2nd Suit Filed Over Teachers Union Dues Conservative Group Joins Fight Over Money Pumped Into Political Campaigns By Wea
The messy fight between a conservative policy group and Washington’s largest teachers union escalated Tuesday with the filing of a second lawsuit.
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which prides itself for shining “the bright light of public scrutiny in dark corners of government,” joined a group of frustrated teachers who sued the Washington Education Association on the grounds that the union illegally deducts dues from their paychecks for political use.
The union, a powerful force in Washington’s political scene, already is the defendant in a lawsuit filed in February by Attorney General Christine Gregoire, who accused the WEA of failing to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in political expenditures.
The foundation and the teachers support Gregoire’s lawsuit, but don’t believe it goes far enough. Their suit seeks to stop the union from collecting mandatory dues for political activities unless it gets permission from each of its 65,000 members.
The union denounced the latest lawsuit as a political stunt designed to bolster fund-raising by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, which is headed by Bob Williams, the GOP’s unsuccessful nominee for governor in 1988. The foundation includes five former Republican legislators and various conservative lobbyists on its board of directors.
Williams was scheduled to appear in Washington, D.C., today before a Senate committee considering a bill prohibiting companies and unions from using money from workers’ paychecks for political purposes.
Both lawsuits are pending in Thurston County Superior Court. No trial dates have been set.
The foundation and the teachers decided to sue after Gregoire declined to add their claims to her lawsuit.
Gregoire’s lawsuit, amended last week, accuses the union of failing to correctly report at least $615,000 in political spending in the past few years. It also alleges the WEA improperly collected and spent union dues to help finance its registered political action committee, WEA-PAC, and that it organized a second, unregistered political committee designed to skirt restrictions under a campaign finance law approved by voters in 1992.
The lawsuit filed by the foundation and a group of teachers seeks to expand the scope of the court’s scrutiny to include the National Education Association, its regional councils in Washington, 15 school districts across the state and the Seattle Education Association.
It alleges that the WEA is violating state law by directing school districts to withhold dues used for political activities without asking each teacher for permission.
The union raised its dues by $1 a month in 1994 after voters approved major changes to campaign finance laws. The dues increase was designed to cover the administrative costs of the union’s registered political action committee, WEA-PAC.
“Nobody should be forced to pay for another person’s politics without their consent,” Lynn Harsh, the foundation’s executive director, told a news conference.
“I don’t want to be a member of something that’s doing things illegally,” added Paul Lecoq, a software technology instructor at Spokane Falls Community College and one of five current or former union members who spoke on behalf of a group calling itself Teachers for a Responsible Union, which joined the foundation in filing the lawsuit.
The others were Jeff Leer, a physical education teacher from the Sedro Woolley district; Carrie Riplinger, a library clerk in the Central Kitsap district; Brian Smith, a technology instructor at Pasco High School; and Jim Johnson, a band teacher in Kent.