Lincoln County, home to 10,000 residents tucked away in rural eastern Washington, has become the epicenter of an important struggle over government transparency between the Lincoln County Commission, the Freedom Foundation, and the Teamsters Union.
In one corner, weighing in with a budget of more than $270 million and led by James Hoffa, Jr. — son of the notorious labor leader and Mob associate — there’s the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
In the other, standing in for the taxpayers and County Commissions, with a budget a fraction of the union’s but punching above its weight, there’s the plucky Freedom Foundation, led by its CEO, the tenacious Tom McCabe.
The contestants have been trading blows for two years now, ever since the three Lincoln County commissioners promised voters they would conduct collective bargaining negotiations with the union representing county employees in public in exchange for a modest tax increase to help fund public services.
The move towards transparency annoyed the Teamsters.
Ironically, the union used to demand open meetings. And local Teamsters officials weren’t initially averse to the idea of resurrecting the arrangement. But they were apparently admonished by the leaders of Washington’s other government unions, who feared Lincoln County would set a precedent in a state where every other governmental jurisdiction negotiates its contracts behind closed doors.
The Teamsters have since passed an internal resolution stating they will never bargain in public and filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) complaint against Lincoln County with the state Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) for trying to keep its promise to the public to be transparent. Freedom Foundation attorneys are defending the county at no cost to taxpayers.
In the 1980s, Mason County, in western Washington, faced a (ULP) charge involving union contract negotiations in open meetings. After refusing the Teamsters’ request to reconsider the collective bargaining agreement in an open meeting in compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA), both PERC and an Appellate Court judge concluded: “that the Legislature intended collective bargaining itself to be conducted in open public meetings.”
In response to the ruling, the Legislature in 1990 exempted collective bargaining negotiations from the OPMA, permitting but not requiring them to be conducted secretly.
Which raises the question: Who has the legal authority to determine whether the meetings will be open or closed?
After two years of legal battles, the Lincoln County commissioners were ordered to sit down with the Teamsters to haggle over how transparent future bargaining sessions would be.
The Teamsters proposed that both sides withdraw their respective resolutions, after which the union would agree to allow proposals made in closed meetings to be made public — something already commonly done and far short of actual transparency.
Because the county has unilateral authority to publish proposals already under ACLU of WA v. City of Seattle, 121 Wn. App. 544 (2004), the union isn’t really offering anything. Its leaders aren’t willing to make any compromise and, in fact, aren’t bargaining in good faith. (
Instead, it appears they’re trying to create an impasse, believing the matter will eventually be decided at the state level, with union allies in the Legislature siding with the union against the county and the people of Washington state.
The Teamsters have made it clear why they don’t want the meetings open to the public. As local reporter Mark Smith wrote in the Davenport Times:
“Union attorney Mike McCarthy expressed concern that the commissioners and their Freedom Foundation attorneys would use any willingness the union may have to negotiate in public ‘against us’ and that the union would lose ‘control of the narrative’ for its members if what took place during bargaining became known outside the negotiating room. ‘We want the county to say this worked in a public session and use that as a weapon in court,’ McCarthy said. ‘We don’t want you to beat us with our own olive branch.’”
In other words, the Teamsters’ best arguments against public bargaining are that they’ll no longer be able to distort reality to their members and their fear that open meetings will actually work.
With no willingness from the Teamsters to compromise, it will be left to the courts to determine who has the authority to determine if collective bargaining meetings between unions and democratically elected officials will be open to observation by the people whose tax dollars are being spent.
The battle for open government has reached a crucial turning point. Will the people of Washington and their elected officials prevail, or will a private special interest group dictate how our government does business with the taxpayer’s money?
When the Legislature passed the OPMA in 1971, it included the following declaration:
“The Legislature finds and declares that all public commissions, boards, councils, committees, subcommittees, departments, divisions, offices, and all other public agencies of this state and subdivisions thereof exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of this chapter that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
The question is: Do these words still hold true today?
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