Just weeks after responding to a Freedom Foundation PDC complaint by filing a lawsuit against SEIU 775, state announces it will do the same to another labor giant
As expected, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 925, like its sister union SEIU 775, is on the hot seat as a result of its failure to report huge amounts of money and likely enough in-kind services expended on behalf of liberal candidates and causes between 2010 and 2015.
The Washington State Attorney General’s Office announced on Monday it would follow the recommendations of the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), which determined a week earlier there was sufficient evidence against SEIU 925 to warrant a lawsuit.
The union is accused of neglecting to report more than $600,000 in cash and hundreds of thousands more in in-kind donations, including labor, postage and other election services donated to its own political action committee.
Just two weeks earlier, the AG filed a similar lawsuit against SEIU 775, which had failed to report $1.4 million in cash and enough in-kind services to likely bring the total in that case alone to more than $2 million.
Both cases are the result of PDC complaints filed in July and August by the Freedom Foundation.
“It’s curious that the press accounts of these scandals quote the heads of both unions as promising to get back into compliance and claiming to have nothing but respect for the principle of transparency,” noted Freedom Foundation CEO Tom McCabe. “But I’m not sure why we should care what someone caught red-handed in a lie would have to say on the subject of honesty.”
McCabe scoffed at the unions’ insistence that the wrongdoings were relatively minor and technical in nature. While hundreds of thousands of dollars may seem insignificant by the union’s standards, it’s more than enough to influence elections in a state the size of Washington.
The unions, he pointed out, employ a battery of lawyers and accountants whose job is to understand PDC regulations – and how to circumvent them.
“These weren’t just paperwork errors,” he said. “These cases demonstrate a pattern of illegal behavior dating back over five years designed to camouflage the full extent of SEIU’s political activity.”
SEIU alone, McCabe pointed out, donated $1.8 million to Jay Inslee’s 2012 gubernatorial campaign, making it his single biggest contributor and, very likely, the difference in the election.
“Government employee unions are by far the largest and most politically active special interests in the country,” he said, “and yet they try to pass off what they do as nothing more than collective bargaining on behalf of their members. These cases prove otherwise.”
