This story was updated Wednesday afternoon to reflect the final Senate vote on paycheck protection.
State Sen. John Eichelberger believes that the time has come for Pennsylvania to stop using its payroll system to collect political money for government unions, and plenty of his fellow lawmakers agree.
The state Senate on Wednesday passed Eichelberger’s paycheck protection legislation in a 26-23 vote, sending it to the state House for consideration.
Originally, the bill prohibited the state from collecting all dues, fees, and political action committee money for all government unions, except for those representing public safety employees. Republican state senators tweaked it Tuesday, approving an Eichelberger amendment that still bars the collection of political money but allows the deduction of fair-share fees that fund representational activities for unions.
“Where we have to draw the line—which seems very reasonable—is that they cannot any longer collect political money,” said Eichelberger, R-Blair.
Conservatives have tried to muscle through paycheck protection for about two years, and the tenor of the debate has changed little.
Republicans contend that public resources and politics should never mix. Democrats respond that conservatives want to stifle the political voice of middle-class workers and scoff at comparisons to past scandals in which public officials went to prison for using state resources for political purposes.
Government unions, which would have to collect money directly from their members if the bill became law, sharply criticize the legislation.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 represents employees who work in state-run liquor stores. Its president, Wendell Young IV, said Republicans are wasting time and taxpayer money pushing ahead something Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf would likely oppose.
“It kind of reminds me of the exercise in Washington, where Republicans keep voting to repeal Obamacare knowing the president will never sign such a thing,” Young said.
Previously, Republicans haven’t had much success with paycheck protection, even when they had a GOP governor, Tom Corbett, who would have signed the legislation. In 2014, a scaled back version of paycheck protection that would have stopped school districts from collecting union dues from employee paychecks failed in the Senate.
But Wednesday went much better for conservatives, who hailed the Senate vote as a step forward.
“Workers should be free to make their own decisions about the organizations and political candidates they support and pay directly out of their own pocket for any candidate they want to see elected,” said Kevin Shivers, executive state director of the National Federation of Independent Business in Pennsylvania. “It’s just dead wrong for the state government, which is supported by tax dollars, to do the union’s bidding by collecting funds that, in turn, are used for political purposes.”
Eichelberger’s amendment was considered key to persuade enough senators to support the measure.
Still, some lawmakers might take issue with another change made Tuesday: The amendment also moves public safety unions under the prohibition.
State Sen. John Rafferty, a Montgomery County Republican running for attorney general, unsuccessfully lobbied to keep the exemption in place for police and firefighters, who in the past were exempted from legislation such as pension reform.
The state should collect money those employees’ unions could use for politics, Rafferty said, because it’s their way “to show their support for candidates running for election or re-election who represent their values and stand with them as a law-enforcement community.”
“These are men and women that work shift work leave their homes and don’t know if they’re coming back to their families. They are different,” Rafferty said.
The plea didn’t resonate. Including carve-outs, Eichelberger says, would create a “very dangerous situation.”
Rafferty’s political ambitions also opened a window for more targeted criticism.
“I guess considering he’s a candidate for the top law enforcement job in the state, he’s pandering to those particular people,” Young said. “You either believe people have the right to do this or you don’t. I don’t think you get to pick between which people do or don’t.”
Rafferty’s chief of staff, Ryan Boop, could not be reached to comment.
The vote came just after the Commonwealth Foundation, a free-market think-tank, found that 67 percent of 700 registered voters polled last month support paycheck protection. Backing was strongest among Republicans (75 percent), but even most Democrats (59 percent) agreed. The margin of error was 3.7 percent.
“More than two-thirds of Pennsylvania voters believe we should end the use of taxpayer resources for the collection of union dues and campaign contributions,” said Nathan Benefield, vice president of policy analysis for the Commonwealth Foundation. “This support transcends all political parties.”
Lawmakers should rally behind the reform, Eichelberger said.
“How we’ve allowed, and how the courts have allowed, unions to continue to collect political money through government payrolls is something that I don’t understand,” Eichelberger said. “And many others are asking that we correct this loophole in the law to make sure that nobody is doing what most of us know we can’t do and our staff cannot do as we go about our business here in this building.”
Originally published in Watchdog.org.
