L.A. Unified Approves Benefits for Partners

After a contentious debate, a divided Los Angeles school board voted Monday to extend health benefits to the domestic partners of unmarried employees.

The proposal, approved on a 5-2 vote, was designed to grant equal benefits to homosexual employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District--who are prevented by law from marrying their partners. It was characterized in high-pitched public comments as both a moral imperative and a moral outrage.

However, the two board members who voted against the measure said they feared it would take money from academics.

“Our priorities appear to be backwards in this district,” said board member Barbara Boudreaux. “Is it perceived as a cash cow district or is it perceived as a student-educational attainment district?”

Even board member David Tokofsky, who voted in favor of the proposal, criticized school district officials for crafting the new policy so that it also covers heterosexuals in unmarried relationships, even though they could qualify for benefits by marrying.

Contending that the broader coverage was added late in the process without consulting rank-and-file union members, who eventually will pay for it out of their overall compensation package, Tokofsky said an issue of high principle had become a “political issue and a fiscal issue.”

Under questioning by Boudreaux and board member George Kiriyama, who also voted against the measure, a union official said he believes that the cost would be much less than the $6.1 million per year projected in a Price Waterhouse study.

Bill Callahan, chairman of the district’s Health and Benefits Committee, said many of the district’s 57,000 active and 29,000 retired employees who qualify for the benefits will not seek them because a Internal Revenue Service ruling treats such benefits as taxable income.

Callahan said the actual cost would prove to be much closer to $2 million annually, and could be paid from a special benefits reserve fund without requiring an increase in the allocation to that fund until future contract negotiations.

Tokofsky, who received no support when asked to amend the proposal to exclude heterosexuals, said he would expect employees to push for a change if the costs prove greater than predicted.

Prior to the vote, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a former school board member, said that the city’s adoption of benefits for unmarried domestic partners in November 1993 had proved that “all the dire consequences predicted have not materialized.”

Los Angeles County followed the city in granting benefits to unmarried couples in 1995. Several large companies, including the Walt Disney Co., offer similar benefits.

Goldberg chastised the district for making it impossible for her to obtain benefits for her own domestic partner.

“For the eight years I served on this board, we did not have them in our house,” she said.

Board president Jeff Horton said he would be one of those not seeking coverage from the district because his partner of 13 years has coverage for both of them.

Several speakers castigated the board for pandering to homosexuals.

The Rev. Jessie Lee Peteron of the Brotherhood Organization of the New Destiny said the vote condoned the teaching of homosexual behavior. “For you to validate it is, in essence, to validate evil.”