Pennsylvania teachers’ union accused of ignoring state law — FOR FOUR DECADES

1/17/2015

By Andrew Staub | PA Independent

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A law firm representing a Pennsylvania college professor has accused the state teachers’ union of ignoring — for more than four decades — a law requiring it to report the use of dues money for political contributions.

It’s the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute between Mary Trometter, an assistant professor of culinary arts at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, and the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the National Education Association, which in a letter urged her husband to vote for Gov.elect Tom Wolf.

Trometter filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board in November. Her attorney, David Osborne of The Fairness Center, argues that the NEA letter and PSEA publications supporting Wolf’s candidacy are illegal under a 1970 state law.

The law says unions cannot use organization funds to make contributions in support of a political candidate, and they must report violations to the state within 90 days, he argued.

An open-records request, “despite PSEA’s enormous levels of candidate support over the decades,” found no instance in the past 45 years in which the PSEA reported such contributions, Osborne said in a written statement.

FLOUTING THE LAW?: An attorney for Mary Trometter, shown above, has accused the state teachers’ union of ignoring a state law for more than four decades.

“This is just the latest example of PSEA’s flagrant disregard for state law and abuse of union members’ money, as Mary Trometter’s experience illustrates,” he said.

The PSEA and NEA see the situation differently.

“The Fairness Center’s hyper-charged claims are based on an unfortunate and inaccurate mixture of apples and oranges,” PSEA spokesman David Broderic said, adding that current law allows the union to communicate with members and their immediate family about political issues and candidates.

The union disputes the letter and pro-Wolf material included in a PSEA magazine are contributions at all. In a December filing with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board, the PSEA and NEA argued the “common, everyday understanding of a ‘contribution’ is that of something that is given to another, not spending on one’s own speech.”

That filing pointed to the state Elections Code, saying it allows the union to spend treasury funds to communicate with its members and their families on any subjects, including recommending a candidate for public office.

Construing the Public Employe Relations Act enacted in 1970 to extend to the communications at issue, as Trometter has done, would raise “grave concerns about its constitutionality under the First Amendment,” the union argued.

In mounting its argument over what a contribution is, the unions cited the controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing outside groups to contribute virtually unlimited amounts of money — including so-called dark money.

The Fairness Center has filed a rebuttal to the PSEA, and Osborne blasted the unions’ use of Citizens United, pointing to the NEA’s past comments the decision was “drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans.”

“Nobody likes hypocrisy,” Osborne said. “Not only are PSEA and NEA using Citizens United to defend their actions after condemning it, but they are citing a court ruling from 2010 to defend actions they’ve engaged in for decades. These unions are arbitrarily assuming the power to pick and choose what laws they will and will not follow.”

The NEA did not immediately respond to a message left with the press office, but Broderic held firm that no law was violated.

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