Frederick awarded perfect score for LGBTQ-friendly policies

Oct. 20--Gender reassignment surgery is now covered under the health insurance plans offered to Frederick city government employees.

Adding transgender-inclusive health care benefits was one of several policies that contributed to the city's perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's 2017 Municipality Equality Index. The annual report measures how friendly municipalities are nationwide to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities, awarding points in five categories to determine a numerical score out of 100.

This was the first year that Frederick earned all possible points on the evaluation, a 14-point jump from its score of 86 in 2016. And it's nearly double the 52 points awarded to Frederick in 2013, the first year the city was included in the survey.

Kris Fair, president of the board of directors at The Frederick Center, lauded the city's 100-point score as evidence of its hard work to address concerns and weaknesses in LGBTQ-friendly policies and attitudes. The Frederick Center is a service and advocacy organization for the LGBTQ community and its allies.

"They truly deserve the kudos," Fair said.

Nikki Bamonti, the mayor's executive assistant, echoed Fair's excitement.

"We feel like it really represents what the city is about, equality, justice and fairness to all people," Bamonti said.

Bamonti has also taken on the role of serving as a liaison between the mayor's office and the LGBTQ community, one of several criteria, along with transgender-inclusive health care benefits, where the city fell short in 2016.

Other areas where the city gained points from 2016 to 2017 were the presence of a LGBTQ police liaison and in city leadership's relationship with the LGBTQ community through public positions and pro-equality legislation, according to the report. The city received partial credit on these benchmarks of equality in 2016.

It was the 2016 report, in part, that prompted the city to add or expand policies, Bamonti said. After the 2016 report was published, the city began working with its new human resources director to add language to its health care policies for city employees that specifies gender reassignment surgery as a covered medical service.

It was also the reason why Bamonti was designated as a LGBTQ liaison for the mayor's office. In her new role, she will serve as the point person through which LGBTQ-related complaints and concerns are shared with city officials. She also planned to take a more active role in outreach, naming attendance at events hosted by The Frederick Center as one way to accomplish this.

Other changes were more a matter of formalizing what had already been unofficial practices, Bamonti said. The memorandum of understanding signed in January between the Frederick Police Department and The Frederick Center, for example, codifies and bolsters the partnership between the two.

Under the agreement, Fair and Peter Brehm, another Frederick Center board member, serve as liaisons to the police task force. In turn, the police department has a designated liaison for The Frederick Center.

Fair stressed the importance of this partnership for both groups.

"It's an opportunity for a voice from the LGBTQ community ... to be in the room and at the table when policies are crafted," Fair said.

Fair added, however, that the perfect score by no means exempted the city from striving to better represent and protect its LGBTQ residents.

"It's a move in the right direction, but I think there's more to do," he said.

There's a difference between supporting issues and actively affirming individuals, particularly when their rights or safety are put in jeopardy, he said.

The city also lacks any openly LGBTQ members among its elected and appointed bodies, which was a bonus point criterion on the Municipality Equality Index score. Fair, who is openly gay, ran as a Democrat for city alderman but lost in the September primary.

He said he was disappointed with the results of his campaign, but hopeful that future local and state elections would offer a chance for representation from the LGBTQ community.

"When you don't have elected leaders who are representing that community ... support for that community can sometimes get lost in the conversation, simply because there's a lack of that cultural experience on the personal level," he said.

Frederick joins 67 other cities awarded perfect scores in the 2017 report. The average among the 506 jurisdictions chosen was 57 points.

This year's evaluation featured the highest number of cities earning perfect scores since the study began in 2012. It also boasted record numbers of cities adding LGBTQ liaisons to police forces and mayor's offices, according to Xavier Persad, legal counsel for the Human Rights Campaign.

These successes were particularly noteworthy given the current political climate, which has threatened many of the rights and protections previously granted to the LGBTQ community, Persad said.

"We're encouraged that this year's report continues to show cities leading the way ... taking bold measures despite federal rollbacks and reductions," he said.

The Human Rights Campaign relies primarily on information supplied by the cities it evaluates to determine their scores according to Persad. Individual feedback, newspaper articles and other publicly available information are also factored into the calculations.

Follow Nancy Lavin on Twitter: @NancyKLavin.

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