By Carter Bundy
There are many times when labor and corporations are on the same page. All unions want to see companies prosper. If you’re a private-sector union, more profits mean more ability to offer good wages and benefits. If you’re a public-sector union, more success means more revenue for the state. And presumably companies agree with unions that there should be due process for employees and that abusive managers should be reined in.
But sometimes unions and companies disagree on how to ensure fairness and prosperity for all New Mexicans, and that’s why both corporations and unions involve themselves in politics. Sometimes they’re on the same side politically, but more often than not, as a general rule, unions end up supporting Democrats and corporations end up supporting Republicans.
This session, there are several bills that would effectively eliminate the right of unions and other nonprofits to engage the public in any kind of dialogue, whether political or issue-based. While nonprofits including unions would still have the constitutionally protected right to communicate with their members, they would effectively be stopped from communicating with the public except through any coverage by the media.
There would be no such restriction on for-profit groups, including the very corporations that are normally on the opposite side of political skirmishes from unions.
Unsurprisingly, the Association of Commerce and Industry has been the only entity testifying for these bills. And frankly, they’re smart to do so. Why fight your political opponents when you can eliminate them?
Background
In early 2008, some nonprofit groups sought to do educational and issue-advocacy work around legislative issues including ethics. As a disclaimer, most unions, including AFSCME, have not been involved in the ethics debate in Santa Fe, so we really didn’t have a dog in the fight over those issues.
Some legislators felt that the issue advocacy crossed the line from being educational into the political. The courts are currently making that determination.
Unintended consequences
While the courts are deciding whether lines were crossed, the Legislature has taken a different tact: require all nonprofits to disclose virtually everything about their operations.
Transparency is terrific. If a mailing is sent out, the world should know who did it. If an ad runs on TV, everyone should be able to identify the sponsor. But the bills go far beyond normal transparency.
They require that if a union, for example, pays for a mailing listing endorsed candidates or reporting factual information about a vote, or simply comments on an issue and asks people to thank elected officials, not only are they subject to normal political reporting requirements, they must divulge every source of money over $1,000 from anywhere, even if the money has nothing to do with politics or New Mexico.
That would mean national unions would have to show the public income from locals and state organizations. They’d have to scour records from each council and local to find things as completely unrelated as rent payments, organizing drive grants and grants for training conferences on how to file a grievance. These bills impose more draconian reporting requirements than anything W’s Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, ever dreamed of — and she dreamed of some pretty nasty anti-union things.
The end result would be an administrative nightmare that does nothing to contribute to political transparency. The Secretary of State’s Office would be flooded with thousands of pages of documents that have nothing to do with anything relating to elections. Of course, the reality is that such absurd burdens would simply drive any nonprofits, including unions, out of the state’s political process, except for their member communications.
ACI and some others would love that, but that’s not a very fair political system.
After all, if such uber-transparency is good for unions and other nonprofits, why isn’t the same true of corporations? Corporations spend about 20 times more than unions on politics, and spend plenty on issue advocacy as well.
If the public deserves to know a private union’s operations in that level of detail, why doesn’t the public deserve to know the identities of each shareholder, contractor and other source of income for a corporation? Heck, many companies either already receive or are lobbying for tax breaks far in excess of all the tax breaks nonprofits in New Mexico receive combined.
In any event, the issue isn’t about tax breaks. It’s about transparency. Taxation is merely the threat being hung over the head of nonprofits to ensure compliance, but whether corporations receive tax breaks or not, why shouldn’t the same transparency standards apply to their political activity?
Legitimate questions
I hope the intention of legislators pushing for these rules isn’t to cripple political participation from one philosophical viewpoint, but it’s the unquestioned result. There’s not one organization in New Mexico, whether nonprofit or corporate, that would want almost all internal financial documents open for public inspection.
The real dilemma driving this debate is the difficulty in drawing the line between issue advocacy and politicking. The response has been to say that, rather than drawing the line, as the feds and dozens of states have done, New Mexico will simply stop nonprofits from participating in any educational or political communication where a candidate’s name is mentioned — even if it’s to thank a politician for good work.
The Legislature is absolutely right to tackle this issue, but the way to do it is to clarify the line between issue advocacy and politics, not to stifle nonprofit voices altogether.
Everyone wants business in New Mexico to do well. But businesses shouldn’t have a totally different set of rules allowing them to communicate with the public on issues and about politics when nonprofits, including unions, don’t. What’s good for New Mexico’s workers and nonprofits is good for our corporate friends, too.
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.