Bay City News Service

A city of Berkeley emblem on the door of a building downtown

The Berkeley City Council has postponed a vote on a staff proposal to appropriate $20,000 a year to pay for sex-change operations for city employees.

City Manager Phil Kamlarz took the item off the agenda of the council's meeting Tuesday night because some questions had arisen about the proposed policy and he wanted more time to provide answers, according to city spokeswoman Mary Kay Clunies-Ross.

The City Council is now scheduled to vote on the matter at its Feb. 15 meeting, she said.

In a memo to the council, Kamlarz said the city is offering to pay for the sex-reassignment surgery because its two health insurance providers, Kaiser and Health Net, don't cover it.

The proposed resolution that the council will vote on says funding sex-change operations is consistent with the city's equal employment opportunity policy.

The city said its policy is "to be fair and equitable to all of its relations with its employees and applicants and any form of discrimination based on race, religion, sex, political belief and other categories."

Kamlarz said that if the funding is approved, the city would provide the initial $20,000 on a first-come, first-served basis.

If no employees use the money in the first year, the city wouldn't have to appropriate additional money the second year, and the pool of money wouldn't exceed $20,000, he said.

Kamlarz said employees must meet several requirements to receive money for sex-change operations, such as being a permanent employee who has worked for the city for at least a year and being an active participant in a recognized gender identity treatment program.

Employees must also have successfully lived within the desired gender role for at least a year without returning to their original gender and have received at least a year of continuous hormonal sex-reassignment therapy.

Clunies-Ross said the idea of having the city pay for sex-change operations was first proposed by a council member in 2007, but no action was taken at the time.