Wednesday, November 19, 1997
Wilson to meet with UC Regents
ISSUES:
Governor expected to vote against proposal that would give
same-sex couples medical benefitsBy Caroline M. Bontia
Daily Bruin Contributor
The long awaited crucial vote for the Domestic Partnership
proposal  a plan that would extend benefits to same-sex
couples for UC faculty, students, staff and retirees  may
become a reality if the University of California Board of Regents
approves the proposal later this week.
Gov. Pete Wilson will be present at the meeting, to be held
Thursday and Friday at UCLA’s Sunset Commons. His vote will be the
decisive factor on the most crucial issue facing the Regents: the
Domestic Partnership proposal.
Wilson has received heated criticism for delaying the
implementation of the proposal, after UC President Richard Atkinson
and the Regent committees ruled in favor of the plan last
September.
Once the governor was notified of the approval of the proposal,
he conveyed a calculated message of disapproval which influenced
the board to postpone implementation until the regents make a final
decision during this November meeting.
"This is a matter of great significance within the university
community," Atkinson said. "It is in the best interest of the
university to postpone implementation of this proposal until the
regents can act and provide direction."
After 15 years of work to gain recognition, proponents of the
plan believe that offering medical, dental and vision care benefits
to same-sex partners would strengthen the UC’s ability to compete
for faculty and staff without significantly increasing the
costs.
For comparison purposes, the UC system has used the examples of
eight universities who have benefited from similar domestic
partnership proposals. Four private institutions  Stanford,
MIT, Yale and Harvard  and public universities, such as
University of Michigan and State University of New York, Buffalo,
currently offer domestic partnership benefits to their employees
and retirees.
As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, if Wilson is
successful in blocking domestic-partner benefits in the UC system,
the decision will not only face legal challenges from employees who
are denied their contracts, but will also financially jeopardize
about $60 million to $70 million in medical contracts that the city
of San Francisco has with UCSF.
For months, San Francisco city officials and UC representatives
have been negotiating contracts which cannot be completed until the
regents vote on the Domestic Partnership proposal.
Sources close to the issue believe that Wilson plans to confront
the issue head-on at this meeting, to publicly declare his vote
against the issue. His decision may set off the kind of bitter and
politically charged debate that the UC Regents battled over with
affirmative action two years ago.
"The governor believes that public dollars should not be
expanded to provide insurance for anyone other than those who are
married," explained Sean Walsh, a gubernatorial spokesman.
Among the other items for discussion at the meeting is the
progress of the recent UCSF-Stanford merger and the amendments for
the 1998-1999 Capital Improvements budget.
Since its approval in September, the UCSF-Stanford merger took
effect Nov. 1, uniting the public UCSF and the private Stanford
University hospitals to create a new health care institution that
UC officials believe will be like no other in the nation.
The merger has been controversial because it entailed the
transfer of assets worth $386 million from a public,
taxpayer-supported university to a private entity where the
university will have a minority voice in decision making.
However, backers of the merger argued the benefits of pooling
the resources of the universities in order to thrive in the Bay
Area’s increasingly competitive health care market.