Seattle Post-Intelligencer
October 11^th, 2000

State should throw the book at WEA

The Washington Education Association appears uneducable on the subject of following campaign laws.

So state Attorney General Christine Gregoire should throw the book at the WEA, which once again is playing fast and loose with money it has no authority to spend for political purposes.

Gregoire has sued the WEA for illegally using for political purposes fees paid to the union by non-members. She was asked to do so by the Public Disclosure Commission, which unfortunately can only levy a maximum fine of $2,500. That ceiling is too small in any case, but especially in this one, where a repeat offender is involved.

She has the option of fining the WEA as much as $10,000 per individual violation. She should do so.

The Attorney General's Office is now trying to ascertain how much non-member money might have been mixed in with the member funds and used for political purposes, according to a spokesman for Gregoire.

It's not as though the WEA just discovered that certain rules apply to how it spends money during the election season. The WEA paid a $430,000 settlement for its misdeeds during the 1994 election. That time it was member money the WEA used improperly.

The complaint came, once again, from the WEA's arch foe, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which makes it its business to scrutinize union spending on political campaigns. While we hold no brief for the foundation, the WEA is obliged to obey the laws that apply to other organizations.

WEA officials should be well aware that the union is a target of unfriendly scrutiny, and one would think this might lead them to scrupulous effort to comply with campaign finance laws.

But so far, it hasn't happened. So another stiff financial penalty is in order.

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