Return-Path: Date: Sun, 09 Aug 92 17:44:42 PDT From: Will.Doherty@Eng.Sun.COM >From the San Francisco Examiner, Friday, August 7, 1992, p. B-11: BART votes benefits to gay lovers of workers Examiner staff report Oakland - BART directors, in a reversal of a 1989 vote, have approved a plan to extend health benefits to gay and lesbian partners of its employees. Wil Ussery, the agency's president, had opposed the plan when it was defeated 5-4 in 1989, but supported it Thursday, when it passed by the same vote. His proposal that benefits - health care, bereavement and sick leave - be extended to partners of all unmarried BART workers was rejected on a 4-4 vote with one abstention. While the first-year cost of the program has been estimated at $300,000, Director Michael Bernick, a key backer, said he thought the figure would be closer to $50,000. "While some predict that coverage will be extended to some 120 people the first year, I foresee a more modest number of perhaps 20," he said. The total annual health benefit cost for the transit agency's 2,600 employees is $15.2 million, he added. Bernick credited "the poignant personal stories told by BART employees, straight and gay, and other speakers" in two hours of testimony with moving the board to endorse the extended coverage plan. The principal speaker against the proposal was Mark Zapalik of the Contra Costa County Chapter of the Traditional Values Coalition, who said BART should instead use the money the proposal will cost the district to reduce fares. Bernick said he was optimistic that in the future benefits would be extended to all unwed workers in committed relationships. Bernick noted that, while heterosexuals have the option to marry, under state law gays and lesbians "don't have that option." Bernick, Ussery, Directors James Fang, Sue Hone and Margaret Pryor voted for the proposal to extend benefits to gay and lesbian partners; opposing the plan were Vice President Nello Bianco and directors Joe Fitzpatrick, Erlene DeMarcus and John Glenn. Pryor abstained from the vote on whether the benefits should be extended to all unmarried domestic partners.