It Gets Better for San Jose Under New Mayor

San Jose should see its score rise significantly on the 2015 Municipal Equality Index compiled by national LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign due to a number of changes ushered in by Mayor Sam Liccardo during his first eight months on the job.

One visible marker of the improved relations between San Jose City Hall and its LGBT constituents should appear sometime in 2016 as Liccardo's administration is working with leaders of the city's Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center and the City Council to install a rainbow colored crosswalk near the building.

In a phone interview last week with the Bay Area Reporter , Liccardo pledged to maintain an open door for LGBT leaders going forward, whether through regular meetings with himself or with his mayoral liaison to the LGBT community, the city's first.

"As we think about opportunities to be more responsive as a city, the best ideas tend to percolate up from the community and not from City Hall," said Liccardo.

The Bay Area's largest city was dinged points on the HRC's 2014 municipal index for not having an LGBT liaison at either City Hall or within the police department. Out of a possible score of 100, San Jose earned a mark of 88.

Speaking to the B.A.R. late last year as he prepared for his swearing-in ceremony, Liccardo, 45, pledged to address the items on the index that caused San Jose to fall short of a perfect score. One of his first moves to do so came in March when he named Khanh Russo as his director of partnerships and liaison to the LGBT community.

Russo, 35, a gay married man, had previously worked as staff director for Liccardo when he served on the City Council. More recently the San Jose resident worked for the Cisco Foundation and Cisco Systems in the dual role of public benefits investment manager for both.

"This is a great opportunity to leverage the skill sets I have developed in the tech industry and in public service," said Russo, who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family left Vietnam; two months later they immigrated to San Jose. "For the mayor it is very important that the LGBT community has someone to go to at a senior level who is able to bring those issues to his attention quickly."

One of the first things Khanh did at the mayor's request was to research if city employees' health insurance from Kaiser included transgender benefits. The HRC's index had said San Jose did not offer such coverage to its transgender employees.

It turns out that it does, said Khanh, due to a 2013 directive issued by the state Department of Managed Health Care requiring all HMOs to provide transgender individuals with the same coverage benefits that are available to non-transgender individuals. It prohibited exclusions or limitations based on gender, or related to gender transition services, explained Khanh.

Therefore, he added, sexual reassignment surgery and mastectomy with chest reconstruction services, in addition to behavioral health and hormone therapy services, are covered.

"I have been talking to the folks at HRC. This is why having an LGBT liaison is helpful," Khanh told the B.A.R. in a phone interview this week. "The way they did the indexing is they do their own investigation first and then ask for verification. I don't know if in the previous administration there was someone helping to verify."

New Outlook at City Hall

Due to his refusal to back same-sex marriage, former Mayor Chuck Reed had a testy relationship with the South Bay's LGBT community during his eight years in office. Thus the election of Liccardo, despite his not having the support of many LGBT leaders in last year's mayoral race due to his being seen as anti-labor, was viewed as a harbinger for repaired relations between City Hall and the LGBT community.

He has not disappointed, so far, with his office helping to coordinate a rally outside City Hall in late June following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. Earlier in the month Liccardo attended the ceremony to raise the rainbow flag outside of the building in honor of June being Pride month.

"I think Mayor Liccardo is doing a great job," said gay Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager, who lives in San Jose and has been friends with the mayor and his wife for years although he endorsed his opponent in the race. "He is a 180-degree turn better than Mayor Reed, who was a disaster for the city."

Liccardo also has won praise from Wiggsy Sivertsen, who with Yeager co-founded the South Bay LGBT political group BAYMEC, which stands for Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee, and is serving with the supervisor as co-grand marshals of Sunday's Silicon Valley Pride parade.

"We did not support Sam because we were afraid he would go down the route Chuck Reed took. He has not; he has been his own person," said Sivertsen, a lesbian who lives in Los Gatos, in explaining BAYMEC's endorsement decision. "He is certainly responsive to our community."

This week Liccardo sent all city employees an emailed invite to join him in the Pride parade, in which the avid cyclist expects to ride a bike. This marks the 40th anniversary of the LGBT event, whose theme is "Looking Forward from Forty," and marks the first parade since 2008.

"We are especially excited about the return of the parade, which has been an honored tradition of the festival," wrote Liccardo in the email.

In his interview with the B.A.R. Liccardo broke the news that he had allocated money toward paying for the rainbow crosswalk near the DeFrank center, which is located on The Alameda in downtown San Jose.

"We are partnering with the local Billy DeFrank center and want to see how we can revitalize that center as an important community gathering space for the LGBT community," said Liccardo.

The project, similar to the rainbow crosswalk installed in San Francisco's gay Castro district last fall, is expected to cost $5,000 to $7,000 depending on if the city installs one sidewalk or four at an intersection near the DeFrank. The mayor's office has set aside $2,000 while another $3,000 has been allocated from the budgets of five council members, with the community being asked to foot the rest of the costs.

The idea was initially broached at a public event the mayor attended this spring at the DeFrank by the center's board President Gabrielle Antolovich. With City Hall's backing, center officials are now meeting with nearby businesses and neighborhood groups to seek their support for the specialty sidewalks.

"He loves the idea because what it really does is it brings all of the businesses on The Alameda together with the DeFrank center, which is what Sam Liccardo is about, businesses working together," said class=st>Antolovich, who lives near the center and works part time as a substance use prevention consultant.

Both the mayor and his LGBT liaison, she said, "have been fantastic" to work with. Relationships are also strengthening between the center and the San Jose Police Department, added Antolovich.

In response to questions from the B.A.R. about if the public safety agency had named an LGBT liaison this year, Antolovich inquired with one of her contacts, Assistant Chief of Police Edgardo Garcia, about doing so. Garcia, a straight married father of three, agreed to be the contact person for now.

In an email to the B.A.R., Garcia said the department planned to name an official LGBT liaison who would start in January. They would be tasked with seeing that the city's police have a strong relationship with the local LGBT community.

"Bias in policing, as has been documented recently not only locally but nationally, is not simply restricted to race and that needs to be recognized," wrote Garcia. "This also would serve as a great opportunity for recruiting purposes, as we need to reflect the community we serve."

Repairing relations between City Hall and the police rank and file has been a key concern for Liccardo, who was eyed with open hostility by the police union's leader during last year's campaign. Tuesday the mayor and council members, by a vote of 10-1, approved a new contract not only with the police department but also with the San Jose Fire Department union.

Other issues the mayor has prioritized during his first months in office include addressing San Jose's growing homeless population and services for disadvantaged youth.

"I feel really blessed. In many ways I am the luckiest mayor of the country coming into San Jose at a time like this with so much opportunity and so much growth," said Liccardo. "I wouldn't trade our city's problems or opportunities with any other city in the country."