GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Ohio's Newspaper for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com Volume 27, Issue 5 August 26, 2011

County looks at partner benefits

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland-Cuyahoga County council is looking at giving workers domestic partner benefits, with Councilor Sunny Simon introducing an ordinance at the August 23 meeting.

County executive FitzGerald is examining changes to the health care plans for county workers to save the county around $2 million, which would likely more than pay for same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners to get equal benefits as their married coworkers.

Cleveland approved partner benefits for city workers last month, but limited them to couples who had registered as domestic partners by May 1. The Cuyahoga benefits would simply require that the workers have evidence of combined lives. This can include being on a domestic partner registry, co-ownership of property, power of attorney or beneficiary status in each other's wills. Statements would have to be backed up by signed affidavits, and the worker would be required to notify human resources if the relationship ends, in which case so would the benefits.

Five of the eleven council members have already joined the legislation as sponsors, and it has been assigned to the human resources and justice affairs committees. If it passes those committees, it heads to the entire council.

FitzGerald indicated his general support of the measure, although he said he would like an estimate of the cost.

"I think it's a civil rights issue," he told the Plain Dealer. "I think it's an issue of equity and fairness."

"It's important to me that the county move forward as a county that actually embraces social justice and inclusiveness," Simon said. "Also it will enable us to broaden our range in attracting new employees and residents to the county.'

For the Cleveland domestic partner benefits, if all 15 couples who were believed to be eligible signed up for the plan, it would cost the city $100,000, a small fraction of the municipality's benefits budget, and less than $7,000

per couple. However, should an Is that a katana in your pocket?

uninsured person go to a hospital for an emergency, the cost would be far higher.

This summer has been quite active for the LGBT community in Cuyahoga County, with Cleveland's partner benefits, an expansion of East Cleveland's civil rights ordinances a day earlier, the settlement of the lawsuit that threatened the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland and the announcement last week that Elton John and Billie Jean King were bringing their annual tennis AIDS fundraiser to Cleveland this fall..

MAGNET RELEASING

Or are you just glad to see me? Hirayama (Tsuyoshi Ihara) takes point against an army of bodyguards, protecting Ogura (Masataka Kubota) in Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins, a return to the classic samurai films of previous decades. More coded in terms of its male-male love than some of Miike's earlier films like Big Bang Love: Juvenile A or Dead or Alive, Miike notes, "Sword-fighting scenes are about love. Without... love, we could not shoot such violent sword-fighting scenes." See more in Evenings Out on page 6.

Cindy Yu is named LGBT center's interim director

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland-The Cleveland LGBT Center on August 16 announced the appointment of Cindy Yu to the post of interim executive director, following the departure of Jan Cline earlier this month.

Yu, who has been at the center for six years, has seen her role increase, going from finance director to associate director to now assuming the helm of the organization, if only on an interim basis while the board conducts a search for Cline's permanent replacement.

It's the second time in as many years that a staff member has been appointed interim executive director. Mary Zaller was named interim director following Sue Doerfer's departure at the end of 2009. Less than three months later, Cline was selected for the role of executive director before leaving August 12 to return to the Food Bank of Southeastern Virginia, which also puts him closer to his family.

While the new title comes with a great deal of extra responsibility, Yu says that the staff is solid and

Cindy Yu

the board is very involved.

"I need to oversee the whole agency and pay attention to everything going on at the center," she said. "Besides my duties of finance, information technology and facility, I am also ultimately responsible for development, communications, programming, donor relations, community networking, staffing, volunteer management."

"Thankfully, the center has very competent staff members, dedicated board members and reliable volunteers to whom I am able to

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delegate some of these duties," she continued.

She also said that she has very good working relationships with all the staff members, fostered in part through her six years on the center's staff. "They all have confidence in me to lead the organization in the right direction," she noted.

She'll need that confidence, as board president Bob Sferra believes the search for a permanent executive director will likely take continued on page 2

News Briefs

Page 2

Charlie's Calendar

Resource Directory....

Classifieds ...........

Page 3

ARC Ohio merges with Ohio

AIDS Coalition