Board Must Act Openly

It shouldn’t be controversial for Ventura County to extend benefits to the domestic partners of its gay and lesbian employees. Unfortunately, it is.

One thing that is not open to debate, however, is the need for the Board of Supervisors to be candid with the public when it is taking action that some of its constituents are likely to find objectionable.

And so while we commend the board for voting unanimously last month to move away from discriminatory personnel policies and treat gay and lesbian county employees more equally, we deplore the bureaucratic shell game it played to sneak the action through without public discussion.

The board’s Sept. 19 agenda included among its consent items--defined as “items expected to be routine and noncontroversial” and therefore off limits for discussion by the board or the public--an action instituting what it described as a “flexible benefits program.”

Although the agenda did not say so, that meant granting health insurance and other benefits to gay and other unmarried couples. Because there are relatively few county employees who would qualify as domestic partners, the change is not expected to cost the county anything.

Only more than a week later, after a Camarillo minister protested, was the action brought out into the open. Supervisor Frank Schillo told The Times that he did not realize the significance of the item and plans to ask his colleagues Tuesday to bring the measure back for discussion and reconsideration.

“I was under the impression I was voting on an extension of the existing policy,” he told The Times. “I didn’t try to hide this from anyone, they hid it from us.”

Domestic partner benefits are becoming more common in government and industry. Nearly one-fifth of the work force can get domestic partner benefits from their companies, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Both the city and county of Los Angeles offer them. They are business as usual in California’s entertainment industry, and are quickly becoming a feature in more mainstream corporate benefit packages as well. The nation’s three largest auto makers in June announced plans to extend health-care coverage to same-sex domestic partners of their U.S. employees. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay and lesbian interest group, the number of employers offering domestic partner health benefits increased 25% since last year.

We agree with the board that extending such coverage equally to all employees is the right thing to do.

Our concern is with the parliamentary sleight of hand that slipped this through in disguise. It brings back uneasy memories of the hidden perks and benefits the supervisors once voted themselves before the practice was exposed in 1992, and the closed-door machinations that led to the disastrous mental-health merger in 1998.

Whether the board is doing the right thing or not, it is obliged to do it openly.

We commend supervisors for voting to extend domestic partner benefits to all employees. But whether they’re doing the right thing or not, they are obliged to do it without sleight of hand.