MCG polls faculty on partner benefits
School could be next to endorse insurance for domestic partners
Athens Banner-Herald
By Lee Shearer
August 4, 2008

The Medical College of Georgia may be poised to join the state's two largest universities in calling on the state Board of Regents to extend health insurance benefits to domestic partners.

Faculty members in the medical college will vote online through Aug. 11 on a resolution asking the Board of Regents to extend health insurance to domestic partners - unmarried couples who live together.

The beneficiaries mostly would be opposite-sex couples who are partners but not legally married, though same-sex couples also would be eligible.

If the faculty endorses the resolution, MCG President Dan Rahn will take it to the regents, said Bill Andrews, a faculty member at MCG and vice chair of the school's Academic Council.

The Academic Council at MCG decided to ask for the vote in May, as the 2007-2008 academic year wound down, and Andrews e-mailed faculty members Wednesday to tell them about the vote.

University of Georgia President Michael Adams and Georgia State University President Carl Patton last year forwarded similar resolutions to the regents, a group of political appointees charged with overseeing the University System of Georgia, the state's 35 public universities and colleges.

In October, elected faculty councils at both schools unanimously endorsed offering benefits to domestic partners, but the regents haven't taken up the issue.

"We have taken them under advisement," said University System of Georgia spokesman John Millsaps.

The regents ignored calls for domestic partner benefits in 2001 and 2002, when faculties at GSU, UGA and several other public universities called on the regents to approve such benefits.

Faculty leaders at both Georgia State and UGA said they're not surprised by the regents' silence, but also said they believe sooner or later, their schools will offer the benefits.

"The lack of reaction from the regents is certainly not a surprise by any stretch of the imagination. Administration at any level, the local campus or the state, is not known for making waves," said Adrian Childs, chairman of the UGA University Council's benefits committee. "It's discouraging but not surprising."

Childs, a music professor, said he has not given up hope that Georgia eventually will adopt domestic partner benefits, joining hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities that already have done so.

In Colorado and Indiana, two states where universities already offer benefits to partners, advocates lobbied for 10 years before the change, he said.

In Georgia, only seven years have passed since the first resolutions, he said.

Childs said he hasn't heard whether the University Council or any advocacy groups are planning a follow-up push for domestic partner benefits.

Christine Gallant, a Georgia State University English professor who helped shepherd a resolution favoring domestic partners benefits through the university's Faculty Senate, said she also doesn't know who may follow up, or how.

"I'm cautiously optimistic," said Gallant, chair of GSU Faculty Senate's cultural diversity committee.

Advocates and faculty groups are using a different argument than they did seven years ago - that it is unfair to deny benefits to domestic partners.

"We are couching it this time on the practicality of it, its use as a business tool for recruiting and keeping excellent faculty," she said.

Prospective faculty members more and more often ask about domestic partner benefits not because they plan to use the benefits, but in order to gauge campus values, according to Childs.

"The University System of Georgia is not particularly competitive in terms of salary. It seems like this is a recruiting tool that's especially important when the system is not competitive in terms of salary," Gallant said. "Once you approach it as a practical business tool, we hope it will have some success."

Offering benefits wouldn't cost much, she said.

According to a research report Gallant prepared for the GSU Faculty Senate, the cost of benefits - mainly health insurance - usually goes up by less than 1 percent when an employer offers benefits for employees' partners.

A 1 percent to 2 percent increase would add about $1.5 million to the University System of Georgia health care costs, $660,000 at UGA.

Although many people assume domestic partner benefits would go mainly to same-sex couples, the opposite is true, said the Williams Institute's Lee Badgett after the UGA University Council passed its resolution last year.

About nine opposite-sex unmarried couples sign up for every same-sex couple that does, she said.