There are two articles on this page.  The first is a local take, while the second, with additional details is from the New York Times.

Lieutenant's Dying Wish

Finally Granted

By ABC News from Philadelphia, on the Web, January 25, 2006

Lawmakers in Ocean County, New Jersey have had a change of heart about a controversial decision involving same sex benefits.  After months of protest, Lieutenant Laurel Hester will get her dying wish.  Freeholders are reversing themselves, and have just voted to grant pension benefits to the domestic partner of the detective, who is dying of cancer.

She's suffering from terminal lung cancer and has just months to live.  Lt. Laurel Hester, a 24-year veteran detective with the Ocean County Prosecutor's office, says she can die in peace now knowing that her partner of six years, Stacie Andree, will receive her 13-thousand dollar a year death benefit.  This will allow Andree to afford to stay in the couple Point Pleasant Borough home.

New Jersey's Domestic Partner Act extends pension and death benefits to state employees, but leaves up to counties and municipalities to decide what they want to do. Despite protests, public pressure and national media coverage, Ocean County Freeholders steadfastly refuse to go along.

   Lt. Hester: "Time is of the essence..."

But soon after seeing a tape of Lt. Hester pleading with them to change their mind, and with pressure from Governor Jon Corzine and County Republican leaders, the freeholders had a change of heart.

Weak from her progressing illness, Lt. Hester and her partner attended the meeting to thank freeholders in person.  Gay activists who harshly criticized the freeholders before are now offering praise.

(Copyright 2006 by Action News. All Rights Reserved.)

Domestic Partner to Get Pension

By DAMIEN CAVE, NYTimes on the Web, January 26, 2006

TOMS RIVER, N.J., Jan. 25 -- For more than a year, Lt. Laurel Hester has been fighting two almost intractable foes:  lung cancer and the Ocean County freeholders, who had refused repeatedly to let her leave her domestic partner the pension she has earned in two decades of local police work.

On Wednesday, one of her opponents finally flinched.  At a special meeting to address Lieutenant Hester's cause — scheduled after negotiations with Gov. Jon S. Corzine and state Republican lawmakers — the freeholders agreed to extend pension benefits to domestic partners of local government employees.

The decision, which will take effect within days, was greeted in the county building with applause and misty eyes among residents, retired police officers and gay activists.

Lieutenant Hester, 49, in a wheelchair pushed by her partner, Stacie Andree, 30, told the freeholders that she had rejected her doctors' orders and had come to witness the vote "to thank you all individually for what you have done."

"You have made yourselves an example of what democracy is all about," she said, detaching her oxygen tube to make a statement.  "You've shown that you're willing to listen and that together, we can work things out."

The freeholders said they reversed themselves only because a solution had been proposed at the state level.  On Friday, State Senator Andrew R. Ciesla, a Republican from Ocean County, agreed to sponsor legislation that would fix the state rules that allow those in the public employee retirement system to name anyone as beneficiary for their benefits, while those in the police and fire retirement system must designate a spouse.

Under a law enacted in 2004, domestic partners of employees in the police and fire retirement system can also become beneficiaries if municipalities or counties agree to allow it.  Until Ocean County's decision, 7 of the state's 21 counties had passed such resolutions:  Bergen, Hudson, Mercer, Union, Monmouth, Passaic and Camden.

Ocean County freeholders said they had not done so because the exemption for domestic partners excluded nonmarried relatives and other caregivers.

Senator Ciesla said on Wednesday that his legislation, to be introduced on Thursday, would end the discrepancy between the state's two pension systems, allowing anyone to be named as a beneficiary.  "In light of the Laurel Hester matter, I thought it was the right thing to do," he said.