Ventura County Star

SACRAMENTO -- A political activist on Tuesday filed the first signatures for an initiative that would force unions representing teachers, police officers and other government workers to get written permission from members before spending their union dues on political activities.

The filing sets the stage for a ballot-box battle that will force public employee unions to fight to retain their considerable political clout.

Lewis Uhler, president of the National Tax-Limitation Committee, said the petitions filed in Sacramento County represent the first wave of 600,000 signatures that will qualify his initiative for the next statewide ballot -- either in a special election in November, if called by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, or in June 2006.

The initiative comes at a time when the state's leading public employee unions, led by the California Teachers Association, are engaged in a bitter political battle with Schwarzenegger over initiatives he has proposed that could reduce pensions, erode teacher job protections and allow the governor to cut spending on schools when the state faces a budget deficit.

$7.5 million raised

A coalition of public employee unions has raised more than $7.5 million this year to fight the governor's agenda.

A spokesman for that group, the Alliance for a Better California, said the fact that signatures were submitted in only one county Tuesday raises the question of whether Uhler in fact has the number of signatures he claims.

If signatures are filed in other counties by the end of the week, said Jim Farrell, the group will respond by filing its initiatives by the end of the week. The alliance is sponsoring initiatives to reregulate electrical energy, to create more consumer protections for car buyers and to establish a state program to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for moderate- and low-income Californians.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has advised sponsors of initiatives that if they want to ensure a position on a potential Nov. 8 special election ballot, they should file signatures at county elections offices by Friday.

Uhler said he believes there is a "disconnect" between the political activities championed by union leadership and the beliefs of rank-and-file members -- and that the law should be changed so that members are not compelled to support political activities they don't support.

"Can you imagine if your employer withheld money from your paycheck and made automatic deductions and you had no say in how it was spent?" he asked. "You'd be outraged."

Union representatives, however, say the effort to hamstring their ability to conduct political activities is nothing more than an effort to silence the voice of working people.

Speaking at a rally this week at the state Capitol, leaders of local unions representing firefighters, teachers and nurses noted that current law allows union members to request that no portion of their dues go to their union's political action committee.

"If it passes, it will be a fatal blow," said Sheryl Obasih Williams, a nurses' union officer in Sacramento. "Only organized men and women collectively have the resources to help elect candidates who will fight for kitchen-table issues."

'Trying to silence' voices

Oxnard Educators Association President Joe Murphy echoed those sentiments in an interview Tuesday. Although Schwarzenegger has taken no official position on the union-dues initiative, Murphy said he believes the governor agrees with his political supporters in their effort to politically disarm unions.

"He's trying to silence our voices and it's not going to work," Murphy said.

Noting that Schwarzenegger has raised more than $70 million, mostly from large corporations and business executives, since coming into office, Murphy said the governor's objective is to collect "large sums of money to shut other people up. That's basically what he's doing."

Because most of the financial support to collect signatures for the union-dues initiative came from the Small Business Action Committee headed by Joel Fox, one of Schwarzenegger's most loyal political allies, Uhler said he believes the governor will be on board.

Hoping for support

"We're hopeful as we progress that this measure will become one of the convoy of initiatives the governor is creating, and he'll endorse it," Uhler said.

A similar initiative, which would have included private-sector unions as well as those representing public employees, failed on the ballot in June 1998. Proposition 226, which led in early polling, was defeated 53 percent to 47 percent after an aggressive labor-backed campaign to defeat it.

The labor alliance on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission against Uhler's initiative committee, the Coalition for Employee Rights.

Citing a comment Uhler made to the San Francisco Chronicle that the Schwarz-enegger-backed Citizens to Save California had directed contributors to give money to the Small Business Action Committee, the complaint alleges that Schwarzenegger and his allies are engaged in "an elaborate conspiracy" to hide the sources of money supporting the union-dues initiative.