admin @ Mon, 2008-11-17 06:40
Of course, not all Democratic legislators are in the pockets of the teacher union hierarchy. It is remarkable, though, to see not one but two such legislators officials assume the highest positions at our state Capitol. Peter Groff's Democratic peers voted to re-elect him as state Senate president, and Rep. Terrance Carroll was selected to become the new speaker of the house.
Supporters of public school parental choice could find no better friends in the Democratic caucus than Groff and Carroll. Both men have a strong record of protecting charter schools against union-backed legislative attacks, even though those attacks were launched by other Democrats. Both Groff and Carroll also sponsored the Innovation Schools Act of 2008. Though watered down by union influence, this law allows traditional public schools an easier path to autonomy from district bureaucratic rules and union work restrictions.
Carroll was hardly the unions' first choice to be the new speaker, nor the early consensus pick. Rep. Bernie Buescher of Mesa County, the presumed successor to retiring House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, took more than $10,000 into his campaign coffers from CEA and its affiliates. Yet on his road to the speakership, Buescher surprisingly was beaten by Republican challenger Laura Bradford.
CEA officials said Buescher “will be sorely missed.” In his place, Carroll is set to appoint fellow Democrats to the House Education Committee. In recent years the committee, largely stacked with handpicked union favorites, has killed or watered down many K-12 education bills deemed unacceptable by the union. CEA may lose some of its leverage to bottle up education reform in committee.
Voters' verdicts on key state ballot issues have thrown another wrench into the union leaders' agenda.
The unions' other lobbies sought to gut the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights by passing Amendment 59 and sought to weaken citizens' initiative power by passing Referendum O. Together, 59 and O were supposed to lay the groundwork for a huge school tax proposal in 2010. But instead, Coloradans rejected both measures. Without 59 and O in place to strengthen their hand over the taxpayers, the unions will need to reassess their strategy.
In part, 59 and O suffered defeat because CEA, CFT and their labor allies were preoccupied with playing defense on other ballot issues.
The two major teachers unions combined to spend more than $6 million to oppose three ballot measures: Amendments 47, 49 and 54.
The union money managers probably made a mistake by spending so much against 47, the right-to-work proposal. Even if 47 had passed, it would have had no effect on the teachers union. Public school teachers already are legally protected from being required to join or pay fees to a union. Amendment 47 would simply have extended the same protection to private-sector Colorado employees.
Amendment 49 was a matter of more direct urgency. Union officials and lobbyists had a major perk at stake. Currently, government payroll systems are used to collect teacher union dues. The government takes the money from individual teachers' paychecks, and delivers the money to the union in a bundle. If 49 had passed, the unions would have lost their free government dues collection service. Of course union members could still make automatic dues payments, if they chose to do so, with a credit card, or with a monthly bank debit.
Back at the legislature, they face a legislative leadership which on education issues puts students and families first, not the union.
So the next two years may be good for empowering parents through public school choice and for making the public schools more accountable to citizens. Now is definitely not the time to give up on the hard work of lasting education reform, but to press forward with renewed optimism and clear purpose.
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