By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- City and county officials in the western Triangle are keeping an eye on an abortion-rights dispute in Wake County that appears likely to spill over to local governments throughout the state.

Wake County officials, following the lead of Apex's government, last week decided they will no longer allow county employees who need abortions to get them paid for through their workplace health insurance.

The decision was pushed in both places by allies of N.C. House Minority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, a longtime anti-abortion activist who in 1981 won a N.C. Supreme Court ruling that barred counties from subsidizing abortions for welfare recipients.

Stam has since sent copies of the 1981 ruling to "county managers everywhere" in the state, Durham County Manager Mike Ruffin said Monday.

Durham County and the city of Durham offer health insurance that will pay for employees' elective abortions in the first 16 weeks of a pregnancy.

Ruffin said he'd relayed a copy of the ruling -- which didn't touch on the question of employee health insurance -- to County Attorney Lowell Siler and otherwise has taken no action.

"Pending discussions with the county attorney, I don't plan to do much of anything with it, not that I have been asked to" by County Commissioners, Ruffin said. "Our position is that what we have continues to be in force, at least until I have opportunity to sit down with the county attorney and go from there."

Durham Mayor Bill Bell said Monday that no one has asked him to have the City Council weigh in on the issue. And the chairwoman of the council's insurance subcommittee, Councilwoman Cora Cole-McFadden, said Monday she doubts that panel would wade in.

That means "we have not received any specific direction to do any analysis or any work regarding our own policy here," Deputy City Manager Wanda Page said, adding city officials have "received communication through e-mail about what other organizations may be doing" on the abortion front.

One came from the N.C. League of Municipalities, which on Friday said its lawyers believe cities and towns have ample authority under state law to include abortion under the medical services employee health insurance covers.

That authority derives from a statute that allows them to "purchase life, health, and any other forms of insurance for the benefit of all or any class of city employees and their dependents," and to "provide other fringe benefits for city employees."

Another statute instructs judges to read any grants of power to cities and towns "to include any additional and supplementary powers that are reasonably necessary or expedient to carry them into execution and effect," provided the added powers aren't "contrary to state or federal law or to the public policy of this state."

In sum, "the General Assembly has provided broad authorities to city councils to decide this," league Executive Director Ellis Hankins said Monday.

However, leaders of the group also decided last week that the health insurance the league obtains for 187 cities and towns as of July 1 will no longer include abortion coverage as part of the standard plan.

Instead, the council in each of those communities, plus utilities, airport authorities and other organizations insured through the same program, will need to decide whether to offer abortion coverage on an "opt-in" basis.

Trustees of the leagues' risk-management arm made the decision "so that municipal governing bodies may exercise local legislative discretion on this employee-benefits issue as they see fit," Hankins and other league officials said in the memo they sent member governments on Friday.

The league's decision won't affect the city of Durham, or neighboring Chapel Hill, both of which insure themselves through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.

"My understanding is [the town's insurance] provides the full array of services," said Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, who has criticized Wake County's decision. "We are not going to be revisiting that."

The league's advisory was silent about the legal issues surrounding county governments, but the separate statute that covers county operations has similar wording on the insurance and judicial-interpretation points.

The statutes that league attorneys cited also figured in the defense that lawyers for Chapel Hill and Carrboro mounted in 2000 of those towns' decision to cover the domestic partners of town employees.

A conservative group joined forces with residents to challenge that decision, but Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson, sitting in Orange County as a visiting judge, sided with the towns' interpretation of the two laws.