Domestic Partners Receive Health Care Benefits In El Paso, TX

EL PASO — Gay and unmarried heterosexual partners of municipal employees will now be able to get city health benefits.

After a brief debate about whether the timing was right, the City Council voted 6-1 Thursday to add domestic partner benefits to the city budget.

About 45 of 6,100 city employees will qualify for the benefits, budget director David Almonte said. The benefits will begin in January.

This additional health insurance coverage will cost taxpayers $128,000 to $287,000, Almonte said.

South-West city Rep. Beto O’Rourke said equal treatment of employees was the basis for the change.

“This is not a fiscal issue. It’s a matter of fairness and doing the right thing,” he said.

City employees with unmarried partners had not been able to get health benefits for them, O’Rourke said.

“But if you are heterosexual, you and your partner always have the choice to get married,” he said. “Gay people are denied that option. That’s a key point.”

Northeast city Rep. Carl L. Robinson was the only council member to vote against the expanded health insurance program, citing the bad economy.

“We’re looking at having to cut a lot of things from the budget and we’re raising fees. This just isn’t the time,” he said.

East-Central city Rep. Emma Acosta also questioned the timing, citing the economy. She initially joined Robinson in a bid that failed 5-2 to remove the benefits package from the budget.

But she changed her position and later voted with the rest of the council to add the new benefits.

Acosta got city staff and the council to agree to research how much it would cost to allow retired city employees to add spouses that they married after they retired to the city health plan.

“I knew that it was going to pass anyway,” she said of the domestic partners provision. “I got some calls from some retired city employees who said, ‘What about us?’ ”

Eastridge/Mid-Valley city Rep. Steve Ortega missed the vote. He said his flight was late getting back from Austin, where he was meeting with members of a state agency on affordable housing for his district.

Almonte, the budget director, said the city had made sure that the domestic partners program would be controlled, to make sure nobody abused it.

Unmarried partners must live together for at least six months and meet three of six requirements.

They need to show a deed, a mortgage or lease agreement with both names on it. They can also show joint ownership of a car, drivers’ licenses with a common address, proof of a joint bank account or a living will that names one of the partners as the beneficiary. They can also show that one of them is named by the other as the primary beneficiary of a will, retirement account or life insurance policy.

Austin and Dallas also provide a domestic partners benefit to their employees, Almonte said.