Capitol Correspondent
and wire reports
LANSING– The Kalamazoo City Manager Kenneth Collard announced Monday night that the city was reversing itself on its earlier announcement it would cut domestic partner benefits to contract employees. The city will launch a pilot program to continue to provide health benefits, reversing the earlier decision.
In Ann Arbor, school board members announced they too would be reversing a decision to eliminate health benefits when they learned of the pilot project at MSU. Board members told the public they were informed by legal counsel they had no other choice based on a reading of the Michigan Appeals Court ruling.
On Monday, the UofM announced plans to pilot a program similar to MSU's "Other Eligible Individual" program. The UofM plan will be called an "Other Qualified Adult" and will take effect in January of 2008. The entire eligibility program can be seen on the web at http://www.umich.edu/~benefits/eligibility/index.htm.
Jay Kaplan, an attorney with the ACLU LGBT project said the MSU program enrollment period is now closed, and that under the new criteria, MSU actually had two heterosexual couples apply for the benefits, helping expand coverage to more people.
