When I see bills like SB51, I am reminded once again why I so dislike the Dillon Rule. In this case, we have self-insured localities who want to be able to extend health insurance benefits to whomever the locality and the policyholder agree. Instead of simply being able to do so – after all, there are no state funds used for this – they have to ask the General Assembly for permission.
The bill passed the Senate 1/23 and just barely made it out of the House Commerce & Labor Subcommittee #1 this afternoon. The bill will be taken up by the full committee tomorrow – Thursday. We need 12 votes, folks. We have 11. Please contact the members of the committee and ask them to support this bill.
UPDATE: The vote on this bill has been moved to Tuesday, February 26, so if you have not contacted your legislators, now is the time.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Ya gotta wonder sometimes, don’t ya?
Why is this at all controversial? One of the reasons I don’t support gay marriage is that it would FORCE companies to provide insurance for classes of people they do not want to cover. This bill, OTOH, merely ALLOWS the localities to do so.
Can we please get Joannou to vote with the rest of the Democrats on this important issue?
Maybe once?
I have a phone call in to Joannou on this bill. He has been supportive of these efforts in the past and I’m hoping to convince him to do so again. But he’s much more likely to listen to a lot of voices than just one so please give him a call on this.
Here’s language suggested by Equality Virginia which folks can edit and adjust for themselves:
As your constituent, I’m writing to urge you to support SB 51, patroned by Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple. This bill passed the Senate earlier this session.
At present, any county, town or city government that would like to extend health care benefits to additional members of an employee’s household are prevented from doing so by a Virginia Supreme Court interpretation of the Dillon Rule.
Unlike many of their peers in the private sector, local government employees cannot seek to add mothers, fathers, adult children, partners, or other dependents living in their homes to their health insurance plan even where local government officials would like to offer these valuable health insurance benefits to its employees.
It has become commonplace for employers to offer extended coverage to employees and those they wish to insure. Over half of the Fortune 500 companies choose to offer such benefits to their employees. Of these, at least 14 are Virginia based, including: AOL Time Warner, Capital One, CarMax, Circuit City, Dominion Resources, Gannett, Genworth, LandAmerica, MCI Group, MeadWestvaco, Owens & Minor, Philip Morris USA , SprintNextel, and SLM Corp. (Sallie Mae).
In addition, 13 state governments and 139 city and county governments offer health insurance benefits to their employees. Included among the local governments offering benefits are nine cities and counties in Maryland, including Baltimore and several localities in the Washington, D.C. area, five in North Carolina, and the City of Atlanta and close-in counties.
Existing law places local governments in the Commonwealth of Virginia at a competitive disadvantage in their efforts to attract the most qualified and talented employees from an increasingly nationwide pool of candidates, particularly in the Northern Virginia area, where local governments compete with public and private employers in Maryland and the District of Columbia that offer all employees expanded health insurance benefits.
Please support this common-sense measure to allow more Virginians to have access to health insurance and assist local governments in recruiting the best and brightest employees.
Thank you, and I look forward to your reply.