The Atlanta City Council approved a “living wage” ordinance this week that includes giving businesses vying for city contracts bonus points if they offer domestic partner benefits to gay employees.

The measure passed 13-1 during Monday’s council meeting. District 7 Council member Howard Shook cast the only no vote.

“If the business provides health benefits for an employee’s spouse, such benefits must also be provided to the domestic partners,” states the equal benefits clause of the Living Wage Ordinance. “In addition, if health benefits are provided to the family, such benefits must also be provided to the domestic partner of the employee.”

Businesses that do not already offer health benefits to their employees, along with those that extend coverage only to the worker, will not be affected by the EBO. Also, only employees who are working on a city contract will be covered by the policy.

The Living Wage Ordinance, while not mandatory, encourages companies seeking business with the city to pay workers a minimum of $10.50 an hour if offering health insurance or $12 an hour if no health insurance is provided. Led by Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), the Georgia General Assembly last year made it illegal for local governments to implement a wage or benefit requirement.

The living wage measure now goes to Mayor Shirley Franklin, who has publicly expressed her support of the ordinance. Her office did not respond to interview requests on whether the mayor would sign it into law.

District 6 Council member Anne Fauver, the council’s only openly gay member, voted in favor of the ordinance. Fauver said she had misgivings about the Living Wage Ordinance over concerns about costs, but supported it because it included the equal benefits policy.

“This is a very difficult thing for me. I wish the two ordinances were separate,” Fauver said before the vote Jan. 3.

“I feel strongly that if a company gives benefits to a husband and spouse or spouse and wife, then it is inherent [in not discriminating] that the city approve the EBO,” she said. “To speak against a living wage is like speaking against motherhood and the flag, I’m aware of that. However, the only responsible way to implement this ordinance is on a tiered approach and not jumping to $10.50 and $12 an hour.”

A citizen panel appointed to review the living wage measure recommended including the equal benefits policy. But the DP benefits section was omitted when the current ordinance was introduced in the City Council. Gay rights activists credited Franklin with working behind the scenes to assure the measure would be included.

Fauver said she and the mayor worked together to ensure the EBO would be included when the final version of the Living Wage Ordinance was approved by the council’s Finance Committee on Dec. 15. Fauver, a member of the finance committee, missed that vote later saying she was ill.

City officials are now reviewing all past contracts to determine what has been paid in the past and then to determine a “point system” and “point spread” for implementing the Living Wage and equal benefits policies, according to Council member Debi Starnes.

The number of points a company earns will play a role in whether or not the contract is awarded.

Starnes said she hopes a point system will be determined by March. The law is slated to go into effect July 1, she said.

In 1997, San Francisco became the first city in the country to enact an Equal Benefits Ordinance. Unlike Atlanta’s policy, the San Francisco law makes compliance mandatory and has been credited with prompting hundreds of businesses to offer DP benefits.

Several other local governments, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley and San Mateo County in California, as well Seattle, Wash., have implemented similar policies.

But Atlanta is the first to implement an EBO as part of a living wage measure, according to Cynthia Goldstein, senior contract compliance officer with San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission, who oversees the ordinance there.

“No other jurisdictions I’m aware of has them tied together,” Goldstein said.

Dyana Bagby can be reached at dbagby@sovo.com.