Eastside Journal
October 6^th, 2000

Our View - Once again, WEA violates state campaign laws

Once again the WEA, the state's teachers' union, has been caught violating campaign laws. This time it involves fees paid by thousands of teachers to help fund its political agenda. WEA executives said the illegal activity was simply the result of an accounting error.

That may have been a plausible explanation at one time, but these recent violations come less than three years after the union was found guilty of failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions. For that, the WEA was slapped with one of the largest campaign-finance penalties in state history.

This latest example not only embarrasses its 68,000 members but also shows disdain to the public.

The WEA's problems began in 1992 when state voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative that barred the withholding of an employee's wages ``for use as political contributions except upon written request of the employee.'' Before that law was passed, the union collected dues for its political action committee from 49,000 of the its then 60,000 members. That gave the WEA a potent political arm with an annual budget of $630,000.

After Initiative 134 passed, the number of teachers willing to contribute a mere $1 per month to the WEA political war chest dropped to only 11,000 --- less than one out of every seven. As money slowed to a trickle, WEA executives found ways to continue business as usual.

The WEA established a new program called ``Community Outreach'' and members were required to contribute to it. To comply with I-134, WEA officials claimed that money from the program would not be used to make direct contributions to candidates or causes. However, one of the WEA's own lobbyists testified that ``it was an internal ploy to raise more WEA-PAC money.''

The state's Public Disclosure Commission later found that the WEA had violated several state laws in operating its Community Outreach Program and its political action committees. Among them: failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in ``loans''; failing to report in-kind contributions; and failing to report $272,000 in contributions to defeat two initiatives regarding school vouchers and charter schools.

WEA executives claimed the violations were unintentional, the result of ``accounting errors'' and changes in personnel --- the same excuse they are using this week to excuse their latest activities.

On Tuesday, the Public Disclosure Commission concluded --- unanimously -- that the WEA had illegally used ``agency fees'' paid to the union by 4,194 nonmembers to help fund its political agenda. The PDC found that the union had not received permission from those nonmembers as required by law. Its executives once again promised to fix their internal procedures.

It's past time for WEA members --- the men and women teaching in our public schools --- to demand that their union leaders abide by the law and the will of the state's voters. The continuous illegal activities by WEA tarnish the profession the union is supposed to serve.

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