Group Forms To Counter Ordinance That Takes Away City Benefits

A new group is considering starting a petition to convince El Paso City Council to add a Non-Discrimination Clause to the city charter that would trump the voter-passed initiative slated to take away the health insurance of gay and unwed partners of city employees.

The voter-passed initiative, put on the ballot by a petition from local religious group, El Pasoans For Traditional Family Values, passed 55 to 45-percent last month. The group has always insisted their only target was to take away the health insurance of gay and unwed partners of city employees. According to city representatives, only 19 employees signed up for those benefits, which were approved by City Council in a budget meeting last year.

However, the City Attorney said that because the initiative only mentioned city employees, their spouses and their legal dependents, more than 200 unintended city employees and retirees will lose their health insurance, too.

“We’re not a place that says that certain individuals should be discriminated against, for any reason”, said local attorney Lyda Ness. She, along with radio host Lisa Degliantoni, or “Lisa D” are considering gathering the 1,548 signatures of registered city voters to get their initiative on the May ballot. It’s a last option, since Representative Susie Byrd said she plans to ask Council, once again, to consider adding the Non-Discrimination clause. If the council rejects Byrd’s idea, said Ness, then they would petition.

Only the City Council, not citizen referendums, can alter the city charter, so ultimately, the decision would be left up to the City Representatives.

Tom Brown has been the most vocal pastor who mobilized the movement to take away the health insurance of gay and unmarried partners of city employees. He has another solution: to change the ordinance so that it reads “no one would lose benefits except unmarried domestic partners”, Brown said.

The City Council has been unwilling to do that. In Tuesday’s city council meeting, Representative Beto O’Rourke said he does not want to leave the 19 employees who signed up for the domestic benefits and who are the intended targets of the original initiative, alone in the battle to regain health benefits. City Council members are also slated to lose their health insurance, once the ordinance kicks in on January 1. “What would be terrible is to start to carve out certain groups and leave for example the gay and lesbian partners of city employees to fend for themselves, who’ve been receiving city employees for the last year who we don’t know what their pre-existing conditions…this way we’re all in the same boat”, Representative Beto O’Rourke said Tuesday.

What city council does appear to be willing to do is amend the ordinance so that only future employees are affected by the initiative.

In Tuesday’s meeting, Representative Rachel Quintana asked for approval from the council to have the city attorney help her draft an amended ordinance that will protect all current employees and would make the initiative applicable only to new employees. “There is case law, that people who already receive benefits, will keep their benefits, so going forward, new people who are asking for domestic partners wouldn’t be able to qualify”, Quintana said.

Brown said the move is not what voters wanted. “That’s not the will of the people, number two, it would provide legal problams because future employees would come and say ‘why are we treated differently?”

Ness believes the confusing language of the ordinance added to the problem. “I honestly think that people didn’t understand what they were voting on to some extent”, she said.

Brown said their intent was clear from the beginning “Everyone on council knows the intended target, so I think it’s disengenious for them to say that ‘we don’t have any idea what voters were thinking’. They’ll do it for their own ordinance, but they won’t lift a finger for lift a finger for the people’s ordinance”

Like the majority of city council, Ness thinks Brown’s message is discriminatory. “I can understand Tom Brown and I respect his religious position, but I think the God and the Jesus that the majority of us believes in here in El Paso is not someone who stands for that hateful message.”

The pastor said that a non-discrimination clause would imply voters who approved the ordinance supporting quote “traditional family values” were discriminating when he says they’re not. “Decent people who look at homosexuality and say that is an immoral and sinful action, and on top of that someone might say ‘I don’t think anything is immoral about them, but I don’t think homosexuals should get married and have equal benefits as a couple, to say that those people are practicing discrimination, is a slap in their face.”

“It is about family values but it’s about accepting all types of families, gay, straight, marriage shouldn’t be a requirement to have these benefits”, said Ness.

Brown has also proposed gathering the necessary signatures to let voters decide in May whether to strip city council of its power to rescind ordinances two years after they pass. He admits it would be a tough deadline to meet, though.

To put a citizens referendum on the May ballot, petitioners need to gather the more than 15-hundred signatures of registered city voters. The city clerk would then take 30 working days to verify those signatures. After that, the citizens’ proposal goes to city council – where it runs the risk of being rejected. If rejected, petitioners would have to get another 15-hundred signatures. All of that needs to be done by February.

On a related note, Brown was recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal article saying he felt called by God to get more involved in public service. When asked if he’ll run for public office, possibly a city council seat in May, he said no. “I can do a lot better as a civic organizer and getting the right people to run… voters are always are cautious and nervous about ministers running so I have to face the fact that they don’t like ministers being in office”, he said.