Virginia Governor To Offer Benefits To Same-Sex Partners Of State Employees

12/5/09-by Paula Brooks Tim_Kaine
Out going Virginia Governor and current DNC Chairman Tim Kaine has announced that he is moving forward with a plan to add same-sex partners under Virginia’s employee health plan.

According to The Washington Post, Kaine ordered his staff to put together a proposal this week that would expand access to state healthcare benefits to qualified adults who live in the same house as an insured state employee. Those adults could include heterosexual and gay partners, roommates, children and other family members, according to the report.

The Virginia Department of Human Resource Management told the WAPO that it expects no additional expense to the state, as state employees would bear the cost of the additions.

The change would take about 18 months to implement,and would come well after Kaine term as Virginia’s Governor ends and his successor, Republican Robert F. McDonnell, takes office.

Thursday, at a press conference in Richmond, McDonnell said his first worry would be about the cost of Kaine’s proposal to the state, but he also expressed other concerns.

“My first question is, what [is] the cost to the state by expanding those policies?” McDonnell said at a news conference at the state Capitol. “I am all for using business — public and private — to expand health-care coverage. . . . But what I don’t know is, what is the cost that has to be borne by the state government versus the individual new subscriber?”

via Kaine plan would extend health benefits to same-sex partners – washingtonpost.com.

Eighteen other states provide benefits to adults other than spouses, and 10 provide benefits to domestic partners with no distinction between couples of the same or opposite sex.

However in Virginia, Kaine’s plan is expected to be controversial. Current Virginia law holds that it has no constitutional or legal obligation to recognize marriages, civil unions or domestic partnership contracts between same-sex couples.

McDonnell has in the past espoused radically conservative opinions on gay rights and in 2006 after Kaine issued an Executive Order changing the Virginia’s nondiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation as a protected class, McDonnell as Virginia Attorney General challenged Kaine’s order on constitutional grounds.

McDonnell, who is a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, also has a longstanding personal and political relationship the conservative televangelist. Robertson was a major financier for McDonnell in races for the Virginia legislature, state attorney general and governor.