"Much
has been made of union members having no say on how their dues are spent on politics.
But less known is how some units of goverment are letting the unions trample their
members' First Amendment rights.
A settlement of
campaign-finance violations reached recently between the Washington Education
Association and the state's attorney general shows how. The accord lets the union to
continue to withhold dues and spend them on political activities. The state, by its
reading of the law, helps enforce the practice...
Washington's attorney general,
Christine Gregoire, interprets the law as not barring union officials from spending
general funds -- including money for COP -- freely, so long as the union's mission isn't
primarily political.
That's a bizarre take on the
issue. A union could spend up to 50% of its general funds on politics and be safe
from prosecution, under Gregoire's reading. Even without the voters' huge
endorsement of of I-134, a better reading would be to require union members' written
permission befor spending any funds on political aims...