Tiny foundation keeps teachers union on edge

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OLYMPIA — Rich in members, money and influence, the Washington Education Association (WEA) walks tall in state politics — lobbying, backing candidates and even passing initiatives. So why do union leaders redden with anger at the mere mention of the tiny Evergreen Freedom Foundation — a conservative think tank with a handful of employees?

Because the foundation has spent the past few years snapping at the WEA's heels, winning legal challenges that saddled the union with massive legal penalties and limitations on its political activities.

In the long-running fight, the foundation, or EFF, says it's simply defending teachers who don't want their union dues to pay for the union's political agenda.

"Teachers on the whole, when they have a choice, have chosen not to support the union's political action, and so the union has dipped into the general fund so they don't have a choice," said Marsha Richards, foundation spokeswoman.

The think tank was formed in 1991 by Bob Williams, a former budget hawk in the state House and the losing GOP nominee for governor in 1988. The group regularly churns out suggestions for cutting public spending.

But the WEA sees the foundation as a shadowy front for big-money conservatives who want to weaken the union's ability to oppose conservative education proposals such as vouchers for private schools.

"If we couldn't be political, then we couldn't exist," said David Scott, the union's vice president. "And EFF would be just fine with that."

The fight dates back to 1996, when the foundation brought a campaign-finance complaint against the union at the behest of a group of teachers. The complaint accused the WEA of violating the law by — among other things — using union dues for political activities without getting individual approval from each member. The requirement was imposed by voters in 1992's Initiative 128, a sweeping overhaul of the campaign-finance law.

The union settled the case in 1998, agreeing to pay $80,000 in fines, $20,000 in legal costs and $319,000 in refunds to its members, according to Susan Harris, deputy director of the Public Disclosure Commission. The WEA also agreed not to use dues for such political activity in the future.

In the 2000-2001 school year, about 10,000 of the 75,000 teachers represented by the union donated money to WEA-PAC, its political-action committee, said Rich Wood, a WEA spokesman.

Since the 1998 settlement, direct donations to candidates come from WEA-PAC, but regular dues still pay for lobbying and opposing and supporting ballot initiatives. The foundation's bid to halt that practice was stymied by the disclosure commission, which found the union could use some of its regular dues for such purposes because politics isn't its principal function.

The union spends about $1 million a year on politics out of about $20 million in revenue, Wood said. The EFF argues the figure is much higher — as much as 24 percent.

Last year, the foundation brought another complaint to the commission, accusing the union of spending money on politics from the mandatory fees paid by about 3,000 teachers who are represented by WEA but aren't union members.

Using "agency fees" for politics is specifically against the law.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor imposed a $400,000 fine in August, ruling that the union intentionally had violated the law thousands of times by mingling the fees with dues from its members.

The Attorney General's Office seeks nearly $200,000 in legal costs in the case. If granted, that would push the union's total financial hit from the two cases to more than $1 million.

The union has appealed the fine. It concedes it violated the law but says it was an innocent accounting error that has been corrected.

Union leaders chafe at the restrictions. By nature, the budget and policy battles that affect teachers, schools and students are fought out in the political arena, they argue.

"We need a whole lot more money to bring about the changes that the people need," said Mary Lindquist, president of the Mercer Island Education Association, a local of the WEA. "We have an absolute obligation to protect the children. That means we have to be political."

Union leaders such as Lindquist see a darker motive in the EFF's campaign. They point to a list of conservative foundations that provide much of EFF's money — groups such as the Arkansas-based Walton Family Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, Pa., and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Indianapolis, all advocates of school-choice policies, including using public money to pay for private-school vouchers.

"They're now trying to attack us as a means of undermining public education," Lindquist said. "It's all about taking money away from the kids in my school."

That accusation brings a derisive snort from Jami Lund, the point man in EFF's face-off with the union.

"If somebody wanted to destroy public schools, they'd run an initiative," Lund said. "That's a whole lot cheaper than what we do."

Lund concedes the foundation agrees in principle with many of its donors — favoring vouchers and other ideas for making schools more competitive.

"Some of the support of what we're doing comes from folks that are interested in a more free discourse on education reform, and they feel the union has an unfair advantage in that discourse," Lund said. "But even if we got our money straight from the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, it doesn't mean that the things we are saying aren't true."

EFF officials note the WEA jumped into three initiative campaigns this year, donating $25,000 to oppose property-tax limitation, $5,000 to support increasing the tobacco tax and $1,000 in favor of revamping the home-health-care system.

But Scott, the union's vice president, said it's ludicrous to think most of the union's membership doesn't support its agenda.

"Everything the WEA does is because it's what the membership wants," he said.