COLUMBUS,Ohio (AP) – The manager of chemistry labs at Miami University was suspicious when she read the email that after 13 years of being turned down, she and other employees would be able to add their same-sex partners to their health insurance and other benefits. Now Amanda Whinery is a believer.

Miami and Ohio universities are the first of the state’s public four-year schools to offer health and dental coverage, free tuition and other paid benefits to employees’ partners. Cleveland State University said it will soon follow.

The forms weren’t ready yet at Miami as of the announcement, so Whinery said she will return later to the personnel office to sign up her partner of 15 years, who has been uninsured for the past year.

“It makes such a big impact on our household, financially and security wise,” Whinery said. “It’s equal pay for equal work.”

Robert Glidden, who retired last week as president of Ohio University in Athens, announced the change at his final board of trustees meeting. “We are doing this as a matter of fundamental economic fairness,” he said.

The benefits will help recruit and keep employees, said James Garland, president of Oxford-based Miami.

“The university is not weighing in on the issue of gay marriage and gay rights,” he said. “It’s primarily a business decision.”

Trustees at both schools passed resolutions supporting the benefits even though no action was required.

Cleveland State has clauses in three of its four union contracts requiring it to offer paid benefits to same-sex domestic partners if any of the state’s other public universities do so. The benefits will be offered university-wide, said Joseph Nolan, vice president of administration. Nolan plans to meet with the unions in about 10 days to negotiate details such as when the plan takes effect and how the benefits will be taxed.

Other four-year universities and Ohio’s two public medical schools with partial or no benefits for domestic partners said they have no immediate plans to change, but many are watching the policies of other schools. The issue frequently comes up in contract negotiations at schools with union-represented employees.

Kent State University has had meetings recently on the topic. A faculty-staff committee at Bowling Green State University plans to have a report by fall about whether the benefits should be offered.

“This is an issue of competition with other universities and even private businesses,” Kent State spokesman Ron Kirksey said. “It looks like everybody is looking at this now.”

The Youngstown State University faculty contract expires next summer, the first of four pacts to come up for negotiation, spokesman Ron Cole said. “Certainly the decisions from the other universities are going to play a role in that.”

The state’s nearly two-month-old ban on same-sex marriage does not affect universities’ employment benefits such as insurance, said Rep. Bill Seitz, the Cincinnati Republican who wrote the law that took effect May 7. It applies to specific privileges granted by law to married people, he said, such as refusing to testify against a spouse in court, transferring pension benefits to a surviving spouse or filing a joint tax return.

“What I think about their decision is not important, because the bill does not preclude them from making that decision,” Seitz said. Gov. Bob Taft and the Ohio Board of Regents said the business decisions are up to individual employers.

The law ended years of legal uncertainty about whether public universities could offer the benefits, Garland said.

The new university benefits aren’t identical to those of married employees because the value must be taxed as income under federal law. Administrators expect fewer than 20 employees to sign up at each school, adding $50,000 to $100,000 yearly to insurance benefits that cost about $20 million at Miami and about $30 million at Ohio.

Whinery, 48, gave birth to John two years ago, and her partner, Kristen Jacobson, quit her job to care for him in their Oxford home. John is covered on Whinery’s policy, but the couple couldn’t afford more than one year of private insurance for Jacobson. For the past year, vacations and outings have been planned around avoiding risks and exposure to germs.

“We knew we couldn’t afford an emergency room visit for her,” Whinery said.