On July 14th, 1st District Councilmember Robert Garcia will officially “Request the City Attorney draft and return within 60 days an Equal Benefits Ordinance, requiring that contractors doing business with the City demonstrate they provide benefits for registered domestic partners that are equal to those provided for married spouses.” (Council Agenda Item #15 / 09-0704). 2nd District Councilmember Suja Lowenthal is co-sponsoring the proposed ordinance.
It would appear that Mr. Garcia’s proposal is very similar to and heavily based upon Administrative Codes 12B and 12C enacted in the City and County of San Francisco in November 1996 and Administrative Code Section 10.8.2.1 enacted by the City of Los Angeles in 2003.
According to his website: robertgarcia.com; Mr. Garcia feels that everyone deserves equal treatment in the workplace and that his recommendation represents an important step forward for equality and civil rights in Long Beach.
Sounds good. Any public policy that serves to enhance liberty, justice, equality and civil rights can only serve as a net benefit for all individual citizens and society as a whole, right?
Interestingly and, perhaps, predictably, not everyone agrees that Equal Benefits Ordinances, or EBO’s, are the right way to go about assuring equal rights for registered domestic partners within a given jurisdiction. According to Thomas F. Coleman, Esq. Founding Director of “unmarriedamerica.org”, a nonprofit information service focusing on the interests and concerns of America’s 101 million unmarried adults, EBO’s have met with significant resistance throughout the U.S. and have resulted in a number of lawsuits challenging them in State and federal Courts.
Portland, Maine, for example, adopted an equal benefits ordinance which was challenged by Catholic Charities. Although a federal court invalidated a portion of the law affecting health and pension benefits, it allowed the city to enforce portions dealing with other benefits, such as employee assistance programs, bereavement leave, and leaves of absence.
And in New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won a court victory in 2006 giving him permission to ignore a local EBO. Much like Mr. Garcia’s proposal for Long Beach, the New York law in question would have prevented the city from doing business with companies that did not offer domestic partner benefits to their employees.
In the 4-3 ruling, New York State’s top court said the mayor did not have to enforce the Equal Benefits Ordinance, enacted by the city council over his veto, because the measure violated a state statute requiring public contacts to be awarded to the lowest bidder. The court concluded that a municipality may not withhold a contract simply because the lowest bidder does not offer equal benefits to domestic partners of its employees.
“The provision of equal benefits for domestic partners and spouses may be a desirable end, but it is not one that New York City is free to pursue by departing from the requirements of the competitive bidding statute,” the court declared.
Like New York, Long Beach requires that city contracts be awarded to what the City’s Purchasing Division refers to as the “lowest responsible bidder” as determined through a well established competitive bidding process.
This fact may or may not prove problematic for Mr. Garcia’s well-intended proposal.
Broward County, Florida passed a milder equal benefits law, which gives preference points to businesses seeking county contracts if those businesses have adopted domestic partner benefits for their own employees.
Long Beach already conducts considerable outreach for and offers a great deal of assistance and consideration in the competitive bidding process to various types of businesses such as Disadvantaged, Minority, Woman, Disabled Veteran, and Long Beach Business Enterprises.
This outreach, assistance and consideration is clearly described in Long Beach’s Diversity Outreach Program and perhaps simply amending this existing program to include business enterprises that demonstrate they provide benefits for registered domestic partners that are equal to those provided for married spouses is another way to accomplish Mr. Garcia’s goal without exposing the City to the potential of costly litigation like that experienced in Portland and New York City.
Our able City Attorney will no doubt consider all of these potential challenges when drafting the EBO that Mr. Garcia recommends and perhaps will advise the Council accordingly.
In any case I fully support the spirit of what Mr. Garcia is attempting through his recommendation even though I don’t necessarily agree with how he wants to get us there.
The true and primary purpose of government in a well-ordered and civil society is to secure, maintain, protect and increase the individual freedoms, rights and liberties of all People, equally.
If we cannot manage to accomplish these goals at the federal or State levels, then we should, at the very least, encourage their accomplishment at the local level.
I very much welcome your questions and your comments.