Rocky vetoes benefits plan

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson vetoed an insurance benefits plan Tuesday — a veto the City Council likely will override by Thursday night.

Anderson nixed the council's plan to offer insurance to adult designees of city employees, including unmarried partners, adult siblings, parents and long-term roommates with whom the employee has long-standing joint financial obligations.

The council passed that plan Feb. 7 with a unanimous vote of all seven members. And since only five votes are required to override the mayor's veto, that sets up a heads-on conflict between the two branches of government.

"The mayor believes he would be doing a disservice to Salt Lake City Corporation employees and the citizens of Salt Lake City if he did not veto the ordinances," wrote Patrick Thronson, the mayor's spokesman. "Considerations of equality, fairness and justice should always trump considerations of political expediency."

Anderson fielded questions about the veto through Thronson, who explained the mayor had said everything he wanted to say in a statement accompanying the veto.

Anderson had campaigned against the council's plan, instead trumpeting his own plan to offer insurance to hetero- and homosexual partners of city employees — a plan that landed the city in court eight days after Anderson put ink to paper.

Several Salt Lake residents and a religious law group from Arizona sued the mayor, saying his domestic partner benefits plan violated Amendment 3 to the Utah Constitution, which establishes marriage as between a man and a woman.

Third District Court Judge Stephen Roth heard arguments on the case Jan. 5 and has not ruled yet on whether Anderson's order was legal.

Jill Remington Love, the council member who brought partner benefits to the City Council, said she was dissatisfied with Anderson's veto.

"I'm disappointed that the mayor chose to do it," Love said. "I think we had a better approach."

The mayor's reasoning in the original order emphasized equality for employees of varying sexual orientations and martial status. His veto Tuesday, however, veered more toward economic and logistical arguments, including a note that the City Council's plan could cost four times more and "opens the door to heightened opportunities for fraud and abuse," he wrote.

The City Council's plan would cost the city between $140,000 and $225,000 to cover 58 to 96 employees. The mayor's plan would have cost between $17,000 and $63,400 for 10 to 22 employees.