City’s health insurance decision under fire

MOSCOW, Idaho – Six Republican state legislators have asked the Idaho attorney general’s office to examine the legality of this city’s decision to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of city employees, citing its possible incompatibility with the state’s marriage amendment.

The lawmakers said the resolution the City Council approved on Monday conflicts with the state’s marriage amendment, passed in 2006, which says “a marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”

“We were surprised to see the (city’s) decision regarding the health insurance policy,” Sen. Russ Fulcher, R-Meridian, told the Moscow-Pullman Daily News. “It appears it would conflict with the marriage amendment, or at least the spirit of it.”

Fulcher submitted the request to the attorney general’s office on Friday on behalf of Sens. Curt McKenzie, R-Boise, and Michael Jorgenson, R-Hayden Lake, and state Reps. Curtis Bowers, R-Caldwell, Phil Hart, R-Athol, and Steven Thayn, R-Emmett.

Regence Blue Shield of Idaho, the city’s insurance company, recently began offering a plan that covers same- and opposite-sex domestic partners. Employees who meet the insurance company’s requirements must also sign an affidavit to be eligible for the health insurance benefits.

The benefits take effect early next year, and the council has the option to review the plan by January 2009.

Fulcher said the city resolution and the marriage amendment have an “intuitive conflict.”

Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney said there is no conflict between the two.

“This is a matter of extending to employees an insurance plan that is offered by our insurance provider,” Chaney said. “The city is neither defining domestic partnerships nor creating them.”

The city’s attorney, Randy Fife, said the city’s insurance company decided who is eligible, meaning the city didn’t “recognize” domestic partnerships.

He said the city did not change its policy, and its definition of “immediate family” doesn’t include domestic partners.

“To me, it is not related to whether or not there is a domestic partnership or a relationship that’s prohibited by law,” Fife said. “It has to do with whether or not the city has the capability of allowing an insurance benefit to be offered to its employees.”

Kriss Bivens Cloyd, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said an analysis of the city’s resolution will require time, and did not say when an opinion might be made.

And she said it will be only an opinion, and the city “can take that into consideration, or they can choose to ignore it.”

Like state lawmakers, Fife said he would also review any opinion offered by the attorney general’s office.

Bryan Fischer is executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, a conservative Christian nonprofit group. He sent a letter Friday to Attorney General Lawrence Wasden backing the lawmakers’ request.

“I think the city of Moscow must be stopped in its tracks,” Fischer said. “If the city is allowed to get away with this, then the constitution of the state of Idaho is a meaningless document.”

Chaney said the city isn’t trying to define what makes a family, but only wants to recognize nontraditional families.

“The people who would benefit are existing employees, conceivably,” she said. “They’re people’s friends, neighbors, relatives. I think there’s this perception that the prospective beneficiaries are kind of scary or evil people, and in fact they’re somebody’s child.”

On a different front, an attempt earlier this year by Moscow to restrict firearms failed when the attorney general’s office ruled the city didn’t have legal authority to restrict guns on city property.