Teachers Union faces a PAC attack

Policy Review, May/Jun 1997 by Jackson, Peggy

Two months ago, in a quiet, rural corner of Washington, gradeschool teacher Jeff Leer opened a startling letter from his union.

"Dear Mr. Leer," the letter began. "I am the general counsel for the Washington Education Association [W.EA.]. You have repeatedly and forcefully asked [your] District to stop collecting

... political education dues from W.E.A. members.... You are hereby warned that if [your] District withholds dues transmission. . . we will sue you."

"I was scared," Leer says. "My first thought was, have I put my family's future at risk?" Leer called Steven T. O'Ban at the Seattle law firm of Ellis, Li and McKinstry for advice. Since 1990, O'Ban has successfully represented teachers who do not want their union dues-which are withheld from paychecks to support collective bargaining-to be used for politics. He has recovered up to 70 percent of dues for his clients. Says O'Ban, "W.EA.'s threatening notice is an act of desperation."

Leer was guilty only of reminding his district of the unprecedented lawsuit filed by the state attorney general against the state affiliate of the National Education Association. In it, Attorney General Christine Gregoire charged the union with "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in campaign finance violations.

Among Gregoire's several allegations against the W.E.A., the union is charged with "severely frustrating the public's right to know," "improperly funding" ballot initiatives, and creating a shadow political fund in "an attempt to circumvent the law." Because state law allows for triple damages and a $10,000 fee for each violation, the union's powerful political machineillegally fueled by teachers' duescould find itself running on fumes.

The law wielded by the attorney general is Initiative 134, a state campaign-finance reform law passed in 1992 by more than 70 percent of Washington voters. Under the law, unions are required to obtain prior written authorization, which they must renew annually, for all payroll deductions used for political expenditures.

Prior to passage of the initiative, the 65,000-member union used the nationwide practice of "reverse check-off" for deductions funneled to political-action committees. Districts automatically extract PAC money from the paychecks of union members on behalf of the union. Member who wish to opt out have to submit a written revocation on a particular date designated by the union. (In Washington, perhaps not coincidentally, the W.E.A. chooses a date when many teachers are on vacation.)

By Another Name

Under I-134, W.E.A. members who want to fund their union's political campaigns against conservative legislative candidates, school-choice initiatives, et cetera must actively choose to support them, and only about 20 percent do so. Rather than respect the rights of their members, however, W.E.A. leaders contrived a new mandatory political deduction-the "Community Outreach Program" (C.O.P.). Robert Maier, a lobbyist employed by the W.E.A., recently stated under oath that the C.O.P. deduction was "an internal ploy to raise more W.E.A.-PAC money." (W.E.A.-PAC is the union's political-action committee.)

The union extracts more than $60,000 a month from teachers' pay via C.O.P. without their consent. Gregoire charges that the "primary purpose" of the C.O.P. deduction was "to influence the political process by supporting or opposing candidates and ballot measures." The money that Jeff Leer asked his district to stop deducting from teachers' paychecks was going to C.O.P He requested only that the district wait until teachers give their prior consent, as the law mandates. To Leer, this seemed the obvious implication of Gregoire's allegations.

This soft-spoken teacher is not new to union intimidation. Last year, Leer, along with several of his colleagues, learned about large money transfers from the teachers union to the union's PAC. So they filed complaints with the state Public Disclosure Commission (PD.C.), the state's campaign-finance watchdog. After months of inaction on the part of PD.C., the teachers enlisted the expertise of Bob Williams, the president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. With his background as a certified public accountant and government auditor, Williams followed the union's labyrinthine money trails through W.E.A. income, expenditure, and tax reports, and uncovered massive campaign violations.

On August 26, Williams presented his findings at a public hearing before the P.D.C. The union responded by continuing their public denunciation of these teachers as "highly trained political operatives," disgruntled freeloaders "unwilling to pay their fair share," and members of an "anti-public education" group engaged in an "ultraconservative conspiracy" against teachers and public education.

"It's a bunch of baloney," says Barb Amidon, a school counselor in Olympia. "We have written letters to our union leaders and made public statements expressing our full support of our union's collective representation for which we pay our fair share."