Special to The Times
September 2, 1999

Judge rewards WEA, punishes voters
by Lynn Harsh

WASHINGTON state's campaign-finance reform laws used to be considered some of the best in the country. But a ruling last week by a Thurston County Superior Court judge moved our state's campaign practices back to the Dark Ages by putting our ballot boxes back in the hands of special interests.

In November of 1992, more than 70 percent of Washington state voters approved Initiative 134, which shifted election-financing power from large special interests to individuals. The initiative also provided legal protection for workers whose paychecks had been routinely raided by their bosses to pay for political campaigns the workers did not choose.

When I-134 was first proposed, Washington Education Association officials waged a hearty campaign against it because they habitually took money from teachers' paychecks without permission to spend on their own political preferences. When voters passed the initiative anyway, WEA officials asked the attorney general to exempt them from complying with the law. They lost their appeal with the attorney general, as well as a subsequent appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But what the voters, the attorney general and the Supreme Court denied the WEA, Superior Court Judge W.T. McPhee gave them last week.

On Thursday, Judge McPhee rendered his decision in Evergreen Freedom Foundation's case against the Washington Education Association. The Foundation charged WEA officials with: 1) taking money from unwilling teachers for politicking, and 2) breaking campaign-finance reporting laws by spending money to influence elections without disclosing the expenditures.

In his 22-page decision, the judge ruled that the WEA did not behave as a political action committee. He stated that "the amount spent [by an organization on politics] is meaningful only in relation to the total expenditures of the organization." Judge McPhee also ruled that participation in politics is a standard activity of a public-sector union, so reporting union politicking is potentially unnecessary. Adding insult to injury, the judge also ruled that union officials did not do anything wrong when they took money from unwilling teachers' paychecks for political activity because the officials did not tell teachers that the money would be spent to influence elections.

To say that the teachers' participating in the lawsuit against their union are stunned by this decision would be the quintessential understatement.

The judge's ruling creates a huge loophole for big labor and big business to avoid public disclosure of political activities. To put this ruling in context: Boeing, with an estimated $58 billion in sales, could spend $2.3 billion for politics without triggering election laws. This is 500 times the amount of money spent in our state by both political parties in the 1996 elections.

The judge's ruling interpreting I-134, though specifically related to the WEA, is a primer for all large organizations on how to conduct political activities with no public accountability. As the law applies to unions, the judge's decision says:

• Union bosses can influence elections, work to defeat or pass initiatives, defeat or pass levies, and work to defend the "status quo" without telling the public, as long as the election activities carry out the union's mission;

• Union officials can take money from employees' paychecks to spend on their own political preferences as long as the employees don't know what's happening.

Consider this: The WEA spent 50 percent more than the largest PAC in the 1996 elections. But the day before the election, public records indicated that the WEA had spent merely $208,500; after the elections, more than $900,000 in campaign donations turned up in lobbyists' reports.

In addition to the amount of money WEA lawyers admitted they spent on politics, the judge acknowledged but dismissed hundreds of thousands of dollars in "soft money" campaign expenditures such as candidate tracking and coordination; voter ID and polling; Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) activities and phone banks; provision of yard signs and campaign paraphernalia to members, and assignment of 11 "field organizers" for campaigns.

No one is saying unions should not be involved in politics. The issues at hand are simple: Should business or labor organizations be able to take money from employees' paychecks to spend influencing elections without permission from employees? And when unions/businesses spend money to influence elections, should they report the expenditures as is required of everyone else?

Judge McPhee's decision means the public will have very little idea of who is contributing to elections, who is receiving contributions and, in the end, who impacts our elections. Those of us who believe in employees' First Amendment rights and the principles of free and fair elections had better hope this decision can be overturned.

Lynn Harsh is executive director of Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

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