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PRESS RELEASE
January 24, 2006

Study shows that Ocean County pension plans can cover employees’ partners cheaply

Contact:
Lee Badgett: 310-825-5847 or 310-904-9761

Los Angeles —A new report released today by the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA Law School finds that Ocean County, NJ, could provide pension rights to domestic partners at a small annual cost. Economist and Williams Project Visiting Professor M. V. Lee Badgett found that the total cost would most likely be negligible, and even under the most conservative assumptions the cost would be less than $70,000 per year.

“The cost is small because very few Ocean County employees have partners who would be affected by a change in the law,” noted Badgett. “At any one time, we would not expect to see more than two survivors of county employees receiving benefits.”

Since New Jersey passed its Domestic Partnership Act in 2004, state employees’ partners have been eligible for the health and pension benefits that spouses receive. Each city, county, and other local public employer decides individually whether to offer health, pension, or both kinds of benefits to domestic partners. So far, more than a hundred local employers have chosen to do so.

Attention to the Ocean County situation developed when Ocean County Freeholders turned down the request for partner pension benefits by Lt. Laurel Hester, a police officer in the county prosecutor’s office who has terminal cancer. Freeholders originally cited the high cost of the benefits as a reason to reject coverage for partners. Original cost estimates for the pension plans were rumored to be $200,000 per year, a figure that the Williams Project study suggests is a serious overestimate.

The full text of the study is available at http://law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute.