LWV League of Women Voters of California
Smart Voter
San Francisco County, CA March 5, 2002 Election
Proposition E
Domestic Partner Benefits
City of San Francisco
Charter Amendment - Majority Vote Required

11,788 / 55.95% Yes votes ...... 9,280 / 44.05% No votes

See Also: Index of all Propositions
Information shown below: Summary | Fiscal Impact | Yes/No Meaning | Arguments |

Shall the City permit employees who retired before 1995 to make their domestic partners eligible to receive survivor benefits?

Summary:
The City Retirement System pays survivor benefits to the spouse of a City employee when the employee dies before the spouse. Since 1995, the City has paid the same survivor benefits to the domestic part-ner of a City employee when the employee dies before the domestic partner. In order for a domestic partner to receive these benefits, the employee must file proof of the domes-tic partnership with the City Retirement System at least one year prior to the employee's retirement or death.

City employees who retired before 1995 did not have the opportunity to file proof of their domestic partnership. As a result, their domestic partners are not eligible to receive survivor benefits.

THE PROPOSAL: Proposition E is a Charter amendment that would permit City employees who retired before 1995 to make their domestic partners eligible to receive survivor benefits. They would only be eligible if the domestic partnership existed at least one year before the employee retired. Survivor benefits could not be received retroactively.

How Supervisors Voted on "E" On November 13, 2001 the Board of Supervisors voted 11 to 0 to place Proposition E on the ballot.

The Supervisors voted as follows: Yes: Ammiano, Daly, Gonzalez, Hall, Leno, Maxwell, McGoldrick, Newsom, Peskin, Sandoval, Yee

Fiscal Impact:
City Controller Edward Harrington has issued the following statement on the fiscal impact of Proposition E:

Should the proposed amendment be adopted, in my opin-ion, there would be no significant increase in the cost of government. As estimated by the Retirement System Actuary, this increase in benefit costs would have no dis-cernible impact on the Retirement System's funding.

Meaning of Voting Yes/No
A YES vote of this measure means:
If you vote yes, you want to per-mit City employees who retired before 1995 to make their domestic partners eligible to receive survivor benefits.

A NO vote of this measure means:
If you vote no, you do not want to permit City employees who retired before 1995 to make their domestic partners eligible to receive survivor benefits.

   Nonpartisan Information

League of Women Voters of San Francisco

Suggest a link related to Proposition E
Links to sources outside of Smart Voter are provided for information only and do not imply endorsement.

Arguments For Proposition E Arguments Against Proposition E
Proposition E is fair. When the original Domestic Partners Charter Amendment was passed in November 1994, a few City retirees with domestic partners were overlooked. Those retirees met the one-year domestic partnership requirement when they retired but could not meet the requirement to register with the City Retirement System. This Charter Amendment simply allows those individuals, who retired before November 1995 and had domestic partners, to now meet that requirement. Proposition E has strict safeguards. The proposition will apply only to retirees who meet the full requirements for domestic partnership within San Francisco, had registered the domestic partnership for at least one year before retirement and who remain domestic partners for the remainder of the retiree's life. The benefit is therefore only for a very few retirees who met all of the requirements before they retired except for the one they could not meet. Proposition E will have negligible cost impact on the City. The Retirement System has estimated that only a few individu-

als will qualify for this benefit and that there will be no signifi-cant associated costs. Proposition E is reasonable and equitable. This proposal is really "clean-up" legislation that treats all retirees that qualify for domestic partnership retirement benefits in an equal and fair way. We ask that you support this small but fair benefit change. VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION E.

Board of Supervisors

How Supervisors Voted to Submit this Argument

The Supervisors voted as follows on December 17, 2001:

Yes:

Ammiano, Daly, Gonzalez, Hall, Leno, Maxwell, McGoldrick, Newsom, Peskin, Sandoval, Yee

Rebuttal to Arguments For
No rebuttal arguement submitted. 		No argument submitted.

Rebuttal to Arguments Against
No rebuttal argument submitted.

San Francisco Home Page || Statewide Links || About Smart Voter || Feedback
Created: April 19, 2002 10:59 PDT
Smart Voter <http://www.smartvoter.org/>
Copyright © League of Women Voters of California Education Fund   http://ca.lwv.org
The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office or political parties.