Domestic Partner to
Get Pension
By DAMIEN CAVE,
NYTimes on the Web, January 26, 2006
TOMS RIVER, N.J., Jan. 25 --
For more than a year, Lt. Laurel Hester has been fighting two almost intractable
foes: lung cancer and the Ocean County freeholders, who had refused
repeatedly to let her leave her domestic partner the pension she has earned in
two decades of local police work.
On Wednesday, one of her opponents finally flinched. At a special meeting
to address Lieutenant Hester's cause — scheduled after negotiations with Gov.
Jon S. Corzine and state Republican lawmakers — the freeholders agreed to extend
pension benefits to domestic partners of local government employees.
The decision, which will take effect within days, was greeted in the county
building with applause and misty eyes among residents, retired police officers
and gay activists.
Lieutenant Hester, 49, in a wheelchair pushed by her partner, Stacie Andree, 30,
told the freeholders that she had rejected her doctors' orders and had come to
witness the vote "to thank you all individually for what you have done."
"You have made yourselves an example of what democracy is all about," she said,
detaching her oxygen tube to make a statement. "You've shown that you're
willing to listen and that together, we can work things out."
The freeholders said they reversed themselves only because a solution had been
proposed at the state level. On Friday, State Senator Andrew R. Ciesla, a
Republican from Ocean County, agreed to sponsor legislation that would fix the
state rules that allow those in the public employee retirement system to name
anyone as beneficiary for their benefits, while those in the police and fire
retirement system must designate a spouse.
Under a law enacted in 2004, domestic partners of employees in the police and
fire retirement system can also become beneficiaries if municipalities or
counties agree to allow it. Until Ocean County's decision, 7 of the
state's 21 counties had passed such resolutions: Bergen, Hudson, Mercer,
Union, Monmouth, Passaic and Camden.
Ocean County freeholders said they had not done so because the exemption for
domestic partners excluded nonmarried relatives and other caregivers.
Senator Ciesla said on Wednesday that his legislation, to be introduced on
Thursday, would end the discrepancy between the state's two pension systems,
allowing anyone to be named as a beneficiary. "In light of the Laurel
Hester matter, I thought it was the right thing to do," he said.
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