A missed chance to shine light on public employee contract dealmaking in Washington state

For a snapshot of how government and union officials in Washington arrive at multi-million dollar public employee contracts every couple years, Pierce County is a timely example.

So far this year, the county has wrapped up 14 collective bargaining agreements covering more than 1,000 jobs at a cost of more than $155 million. The goal is to resolve the final seven deals by the end of the summer.

The high-stakes drama unfolds behind closed doors, under the watch of County Executive Bruce Dammeier and his negotiators. The County Council gives its token blessing in an open public meeting.

All the 2018-19 pay raises to this point have coasted through the council with virtually no questions or public discussion. Chairman Doug Richardson typically gives a vague statement that the agreements took time to craft, and that the council was kept aware of backstage negotiations.

It’s not much of a snapshot, is it? More like a faded Polaroid from your mom’s photo album, yellowing at the edges with key details out of focus.

Pierce County is not alone. Most governments in Washington, from state agencies to city councils to school boards, behave just as opaquely when they go through the arduous back-and-forth of employee contract hardball.

But keeping taxpayers in the dark on this massive outlay of their money is an affront to our state’s bedrock principles of transparency.

Initiative 1608 would throw open the curtains; it would require state and local governments to make negotiating sessions open to public observation and recording, disclose all bargaining proposals and retain agreements online.

Unfortunately, I-1608 backers have given up on making the November ballot; they won’t collect enough signatures before the July 6 deadline. That’s a shame, because voters should have a chance to bring more oversight to hundreds of millions of dollars in public employee pay and benefits after a history of failed attempts in Olympia.

Odds are slim that legislators will see the light before next session. But it is election season, and voters would do well to quiz candidates where they stand on collective bargaining while asking about their overall commitment to government accountability

Opening negotiations really isn’t such a radical idea. Until 2004, legislators had a seat at the table for state employee contracts, and the public and news media could observe. That all changed after Gov. Gary Locke signed a bill that allowed state workers to hammer out deals directly with the governor's office in private meetings, reducing the Legislature’s role to a straight up-or-down vote at the end.

Other states that require some form of open bargaining include Texas, Florida, Colorado and Idaho. A handful of take-charge local governments in Washington, led by the Lincoln County Commission in 2016, have adopted such systems, proving that transparency is more than lip service for them.

In Pierce County, the gears of change grind much more slowly.

The executive’s office this year invited three employee bargaining groups to participate in an experiment of increased openness; two groups consented. Union leaders agreed to have summary-level information about negotiations shared on the county intranet — not available to the general public. The information included when and where meetings were held, and whether offers were exchanged — not the substance of those offers.

Dammeier, who spoke on the campaign trail about wanting greater openness in labor contracts, says these were modest steps designed to build trust and slowly change culture. “People on both sides of the bargaining table are used to the same way it’s been done forever,” he told us last week.

Incremental change is fine as far as it goes. But sometimes an external force is needed to shove entrenched parties outside their comfort zones. Initiative 1608 could have been that force.

The measure garnered bipartisan support from respected public figures including Republican Rob McKenna, the former state attorney general, and Democrat Brian Sonntag, the former state auditor. “It’s never wrong to open the doors and let the people in,” Sonntag, of University Place, told us Wednesday. “Especially with the amount of public dollars involved, keep the door open.”

While unions claim the initiative would erode public employee rights, that argument is flawed because rank-and-file members could use the access to make sure they’re well represented. Having confidence in union leadership is more important than ever at a time when mandatory dues are under U.S. Supreme Court review, and some workers question what they’re paying for.

But I-1608 will not qualify for the 2018 ballot, and that qualifies as a major disappointment.

For now, we’ll hope for an epiphany at the Legislature, cheer for the reformers in places like Lincoln County and watch for piecemeal progress in Pierce County.

Like your mom’s Polaroid snapshot, open public employee bargaining in Washington is painfully slow to develop.

This story was originally published June 23, 2018 at 2:00 PM with the headline "A missed chance to shine light on public employee contract dealmaking in Washington state."