Ocean County expected
to extend benefits
to domestic partner
By AP from
newsday.com from the Web, January 21, 2006
TOMS RIVER, N.J. -- In a
reversal in the face of months of protests by gay-rights advocates, Ocean County
freeholders are poised to extend death benefits to the partner of a veteran
detective dying of lung cancer, according to published reports.
Freeholder James F. Lacey told the Ocean County Observer for Saturday newspapers
that the freeholders now plan to extend pension benefits to the domestic partner
of Lt. Laurel Hester, a 23-year veteran of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office.
The benefit is also to be extended to other members of the Police and Fire
Retirement System in a vote expected at a freeholder's meeting this Wednesday.
"I think we're doing the right thing now," Lacey told the newspaper. "I
feel comfortable."
The decision was made after a teleconference Friday among Republican leaders in
the county, including state Sens. Andrew Ciesla and Leonard T. Connors.
"They wanted to discuss this," Connors told the paper. "The freeholders
want to give this lady's companion the benefits that others get."
New Jersey's nearly two-year-old Domestic Partners Act gives counties and cities
the power to extend pension and health care benefits to the gay partners of
employees if they choose.
Forty-nine-year-old Hester, of Point Pleasant, has said without her $13,000
death benefit her partner of six years, Stacie Andree, will be forced to sell
the house they now share after Hester's death, expected within six months.
The apparent reversal came two days after advocacy group Garden State Equality
presented videotaped statement of Hester at last Wednesday's freeholder meeting.
In the video Hester, hairless and struggling to breath with the aid of a
respirator, asked freeholders to "make a change for good, a change for
righteousness."
"This is one of the happiest days of my life," Hester said in a statement
Saturday. "I feel like David conquering Goliath."
Phone messages left by The Associated Press Saturday at the homes of Lacey and
three other county freeholders were not immediately returned.
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