UPDATE:Â City council voted unanimously to approve the ordinance on Monday night.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Crescent Springs is poised to become the twenty-first city in Kentucky to adopt what is commonly referred to as a fairness ordinance, a change to the city’s laws extending legal protections against discrimination to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
City council will vote on the ordinance at Monday night’s meeting.
It was first discussed in early February and later that month presented as a first reading.
“Basically what it does is, it essentially puts it on the books that the city doesn’t stand for that type of discrimination,” said Councilman Justin Hartfiel in February. “I am of the belief that it would be fantastic for the City of Crescent Springs to become the twenty-first city in Kentucky and only the second city in Kenton County to pass one of these ordinances.”
Louisville and Lexington were the first Kentucky cities to adopt such legislation, with both doing so back in 1999. Covington followed in 2003.
Locally, the issue never arose for full consideration by a city government until a flurry of such laws were adopted in 2019 and 2020 with legislation passing in Dayton, Bellevue, Highland Heights, Fort Thomas, Cold Spring, and Newport.
Justin Hartfiel, who is the grandson of Mayor Lou Hartfiel, said that adopting the ordinance would also be another tool for the city in its economic development endeavors.
“I think we can see all the great economic development things happening in the City of Covington, and this is an opportunity to differentiate ourselves in economic development,” Hartfiel said.Â
While most of the ordinances across the state are very similar, they differ in how violations could be addressed. Crescent Springs would establish a three-person human rights commission, if adopted on Monday night.
-Michael Monks, editor & publisher