Salt Lake City leaders, led by Mayor Rocky Anderson, are considering offering health benefits to domestic partners — a move that would make the capital city the first government body in conservative Utah to adopt such a plan.

While politically and socially controversial, a new report shows the plan could be accomplished with little burden to taxpayers. Moreover, data show that only a handful — possibly less than a dozen — of Salt Lake City's 26,000 employees would actually take advantage of domestic partner benefits.

A new report, conducted by the Public Employees Health Program for Salt Lake City's Department of Human Resources, shows that extending health benefits to domestic partners would cost the city between $38,000 and $113,000. Those figures are fairly meager, considering the city maintains an annual general fund of $170 million and a total budget of more than $660 million.

"It's really very minimal," said Jodi Langford, the city's employee benefits administrator.

The costs are so low because few employees are expected to take advantage of the new benefits.

A scant 1,034 of the city's employees are single, and of those only 1 to 2 percent — 10 to 20 — would be expected to take advantage of domestic partner benefits if they were offered, Langford said. Those assumptions are based on surveys of other large employers who have begun offering domestic partner benefits, she said.

Anderson's spokeswoman, Deeda Seed, said Friday that the mayor is only looking to extend benefits to domestic partners and not to other groups that may be living together.

"Just domestic partners," she said, describing domestic partners as heterosexual couples living in a "common-law marriage" or gay couples.

Councilwoman Jill Remington Love, however, who has been looking at the issue as well, says she would like to see benefits extended to other living relationships — such as parents and siblings — beyond just domestic partners. Councilman Eric Jergensen agrees and urged the mayor "to be collaborative" with the council.

However, if benefits were extended beyond domestic partners to siblings and parents, the budget impact could become huge, Langford said.

"Parents and possibly siblings would change the demographics of our group," she said.

And Love said if the costs were greater than "a couple hundred thousand dollars" she wouldn't be interested.

While Love had been looking to introduce an ordinance that would extend the benefits, Anderson is looking to see if it could be done administratively, either through a policy change or an executive order. City Attorney Ed Rutan is looking at the legal issues and plans to issue a decision in two weeks.

Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson recently proposed extending domestic partner benefits to county employees. At the county it was determined that changing the benefits would have to be done by County Council vote.

In that decision, the council voted 5-4 against extending the benefits, with five Republicans against and four Democrats in favor.

In the city, Love said she has discussed the issue with her collegues and found support.

Councilwoman Nancy Saxton, for one, backs the idea, although she would want to know an exact dollar figure.

"I believe in the concept," she said.

---

E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com