DETROIT – After nearly nine years of discussion the issue remains unresolved. But this week, the City of Detroit is poised to take an important step toward offering domestic partnership benefits to their non-union employees. It is expected that the city council will vote as early as Wednesday on a measure that would offer such employees sick, bereavement and other leaves that could be used to care for domestic partners. But while several council members have indicated their support for the plan, its passing is not guaranteed. Sources say that council members received a large influx of calls and letters last week urging them to oppose the measure after a local radio personality denounced it on the air.
That personality "certainly sounded an alarm that resulted in the council people getting many calls and possibly causing some of them to rethink their positions," said Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation, who urged Detroit residents in favor of the measure to reach out to council members immediately. "It's still important to call council members Bates, Collins, Tinsley-Talabi, Everett and Sheila Cockrel encouraging them to support the ordinance. And it wouldn't hurt at this point if Mahaffey, McPhail, Ken Cockrel and Joann Watson were called and thanked for their support so they know they have backing."
Maryann Mahaffey
(313) 224-4510 (phone)
(313) 963-5741 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Kenneth V. Cockrel, Jr.
(313) 224-4505 (phone)
(313) 224-0367 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Sharon McPhail
(313) 224-4530 (phone)
(313) 224- 2011 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Sheila M. Cockrel
(313) 224-1337 (phone)
(313) 224-0369 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Alberta Tinsley-Talabi
(313) 224-1645 (phone)
(313) 224-1787 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Kay Everett
(313) 224-1198 (phone)
(313) 224-1684 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Barbara-Rose Collins
(313) 224-1298 (phone)
(313) 224-0372 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
Alonzo W. Bates
(313) 224-1245 (phone)
(313) 224- 4095 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
JoAnn Watson
(313) 224-4535 (office)
(313) 224-1524 (fax)
E-mail: [email protected]
The history
The issue of domestic partnership benefits first came before the council in July 1995, when they appointed a Domestic Partnership Task Force to examine it. Three years later, the council passed a resolution that called upon the mayor – at that time Dennis Archer – to implement a policy that recognized employees' families that included domestic partners.
"Archer chose not to do it and obviously his successor chose not to, too," said Montgomery. "Archer's argument had always been that he was supportive of an ordinance. His argument was that an ordinance had more integrity because it would have been something passed by council and that this resolution could rise and fall with the change of the administration.
"If we took him at his word we would see that as a real strong statement of sort of wanting to do the completely iron clad thing of passing an ordinance," Montgomery continued. "But why, if he really believed that, why would he not put this temporary mechanism in place? It led many people to not the wrong conclusion, I think, which is that he was trying to play politics and put the whole responsibility for those benefits on the council. I think a reasonable argument could be made that his failure to implement the resolution certainly and unfortunately had the affect that people who would otherwise qualify for the benefits have not had them and could have had them since March 1998."
Three years after the resolution vote, the council took up the matter again and voted to create a registry so employees could sign up for DP benefits. But the benefits, themselves, were never voted on and the plan lay dormant while the city's law department went about the task of updating the language in the city's code to allow for them.
"The law department has taken a really long time researching this and their explanation for the length of time involved is that to get into this they had to go in and rewrite the language from these laws that have been around forever and forever and ever and it's been a very tedious thing to update the language in these ordinances," said Montgomery. "They have said that their problem has not been with the concept of the ordinance."
The issue surfaced during the last election, when mayoral candidate and former city council member Gil Hill pledged to issue an executive order granting DP benefits to city employees should be elected. Kilpatrick never made such a promise and since taking office in 2002 has been sketchy in his support of DP benefits.
City Council President Maryann Mahaffey, long an ally to the LGBT community, proposed the ordinance currently before the council. But Montgomery said it's important to remember that it represents only the first in a series of steps the council must take to make DP benefits in Detroit a reality.
"What one might think of in terms of DP benefits are things that include policies governing family leave, funeral leave and direct payment of health and life insurance benefits," he said. "However, each of those things is covered by a separate ordinance. There's a separate ordinance for the leave stuff, a separate ordinance for the insurance benefits, etc."
If this first ordinance passes this week, it is Montgomery's hope that the remaining ordinances will come before the council in an expeditious manner.
"I think people should be very, very impatient with this process at this point because this has been a process that has taken far too long," he said. "I think some people on council over time have said, and I think believe, that at different times the broader political picture has mad it harder for them to push this at times. I think those are reasons and excuses that they point forward as a way to delay. But from my standpoint, no time is going to be better or worse than any other because any time this comes up the people who are going to oppose it will do so. It has been frustrating and it is very much long, long overdue. Now we seem to be at least almost ready to go onto this first step."
If you're a Detroit resident, please call the members of the Detroit City Council and urge them to support domestic partnership benefits.
