Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children (KBHC) has reached an agreement with state officials over its contract that was threatened not to be renewed because of KBHC’s hiring policy that bars homosexuals from employment.
Also, KBHC, the largest private provider of child care in Kentucky, along with two state cabinets that contract with KBHC, remain part of a federal lawsuit due to KBHC’s firing of a lesbian worker.
The agreement came after Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton helped with negotiations. Earlier discussions ended in dispute following the state’s threat to stop sending children to KBHC institutions and foster parents. KBHC agreed to pay all cost of defending its hiring practices, but could not accept the possible loss of children.
Two days before the contract was set to expire, KBHC President Bill Smithwick announced the Baptist agency would not sign the contract.
“The state has asked us to indemnify them without any boundaries whatsoever, all costs, attorney’s fees,” Smithwick said. “On the other hand they’re saying, ‘We’re not going to send them any more children.’ Now why would you enter into a contract like that? It makes no sense.”
Rejecting the contract would have cost the agency more than half its projected budget and therefore result in layoffs for at least half the agency’s 465-member staff, he said.
But within a day, Patton asked KBHC officials to reconsider their decision.
Smithwick said new negotiations with the governor’s office resulted in two significant developments.
First, “the contract language has changed to the point that it specifically allows social workers to make their decisions individually, with no overriding cabinet policy that would prohibit them sending children our way,” he said.
Second, the governor promised to write to all state case workers stating that it’s up to the individual social workers as to which contract agencies they will send children.
“That was really what the whole thing has hinged on.” He reiterated that KBHC hasn’t changed its hiring policy in order to reach an agreement.
“We have not moved one bit on our family values, in our employment policies regarding homosexuals. We’re right back where we started,” he said. “I would like Kentucky Baptists who have ever had a doubt about our conviction to being a Christ-centered ministry and taking any public reimbursements to know from this experience that we are not vacillating on that.”
The past two months of negotiations on the contract have impacted KBHC’s bottom line, he added.
“We have suffered some significant financial losses because of the turmoil that this has caused. Children have not been referred to us, but we’ve had to maintain our overhead to take care of the kids that we do have,” he said.
The agency has gone from a high of 360 children in residence care to about 290. Smithwick estimated half the decrease is a result of a decline in state referrals. “It’s probably going to take a while to get back where we were, and we still need help from our friends to make up the difference.”
Still unsettled is a federal lawsuit filed by Alicia Pedreira, a former employee who was fired because she is a lesbian. Among the claims of the suit is that the state’s funding for KBHC and its religious-based employment policy violates the First Amendment call for separation of church and state. (BP)
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