Council set to override benefits veto

The Salt Lake City Council is set tonight to override Mayor Rocky Anderson's veto of an insurance benefits plan, even as the Utah Legislature has advanced a bill that would restrict how cities can administer those benefits.

Anderson vetoed the council's plan to offer insurance to adult designees of city employees, but City Council Chairman Dave Buhler is confident that the seven-member body has at least the five votes required to override the veto.

But councilman Saning toward supporting Anderson's veto. Simonsen agrees with the mayor that the city should wait for a state court to rule on the legality of an earlier insurance plan from Anderson that would have offered benefits to domestic partners of city employees.

"Until we have a legal interpretation of what's constitutionally appropriate, we're always going to be in this limbo," Simonsen said. "Even if the answer is no, I think it's an important answer to get — there are other cities and agencies who need to know these answers as well."

Simonsen, Buhler and the rest of the council have watched the progression of a bill that would require employees who use insurance for domestic partners or adult designees to pay for it themselves.

That bill, HB327, would also require that insurance for adult designees or partners be offered through city and county councils and not through an executive branch order, as Anderson's earlier action was.

"Ninety percent of that bill is just fine and would not affect what the City Council has done," Buhler said. "The part that is not fine is that the employees have to pay the total cost themselves."

During House debate Wednesday morning, Rep. Jackie Biskupski, a Democrat from Salt Lake City and the only openly gay House member, tried to amend the bill so that cities could decide who should pay for the additional insurance.

"I don't think it's too much for me to ask that I be able to purchase or be able to ask my employer for the same health benefit for somebody that I have a relationship with that you get automatically because you're married," Biskupski said. "All I'm asking is that I be treated the same way."

Biskupski's amendment failed 49 to 21, and the original bill passed by 52 to 16.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, said that he wants the Legislature to set public policy for the state instead of waiting for individual court decisions.

"I do not think that everything's that happened in the last 200 years is bigotry and needs to be corrected," Christensen said during floor debate. "I just don't think that you can take the tax dollars and advance this specific instance."

The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com