Cover That Hiney

I’ve been remiss in talking about this as I was waiting for the next move in this low-speed chess game to happen. It finally did yesterday.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a PacNW Conservative Think Tank and proponent for some very Reaganesque ideas. Their most current jousting match is against the public employees unions here in Washington State.

The EFF are the ones who got the case in front of the SCOTUS asking whether it is legal for the Washington Education Association (the state teacher’s union) to use the money taken from non-members (teachers do not have to be members of the WEA, but they have to pay dues if they want to keep their jobs) and put it towards political donations. Said case was heard by the SCOTUS on January 10th, 2007 and the decision will hopefully be handed down sooner than later.

The EFF have also recently asked for the notes of the negoatiations between the public employees union to be released to them so that they can be made public, and that is what we’re talking about today.

For those not in the know, government in Washington State employs more citizens of the state than Boeing (aka: the very large airplane manufacturer) and Microsoft (aka: the very large software company) combined.

This fact makes it very necessary that the notes, which ARE currently considered part of the public record, be shown to the citizens of this state, not only so that we can see exactly what we’re paying for, but who is negotiating for us and did they get us a fair deal.

Per usual, the pro-union, pro-nanny state, pro-tax ’em till they bleed and then tax them some more Democrats in this state are screaming bloody murder.

While I must say that I was nominally intrigued about what exactly goes on in these contract debates before EFF stepped up and asked for them, and that my interest was highly piqued when they actually did, but after what happened yesterday, you could say that my interest level literally went to 11.

HB-2326: Protecting the integrity of collective bargaining for public sector employees

Link found at Sound Politics

11 Dems and a single Repub sponsored this bill in the State House of Representative’s “To Do Book” in an attempt to try and keep the taxpaying citizens from finding out what they’re paying for and who is negotiating on their side. The current hearing in King County Superior Court is on March 9th, and if HB-2326 doesn’t get out of committee by then, we’ll look for the union’s lawyers to try a delaying tactic until it can be.

If your first though was “Those 12 Representatives must be getting a nice chuck of change in campaign contributions from the public employees unions”, go to the head of the class.