No on Proposition 75

Senior Representative, Sierra Club California

Conservative ideologues and large corporations have placed on the Nov. 8 special election ballot an initiative to prohibit public employee unions from making expenditures on political activities, including electoral activities, issue advocacy, and any other political or legislative cause, unless they have obtained the express written consent of each union member whose dues will be used.

In 1998, a similar initiative that applied to all labor unions failed to pass. Sierra Club California opposed that measure, and the conservation, executive, and legislative committees have all voted to oppose this year's version of Proposition 75.

Sierra Club urges a 'no' vote on Prop 75 for the following reasons:

We support the ability of membership organizations to use members' dues and contributions for public advocacy purposes, particularly for state and local ballot measures. Although the news reports about Proposition 75 focus on contributions by state employee unions to state candidates, the initiative also applies to campaigns for state and local ballot measures. (It also applies to all 'public employee labor organizations,' and not just to state employee unions.) We oppose attempts to make it more difficult for membership organizations to engage in these campaigns.

Proposition 75 would skew the political landscape against the environmental cause. The measure is a blatantly unfair attempt to take away one of the biggest sources of campaign funding for Democrats and moderate Republicans. Proposition 75 would not require corporate polluters to gain the permission of their shareholders before lobbying against the environment or contributing to candidates.

Drying up funding from public employee unions would drive even more politicians into the arms of corporate contributors when they are seeking the big bucks to fund their campaigns. In addition, many of the elected officials with the best environmental records receive significant funding from public employee unions and would face difficulty raising money without their support. Since environmental groups like Sierra Club give very little money to candidates (and public campaign financing is not yet a reality in California), pro-environment politicians need to seek funding from other sources, and public worker unions are among their biggest funders.

The unions targeted by Proposition 75 are often allies of the environmental movement. Public employee unions in California have come to the aid of the environment many times. For example: CA Nurses Association, one-quarter of whose members are public employees, has supported many of our top priorities, like reducing greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles; the Service Employees International Union, which represents a huge number of public employees, is our partner in offering solar energy to our members; the California Association of Professional Scientists, which represents many staffers at the departments of Fish and Game and Toxic Substances Control, has worked with us on protecting the budgets of environmental agencies; and public employee unions in 2000 helped the environmental community defeat the Polluter Protection Act, Proposition 37, which would have reclassified environmental mitigation fees as taxes requiring two-thirds votes. Were Proposition 75 to pass, these allies would not have the resources with which to come to the aid of environmental causes.