Spending reports due in fight over Ohio union law

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Cam­paign records due to the state on Fri­day will reveal how much both sides spent in a fall bal­lot fight that ended with the defeat of Ohio’s sweep­ing new col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law.

Ohioans were bar­raged with TV ads, mail­ers and spar­ring in the press dur­ing the months lead­ing up to the Novem­ber vote on whether the union law should be kept or tossed out. The bill would have restricted the bar­gain­ing abil­i­ties of more than 350,000 teach­ers, police, fire­fight­ers and other union­ized pub­lic employ­ees around the state.

Even before the final cam­paign finance dead­line, some $30 mil­lion in com­bined spend­ing had been reported by oppo­si­tion cam­paign We Are Ohio, backed largely by labor unions, and by Build­ing a Bet­ter Ohio, a cam­paign sup­ported by busi­ness groups, farm­ers and oth­ers who wanted the law left in place.

Insid­ers have pre­dicted that spend­ing would top that of last year’s hard-fought governor’s race, in which almost $34 mil­lion was spent.

Friday’s reports were to show spend­ing and con­tri­bu­tions from mid-October to early Decem­ber in the union law fight.

Back­ers of the bill had help from out­side inter­est groups, who spent inde­pen­dently to keep the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing restric­tions in place.

Fil­ings sub­mit­ted ahead of Friday’s after­noon dead­line show Virginia-based Alliance for America’s Future spent more than $1.7 mil­lion on mail­ings in sup­port of the law. Con­ser­v­a­tive group Cit­i­zens United spent $115,000 on email and tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing, accord­ing to inde­pen­dent expen­di­ture reports filed this month with the Ohio’s top elec­tion official.

More than 61 per­cent of Ohio vot­ers rejected the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing law in last month’s election.

Gov. John Kasich, a first-term Repub­li­can, and other sup­port­ers had pro­moted the over­haul as a means for city offi­cials, school super­in­ten­dents and oth­ers to bet­ter con­trol their costs and keep work­ers on the job dur­ing a time of tight budgets.

Oppo­nents had argued the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing restric­tions were an unfair attack on pub­lic employee unions that had worked coop­er­a­tively with their gov­ern­ment employ­ers for decades. They also accused law­mak­ers of exploit­ing a state bud­get cri­sis to pass an unpop­u­lar measure.

Pre­vi­ous cam­paign finance reports from mid-October show that We Are Ohio cam­paign raised almost $24 mil­lion and received more than $6 mil­lion in in-kind con­tri­bu­tions. Unions were among its top donors. The Ohio Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, the state’s largest teach­ers union, con­tributed more than $4.7 mil­lion. The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, County and Munic­i­pal Employ­ees and its locals gave more than $5.1 mil­lion, while Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tional Union affil­i­ates con­tributed more than $1.5 million.

The Build­ing a Bet­ter Ohio coali­tion raised $7.6 mil­lion and spent almost $6 mil­lion through its polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee as of mid-October, accord­ing to its pre­vi­ous forms. The coali­tion is not required to say who gives money to it because of its sta­tus as a non­profit cor­po­ra­tion, whereas We Are Ohio is a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee that by state law had to pub­licly dis­close its spend­ing, donors and their contributions.

Build­ing a Bet­ter Ohio vol­un­tar­ily pro­vided a list of donors before Elec­tion Day and did so again on Fri­day. Nei­ther list reveals how much each con­trib­u­tor gave — or other iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion, such as address and occupation.

Donors on both lists include the Ohio Cham­ber of Com­merce and Make Ohio Great, a project of the Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion. Oth­ers who have donated to Build­ing a Bet­ter Ohio include the Ohio Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion, the Greater Cleve­land Part­ner­ship and Asso­ci­ated Build­ing & Con­trac­tors, a coali­tion of nonunion con­struc­tion interests.

Posted by AP News on Dec 16 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.