A bipartisan panel voted 7-5 today to allow the House and Senate to decide for themselves whether legislative employees should be extended the same-sex benefits negotiated in a union contract for state workers.

"This really is more institutional, respecting the long-held tradition of the House and the Senate," said Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe, DFL-Erskine. "I would think both the House and the Senate ... would want to protect that."

The move was a compromise, putting off the decision for now. The House and Senate rules committees will each decide later how they will handle those benefits for their lawmakers and staffs.

Republicans who control the House generally oppose same-sex coverage while DFLers who control the Senate favor the plan.

A separate group of 110 employees answer to both bodies. The fate of their coverage will be decided later by the Legislative Coordinating Commission, made up of six senators and six representatives.

The same-sex benefits were agreed to last month by the state and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 6 and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, which represent more than half of the state government work force.

Legislators and nonunion legislative staff members normally adopt the health plan used by state employees.

But the same-sex language had provided a hangup.

"I think this is something that's not right," said Sen. Dick Day, R-Owatonna. "I feel it shouldn't be in either the House or the Senate and I would like it removed."

House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, said the moral and practical reasons that House Republicans voiced against extending same-sex insurance coverage to nearly 30,000 union members who negotiated the benefits with the state applied to themselves and their staff members.

"It's an issue I feel very strongly about," Sviggum said. "I not only speak to the rightness of the benefit."

He said the provision is discriminatory because it allowed unmarried same-sex partners coverage, but not unmarried opposite-sex partners. If the LCC had extended the provision to legislative employees, Sviggum said he expected lawsuits.

If there had been a tie vote, the insurance package would have failed, leaving about 575 legislative staff members and 201 legislators without health or dental coverage as of Jan. 1. The compromise means everyone will be covered.

A House-Senate subcommittee recently deadlocked on the two union contracts, sending the issue to the full Legislature, which convenes Jan. 29. In the meantime, the contracts are to take effect on Friday.

Unlike the AFSCME and MAPE contracts, which need approval by the Legislature, a decision on coverage for legislators and staff is the prerogative of the Legislative Coordinating Commission.

The cost of the same-sex coverage for the two unions is estimated at $900,000 a year. Additional cost coverage for legislators and staff members would be negligible, said Greg Hubinger, director of the LCC.

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