Eastchester stands alone in axing gay benefits

By KEITH EDDINGS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: January 9, 2005)

The narrow vote by the Eastchester Town Board last week to stop offering health benefits to the partners of its gay employees has received little notice from other municipalities, school districts and companies in the region that offer the benefits. They said their decisions to recognize their gay workers have ignited none of the controversy created in Eastchester.

None said they would consider following Eastchester by rescinding the benefits.

"Absolutely not," said Celia Felsher, president of the Mamaroneck Board of Education, which voted unanimously three years ago to provide health coverage to the partners of the school district's gay employees. "In fact, when I came on the board ... it came to my attention that we didn't offer benefits to domestic partners, and I said, 'What? In this day and age? How could we not?' "

Eastchester was near the forefront of the issue when the Town Board voted unanimously to offer domestic partner benefits to its gay workers at the request of a police officer in 2000, when 4,148 public and private employers in the United States offered the benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group based in Washington. By 2003, there were 7,149 offering the benefits.

The numbers suggest that while gay couples have been less successful on other issues in recent years — most notably on their campaign for the right to marry — they have been making strides in the workplace.

"I think the decision (by Eastchester) goes against what seems to be happening in certain parts of society," said Robert Nadel, who serves on the board of the Westchester Human Resources Management Association, an organization of personnel professionals.

Locally, IBM Corp. of Armonk in 1997 became the first major employer to extend health benefits to the partners of gay employees.

"The reason is pretty simple," said John Bukovinsky, a spokesman for the company, Westchester County's largest employer. "We value and respect diversity. We think it sparks innovation and we think it helps us understand our customers better."

For gay couples, the justification for offering the benefits strikes closer to home.

"Everyone opposed to same-sex marriage says it's about protecting children," said Michael Sabatino, a Yonkers businessman who married his partner, Robert Voorheis, in Canada last year. "The reality is that not offering benefits to domestic partners denies their children health benefits, denies them life insurance benefits. There's no reason why we shouldn't have the same benefits. It's encouraging family. It's encouraging stability. It's encouraging commitment."

Other companies with a local presence have begun offering health benefits to the partners of their gay employees in recent years, including AT&T, Consolidated Edison and Gannett, the parent company of The Journal News. Westchester County government began offering the domestic partner benefits to gay employees in 1999. Rockland County began offering them last year.

In Eastchester, the school and fire districts have offered domestic partner benefits for gay employees for several years, which has attracted little notice. But the Town Board's 5-0 vote to do the same in 2000 ignited a firestorm, fanned by a local group that gathered nearly 1,100 signatures on a petition opposing the decision and then led a campaign to defeat James Cavanaugh, the five-term town supervisor, in the 2003 elections. Cavanaugh lost a Republican primary by a narrow margin to Anthony Colavita, who voted for the benefits as a councilman but changed his position during the campaign.

Colavita said the decision to end domestic partnership benefits was an economic one, not a moral judgment on homosexuality. He said the cost of the benefits went beyond the $6,100 extra the town pays to provide health insurance to the partner of the lone employee who has signed up for them because, since the town is self-insured, it also must pick up the partner's medical bills. Two more employees have recently asked about the benefit, which Colavita said would add to the cost.

"This was not political," Colavita said. "It was economic."

Other municipal and school officials say the cost of offering health benefits to the partners of gay employees has been small because few employees have signed up their partners. In addition, many of the employees who have enrolled their partners already were on family health plans because they have children, said Robert Siebert, the superintendent of the Eastchester school district. Eastchester is part of an insurance cooperative of 23 public school districts in southern Westchester that has offered domestic partner benefits since 2003. In all, 25 couples in the 23 districts have signed up; 12 are gay couples, 13 are straight.

"It's proven to be a positive for our cooperative," Siebert said. "It's given access to our members for equal coverage."

In Greenburgh, no gay employees have signed up their partners since the town offered the benefits three years ago. Supervisor Paul Feiner said that's not the point.

"I think people deserve to be treated equally," Feiner said. "We haven't had any problems with this. If you have good employees, they should be receiving the same benefits."

Reach Keith Eddings at keddings@thejournalnews.com or at 914-694-5060.Reach Keith Eddings at keddings@thejournalnews.com or at 914-694-5060.