Carmel delays action on anti-discrimination ordinance
Concerned that an anti-discrimination ordinance needed more work, the Carmel City Council delayed action for at least two more weeks.
Council President Rick Sharp tried to discuss and vote on the ordinance Monday but was blocked by several council members who are concerned about its legal wording.
Social conservatives raised those concerns at a committee meeting Thursday.
“I think there really needs to be work on this,” Councilwoman Luci Snyder said. “When you make a law, you have to make sure the words are what we want them to be.”
Snyder, though, said she agrees that Carmel needs to let people know it is an inclusive community. She plans to hold another committee meeting within the next two weeks.
She said a similar proposal passed by Columbus earlier this month was 22 pages long and included legal definitions and more detailed procedures for filing and adjudicating a claim. Carmel’s ordinance is three pages long, includes a less thorough process for filing a claim and includes no definitions for terms such as sexual orientation, gender identity and religious worship.
Sharp and council members Sue Finkam and Ron Carter had been pushing for a vote on the ordinance Monday. Sharp tried to use a procedural move as the council president to lift it out of Snyder’s committee, where it had stalled. However, Snyder, Carol Schleif, Eric Seidensticker and Kevin Rider overruled his decision.
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Sharp said the committee should have made more progress on the ordinance in the past month.
He said he hoped Snyder would work with the mayor and his staff to address any concerns she had in the next two weeks. He said he would be disappointed if council members still had questions in two weeks.
Regardless of whether they pass it out of committee, Sharp said, he can and will raise it for debate in front of the full council Oct. 5.
“This is too important of business to leave stranded in a committee,” Sharp said.
After hearing more than three hours of public testimony for and against the ordinance Aug. 17 and at a committee meeting Thursday, Sharp limited public comment Monday to people who had not spoken at those meetings.
Several people spoke in favor of the ordinance Monday.
“I want to live in a community that is tolerant,” Pat Otten said. “Because once you get past all of the narrow-mindedness and hatred, you can profit in so many ways.”
Carmel High School freshman Chris Moe said his generation believes there should be zero discrimination.
“Who cares if a person is gay, straight, black or white?” Moe said. “It only matters that they are a decent human being.”
No one spoke against the ordinance, although Sharp said five people who previously raised concerns asked to speak a second time.
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Eric Miller, executive director of the conservative advocacy group Advance America, attended the meeting. He has opposed LGBT anti-discrimination proposals in communities across the state, and he questioned the legal wording of Carmel’s ordinance at the committee meeting Thursday.
“The council did the right thing, because there were so many legal defects with the ordinance,” Miller told The Indianapolis Star.
Former Angie’s List CEO Bill Oesterle also attended the meeting with supporters from Tech for Equality, a group he formed to push for expanded statewide civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Hoosiers.
At a news conference at the Statehouse earlier Monday, he released a list of 30 companies and leaders joining the initiative.
Members include a “who’s who” of emerging technology companies, along with leaders of the state’s tech sector, such as Angie’s List, Salesforce, NextGear Capital, Cannon IV, OurHealth, Mobi and LeadJen.
“I think it’s notable that they are stepping forward here,” Oesterle said at the Statehouse, “and that’s simply a product of the direct impact that this issue can have on the labor force, especially the skilled labor force, they are so dependent on.”
Call Star reporter Chris Sikich at (317) 444-6036. Follow him on Twitter: @ ChrisSikichand atFacebook/chris.sikich.