Don't make Ky. domestic partners an issue

Robbie Rudolph, Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s running mate and executive secretary in the governor’s cabinet, said Monday during a debate on Kentucky Educational Television that Fletcher may ask the General Assembly to deal with the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees’ decision to offer expanded employee benefits to domestic partners.

In other words, Rudolph says the governor wants to do something about UK offering benefits to unmarried and same-sex couples. The Legislature has more important things to do and Rudolph and Fletcher ought to stop trying to make an election year issue out of this.

UK, like the University of Louisville as well as other public and private schools around the country and many private companies, offer such benefits because it helps to attract and keep a high caliber workforce. The incremental cost of extending existing benefits to such couples is negligible.

In the past Fletcher was willing to take a pass on this issue, leaving it to university presidents to decide. But now he is in a competitive primary for renomination, a lot of big name Republicans are opposing him and he has a running mate willing to goad him with the political appeal of such a hot-button issue.

Fletcher should resist. Inflating the domestic choices of a handful of people into a policy issue is not a move of government leadership.