Johnson County Trans Advisory committee presents initial recommendations

IOWA CITY — Johnson County staff will work over the coming months to explore the feasibility of implementing seven recommendations made by the Johnson County Trans Advisory Committee to support transgender residents.

The recommendations include establishing grant programs to help with legal name changes and gender-affirming care, requiring LGBTQ+ education for county staff and funding recipients, and reevaluation of the county’s criminal justice priorities.

The committee, which was established in March, is made up of members of the transgender and nonbinary community, county staff, Supervisors Rod Sullivan and V Fixmer-Oraiz and other county residents.

Fixmer-Oraiz and Sullivan plan to meet with county staff across departments to discuss what it would take to put the recommendations into action.

“We know that a couple of those would probably require some attorney work and probably a lot longer time frame, and a couple others are probably something that can get done relatively quickly ... we'll just have to see what feedback we get from our staff and then we'll come back to the board with whatever that feedback is,” said Sullivan.

The Board of Supervisors has not committed to enacting any of these recommendations. After working with county staff, formal measures must be presented and voted on by the entire Board of Supervisors.

There is no firm timeline for when any of the recommendations could be put into action or how much it would cost to do so.

“I hope that my colleagues, our elected officials, will recognize that olive branch and see it for what it is, which is trying to make our county a better, safer, more equitable place, and that these asks are really about human dignity and protection,” Fixmer-Oraiz said about the committee’s collaboration with county staff.

The committee’s recommendations include:

Establish grant program to help with legal name changes. The county would work with Lavender Legal, a nonprofit in the Corridor area specializing in legal services for LGBTQ+ people, to develop a $2,000 pilot program to help individuals with legal name changes.

In Iowa it costs $195 to file a petition for a legal name change and it can cost more to obtain copies of official documents such as birth certificates.

Name changes are free when applying for a marriage license.

Establish grant program for individuals seeking gender-affirming care. The proposed program would offer up to $10,000 for county residents seeking gender-affirming medical care. It would be distributed through the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund.

Centralize trans resources on the county’s website. This recommendation would include developing a page on the county website that would centralize information related to social services available for transgender individuals in the county.

Develop LGBTQ+ training for social services staff. The committee recommends working with an existing agency such as One Iowa, Iowa Safe Schools, United Action for Youth, and Advocates for Trans Equality to provide training on barriers LGBTQ+ people may face when accessing education, health care, housing or other social services.

Require LGBTQ+ training for housing organizations receiving county funding. Any housing organization receiving county funding would be required to complete annual LGBTQ+ education training most likely similar to the proposed training for county social services staff.

Deprioritization of arrest/prosecution of anti-trans laws. The committee would like to work with the county attorney “to craft a policy related to deprioritization of arrest and prosecution related to anti-trans laws.”

A policy would be modeled after other U.S. cities’ existing policies, such as Madison, Wis., and Austin, Texas.

The committee wants to ensure that any such policy would not jeopardize state funding opportunities.

Develop report on transgender individuals experience in county jail. Under this recommendation the committee requests a report on transgender individuals’ experience in the county jail from the county sheriff or potentially an outside entity.

This could include reports on transgender inmates’ housing and safety experience as well as access to medical care.

The committee specifically asks that the report contain direct language from policy and practice documents.

Recommendations based on community feedback

Members of the committee began working on developing recommendations in August through the creation of subcommittees. Those committees included Safe Place Designation, Housing, Medical Access, and Youth and Civic Engagement.

Recommendations from the subcommittees were then put in a community survey.

The survey, which received just under 80 responses, asked respondents to rank certain measures in terms of priority.

The committee used survey responses to identify potential recommendations before bringing the seven to the board.

“I have been able to witness in really beautiful ways, our community coming together to deliberate and to collaborate and to build decisions based off of consensus and making sure that everybody is heard in the process,” said Emerson Cram, a member of the Trans Advisory committee. “I think this is really important in building a strong community and a resilient community, and all of these things are part of Johnson County's values.”

In the future, the committee — which meets monthly — is hoping to make meetings more accessible for community members who want to participate.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com