Investor'S Business Daily
March 19^th, 1998

Government vs. The First Amendment

"Much has been made of union members having no say on how their dues are spent on politics. But less known is how some units of goverment are letting the unions trample their members' First Amendment rights.

A settlement of campaign-finance violations reached recently between the Washington Education Association and the state's attorney general shows how. The accord lets the union to continue to withhold dues and spend them on political activities. The state, by its reading of the law, helps enforce the practice...

Washington's attorney general, Christine Gregoire, interprets the law as not barring union officials from spending general funds -- including money for COP -- freely, so long as the union's mission isn't primarily political.

That's a bizarre take on the issue. A union could spend up to 50% of its general funds on politics and be safe from prosecution, under Gregoire's reading. Even without the voters' huge endorsement of of I-134, a better reading would be to require union members' written permission befor spending any funds on political aims...

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org

Quotables:

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." - Thomas Jefferson

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." - John Stuart Mill