Top court makes major ruling on union billing taxpayers for its political operations
'A watershed decision that ensures taxpayer dollars will be spent to advance public interests, not private special interests'
Unions representing public sector employees routinely insist that their union officers, public employees themselves, be given time to do the union’s partisan activism.
At the expense of taxpayers.
But that’s ending in Arizona, after the state Supreme Court struck it down as an abuse of taxpayers.
The procedure commonly is called “release time” and allows union officers to continue getting their full pay and benefits from taxpayers while doing their partisan union chores.
But the state constitution bans that, the ruling said.
“Today’s decision is the first time that a state high court has squarely struck down release time as unconstitutional. It came after the Goldwater Institute sued the city of Phoenix on behalf of two city employees and taxpayers who objected to being forced to pay for unions to engage in recruiting, political lobbying, and other practices that don’t benefit the taxpaying public,” explained the Goldwater Institute, which pursued the fight.
The court decision explained, “The costs and benefits here are so one-sided” making the procedure “an impermissible subsidy to a private entity.”
The problem, the institute explained, is that, “government workers are released from the jobs they were hired to perform to work full-time for the union instead – yet are still paid their taxpayer-funded salaries and benefits. While on release time, these government employees engage in political and lobbying activities, attend union conferences and meetings, recruit new members to the union, and do other things that advance the union’s own interests, not those of the public.”
Goldwater’s report explained, “In this case, the city signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with a local unit of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union. Under that MOU, the city gave the union several release time benefits, including four full-time release positions. In other words, the city paid four employees to work exclusively for the union on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The contractual paperwork claimed that the four paid positions providing for union work was part of the “compensation” paid to all employees.
But Goldwatear noted that’s a problem: “If release time was being paid as part of their ‘total compensation,’ then it violates the free expression and association rights of these employees to force them to give up their compensation to fund the political speech of union representatives with whom these employees disagree.”
The institute explained that’s the same message from the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2018 Janus ruling.
“On the other hand, if release time did not count as part of their compensation, and was instead paid for out of the city’s own pocket, then it was a direct subsidy to the union, which violates the Gift Clause, the part of Arizona Constitution that forbids government from giving public resources to private entities,” Goldwater reported.
The state’s highest court determined, 7-0, that “the city pays for release time … and that means release time violates the Gift Clause. First, what the city pays is so disproportionate to what the city gets in return (which is effectively nothing), that paying for release time is effectively a handout, which is illegal. Second, the justices rejected the city’s argument that as long as the MOU as a whole passes muster, any specific expenditure of public resources included within it must also be OK.”
But the court found, “It would negate the purposes of the Gift Clause if scrutiny could be avoided merely because a gift is contained within a larger contract. …In all Gift Clause cases, courts must probe the reality of the transaction” and including release time provisions “as part of a larger contract does not insulate them from review.”
The court also had doubts about any beneficial public purpose at all.
“The plain language of the Gift Clause aims to prevent subsidies to private individuals, associations, and corporations,” the court said.
In this case, taxpayers were being forced to pay for employees to do private “union” work.
The institute said, “Today’s ruling is a watershed decision that ensures taxpayer dollars will be spent to advance public interests, not private special interests, including the politically powerful special interests of government labor unions. And that will have nationwide ramifications, too. Just weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court issued a lengthy decision making clear that the Lone Star State’s Constitution also bars government from giving away taxpayer money to private interests. Government entities throughout Arizona—and the United States—should take notice when they seek to transfer taxpayer funds to their political cronies.”
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