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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 4, 2006)
Think Again • By Tim Nesbitt Bill Sizemore’s born-again accountability A t first glance, it looked like a case of born-again accountabil- ity. Or jailhouse redemption. Or just plain chutzpah. Here was Bill Sizemore, the guy whose organization was convicted of racketeering for using forged and falsely-obtained signatures on initia- tive petitions, complaining that we haven’t done enough to clean up the initiative process. Sizemore’s complaint, high- lighted in an opinion piece in the Oregonian last month, challenged the effects of Measure 26, the Initia- tive Integrity Act, which was spon- sored by Oregon’s unions and ap- proved by Oregon voters in 2002. I was a chief petitioner for that meas- ure, along with community activists Ellen Lowe and Bob Davis. We filed Measure 26 largely in response to what Sizemore and his Initiatives-R-Us signature gathering business was doing to the initiative process. Sizemore’s initiative business plan was very much in keeping with his free market philosophy — use contractors and subcontractors to ply your petitions and pay what it takes to exchange dollars for signa- tures, no questions asked. As busi- ness plans go, it was cost-effective. But it was also corrupting. Out-of-state mercenaries, who were experienced in high-volume petitioning, swarmed here. Slick operators used bait-and-switch tac- tics to trick voters into signing peti- tions for initiatives they did not sup- port. And forgers were rewarded with cash on the table. Our signa- tures became street-corner com- modities. We had to thread a legal needle to rein in these practices, since paying for signature gathering had been de- termined by the courts to be a con- stitutionally-protected exercise of free speech rights. If Measure 26 had been written to ban all forms of paid signature gathering, it would never have passed muster with the courts. But by focusing on the method of payment and the corrupt- ing effects of that method, Measure 26 struck the right balance. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that Measure 26’s prohibition on per-signature pay- ments “serves the important regula- tory interest in preventing fraud and forgery in the initiative process.” Sizemore ignored that important distinction in his Oregonian piece, characterizing Measure 26 as a ban on all forms of paid signature gath- ering. And he ignored his own recent history as well. During the 2002 election cycle, Sizemore told a TV reporter that he was not responsible for the practices of the individuals who were carrying his initiative petitions, because they were independent contractors over whom he had no control. No ques- tions asked, no responsibility. Sizemore continued to deny any responsibility for his signature gath- erers, even when two of them went to jail for forgery and election law violations. It took a lengthy racket- eering case, brought by the Oregon Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers- Oregon, to prove otherwise. Sizemore mentioned none of this in his Oregonian piece, of course. Instead, he tried to promote himself as a defender of the initiative process and disparaged Measure 26 as a tool to make petitioning more difficult for those who promote con- servative causes. He even tried to argue that there were fewer problems with petition- ing back in the good old days before Measure 26, citing the higher num- ber of signature gatherers caught committing forgery and fraud this year compared to four years ago. But now that Measure 26 is in ef- fect, all sponsors of initiatives must attest that they are not paying boun- ties or commissions for signatures. And this is why Sizemore is paying more attention to the practices of those who carry his petitions. A signature collected by a volun- teer still costs the same, no matter what your political leanings. And those who pay for signatures now have to be responsible for how they’re collected, even if it costs more to finance a responsible cam- paign operation than to put money on the street to troll for signatures. So if Sizemore and his col- leagues are now presenting them- selves as defenders of the initiative process and bragging that they “caught and turned in nearly 20 peo- ple for forging signatures” this year, I’d say that’s pretty good evidence that Measure 26 is doing its job. ★★★ Clarification: In my July 7 col- umn on higher education, I wrote that the state used to contribute $3 in operating funds for our public uni- versities for every $1 that resident students paid in tuition, and that the state’s contribution has since de- clined to 60 cents on the dollar. I have since discovered that the data on tuition revenue did not distin- guish between in-state and out-of- state tuition. So my description of the decline is state support from $3 to 60 cents on the dollar should have referred to all tuition collected, not just tuition collected from resident students. Tim Nesbitt is a former president of the Oregon AFL-CIO. Zachary Zabinsky • Social Security • SSI - Disability Claims Personal Attention To Every Case Working For Disability Rights Since 1983 NO FEE WITHOUT RECOVERY 621 SW Morrison, Portland 223-8517 AUGUST 4, 2006 NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS Senator Smith heeds call of 2,300 union members in ‘Kentucky River’ cases U.S. Senator Gordon Smith, (R-Ore- gon), ended his silence July 31 by ask- ing that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hold oral arguments be- fore issuing any rulings on three pend- ing cases known collectively as “Ken- tucky River.” The AFL-CIO held national protests the week of July 7, in which it called on Congress to allow oral arguments in the cases. At issue is whether the NLRB will broaden the definition of supervi- sors to potentially deny millions of workers the right to belong to a union by re-classifying them as supervisors. The Oregon AFL-CIO and its affili- ates collected 2,300 signatures, hosted two rallies, and convinced lawmakers to join their fight to preserve union rights for workers. Oregon’s Democratic con- gressional delegation signed a letter to the NLRB asking for oral arguments, as did Gov. Ted Kulongoski and a host of statewide and local elected officials. The only holdouts were Smith and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden. Smith’s letter to the NLRB asks the Board to hold oral arguments on the three Kentucky River cases. “These cases are too important to our nation’s workers to disregard oral arguments,” he wrote, adding that the federal govern- ment should ensure “safer workplaces, improved training, family wages, fam- ily health care, retirement security and a voice at work.” Over the past five years, President Bush’s appointees to the NLRB (three of them recess appointments to avoid Senate confirmation hearings) have taken away or “severely restricted” the rights of millions of workers to organize into unions and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining, according to a July 13 report issued by U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), ranking De- mocrat on the House Committee on Ed- ucation and the Workforce. The 25-page report cites cases by which the Labor Board excluded large categories of workers from being repre- sented by a union by ruling they are not employees, but rank as supervisors. It decided that disabled workers in reha- bilitation programs do not constitute employees, depriving 45,000 disabled workers of the right to join a union. The Board also found that graduate research and teaching assistants are not employees because their primary rela- tionship with the university is educa- tional rather than economic. This deci- sion, the report said, has denied more than 51,000 graduate teaching and re- search assistants at 1,561 private uni- versities the right to organize. The NLRB also decided that tempo- rary employees at nursing homes could not join a union with permanent em- ployees unless the temporary agency and the employer agreed to the arrange- ment. The decision severely restricts the basic rights of more than two million temporary and contract workers. “President Bush has filled the NLRB with anti-union members who have made it more difficult for workers to or- ganize a labor union,” Miller said in a statement releasing the report. 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