said, listing makers of specialized computer software as examples.

San Francisco’s EBO also included a six-month delay before it took effect, another issue not included in Atlanta’s measure.

"One thing I would hope is that Atlanta would consider creating some kind of phase-in time," Goldstein said. "It would be helpful to give the city more time to roll out the program and get contractors on board to make it more smooth."

Future of an Atlanta EBO

Despite the delay in implementation San Francisco allowed for its ordinance, the measure still attracted several legal challenges. So far, federal courts have upheld the idea of the ordinance, despite tinkering slightly with its application.

But an eventual EBO passed by the City of Atlanta could still face its own court challenges, and one conservative legal organization said this week it is already monitoring the situation.

"In general, we don’t believe society should put its moral stamp on domestic partnerships of this nature," said Phil Kent, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has challenged previous domestic partnership measures in Atlanta.

Kent called the Atlanta City Council "completely irresponsible" for passing Bond’s version of an EBO. He declined to discuss specific legal reasons for challenging a future Atlanta EBO before seeing the language of any reworked legislation.

"But we will be the watchdog, you can rest assured," he said.

Meanwhile, Pridgeon, Campbell’s chief of staff, said the current mayor hopes a new EBO will be enacted quickly after he leaves office.

"We hope some type of modifications will be made by the new Council, and the mayor is urging them to do it expeditiously and have it put in place," Pridgeon said.

Both Woolard, the City Council president-elect, and Franklin, the mayor-elect, have said they support the concept of requiring city contractors to offer domestic partner benefits.

Neither could be reached for comment on Campbell’s veto by press time Wednesday.

INFO!
Mayor Bill Campbell
55 Trinity Ave SW Suite 2400
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-330-6100

Atlanta City Council
55 Trinity Ave. SW suite 2900
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-330-6030