Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
A stairwell outside the City Council chamber was crowded with people waiting to enter Monday night.
A few minutes after 3 a.m. Tuesday, Billings Mayor Tom Hanel cast the deciding vote against a proposed nondiscrimination ordinance, sending it to a 6-5 defeat by the City Council.
Voting with the mayor to kill the NDO were Mike Yakawich, Denis Pitman, Angela Cimmino, Rich McFadden and Shaun Brown. Those in favor of the NDO were Brent Cromley, Becky Bird, Jani McCall, Al Swanson and Ken Crouch.
The vote came after nearly five hours of public testimony — in a meeting that lasted 8½ hours, with three breaks — capping a tumultuous process that began in December, when the council directed staff to draft an NDO. The ordinance would have prohibited discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identification or expression.
It was widely predicted that Hanel would cast the tie-breaking vote, and when the roll call was taken after an hour of council discussion, it went swiftly, with all 10 council members voting as predicted.
Hanel did not say a word during the council debate, saving his remarks until the vote was locked at 5-5 and it was time to break the tie. Then he spoke for nearly eight minutes, giving a somewhat rambling account of how he moved to Billings 41 years ago, how he loved the city and everyone in it, how he was never accused of discrimination in his law enforcement career and how the NDO was not about religion.
“I need to ask myself,” he said: “Is this fair to everyone? Is it beneficial to everyone?”
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Jeff Laszloffy, head of the Montana Family Foundation, which led the fight against the NDO, waits outside the council chamber.
After some more general remarks that didn’t tip his hand, he abruptly explained that he was going to vote no because “ladies and gentleman, I do not think Billings is ready at this time.”
And that was that. Eight months of debate and record-breaking public hearings, thousands of emails, phone calls, letters and public rallies were over. Billings became the first Montana city to defeat an NDO. Fours others — Missoula, Butte, Helena and Bozeman — had already adopted one.
Of those voting to kill the NDO, Cimmino and Yakawich both said they did so because an overwhelming majority of their constituents were against it. Pitman said he was disappointed at how badly the issue had divided the community and McFadden framed the debate as freedom vs. government intrusion.
Brown said he wasn’t entirely against the NDO but objected to language allowing transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identification. He was also opposed to forcing businesses that provide personal services to traffic with customers whose lifestyles they objected to.
Cromley, who made the motion to approve the NDO, said nearly all the opposition was based on religious viewpoints, which should have no bearing on public policy. He also said NDOs are in effect all over the country with no ill effects.
Bird delivered a personal story about a good friend of hers who is a transgender male. She said she has been with him on multiple occasions when he has been subjected to hateful and threatening remarks. She said some people on the council refused to give any credence to accounts of anti-gay discrimination and hate activity, “and it’s embarrassing and shameful.”
Crouch, a minister, said opponents often quoted John 3:16, but no one quoted John 3:17, in which Jesus said, “I come not to judge.” McCall said the issue was not one of legislating morality but of protecting the rights of everyone who lives in or visits Billings.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Pro-NDO shirts were being handed out at the First Congregational Church.
Swanson said he was mainly concerned about how a defeat of the NDO could harm Billings’ prospects as a business center. He also said the NDO would protect people who have always been discriminated against.
The council discussion followed the testimony of about 60 people, nearly all of whom used their three full minutes of allowed time, and many of them kept talking after that in response to council questions or prompting.
The NDO had been tinkered with, tweaked and changed many times in the past couple of months, but Cromley’s motion was to leave the bathroom-locker room exclusion out of it and to go with open-ended language regarding monetary damages for violations of the ordinance, rather than alternatives that capped damages.
There was some discussion of tinkering with the NDO again Tuesday, but when McFadden’s motion to put the bathroom exclusion back in died for lack of a second, those efforts ended.
Pitman said the language in Cromley’s motion contained everything supporters wanted all along, so rather than endlessly massaging the language to make the NDO palatable, why not just vote on it as is.
And that’s what the council did just a few moments later.
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