The Washington Post reports:
Most Candidates for local office in Montgomery County covet the endorsement of the county teachers union more than any other, and all of them know the drill: Appear at union events, fill out the union questionnaire, submit to the union interview. The union, representing 11,000 teachers, helpfully provides a road map to candidates seeking its blessing, including 11 criteria spelled out in painstaking detail online. Just one thing is missing from this handy guide: Candidates who receive the union's stamp of approval are also then expected to pay.
As far as we know, this arrangement is unique; in elections elsewhere, unions and other special interests contribute to candidates, not vice versa. But such is the overweening power of the teachers union in Montgomery that the usual rules are turned upside down. And it's no coincidence that the union's toxic influence in local elections is matched by its success in squeezing unaffordable concessions from the county in contract negotiations -- at taxpayers' expense.
In the latest elections for the Montgomery County Council, in 2006, most candidates on the union-approved (and trademarked) "Apple Ballot" coughed up the maximum contribution allowed by state law, $6,000, to a PAC run by the Montgomery County Education Association, as the teachers union is known. Union-backed candidates for the Board of Education also paid handsomely. Supposedly, these funds covered the cost of the union's mailings to constituents and other activities on behalf of its anointed candidates -- although there is no real accounting on a campaign-by-campaign basis. In theory, these contributions are voluntary. In fact, several sources told us that the MCEA's chief political strategist, Jon Gerson, made it clear that he expected candidates, once endorsed, to pay what they "owed" for the union's campaign on their behalf. One candidate, asked to explain the decision to pay, answered concisely: "Fear."
The yield has been quite impressive:
The problem in Montgomery is not its teachers. Rather, it is that the MCEA, the largest union in the county, is in effect hiring its own bosses -- members of the school board, who vote on the teachers' contract, and County Council members, who approve the overall county budget -- and is getting paid for it in the bargain. This twisted system has fueled skyrocketing payroll costs -- including a 23 percent pay raise for a typical teacher over the past three years, plus extraordinary health and retirement benefits -- even as private-sector wages have stagnated.
The self interest of the public sector workers! Thanks to Ed Lasky for the heads up on this one.
