PDC Recommends Lawsuit Against Second Public Employee Union In Two-Week Span

Press
October 6, 2015

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 925, like its sister union SEIU 775, is facing disciplinary action from Washington state as a result of its failure to report substantial monetary and in-kind donations to its own political action committee on behalf of liberal candidates and causes dating back to 2010.

The Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) voted unanimously on Monday to urge the Attorney General’s Office to file a lawsuit against SEIU 925 for neglecting to report more than $1 million in cash and hundreds of thousands more in donated labor, postage and other election services.

Just two weeks earlier, the AG filed a lawsuit against SEIU 775, which had failed to report $1.4 million in cash and enough in-kind services to 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.

The AG’s Office now has 10 days to decide whether it will file a lawsuit against SEIU 925, too.

“If they don’t, we will,” vowed Freedom Foundation Litigation Counsel David Dewhirst. “SEIU may be the most powerful political force in Washington state, but it’s still subject to the same campaign finance laws everyone else is.”

While the PDC staff only recommended prosecution for a portion of the Freedom Foundation’s alleged violations, the board acknowledged the union had clearly violated the law and, because of the large amount of money involved in SEIU’s cover-up scheme, recommended the Attorney General, and not the PDC, move forward with a lawsuit.

“When the irregularities turned up in the SEIU 775 case, union officials characterized it as a clerical error,” Dewhirst said. “But this second example with SEIU 925 clearly shows a pattern of illegal behavior and a troubling contempt for the law.

“We’ve said all along this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the union’s activities,” he said. “It’s high time the people of Washington discovered who really pulls the strings down here in Olympia, and these two cases are only a small part of our larger plan to do just that.”