By Mike Antonucci
&copy 1998 Investor’s Business Daily. Used by permission.


Suppose California’s Proposition 226, the paycheck protection initiative, had passed. What would the unions do then?

Thanks to documents obtained from sources within the California Teachers Association, we know the answer: more of the same.

During the campaign, the only thing both sides agreed on was that a victory for the proposition would have been devastating to organized labor.

Citing examples from Michigan and Washington state, supporters and opponents alike predicted that a victory would make labor’s political power fall off dramatically and blunt its impact on the general election in November.

And a win for Prop 226 was supposed to lead the way for similar measures in dozens of other states. But was it really all-or-nothing?

CTA drafted two separate budgets for the 1998-99 fiscal year–one to be put into effect if the measure lost, the other if it won. The difference between the two budgets–or lack thereof–shows how the union planned to circumvent the intent of the new law almost at once.

First, Prop. 226 would not have gone into effect until July 1, nearly a month after the election. CTA planned to empty the current contents of its Initiative Fund and political action committee fund.

Where would the money go” That’s unclear. But it’s safe to assume that most of the PAC money would have ended up as "soft money" donations to committees of the Democratic and to a much lesser extent, Republican parties.

In any event, the PAC and initiative funds would have begun the new fiscal year at zero–and would have stayed that way. CTA simply was going to divest its budget of political expenditures completely, as defined by the provisions of Prop. 226.

The union had no intention of subjecting itself to the so-called "bureaucratic nightmare" of collecting political spending permission slips from its members. Since there was to be no "political spending," there would be no need for permission.

But the interesting thing is that CTA’s two contingency budgets are exactly the same size.

Dues wouldn’t have been reduced by the amount previously spent on politics. In fact, both budgets include a dues hike of $9–to $399 a year.

So where would all of that former political money have gone” According to the "226 wins" budget: "Funds previously budgeted in the CTA/ABC (Association for Better Citizenship PAC) department and Initiative Fund are reallocated to the budget for Public Policy Center."

CTA would have formed a new $7 million center that would have allowed the union "to engage in organizational outreach to other interested groups with common goals and objectives to obtain visibility and coordinated advocacy on educational issues."

Clearly, CTA’s Public Policy Center, barred by state law from giving funds to candidates or initiatives, wold have been within the law to give "outreach" money to other groups. If those groups deposited that money in their general funds, they would have been free to do whatever they wished with the cash–including forming PACs or giving it to candidates.

Non-CTA members who must by law pay an "agency" fee to the union for representation, but who are supposed to get back dues used for politics, probably wouldn’t have received the same amount back from the Public Policy Center. The new refund–governed by a member’s rights under the Supreme Court’s "Beck" decision, not the provisions of Prop. 226–likely would have been thrashed out in court or in arbitration.

In an irony that must have had CTA bosses smirking, the passage of Prop. 226 could have forced fee-payers, some of the most ardent supporters of the measure, to pay more to the union.

So why did California’s largest teachers’ union spend millions of dollars to defeat a measure that wouldn’t have reduced its income by a single cent?

Well, negotiating the nuances of Prop. 226 would have been annoying to the union. And it’s harder to push a political agenda through surrogates and front groups. CTA spent its millions merely to maintain the status quo–a lesson to school reformers that no battle is small to the teachers union.


Mike Antonucci is the director of the Education Intelligence Agency, a private firm in Sacramento that conducts public education research, analysis and investigations. This article originally appeared in Investor’s Business Daily on July 9, 1998, and is used by permission.