Berkeley Taxpayers To Pay for Sex-change? Financially Strapped SF School District Loans Money to Radio Station

Berkeley Taxpayers To Pay for Sex-change Surgery?

A proposal that would cover the cost of sex-change operations for city employees in Berkeley is set for a City Council vote Tuesday night.

Berkeley health insurance providers Kaiser Permanente and Health Net don't pay for gender-reassignment surgery under the city's current health plans. The City Council proposal would set aside an annual $20,000 fund for the procedure for city employees.

The benefit would allow employees to collect the money before the sex-change operation, which can cost up to $50,000. The money would be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis each year.

To receive a payout from the fund, employees would have to have lived as the opposite sex for at least one year and undergone hormone therapy. They also would have to have worked for the city at least a year.

And here I thought California's economy was in trouble!

In a related story, San Francisco School district loans money to radio station:

SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT noncommercial KALW/SAN FRANCISCO is receiving a loan of up to $200,000 from the school district to keep the station operating through financial difficulties. The SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE reports that the board voted unanimously to provide the station with a line of credit, despite financial woes for the school system itself.

These are your tax dollars at work, friends. Those of you outside of California should be bailing us out any time now, since we represent the acme of fiscal responsibility.

And I mean "Acme" in the full Wile E. Coyote/ Roadrunner sense of the word!

Cross posted at LCR.