City benefits expansion faces opposition

A Spokane city ordinance extending benefits to the domestic partners of unmarried city employees may be headed for the ballot this year.

Opponents of the ordinance submitted 6,300 signatures this week from a petition drive seeking to reverse City Council approval of a “domestic partnership benefits” ordinance.

City law requires 5,145 signatures of city voters to qualify a referendum for the ballot.

Additional signatures were expected to be submitted before today’s 5 p.m. referendum filing deadline, said city Clerk Terri Pfister.

City Council President Dennis Hession has tentatively set a hearing for July 5 at 6 p.m. to consider the petition. Under the City Charter, the council has a choice of accepting the petition and repealing the ordinance or sending the signatures to the county auditor for validation. Hession said the council will probably ask that the signatures be validated.

The council on April 25 approved the ordinance on a 5-2 vote following nearly three hours of often impassioned testimony.

A group known as Choice of the People mounted the petition drive, organized largely by volunteers, according to Penny Lancaster, a conservative activist on social issues.

In a written statement, Lancaster said the Choice group believes “that treating heterosexual and homosexual cohabiting relationships as equal to marital relationships will be harmful to our community” and that those relationships are more often troubled by poverty and crime.

“Basically, this ordinance establishes a government policy of rewarding immorality with taxpayer money,” said Lancaster, who lives in Spokane Valley but was involved in the petition drive because she believes it’s a regional community issue.

Hession said the Choice group has reduced the issue to a question of morality. “It comes down to fairness and equality and trying to treat people the same,” he said, rather than judging them.

Unmarried employees would have to submit an affidavit declaring their partnerships with someone of either the same or opposite sex.

Mayor Jim West had said he might veto the measure, but the five-vote council majority could have overridden his veto. As a result, West let the law pass without his signature. Opponents were then allowed 30 days to submit signatures.

The extension of benefits would include health care, retirement rights, family leave and life insurance.

Labor groups would have to agree to include the benefits in their contracts before most employees would be eligible to receive them. Initially, only 17 non-represented employees, plus the City Council, would be eligible. None has asked for the benefits.

Referendum sponsors have pointed out that the cost of extending benefits is an issue. One estimate puts the potential cost at $176,000 a year for health insurance if the measure is extended to all employees.

Council members who supported the ordinance said the actual cost would be negligible because union organizations would have to make concessions in other areas of their contracts in order to obtain domestic partner benefits.

The ordinance is also seen as part of a wider attempt by council members to contain the cost of benefits by having employees choose from a limited package of benefits.