Five Starkville aldermen on Tuesday repealed the city’s equality resolution — a non-discrimination policy that included language protecting lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender employees — and ended its plus-one insurance option available to workers’ same-sex partners.
The action took place without public discussion or warning.
Mayor Parker Wiseman, who previously stumped for both resolutions, vowed to veto the board’s acts after the three-hour, closed-door meeting, but his reversal will not stand if both 5-2 votes hold in an overturn.
“I’m disappointed by the actions the board took tonight,” he said following the meeting. “I’ll continue to do everything in my power to see to it that Starkville is a place where discrimination in any form is never tolerated.”
The direct effect of the insurance reversal is limited — Wiseman said he was unaware of any employee signing up their partner for coverage — but the perception implications with the non-discrimination policy change may linger, as Starkville was the first Mississippi city to extend coverage to the LGBT community.
The Human Rights Campaign, one of America’s largest civil rights organizations working to achieve LGBT equality, was quick to applaud the city for its progressive policies last year. HRC’s attention also ignited a firestorm when some board members said they didn’t realize the totality of the insurance change’s impact, even though a two-page letter from Sept. 2’s e-packet shows Cox Consulting Services Inc. acknowledged “domestic partnership eligibility” with the extension.
Tuesday’s agenda listed personnel matters, pending litigation, potential litigation and property acquisition as the topics for executive session, giving the public no warning about the board’s intention to discuss either policy.
Board attorney Chris Latimer advised City Clerk Lesa Hardin not to disclose how individual aldermen voted in executive session, but the circumstances involving Starkville’s previous protracted debates on the insurance option suggests either Ward 2 Alderman Lisa Wynn or Ward 5 Alderman Scott Maynard flipped their previous stances on the matter.
For almost a month last year, aldermen battled in public and behind closed doors each week over the addition of a new insurance policy that would allow employees to add an adult dependent of their choosing.
After the board unanimously approved the new tier in September, some aldermen accused Wiseman and Chief Administrative Officer Taylor Adams of hiding the resolution’s full impact.
Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver, Ward 3 Alderman David Little, Ward 6 Alderman Roy A. Perkins and Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn rescinded the insurance offering on Sept. 16 — Ward 4 Alderman Jason Walker and Maynard opposed, while Wynn abstained.
Wiseman’s veto stood when Wynn walked out of City Hall before the override vote was executed. An abstention in that case would have counted toward the majority, giving the override the five votes needed to cancel the mayor’s order.
Although he did not say specifically how he voted Tuesday, Walker said his stance on the issue did not change during executive session.
A call to Maynard went unreturned at press time, and both Wynn and Vaughn were seen leaving executive session after casting their votes on the issue.
Starkville became the first Mississippi city to denounce discrimination based upon sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression when the board unanimously passed an updated non-discrimination policy via the consent agenda in January 2014.
Other cities, including Hattiesburg, Oxford and Jackson, followed suit throughout the year.
In September, Wynn, who previously lobbied in favor of the new insurance option’s cost-savings for employees, countered the brunt of public pressure from the city’s religious community seeking to end the extension by alluding to the non-discrimination policy specifically protecting LGBT employees’ rights and by saying she could not use religion to set city policy.
“So many of you all were telling me to apply the Bible to this. I tried, but I can’t use the Bible to operate city government,” she said in September. “Not one alderman said one thing about the equality resolution. It was passed under the radar on consent. When this document was in my packet, it kind of concerned me. Nobody said anything, though. I trusted the person who authorized it. For any alderman to say they didn’t know (the implications of the equality resolution and the plus-one insurance extension) isn’t true.”
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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