City Benefits Battle: Some Seek To Recall Mayor Over New Proposal

It’s a new round in the battle over city health benefits and it’s getting even uglier.

The authors of an embattled voter-approved ordinance are threatening to recall El Paso mayor John Cook over a recently introduced ordinance of his own.

“If it does pass we will recall the mayor and we will recall every city council person who votes for it,” said pastor Tom Brown, who helped draft the ordinance.

“That’s something I’ll have to live with if it happens,” Mayor Cook said.

Mayor Cook’s new ordinance would give back health benefits to dozens of city employees, their partners and some retirees that were taken away last November.

Last November, voters approved a measure to take away those health benefits. Religious group El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values spearheaded the initiative to put the item on the ballot and actually worded the ordinance voters saw.

El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values intended for the ordinance to solely target the gay and unwed partners of city employees. However, the wording of the ordinance did not specify that goal. Dozens of unintended groups, like some retirees and judges, ended up also losing their benefits as a result.

Some elected officials, domestic partners and retirees sued the city in an effort to trump the ordinance and keep their health insurance. Because the majority of city council has been opposed to taking away the health insurance, El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values intervened in the lawsuit and defended their ordinance.

Those who sued wanted the ordinance struck on two grounds. They alleged it prevented them from obtaining health insurance, thus violating the contract they had with the insurance company, and that they were denied equal protection under the law, meaning, they were singled out for discrimination.

In the end Federal Judge Frank Montalvo ruled the ordinance must be enforced as written.

The mayor said his new proposal is needed in light of the judge’s ruling. He said city council must make an “all or nothing” choice: either all of the domestic partners and the unintended targets, such as judges and some retirees, lose their health insurance or the benefits are restored to all.

“Knowing those two things – — that hundreds of people will be impacted by what the people voted for, and number two, No. 2, knowing that if we just tried to do what we think the drafters of the ordinance wanted in the first place which was to punish domestic partners, that we would end up losing and spending precious taxpayer taxpayer dollars, I thought the best thing to do was to restore benefits to all city employees and their dependents,” the mayor said in an interview last month.

Brown and the ordinance’s supporters believe the mayor is overstepping his boundaries. “He’s not respecting the will of the voters,” said Brown.

“I do respect the voters,” said Cook. “I just think that in this particular case they made a serious mistake that impacts hundreds of people’s lives. If I see a wrong that happened no matter what people’s intentions were, I have to have the political fortitude to fix it,” he said.

Brown said he would like to prevent council from voting on the issue altogether. His interpretation of the federal judge’s ruling is that city council members lost their benefits themselves and voting to re-instate those benefits would be a conflict of interest.