Tag Archives: dallas county commissioners court

Dallas County employees can now enroll in DP benefits program

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Gay Dallas County District Clerk Gary Fitzsimmons forwarded this document that was emailed to county employees by the human resources department. (click to enlarge)

Dallas County’s domestic partner benefits program began Jan. 1 and the human resources department already has information up online reminding people of the qualifications.

After hitting roadblocks to offer the benefits through the healthcare co-op the county is a member of, the benefits were approved 3-2 by the Commissioner’s Court on party lines in October.

Partners of same- and opposite-sex employees who do not have insurance are can receive a subsidy toward their own privately purchased plan. They must have lived together for at least six months, be 18 years or older and not currently married. The county will reimburse employees for 45 percent of their partners’ insurance or up to $295.78 monthly — the amount the county contributes toward employees’ coverage — whichever is less.

Documentation for adults and children is listed below.

Continue reading “Dallas County employees can now enroll in DP benefits program” »

—  Anna Waugh

BREAKING: Dallas County approves domestic partner insurance benefits

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Derrick Spillman with DFW Pride Movement addresses the Dallas County Commissioners Court on Oct. 30, 2012. (Anna Waugh/Dallas Voice)

The gay and straight domestic partners of Dallas County employees will soon be eligible for a $300 monthly subsidy from the county to help pay for health insurance.

The County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 along party lines Tuesday morning to offer the subsidy to employees who have same- or opposite-sex domestic partners who do not have insurance through other means. The subsidy will be equal to the amount the county contributes to an employee’s health insurance.

County Judge Clay Jenkins, and Commissioners Dr. Elba Garcia and John Wiley Price, who comprise the court’s Democratic majority, voted in favor of offering the domestic partner subsidy. Republican Commissioners Mike Cantrell and Maurine Dickey voted against it.

Commissioners made comments before several speakers addressed the court on the issue.

Dickey said the court shouldn’t fund a special group outside of the Public Employee Benefits Cooperative because its members didn’t approve it.

Jenkins and Garcia, who spearheaded the initiative, had initially hoped to offer domestic partner benefits through the PEBC, a multi-county partner agency, but other members — including Denton and Tarrant counties — would not allow it.

Dickey said approving benefits for domestic partners would lead to funding other special groups, such as obese people, smokers or people that have blue Pontiacs.

“We must stay within the realm of our group, of our PEBC, in order to offer our employees the best possible and lowest possible health insurance,” she said.

Continue reading “BREAKING: Dallas County approves domestic partner insurance benefits” »

—  Anna Waugh

Ex-Councilman J.T. Price rescinds endorsement of Theresa Daniel over her support for gay rights

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On Monday we told you that Theresa Daniel, a Democratic candidate for the newly redrawn District 1 seat on the Dallas County Commissioners Court, had sent out an endorsement letter signed by 17 “LGBT Leaders & Friends.” Among other things, the letter mentioned that Daniel is a longtime member of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, which is, of course, the party’s LGBT caucus. Well, apparently that came as a surprise to former Dallas City Councilman Jesse “J.T.” Price, who had endorsed Daniel for Commissioners Court. Daniel reports this morning that, after learning that she’s a member of Stonewall, Price requested that she remove his name from her endorsement list.

“I am disappointed by this development, and had I known Price held this view, I never would have used his name to begin with,” Daniel said in an email. “To my mind, being a Democrat means that you are inclusive and accepting of others. It also means that you are committed to fighting discrimination wherever it exists. I am proud of my convictions, proud of my work with the LGBT community and Democratic Party, and proud of my membership in Stonewall Democrats.”

FYI, in case you’ve never heard of Jesse Price, according to Dallas Morning News archives, he served on the council from 1967 to 1972.

Read Daniel’s full email after the jump.

Continue reading “Ex-Councilman J.T. Price rescinds endorsement of Theresa Daniel over her support for gay rights” »

—  John Wright

17 ‘LGBT Leaders & Friends’ back Theresa Daniel for Dallas County Commissioners Court

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Theresa Daniel, a Democratic candidate for the newly redrawn District 1 seat on the Dallas County Commissioners Court, today sent out an endorsement letter from a group of “LGBT Leaders & Friends.”

Read our recent story on the District 1 race here. Coincidentally, The Dallas Morning News had a good primer on the race in today’s edition saying there’s a “good chance” the district (currently represented by retiring Republican Maurine “Trans Fat” Dickey) will go Democratic. The story also compares the new district to “the head of a pipe wrench” and notes that it “flows into the north, south and eastern parts of the county and includes parts of Pleasant Grove, Garland, Richardson, Oak Lawn and White Rock Lake.”

“Because of the new demographics, the winner will have to develop a coalition that crosses racial and geographic lines and be able to reach out to all the groups,” the DMN’s story states.

The letter in support of Daniel is signed by 17 people, from former State Rep. Harryette Ehrhardt to former City Councilman Chris Luna, and states that Daniel “didn’t join the Stonewall Democrats last month or last year just because she is running for office.” Which, apparently, is a jab at one of her opponents in the primary, Daniel Clayton. The letter also notes that Theresa Daniel, a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee, voted in favor of putting a marriage equality resolution on the statewide primary ballot earlier this year. As we’ve noted, that resolution has failed twice.

“Theresa Daniel does more than talk the talk,” the letter states. “She walks the walk. She has been there with us, and with dozens of other community groups, working to make Dallas County a better, more Democratic place. We don’t have to worry about where Theresa Daniel stands or how she will perform. She has earned our trust.”

Read the full letter after the jump.

Continue reading “17 ‘LGBT Leaders & Friends’ back Theresa Daniel for Dallas County Commissioners Court” »

—  John Wright

Dems seek supermajority on Commissioners Court

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LGBT ally Theresa Daniel among those vying for Dickey’s seat

Going-after-Gay-vote1

GOING AFTER THE GAY VOTE | Cecile Fernandez, left, speaks to Log Cabin Republicans of Dallas on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at Texas Land & Cattle in Uptown. Fernandez is one of two Republicans who’ve filed to replace retiring GOP Commissioner Maurine Dickey. On the Democratic side, longtime LGBT ally Theresa Daniel, above right, and Daniel Clayton are two of the three candidates running for Dickey’s District 1 seat.

DAVID TAFFET  |  Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Stonewall Democrats President Omar Narvaez thinks Democrats have an excellent chance of picking up a fourth seat on the Dallas County Commissioners Court since newly drawn lines extend a district into Oak Lawn.

District 1 Republican incumbent Maureen Dickey — who voted against transgender nondiscrimination protections for county employees last year — isn’t seeking re-election. Two Republicans and three Democrats have filed to run for the seat Dickey has held since 2004.

Narvaez said two of the three Democratic candidates are members of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas — Theresa Daniel and Gloria Levario.

The redrawn district, he said, will be harder for a Republican to retain. Cedar Springs Road is the dividing line. The northeast side of the street will be part of the new District 1. The southwest side of the street will be represented by District 4 Commissioner Dr. Elba Garcia.

District 3 Commissioner John Wiley Price, also up for re-election, lost the Oak Lawn portion of his district but picked up more of Oak Cliff and Cedar Hill. Parts of South Dallas between Interstate 30 and US Highway 175 also shifted from Price to the new District 1.

Usually the filing period ends on Jan. 1 for the November race. Because of legal challenges to redistricting maps, Narvaez said the filing period will be reopened. Candidates whose districts have changed may decide to change races or may pull out of the running and receive a refund.

“And that’s extremely unusual,” Narvaez said.

So he said that the field of candidates — even for the Commissioners Court races where boundary lines haven’t been challenged — isn’t necessarily set. Although the primary is still tentatively scheduled for April 3, a firm date cannot be set until new maps are approved.

“I wonder how long this marathon is going to be,” said Daniel, one of the Democratic candidates for the District 1 seat.

Daniel was a staff member for Democratic Congressman Martin Frost. She has served on the State Democratic Executive Committee since 1996 and as chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party Advisory Committee for four years. Currently, she works with the Dallas Independent School District in program evaluation and accountability and is an adjunct professor of urban and public affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Daniel said she’s been a member of Stonewall Democrats for 10 to 15 years. As a member of the SDEC she helped add two seats to the state body for Stonewall Denocrats leaders.

“With their activity level, both locally and at a state level, they were a model,” she said.

In 2004, Daniel received Stonewall’s Democrat of the Year award.

Daniel said she’s glad sexual orientation and gender identity were added to the county’s employment nondiscrimination policy last year and called health benefits for the domestic partners of county employees a “civil right.”
County Judge Clay Jenkins has said he supports DP benefits but didn’t bring the proposal forward last year due to budget constraints.

On healthcare issues, Daniel said she needs to take a look at how agencies are funded but said, “I’d work to keep funding on track.”

She called the new Parkland hospital “absolutely wonderful.”

“When you have an 80-year-old building we’re going to have problems,” she said, adding that the new hospital shows Dallas County’s commitment to public health.

Daniel Clayton is the third Democrat running for the District 1 seat. He has worked for state Sen. Royce West for five years and currently serves as his political director.
Before joining West’s office, he worked on a number of campaigns. In 2001, he campaigned for Jim McGreevey, who became New

Jersey’s “gay-American” governor. Clayton served as deputy field director for former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk’s Senate campaign.
Since 2007, Clayton has served as president of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats.

In 2004, he was executive director of the Dallas County Democratic Party. That year, Sheriff Lupe Valdez and other Democrats swept into office, which began a run of Democrats who were elected to county-wide office.

“How do we make county government more efficient?” Clayton said when asked about his top concern.

He said continued funding for AIDS programs was a priority.

“Dallas County’s rate of HIV is so high,” he said. “It’s affecting the minority community terribly.”

On partnership benefits, he said the idea sounds fair and he needs to study the economic impact.

On the Republican side, Dickey has endorsed Cecile Fernandez, a former Dickey’s Barbecue executive vice president who helped create the franchise program and take the company national. District 2 Commissioner Mike Cantrell has endorsed Fernandez’s opponent, attorney Larry Miller.

Fernandez attended the kick-off event this week for the new Dallas Log Cabin Republicans chapter.

“I was impressed with the turnout,” she said of the meeting, adding that she attended because several of the founders “are longtime personal friends.”

She said that although the new boundaries of District 1 give Democrats a slight edge, her connections in the Hispanic community and position as vice chair of the Dallas chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly will make the difference.

“I think I’m the Republican who can win that seat,” she said.

She expressed support for LGBT issues. She backs partnership benefits for county employees, but worried that in the new budget year everyone’s benefits will have to be cut.

She said that funding for HIV and AIDS treatment must remain in place and added she sees no room for discrimination.

“It’s not the ’80s,” she said. “Everyone knows someone who’s died of AIDS.”

She said she supports Parkland Hospital and has had people in her family use the facility.

“The people at Parkland are so caring,” she said. Despite being overworked in a rundown facility, “they must really love their jobs.”

Miller and Levario did not return messages before press time.

Levario, the sister of Dallas County’s 204th District Court Judge Lena Levario, works for Baylor’s physician network to manage their medical practices. She’s also a member of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, Narvaez said.

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition February 3, 2012.

—  Kevin Thomas

Top 10: County, DISD, FWISD added trans protections

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TransProtections

STRIKING A POSE | LGBT activists celebrate outside the Dallas County Administration Building in April, after the Commissioners Court voted to add transgender protections to the county’s employment nondiscrimination policy. (John Wright/Dallas Voice)

No. 6

Although transgender rights continue to be the last frontier in the ongoing battle for LGBT equality, the trans community made significant progress in North Texas in 2011.

The all-too-familiar scenario of transgender being left out of laws protecting lesbians and gays played out in March when the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted in favor of adding sexual orientation — but not gender identity and  expression — to the nondiscrimination policy covering the county’s roughly 7,000 employees.

County Judge Clay Jenkins and Commissioner Dr. Elba Garcia, two Democrats who spearheaded the addition of sexual orientation to the policy, said they had not been aware of the distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.

But after Dallas Voice reported on the oversight, LGBT advocates went back to the court to insist that commissioners correct the omission.

Republican Commissioner Maureen Dickey added insult to injury during an April Commissioners Court meeting when she not only announced she would vote against trans protections, but also compared being transgender to being overweight.

But on April 26 — after activists spoke at several consecutive meetings in an effort coordinated by Resource Center Dallas — the court voted 3-2 along party lines to add trans protections. Jenkins, Garcia and Commissioner John Wiley Price voted in favor of trans protections, while Dickey and fellow Republican Mike Cantrell voted against them.

Dallas County is the only county in the state with a trans-inclusive employment nondiscrimination policy — and momentum from the decision appeared to spread as the year went forward.

In late June, the Fort Worth school board added gender identity and expression to the district’s anti-bullying policy. And in early August, shortly before the start of a new school year, came news that the Dallas school board would consider a series of policy changes intended to protect transgender students, faculty and other employees from discrimination and harassment. The vote to add the protections came on Aug. 25.

The wave of transgender victories hit a small snag in November, when the Dallas County Community College District initially refused to add trans protections, insisting that the district’s protections based on sexual orientation covered trans people. But after another effort coordinated by the Resource Center, DCCCD President Wright Lassiter announced in November that an amendment to the district’s nondiscrimination policy to specifically protect transgender people is on the agenda for the board’s January meeting.

— Tammye Nash

This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 30, 2011.

 

—  Kevin Thomas

What is Dallas’ obsession with building useless crap downtown?

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Proposed Fair Park tower, from a pdf of a City of Dallas Landmark Commission agenda

The latest piece of useless downtown architecture is a ferris wheel approved by Dallas County Commissioners Court at Tuesday’s meeting. Another ferris wheel? Really?

First Dallas built that hideous new 1980s glass box of a hotel that’s attached to the Dallas Convention Center. How much more would it have cost to tell the architect to make the building attractive? Make it a place people will say, “Hey, I wanna stay there.”

OK. The lighting at night is interesting. But the architecture is as updated as the city’s other half-empty decades-old reflective-glass office towers.

Next, there’s The Bridge to Ray’s Gun Shop. That’s not the official name, just what the people at the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League are calling it.

Impressive close up; a meaningless non-golden arch from a distance. Iconic? Only because the Trinity River will be recognized around the world as the smallest trickle of water ever crossed by suspension bridge. And it’s destined to become a traffic nightmare each evening when six-lane Woodall Rodgers crosses the mighty Trinity River and backs up onto two-lane Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas.

For the same money we could have had two or three new bridges that crossed to where much of the traffic is actually going — Oak Cliff. Hopefully Ray, operator of the oldest sporting goods store in Dallas, will see an increase in business.

Now the Dallas Commissioners Court has approved a new ferris wheel for Founders Plaza.

Daniel Cates and GetEQUAL will have to find a new location for weddings, protests and other demonstrations.

A ferris wheel? Don’t we already have one of the largest — yet mostly unused — ferris wheels in the world a mile away in Fair Park?

OK, this one is being billed as a 17-story “observation wheel.” What’s an observation wheel? Well, it’s round and has baskets and rotates in a vertical circle. Like a ferris wheel. What about it is not like a ferris wheel? The baskets will be air conditioned and a ticket will cost $15. And unlike the Texas Star in Fair Park, it will be a sightseeing attraction. And the Texas Star? Well, that’s just a ferris wheel.

And if downtown is going to have a ferris wheel, then Fair Park must have an observation tower. This planned 500-foot needle will be nothing like downtown’s Reunion Tower. And it will never be built because Fair Park is on the glide path to Love Field and the FAA won’t approve it, but that’s beside the point. And unlike Reunion, this won’t have a restaurant and there won’t be an elevator.

The observation deck itself will ride up and down the spire. To see downtown. Which you apparently can’t do from the nearby ferris wheel — because 49 weeks a year, it doesn’t operate.

—  David Taffet

WATCH: Marathon of LGBT speakers call on Commissioners Court to add trans protections

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Here’s video of the first six LGBT advocates who spoke at Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, with video of the remaining six to come later. As we noted earlier, the unprecedented marathon of speakers exceeded the maximum 30 minutes for public comment on the issue — a proposal to add transgender protections to the county’s nondiscrimination policy. It was the fourth straight week in which LGBT advocates addressed the Commissioners Court, and the community’s advocacy led to the court ultimately approving trans protections in a 3-2 party-line vote. The speakers in Part I (above) are Rebecca Solomon, Jesse Garcia and Louise Young; and the speakers in Part II (below) are Cd Kirven, Jeffrey Barnett and Mark Reed. As the old saying goes,  “This is what Democracy looks like!”

—  John Wright

WATCH: Dallas County adds trans protections

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LGBT advocates who attended Tuesday’s Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting gather on the steps of the administration building after the vote.

After listening to more than 30 minutes of public comments in favor of the proposal, the Dallas County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 along party lines Tuesday to add transgender protections to the county’s employment nondiscrimination policy.

About a dozen people from the LGBT community addressed the Commissioners Court prior to the vote, which came five weeks after the court voted unanimously to add sexual orientation but not gender identity/expression to the policy covering the county’s 7,000 workers. Despite rumors over the last few days, no one spoke against the proposal.

Commissioner John Wiley Price provided the third and decisive vote in favor of transgender protections, joining fellow Democrats County Judge Clay Jenkins and Commissioner Dr. Elba Garcia. Republican Commissioners Maurine Dickey and Mike Cantrell voted against the transgender protections. (Watch video of the court’s discussion below.)

LGBT advocates who attended Tuesday’s meeting erupted in applause after the dramatic vote, and they gathered on the steps of the county administration building for an impromptu celebration moments later.

“The community’s participation is what made this happen — the letters, the phone calls, the people who showed up here,” said Resource Center Dallas’ Rafael McDonnell, who coordinated the community’s advocacy on the issue. “The fact that this was done in five weeks is what really surprises me. Five weeks is the blink of an eye in government time.”

Continue reading “WATCH: Dallas County adds trans protections” »

—  John Wright

What’s Brewing: Dallas County Commissioners Court to vote on transgender protections

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Rachel Maddow

Your weekday morning blend from Instant Tea:

1. The Dallas County Commissioners Court is scheduled to vote this morning on whether to add transgender employees to the county’s nondiscrimination policy. County Judge Clay Jenkins and LGBT advocates have urged members of the community to attend the meeting in a show of support for the amendment, which comes five weeks after the Commissioners Court added sexual orientation to the policy. Opponents of the amendment are expected to attend the meeting as well, and it remains unclear whether the measure has enough votes to pass. The meeting begins at 9 a.m. at the county administration building, 411 Elm St. Stay tuned to Instant Tea for a full report from the meeting later this morning.

2. Prop 8 supporters have filed a motion seeking to vacate Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling striking down California’s same-sex marriage ban, on the grounds that Walker had a conflict of interest because he’s in a long-term gay relationship.

3. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said she thinks others gay cable TV anchors need to come out, but later insisted she wasn’t talking specifically about CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

—  John Wright