Board delays nod on partner benefits

CARSON CITY — A panel that oversees health insurance benefits for state employees took a wait-and-see approach on whether to offer coverage to domestic partners.

Presidents of the campuses of the Nevada System of Higher Education have asked the board of the Public Employees Benefits Program to allow “reciprocal beneficiary coverage,” which would extend the state benefits currently available to spouses to “spouse-like relationships,” including same-sex partnerships.

Presidents and other university system officials who testified at a hearing on the matter said extending benefits to partners is essential to their ability to recruit top professors and administrators. The state is competing with other higher education and private sector businesses that offer such benefits, said Carol Lucey, president of Western Nevada Community College.

“We’re competing against states in which the best public colleges and universities already offer these benefits to their employees,” she said. “We’re also competing against industry, companies like Hewlett-Packard, for example, who already provide this benefit to their employees.”

The petition filed by the campus presidents noted that between 1999 and 2006, the number of colleges and universities offering health benefits to non-married adults in mutually dependent relationships increased from 122 to 290.

Richard Morgan, dean of the Boyd Law School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the benefit is needed to retain employees.

“At the law school, we have had good fortune in recruiting excellent people,” he said. “But we have situations where we may lose some of those folks to other institutions that provide these reciprocal benefits that are needed by partners of the people involved.”

It is also an issue of fairness to provide benefits equally, Morgan said.

The board discussed and took testimony on the issue for two hours before deciding to seek guidance from the attorney general’s office on the board’s ability to enact such a rule for the state health insurance plan. A consultant retained by the board will provide the financial analysis.

The board wants the attorney general to offer an opinion on whether it has the authority to expand the definition of a dependent now in place. The current definition refers to a spouse or family. The legal opinion will also address whether the state’s nondiscrimination law requires benefits to be provided equally to all employees, including local government employees. If the law is found to control the issue, the board may be compelled to offer the benefits to domestic partners.

People spoke in favor of and opposition to expanding the coverage.

Richard Ziser, chairman of the conservative group Nevada Concerned Citizens, opposed the idea. Ziser, who led the group that succeeded in passing an amendment to the Nevada Constitution banning gay marriage in 2002, said approval of that measure was a message from voters that such benefits should not be provided.

If the question is worth discussing, Ziser said elected officials should make the decision, but neither the Legislature nor the Board of Regents has acted on the public policy question. Regents have discussed but have not acted on the idea.

The benefits board is appointed and not accountable to voters.

Ziser also questioned the urgent need for such a change, given the limited information from other states showing that fewer than 1 percent of state employees took advantage of such benefits when they were offered.

The claim is that this is a pressing issue, but “we haven’t really established that there is any great crisis going on,” Ziser said.

But Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, accused Ziser of revising history by saying the vote on the gay marriage ban implied any kind of a referendum on such issues as reciprocal benefits.

There is no constitutional edict prohibiting the crafting of such a policy, he said.

Advocates of the marriage measure said the issue wasn’t about gay rights, but about protecting the sanctity of the institution, Peck said.

Nevada has an employment nondiscrimination act that says people should be treated fairly and equally on the job, he said.

But benefits board member Ron Swirczek wondered whether the panel was the proper place to consider such a request.

“I think the issues are certainly legitimate, but is this the proper forum,” he said. “We’re an appointed board, and this issue is a little more far reaching than just the system of higher education. My question is why wasn’t this brought before the Legislature.”