The Columbian
Local, May 28^th, 1999

Teachers union, foes await ruling
By Howard Buck, Columbian Capitol Correspondent

OLYMPIA - Legal guns for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and Washington Education Association fired parting shots in court Thursday, capping a four-week trial over political efforts funded by compulsory union dues.

The conservative foundation claims the WEA circumvented Initiative 134, a campaign disclosure reform act passed by voters in 1994. It says the union skimmed more than $1 million from school teachers' dues to mount a strong campaign against 1996 ballot measures for school vouchers and charter schools, while dodging finance reporting rules.

Now, it wants the WEA declared a political action committee, or PAC, period.

Much is riding on the verdict of Thurston County Superior Court Judge Thomas McPhee, expected within days. His decision would impact 67,000 WEA members statewide, including 4,300 educators in Clark County.

Just what is at stake depends on who's asked.

"This case is, and has always been, about the public disclosure of campaign financing," said Steven O'Ban, lead attorney for the Foundation, in his closing argument. "This case is not about the modern role of public-sector unions."

The WEA claims just the opposite.

"They want to cut off the dues of these good members," said Judith Lonnquist, leading the WEA legal team. "They are political opponents, and they want to stop the WEA in its tracks."

The foundation is headed by Bob Williams, a conservative former state legislator long at odds with the WEA.

The two sides agreed only that the state needs a better definition of just what constitutes a PAC. Both voiced hope that McPhee's ruling will help to that end, after sketching sharply differing views on whether the WEA fits the bill.

AGGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN HATCHED

If the WEA talks and walks like a PAC, it is a PAC, O'Ban argued and thus subject to strict disclosure rules, as is its smaller WEA-PAC arm. He highlighted testimony and WEA documents he said reveal an ambitious "stealth" 1996 campaign plan crafted by Executive Director Jim Seibert.

The plan called for private polling of teachers and the public, training of field organizers, opposition research on some candidates, even methods to discourage initiative signature-gathering. It was fueled partly by "seed money" taken from WEA's cash reserves, in turn supplied by mandatory union dues.

"It was a political blueprint for this organization. It was conceived, set up, spearheaded by the WEA," said O'Ban.

Specific campaign-linked duties were entwined in daily management of the union, he said.

While a " 'no' committee" was formed to fight the two 1996 initiatives, and filed extensive reports with the state Public Disclosure Commission, more than $1 million in WEA funds were slipped quietly into the $1.5 million campaign without such records, he said.

"The voters of Washington had no idea that the WEA was running a stealth operation. None of that was disclosed," said O'Ban.

In fact, McPhee fined the union $15,000 in March for failure to produce the 1996 plan, first requested by the Foundation in November 1997 during the pre-trial process.

That followed a $430,000 settlement reached with the state's attorney general in February 1998 over WEA's illegal collection of union dues for improper use in that same campaign.

Since Initiative 134 was passed, voluntary WEA-PAC contributions come from about 13,000 of 67,000 members, say union officials.

POLITICS SECONDARY, SAYS UNION

Lonnquist countered that the campaign totaled less than 5 percent of the WEA's $42 million budget that year. In no way was politics the principal activity of the union, earning PAC status, she said.

Much of what was planned never was carried out, she noted. Routine teacher training and support activities filled union managers' time throughout the campaign, she said.

"The end is not to be a political committee. The end is to help our WEA members," Lonnquist said. "Records clearly show the WEA continued its business as usual."

She stressed members' distance from political decision-making, far from the usual PAC formula: "It is a discretionary, ad hoc decision by Mr. Seibert to write checks for candidates or propositions."

Of course, that's largely what got the WEA in hot water in the first place. The foundation filed the lawsuit two years ago, egged on by teachers who felt burned by WEA campaign tactics, a frequent target of the Foundation.

The employees objected to their union dues supporting candidates or policy positions they disliked, and complained loudly when they could not uncover the WEA money trail.

Among them was Spokane speech therapist Cindy Omlin, who said union officials thwarted her efforts at every turn.

"If it's truly going to be a teacher-driven group, we have a right to the information," said Omlin, who attended.

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