Spokesman-Review
October 5, 2002

State claims teachers union misuses funds Lawsuit accuses NEA of illegally using money for political fights
By Richard Roesler

OLYMPIA _ The state Attorney General's Office has filed a lawsuit against the nation's largest teachers union, accusing it of misusing money collected from thousands of teachers statewide.

State officials say the union, the National Education Association, illegally spent $530,000 of teachers' money on political causes without their permission. A nearly identical charge two years ago against the NEA's state affiliate, the Washington Education Association, resulted in a $400,000 fine. That judgment is being appealed.

Through automatic payroll deductions, teachers in Washington pay an average of approximately $700 a year to support their local, regional, state and national unions. About $304 of that goes to the state union, and $130 to the NEA.

Under most school district contracts, teachers who don't want to join the union still have to pay the unions an "agency shop fee" that costs almost as much. That fee is intended to cover the cost of collective bargaining, insurance and legal services. It's not supposed to be spent on politics.

For the past two years, the state teachers union has agreed to refund to non-member teachers the percentage of money that would otherwise be spent on politics. Currently the union shop fee is 8 percent less than what union members pay.

"I just joined the union because I thought I had to," said Karen Petty, a former teacher who lives in Spokane. "They're hugely liberal. For the NEA to say they speak for all teachers is a total fallacy."

A smaller number of teachers become "religious objectors," agreeing to donate all of the shop fee instead to a union-approved charity. The "objectors" are not eligible for union services, which are available to non-members who pay the union shop fee.

In the NEA case, the union allegedly made political contributions to three state initiative campaigns using accounts that included the agency shop fees. The union gave $15,000 to a campaign to raise the state minimum wage, $15,000 to fight an affirmative-action ban, and $500,000 to an initiative requiring an annual cost-of-living raise for teachers.

This winter the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation complained about those donations to the state Public Disclosure Commission. The commission investigated, and last week ruled that the NEA was guilty of "apparent multiple violations" of the law. It forwarded the case to the Attorney General's Office for charges.

The foundation claims that nearly all the money that goes to the NEA is spent on political causes.

"They have political operations that a political party would envy," said Evergreen Freedom Foundation spokeswoman Marsha Richards.

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