The Long Beach City Council had a busy slate last night as they approved their proposed Equal Benefits Ordinance, approved laws concerning smoking lounges that the City Attorney’s office say violate state law, and learned that levels of carcinogenic PCB’s in the Los Cerritos Wetlands that the City is attempting to acquire are 2,000 times greater than state and federal recommended levels.
Yes, it was a busy night at City Hall.
The Council voted unanimously to have City Attorney Robert Shannon draft an Equal Benefits Ordinance into law, which would essentially require the City to do business and issue contracts only to companies that provide the same benefits for same-sex couples that they do for married couples. It will return to Council in the near future for final approval. The Press-Telegram’s Paul Eakins weighs in on the issue in this article.
In a more complicated issue, the Council then decided to approve rules concerning smoking lounges after being expressly warned by the Assistant City Attorney that they would violate state law in doing so. Eakins again has the gist in this article.
The Council also learned from the Environmental Protection Agency that large portions of the wetlands-area property they voted to acquire this summer contain levels of harmful chemicals that exceed state and federal recommendations 2,000-fold. The Los Angeles Times’ Louis Sahagun profiled the findings yesterday in this piece and raises the question on everyone’s mind: what does this mean for the land swap?
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