Tuesday, November 9, 2004
Councilmen honor picket line
By M.K. Guetersloh
mkguetersloh@pantagraph.com
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BLOOMINGTON -- The Bloomington firefighters' union has agreed to talk after offers from three alderman -- two of whom missed Monday's council meeting because they refused to cross an informational picket line.
Instead, aldermen Mike Matejka and Tom Whalen looked at City Hall from the lawn at the McLean County Chamber of Commerce building.
Whalen and Matejka both are members of Laborers Local 362.
Members of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 49 picketed the meeting as part of their on-going dispute with Fire Chief Keith Ranney and his promotion of two deputy chiefs.
"I have never crossed a picket line in my life," Whalen said. "It means too much to me."
Matejka added, "I was raised not to cross picket lines."
But Whalen said he was frustrated at the union for distributing a flyer claiming the union has not received any response from the council in trying to resolve the dispute.
Whalen said he and Alderman Mike Sprague talked with union representatives this spring after the council was sent a letter from the union outlining its discontent with Ranney.
Matejka also met separately will union leaders.
"The best I can do is try to facilitate a dialogue between the city and the firefighters."
Because of the picket, union President Dave Talley said, the union has agreed to offers by Whalen, Matejka and Sprague to sit down and talk.
"It looks like we will be able to get a meeting scheduled within the next week or two," Talley said. "Hopefully we can get back to interest-based bargaining and get started negotiating in a way that works to everyone's best interest."
The union picketed City Hall in early October, but Talley said Monday's picket accomplished more in the way of talking to city officials.
"We made a bigger point today perhaps because a couple of members were not able to go to the meeting," Talley said.
The union claims the promotion of one of the deputy chiefs initially to assistant chief violated the police and fire commission's rules of promotion. The police and fire commission has authority to make promotions up to assistant chief.
This summer, that assistant chief was promoted to deputy chief, a position outside of the commission's authority. The union had filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 12 fire captains who would have been eligible for promotion to assistant chief.
Alderman Rich Veitengruber, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 197, did not attend the council meeting. It wasn't clear whether he was absent for personal reasons or because of the picket line.
Copyright © 2004, Pantagraph Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
IBEW Local 441 (Santa Ana, CA) Helps Members with Below-Market-Rate Housing Options
Orange County, Calif., Employers, Workers Battle Housing Costs
By Mary Ann Milbourn, The Orange County Register, Calif.
RISMEDIA, Nov. 8 – (KRT) – Mike Woolbright did the math, and it didn't add up:
Orange County's typical monthly mortgage payment, with taxes: $2,262. Median monthly rent: $1,317.
Monthly pay for the 12 full-time workers at his silk-screening company in Stanton: less than $2,000 each.
No matter how he worked the numbers, he knew it was a formula for disaster. He already had lost one worker because of the high cost of housing here, and he knew it was just a matter of time before others followed.
Then he hit on a solution: Buy property himself and rent it to his workers at below-market rates.
So far, it's working. He rents a house next to his Express Screen Press Corp. plant to one worker and is buying a nearby triplex that he hopes will take care of three other employees and their families.
But this is no act of charity. Woolbright sees it as a matter of business survival.
"Helping my employees helps me in the long term, because healthy, happy employees will want to work here," he says.
Recruiting and retaining workers is a problem more Orange County employers, large and small, are trying to come to grips with as housing prices have outpaced incomes.
Their solutions are as varied as the employers themselves: universities that build housing for faculty and staff, unions that partner with cities to create lower-cost housing, and companies that subsidize commuting costs from places where workers can still afford to buy homes.
High housing costs are a familiar problem in Orange County, which saw a similar price run-up in the late 1980s. But this time, overburdened freeways and shrinking availability of open land have clogged what used to be a pressure-release valve -- construction of new homes in undeveloped stretches of Orange County.
Business leaders are exploring ways to cope with the problem, but soaring housing prices are making it increasingly difficult to attract and keep workers.
The solutions aren't easy. Many of the traditional government responses to high-cost housing -- including rent control and housing projects -- are unpalatable to Orange County residents. Other initiatives, such as requiring a percentage of new units to be set aside for low- and moderate-income residents, often meet community resistance because of concerns about population density, traffic and lower-income neighbors.
The struggle with affordability also is spreading from traditional low-income households to middle- class workers such as teachers and police officers.
Stan Oftelie, chief executive of the Orange County Business Council, said he's recently heard of employers having difficulty attracting nurses and engineers in the $75,000-$125,000 pay range.
"We have a very good job market and have been the victims of our own success," he says. "But the high-quality workers we've attracted are not going to continue to come if people can't afford to live here."
While no one is predicting that the high cost of housing will be the death knell for Orange County's economy, experts say that, left unabated, rising costs will unalterably change the community.
As more people are unable to afford to live here, experts see a gradually receding middle class and the virtual disappearance of young families with children, leaving only the rich, the poor and the lucky -- those who bought before housing prices soared.
"Orange County will become a Baby Boom ghetto," says Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles futurist who often writes about the changing dynamics of cities and suburbs.
The numbers are grim:
The median Orange County home cost $533,000 in September, up 24 percent in the past year, according to DataQuick. That's only off a little from the peak of $543,000 in August.
Chapman University economists say a single-family house now costs more than seven times the county's estimated $75,000 median family income, up from about five times the typical income in 1989, the last time housing prices peaked.
Last year, 54 percent of Orange County households were unable to easily afford the median monthly rent, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Woolbright isn't the only employer who is fighting back.
Following in the footsteps of UC Irvine, which built 700 houses for faculty, Cal State Fullerton recently embarked on a plan to provide affordable housing for its faculty and staff.
Ephraim P. Smith, vice president of academic affairs, said it has become critical, especially in attracting staff and younger faculty. The average beginning faculty member makes $60,000 for a nine-month academic year.
"One person (who was offered a job) came out and seemed very satisfied," Smith recalls. Then the house-hunting began. "He came back out with his spouse and called us on Monday morning and said, 'We've changed our minds.'"
In 2002, the university opened its first 86 homes and townhouses in University Gables, a joint project with the city of Buena Park on county land. Townhomes and houses ranged from $150,000 to $252,000.
Availability of the CSUF housing proved the difference in Robert McLain's decision to move to Orange County.
The British new imperial history expert says Fullerton was the best fit for his career plans. "But the question was, can we afford it?" recalls McLain, 39, who has a wife and 5-year-old son.
McLain was able to buy a three-bedroom, 21/2-bath detached house in the university's complex for $220,000.
"The fact we could buy into University Gables is what allowed us to come here," he says.
Bill Dickerson, head of CSUF's housing authority, says the school hopes to build about 300 additional units -- apartments and homes -- on two other sites in Fullerton in the next two years.
While colleges have been on the forefront of providing housing for their workers, organized labor is now getting involved. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 441 in Orange hopes to become the model for joint ventures in building affordable housing for union members with a project it's planning in Santa Ana.
Doug Chappell, the local's business manager, says the need is critical.
"The guys who do the work in Orange County -- especially the apprentices -- don't make enough to buy here," Chappell says. The average electrical apprentice earns $12 an hour. Journeymen make $35 an hour but often have jobs for only seven to eight months of the year.
"Some are driving two hours each way -- four hours a day -- before they've ever done any work," Chappell says.
The union and the National Electrical Contractors Association is teaming with John Laing Homes and the Santa Ana redevelopment agency to build affordable homes on a site the IBEW owns on Lyon Street. The First American Credit Union and Fannie Mae are going to help union members with credit counseling and financing.
Chappell said similar joint projects are being pursued in Anaheim, Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster.
Not every enterprise can build or buy employee housing, so some employers are trying to make it easier for their workers to commute from areas with lower- priced homes.
SHURflo LLC, a pump manufacturing company, uses a van- pool program as an employee recruitment and retention incentive.
When the company moved from Garden Grove to its new facilities in Cypress three years ago, company officials were concerned about how to get their workers, many of whom lived in low-cost housing within walking distance of the old plant, to the new facility. Van-pool service from the central county to Cypress filled the transportation gap.
Since then, however, the vans have become more important for workers who commute from outside the county. The company's Inland Empire van-pool program has grown to three 10-, 12- and 15-passenger vans. SHURflo leases the vans; the employees split the gas and FasTrak toll- road pass.
Besides helping to retain current employees, the program is a recruiting tool, says Janet Scott, SHURflo's vice president of human resources.
"I had one person from Lake Elsinore who came here because of the van program," she says.
While many employers are feeling the pinch that housing prices present for their work forces, not every business is hurting.
"We have a lot of people from all over the place who are willing to commute," says Marybeth Sosa, human-resources director at Greenlight Financial Services in Irvine.
She acknowledges, however, that a more competitive labor market could change that.
"When the (job) market is good and everyone wants people, then it could be a problem," she says.
Employers and experts in communities such as Silicon Valley, where the median home price tops $600,000, warn Orange County employers not to be complacent.
It doesn't take much, they say, before the middle-class workers who provide the backbone of the community begin to abandon a region that imposes high housing costs and long commutes.
"How long is it going to be before that teacher, who is commuting one hour each way, is going to say, 'I could just teach in Gilroy' or wherever they live?" says Shiloh Ballard, housing director for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which represents 175 employers. "We've ended up training the teachers (in Santa Clara County) and then they move to Fresno."
The Business Council is working on several fronts to improve the situation here. It is teaming up with First American Corp., the Santa Ana title company, to pinpoint areas where homes are under the county's half-million- dollar median price. The project is aimed at showing prospective employees that Orange County still has affordable housing for middle-class workers.
It has also joined with Merrill Lynch and Neighborhood Housing Services of Orange County to establish a revolving fund that will help pay engineering and planning costs for affordable housing.
Kotkin, the futurist, says mixed-use developments that combine retail at the street level with housing above could also be part of the answer for Orange County. Brea, Orange and Anaheim are among the cities already experimenting with the concept.
"There are a lot of options for Orange County that can make this situation work," he says.
SEEKING AFFORDABILITY: Orange County isn't the first place to have struggled with the high cost of housing. Here are some of the approaches communities and employers have taken:
Merrill Lynch recently provided a $1 million loan to be administered by the Orange County Affordable HomeOwnership Alliance and Neighborhood Housing Services of Orange County to help jump-start early engineering and other planning for low- and moderate- income projects. They hope other businesses also will contribute to make more funds available.
Anaheim, Brea, Fullerton, Orange and Tustin are among local communities planning mixed-use developments that have retail at street level with residential units above.
Some employers, such as the St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point, offer housing subsidies. The hotel teamed with the Mary Erickson Community Housing Foundation to provide monthly subsidies of $200 to $600 so workers can live in Orange County.
Local colleges, including UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton, have built faculty and staff housing.
Buena Park Councilman Art Brown advocates housing near Metrolink stations so families can give up the cost of having more than one car for transportation.
Los Angeles, New York City and Santa Monica impose rent control to keep housing costs down.
California requires communities to include affordable housing in their planning, although they often fall short of goals.
The federal government offers Section 8 rent subsidies to make apartments more affordable to low-income residents, although the demand far outstrips supply.
Housing projects, a popular affordable-housing solution during the middle of the last century, have fallen from favor after many deteriorated into crime-ridden slums.
RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Please send e-mail to editorial@rismedia.com.
By Mary Ann Milbourn, The Orange County Register, Calif.
RISMEDIA, Nov. 8 – (KRT) – Mike Woolbright did the math, and it didn't add up:
Orange County's typical monthly mortgage payment, with taxes: $2,262. Median monthly rent: $1,317.
Monthly pay for the 12 full-time workers at his silk-screening company in Stanton: less than $2,000 each.
No matter how he worked the numbers, he knew it was a formula for disaster. He already had lost one worker because of the high cost of housing here, and he knew it was just a matter of time before others followed.
Then he hit on a solution: Buy property himself and rent it to his workers at below-market rates.
So far, it's working. He rents a house next to his Express Screen Press Corp. plant to one worker and is buying a nearby triplex that he hopes will take care of three other employees and their families.
But this is no act of charity. Woolbright sees it as a matter of business survival.
"Helping my employees helps me in the long term, because healthy, happy employees will want to work here," he says.
Recruiting and retaining workers is a problem more Orange County employers, large and small, are trying to come to grips with as housing prices have outpaced incomes.
Their solutions are as varied as the employers themselves: universities that build housing for faculty and staff, unions that partner with cities to create lower-cost housing, and companies that subsidize commuting costs from places where workers can still afford to buy homes.
High housing costs are a familiar problem in Orange County, which saw a similar price run-up in the late 1980s. But this time, overburdened freeways and shrinking availability of open land have clogged what used to be a pressure-release valve -- construction of new homes in undeveloped stretches of Orange County.
Business leaders are exploring ways to cope with the problem, but soaring housing prices are making it increasingly difficult to attract and keep workers.
The solutions aren't easy. Many of the traditional government responses to high-cost housing -- including rent control and housing projects -- are unpalatable to Orange County residents. Other initiatives, such as requiring a percentage of new units to be set aside for low- and moderate-income residents, often meet community resistance because of concerns about population density, traffic and lower-income neighbors.
The struggle with affordability also is spreading from traditional low-income households to middle- class workers such as teachers and police officers.
Stan Oftelie, chief executive of the Orange County Business Council, said he's recently heard of employers having difficulty attracting nurses and engineers in the $75,000-$125,000 pay range.
"We have a very good job market and have been the victims of our own success," he says. "But the high-quality workers we've attracted are not going to continue to come if people can't afford to live here."
While no one is predicting that the high cost of housing will be the death knell for Orange County's economy, experts say that, left unabated, rising costs will unalterably change the community.
As more people are unable to afford to live here, experts see a gradually receding middle class and the virtual disappearance of young families with children, leaving only the rich, the poor and the lucky -- those who bought before housing prices soared.
"Orange County will become a Baby Boom ghetto," says Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles futurist who often writes about the changing dynamics of cities and suburbs.
The numbers are grim:
The median Orange County home cost $533,000 in September, up 24 percent in the past year, according to DataQuick. That's only off a little from the peak of $543,000 in August.
Chapman University economists say a single-family house now costs more than seven times the county's estimated $75,000 median family income, up from about five times the typical income in 1989, the last time housing prices peaked.
Last year, 54 percent of Orange County households were unable to easily afford the median monthly rent, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Woolbright isn't the only employer who is fighting back.
Following in the footsteps of UC Irvine, which built 700 houses for faculty, Cal State Fullerton recently embarked on a plan to provide affordable housing for its faculty and staff.
Ephraim P. Smith, vice president of academic affairs, said it has become critical, especially in attracting staff and younger faculty. The average beginning faculty member makes $60,000 for a nine-month academic year.
"One person (who was offered a job) came out and seemed very satisfied," Smith recalls. Then the house-hunting began. "He came back out with his spouse and called us on Monday morning and said, 'We've changed our minds.'"
In 2002, the university opened its first 86 homes and townhouses in University Gables, a joint project with the city of Buena Park on county land. Townhomes and houses ranged from $150,000 to $252,000.
Availability of the CSUF housing proved the difference in Robert McLain's decision to move to Orange County.
The British new imperial history expert says Fullerton was the best fit for his career plans. "But the question was, can we afford it?" recalls McLain, 39, who has a wife and 5-year-old son.
McLain was able to buy a three-bedroom, 21/2-bath detached house in the university's complex for $220,000.
"The fact we could buy into University Gables is what allowed us to come here," he says.
Bill Dickerson, head of CSUF's housing authority, says the school hopes to build about 300 additional units -- apartments and homes -- on two other sites in Fullerton in the next two years.
While colleges have been on the forefront of providing housing for their workers, organized labor is now getting involved. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 441 in Orange hopes to become the model for joint ventures in building affordable housing for union members with a project it's planning in Santa Ana.
Doug Chappell, the local's business manager, says the need is critical.
"The guys who do the work in Orange County -- especially the apprentices -- don't make enough to buy here," Chappell says. The average electrical apprentice earns $12 an hour. Journeymen make $35 an hour but often have jobs for only seven to eight months of the year.
"Some are driving two hours each way -- four hours a day -- before they've ever done any work," Chappell says.
The union and the National Electrical Contractors Association is teaming with John Laing Homes and the Santa Ana redevelopment agency to build affordable homes on a site the IBEW owns on Lyon Street. The First American Credit Union and Fannie Mae are going to help union members with credit counseling and financing.
Chappell said similar joint projects are being pursued in Anaheim, Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster.
Not every enterprise can build or buy employee housing, so some employers are trying to make it easier for their workers to commute from areas with lower- priced homes.
SHURflo LLC, a pump manufacturing company, uses a van- pool program as an employee recruitment and retention incentive.
When the company moved from Garden Grove to its new facilities in Cypress three years ago, company officials were concerned about how to get their workers, many of whom lived in low-cost housing within walking distance of the old plant, to the new facility. Van-pool service from the central county to Cypress filled the transportation gap.
Since then, however, the vans have become more important for workers who commute from outside the county. The company's Inland Empire van-pool program has grown to three 10-, 12- and 15-passenger vans. SHURflo leases the vans; the employees split the gas and FasTrak toll- road pass.
Besides helping to retain current employees, the program is a recruiting tool, says Janet Scott, SHURflo's vice president of human resources.
"I had one person from Lake Elsinore who came here because of the van program," she says.
While many employers are feeling the pinch that housing prices present for their work forces, not every business is hurting.
"We have a lot of people from all over the place who are willing to commute," says Marybeth Sosa, human-resources director at Greenlight Financial Services in Irvine.
She acknowledges, however, that a more competitive labor market could change that.
"When the (job) market is good and everyone wants people, then it could be a problem," she says.
Employers and experts in communities such as Silicon Valley, where the median home price tops $600,000, warn Orange County employers not to be complacent.
It doesn't take much, they say, before the middle-class workers who provide the backbone of the community begin to abandon a region that imposes high housing costs and long commutes.
"How long is it going to be before that teacher, who is commuting one hour each way, is going to say, 'I could just teach in Gilroy' or wherever they live?" says Shiloh Ballard, housing director for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which represents 175 employers. "We've ended up training the teachers (in Santa Clara County) and then they move to Fresno."
The Business Council is working on several fronts to improve the situation here. It is teaming up with First American Corp., the Santa Ana title company, to pinpoint areas where homes are under the county's half-million- dollar median price. The project is aimed at showing prospective employees that Orange County still has affordable housing for middle-class workers.
It has also joined with Merrill Lynch and Neighborhood Housing Services of Orange County to establish a revolving fund that will help pay engineering and planning costs for affordable housing.
Kotkin, the futurist, says mixed-use developments that combine retail at the street level with housing above could also be part of the answer for Orange County. Brea, Orange and Anaheim are among the cities already experimenting with the concept.
"There are a lot of options for Orange County that can make this situation work," he says.
SEEKING AFFORDABILITY: Orange County isn't the first place to have struggled with the high cost of housing. Here are some of the approaches communities and employers have taken:
Merrill Lynch recently provided a $1 million loan to be administered by the Orange County Affordable HomeOwnership Alliance and Neighborhood Housing Services of Orange County to help jump-start early engineering and other planning for low- and moderate- income projects. They hope other businesses also will contribute to make more funds available.
Anaheim, Brea, Fullerton, Orange and Tustin are among local communities planning mixed-use developments that have retail at street level with residential units above.
Some employers, such as the St. Regis Hotel in Dana Point, offer housing subsidies. The hotel teamed with the Mary Erickson Community Housing Foundation to provide monthly subsidies of $200 to $600 so workers can live in Orange County.
Local colleges, including UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton, have built faculty and staff housing.
Buena Park Councilman Art Brown advocates housing near Metrolink stations so families can give up the cost of having more than one car for transportation.
Los Angeles, New York City and Santa Monica impose rent control to keep housing costs down.
California requires communities to include affordable housing in their planning, although they often fall short of goals.
The federal government offers Section 8 rent subsidies to make apartments more affordable to low-income residents, although the demand far outstrips supply.
Housing projects, a popular affordable-housing solution during the middle of the last century, have fallen from favor after many deteriorated into crime-ridden slums.
RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Please send e-mail to editorial@rismedia.com.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Oregon "Gay Marriage" Amendment May Hurt IBEW Members in Portland
Married gay couples rush to protect their benefits
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND — Kelly Burke was happy to be at home after the election, watching her 3-year-old son convert a box into a spaceship. But she was dreading the arrival of a letter that could change their lives.
"The mailman came this morning and I panicked," said the stay-at-home mom on Nov. 3, one day after Oregon voters decisively approved a ban on gay marriage.
Like many housewives, Burke, 35, relies on her spouse's employer for her own health insurance. But because Burke is a lesbian, it was only this spring — after Multnomah County momentarily flung open the door to gay marriage — that she became a legal "spouse" by marrying her partner of 15 years, Dolores Doyle.
The change in legal status meant she became one of a number of married gay and lesbian spouses in Multnomah County who began receiving comprehensive medical insurance through their partners' employers.
While 11 states — including Oregon — passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage on Election Day, Oregon is the only state among them with legally married gay couples.
Those amendments deal with the right to marry rather than the legal and employment benefits that come with marriage.
Supporters of gay marriage argue those benefits should be available to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.
But opponents say the issues are separate, and while they reject gay marriage, many of them agree benefits should apply to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.
Kelly Clark, attorney for the Defense of Marriage Coalition, said many supporters of Measure 36, the Oregon amendment to ban gay marriage, feel very strongly about fairness when it comes to benefits.
"It's what I've felt from the beginning and I have consistently said this to gay friends," Clark said. "So what kind of alternatives can we craft? And whatever alternative mechanisms we find have to be fair."
The institution of marriage itself, however, is seen as a different matter in the minds of the majority of Oregonians, Clark said, as shown by the decisive 57 percent approval of Measure 36 on Tuesday to amend the Oregon Constitution by limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman.
However, for the 2,961 gay couples who did tie the knot from March 3 until a judge stopped the practice six weeks later, there is now a cloud of uncertainty about their legal status and the protections they stand to lose if their marriages are invalidated.
"When the mailman comes, my first thought is: ‘Oh, my God, here comes the letter. They're cutting me off,'" said Burke, who previously paid $200 a month out of pocket for her own, bare-bones insurance.
"With our marriage came a huge financial relief — as well as huge emotional relief. I could actually sleep at night and know I'll be taken care of. That uncertainty has now crept back in," said Burke.
Tim Nashif, political director of the Defense of Marriage Coalition, said Burke's family is the exception.
"You'd have to search a long way out of these 3,000 couples to find one case like this. And for every one example like this, I can find you 25 similar cases of heterosexual couples that are married with children and have the same problem. You see, it's not specific to them."
Nashif says that if health care is the issue, gay rights groups should lobby the Legislature to extend domestic partnership benefits, not change the institution of marriage.
In a landmark ruling in December 1998, the Oregon Court of Appeals required Oregon Health & Science University to extend insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of its employees after three lesbian couples sued OHSU.
The unanimous ruling was considered the first in the nation to interpret a state constitution to prohibit all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, granting sexual orientation the same protected status as race, gender and religion in the workplace.
But there since has been little movement in the Legislature toward a clear policy on same-sex partner benefits.
After the Tuesday election, gay couples said they were more worried than before about such matters as passing on their inheritance to their loved ones, adoption rights and power of attorney statements. Some, including Burke, are shopping for insurance policies online.
Because the state refused to acknowledge their marriages pending the outcome of an Oregon Supreme Court lawsuit on the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriages, the couples were never eligible for more than 100 state benefits and 1,100 federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples in Oregon.
But some companies took it upon themselves to view the couples as legally married, extending some benefits — such as insurance coverage — not previously available.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where Doyle, Burke's partner, works as an electrician, has insured three spouses of gay employees in the past six months, said Lee Centrone, the union's benefits administrator.
The union's leadership will meet next month to determine what will happen to these policies, she said, stressing that nothing has been decided. However, the policies were crafted using temporary language to allow for changes in the legal landscape of gay marriage, Centrone said.
It is also unclear what the passage of Measure 36 means for the current lawsuit in the Oregon Supreme Court, in which nine gay couples — including Burke and Doyle — claim that preventing them from marrying is unconstitutional.
The next hearing in the case was postponed until Dec. 15 to give both sides a chance to argue what effect the amendment will have. The American Civil Liberties Union has already said the language in the Oregon amendment — unlike the other 10 states that approved constitutional bans on gay marriage — is ambiguous and open to interpretation that could allow civil unions.
As a result, the outlook for gay couples is even more complicated legally than before the election.
"These couples stand to lose a lot," said Ken Choe, an attorney with the ACLU Gay and Lesbian Project, who will be representing the gay couples in their case before the state Supreme Court.
"Marriage brings with it hundreds of important protections for families in their times of greatest need, such as sickness and death," Choe said. "And to the extent that these couples are deemed no longer married, they are vulnerable again."
Among the couples who were married in Oregon, many have been together for decades. Some are elderly, a fact which makes pensions, and end-of-life arrangements a real issue.
Mary Beth Brindley, 65, of Portland and her partner Evelyn Hall, 66, have been together for 45 years — a relationship they kept secret for 37 years while living in the deep South.
"I don't know if there are any assisted living facilities around that will allow us to share a room if we are not legally married. That's a very real concern for us," Brindley said.
Copyright © 2004 Democrat-Herald
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND — Kelly Burke was happy to be at home after the election, watching her 3-year-old son convert a box into a spaceship. But she was dreading the arrival of a letter that could change their lives.
"The mailman came this morning and I panicked," said the stay-at-home mom on Nov. 3, one day after Oregon voters decisively approved a ban on gay marriage.
Like many housewives, Burke, 35, relies on her spouse's employer for her own health insurance. But because Burke is a lesbian, it was only this spring — after Multnomah County momentarily flung open the door to gay marriage — that she became a legal "spouse" by marrying her partner of 15 years, Dolores Doyle.
The change in legal status meant she became one of a number of married gay and lesbian spouses in Multnomah County who began receiving comprehensive medical insurance through their partners' employers.
While 11 states — including Oregon — passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage on Election Day, Oregon is the only state among them with legally married gay couples.
Those amendments deal with the right to marry rather than the legal and employment benefits that come with marriage.
Supporters of gay marriage argue those benefits should be available to everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.
But opponents say the issues are separate, and while they reject gay marriage, many of them agree benefits should apply to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.
Kelly Clark, attorney for the Defense of Marriage Coalition, said many supporters of Measure 36, the Oregon amendment to ban gay marriage, feel very strongly about fairness when it comes to benefits.
"It's what I've felt from the beginning and I have consistently said this to gay friends," Clark said. "So what kind of alternatives can we craft? And whatever alternative mechanisms we find have to be fair."
The institution of marriage itself, however, is seen as a different matter in the minds of the majority of Oregonians, Clark said, as shown by the decisive 57 percent approval of Measure 36 on Tuesday to amend the Oregon Constitution by limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman.
However, for the 2,961 gay couples who did tie the knot from March 3 until a judge stopped the practice six weeks later, there is now a cloud of uncertainty about their legal status and the protections they stand to lose if their marriages are invalidated.
"When the mailman comes, my first thought is: ‘Oh, my God, here comes the letter. They're cutting me off,'" said Burke, who previously paid $200 a month out of pocket for her own, bare-bones insurance.
"With our marriage came a huge financial relief — as well as huge emotional relief. I could actually sleep at night and know I'll be taken care of. That uncertainty has now crept back in," said Burke.
Tim Nashif, political director of the Defense of Marriage Coalition, said Burke's family is the exception.
"You'd have to search a long way out of these 3,000 couples to find one case like this. And for every one example like this, I can find you 25 similar cases of heterosexual couples that are married with children and have the same problem. You see, it's not specific to them."
Nashif says that if health care is the issue, gay rights groups should lobby the Legislature to extend domestic partnership benefits, not change the institution of marriage.
In a landmark ruling in December 1998, the Oregon Court of Appeals required Oregon Health & Science University to extend insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of its employees after three lesbian couples sued OHSU.
The unanimous ruling was considered the first in the nation to interpret a state constitution to prohibit all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, granting sexual orientation the same protected status as race, gender and religion in the workplace.
But there since has been little movement in the Legislature toward a clear policy on same-sex partner benefits.
After the Tuesday election, gay couples said they were more worried than before about such matters as passing on their inheritance to their loved ones, adoption rights and power of attorney statements. Some, including Burke, are shopping for insurance policies online.
Because the state refused to acknowledge their marriages pending the outcome of an Oregon Supreme Court lawsuit on the constitutionality of banning same-sex marriages, the couples were never eligible for more than 100 state benefits and 1,100 federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples in Oregon.
But some companies took it upon themselves to view the couples as legally married, extending some benefits — such as insurance coverage — not previously available.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where Doyle, Burke's partner, works as an electrician, has insured three spouses of gay employees in the past six months, said Lee Centrone, the union's benefits administrator.
The union's leadership will meet next month to determine what will happen to these policies, she said, stressing that nothing has been decided. However, the policies were crafted using temporary language to allow for changes in the legal landscape of gay marriage, Centrone said.
It is also unclear what the passage of Measure 36 means for the current lawsuit in the Oregon Supreme Court, in which nine gay couples — including Burke and Doyle — claim that preventing them from marrying is unconstitutional.
The next hearing in the case was postponed until Dec. 15 to give both sides a chance to argue what effect the amendment will have. The American Civil Liberties Union has already said the language in the Oregon amendment — unlike the other 10 states that approved constitutional bans on gay marriage — is ambiguous and open to interpretation that could allow civil unions.
As a result, the outlook for gay couples is even more complicated legally than before the election.
"These couples stand to lose a lot," said Ken Choe, an attorney with the ACLU Gay and Lesbian Project, who will be representing the gay couples in their case before the state Supreme Court.
"Marriage brings with it hundreds of important protections for families in their times of greatest need, such as sickness and death," Choe said. "And to the extent that these couples are deemed no longer married, they are vulnerable again."
Among the couples who were married in Oregon, many have been together for decades. Some are elderly, a fact which makes pensions, and end-of-life arrangements a real issue.
Mary Beth Brindley, 65, of Portland and her partner Evelyn Hall, 66, have been together for 45 years — a relationship they kept secret for 37 years while living in the deep South.
"I don't know if there are any assisted living facilities around that will allow us to share a room if we are not legally married. That's a very real concern for us," Brindley said.
Copyright © 2004 Democrat-Herald
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