Catherwood LibraryILR School

On Tuesday the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to begin offering domestic partner health benefits to the county?s 14,000 employees next year, earning the praise of gay rights advocates and joining fourteen other counties and nineteen cities in California that offer such benefits. Under the policy, eligible county employees and their domestic partners who register with the state, will have to pay the entire premium for the domestic partner but will benefit from the guaranteed availability of health insurance cheaper and more complete than most private plans. An earlier bill under which the financially troubled county would have footed some of the bill for the domestic partners benefits was defeated 3-2 last week over cost concerns and anti-gay sentiment, but the elimination of any cost to the county allowed the new legislation to pass.