Save for its prominent role in helping to oust Richard Iannuzzi from his perch as head of New York State United Teachers and being a key force in keeping NYSUT from endorsing Andrew Cuomo’s bid for a second term as governor, few people in education circles pay much mind to the New York State Public Employees Federation. Though one of the larger affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers, the union is little known outside of Albany, where it is the mandatory bargaining agent for 50,596 civil servants forced to pay into its coffers.
But based on its 2013-2014 annual financial filing with the U.S. Department of Labor, reformers, both in the Empire State and the rest of the nation, may want to pay attention to NYSPEF. This is because the AFT affiliate’s political donations are a key part of the efforts of the union and its two other powerful units, NYSUT and the United Federation of Teachers, to preserve influence over education policy.
NYSPEF doled out $2.3 million in political contributions last fiscal year. While this represents a mere 6.4 percent of the union’s $35 million in spending, this was money well spent. Among the beneficiaries of its largesse: State Sen. Dean Skelos, who as the majority leader of the Empire State’s upper house, is the third most-powerful person in state government after Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Skelos’ campaign committee collected $10,300 from the AFT affiliate. His fellow Republicans in the state senate also got some NYSPEF love, picking up $10,000 from the unit.
The big dollars, naturally, went to Democrats, especially those on the state senate’s powerful education committee. This included State Sen. George Latimer, the Ranking Democrat on the committee, whose political action committee collected $10,300 from NYSPEF. Latimer is a particularly important recipient; if Democrats regain control of the state senate this November, he will likely assume chairmanship of the education committee, and be one of the two most-powerful players in shaping policy governing New York State’s public education clusters. Another $10.300 of NYSPEF money went to the PAC of Latimer’s colleague on the committee, Cecilia Tkaczyk.
Meanwhile the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee collected a whopping $127,300 from the AFT affiliate. That should ensure the unit, along with its counterparts within the AFT, that Democrats will listen closely to their concerns. The union is also a big backer of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, putting $30,000 into his campaign committee. Given that Schneiderman is dealing with the Vergara lawsuits filed by the New York City Parents Union and Campbell Brown’s Partnership for Educational Justice, there’s a chance that he will work diligently on behalf of the AFT to keep the state’s tenure laws from being overturned. Even the Working Families Party, a virtual subsidiary of the AFT and its public-sector union allies in the Empire State, got some love; NYSPEF gave it $43,750, likely more than enough to persuade it to not name Zephyr Teachout, the academic-turned-anti-Common Core challenger to Cuomo’s bid for re-election, its standardbearer on the ballot this year.
This spending follows a path set by NYSPEF in 2012-2013, when it poured $1.9 million into explicitly political activities. In 2012-2013, for example, NYSPEF donated $9,850 to Andrew Lanza, one of the key Republicans on the Senate Education Committee, and gave another $9,300 to his Democrat counterpart, Joseph Addabbo Jr., the son of the famed New York congressman. The PACs for Latimer and Tkacyk each picked up $10,300. NYSPEF made sure to take care of Senate Democrats off the education committee; the AFT affiliate donated $8.300 to Diane Savino, a state senator who is also the girlfriend of Senate Democratic leader (and possible majority leader) Jeff Klein. The New York State Democratic Committee also got $35,000 from NYSPEF, ensuring that the AFT can keep some of its influence in state government; Schneiderman’s campaign also picked up a $5,000 check.
What is clear is that NYSPEF is acting as a stealth donor for the AFT’s efforts to keep what’s left of its influence over education policy. Latimer has already proven his worth to the affiliate — as well as to NYSUT, UFT, and the national AFT — earlier this year when he announced that he would vote against renominating four members of the Board of Regents, the body that oversees education policy; he apparently paid attention to their complaints about the reform agenda undertaken by the board and Education Commissioner John King (who, along with Cuomo, is the leading player on overhauling public education), as well as their desire to weaken teacher evaluations using data from tests aligned with Common Core reading and math standards.
You can expect more of the same for 2014-2015. Expect the AFT affiliate to pour even more money this fall into state Democratic efforts to win control of the senate, and if successful, put even more money into the hands of Latimer, Tkaczyk and their colleagues. They, in turn, will likely challenge Cuomo, King, and the board (including chairman Meryl Tisch), over their reform efforts. Given that the state senate, regardless of Republican or Democrat, has been more-friendly to advancing systemic reform, there is a slight chance that NYSPEF’s efforts (along with that of its fellow AFT affiliates) make the chamber less so. But this still depends on Democrats gaining the majority (problematic, but possible), and more-importantly, on maintaining enough of a united front to actually take control. Given past history (including the splintering of several Democrats two years ago to join Republicans in a governing coalition that kept Skelos in control of the senate), don’t count on it.
It wasn’t always this way. Before 2013, NYSPEF’s political donations were far less focused on education policymaking. Save for a $5,000 donation to Hugh Farley, a Republican on the Senate Education Committee in 2010-2011, the AFT affiliate donated heartily to the key Democratic and Republican legislative campaign committees. In fact, the union even gave $5,000 to Cuomo’s political campaign. What changed? Start with the emergence of current NYSPEF President Susan Kent, who fought a successful campaign to oust predecessor Kenneth Brynien after he struck a collective bargaining deal with the state that gave rank-and-file no raises. Though Kent promised to focus on tough bargaining with Cuomo, she instead built close ties to national AFT President Randi Weingarten, who always likes to have a little extra help in advancing her agenda; the two appeared together last June in one of the events held as part of the national union’s Reclaim the Promise effort to preserve its influence over public education.
For Weingarten, along with UFT President Michael Mulgrew and NYSUT President Karen Magee (the last of whom owes her job to Kent’s and Mulgrew’s efforts), NYSPEF’s political donations will likely yield some fruit. Especially for Weingarten. For all the focus of reformers and education policy wonks on the AFT’s national profile (and that of the National Education Association), the reality is that the key to teachers’ union influence lies in the nation’s statehouses (as well as in school districts), where their affiliates can leverage their coffers and rank-and-file members on behalf of their agendas. This is especially true in the case of New York State, which is to the AFT what California is to the NEA: The most-important base of its political influence. NYSPEF’s efforts help Weingarten and Mulgrew, her possible successor once she decides to step down, preserve the declining-yet-considerable influence the AFT has left.
As for NYSPEF itself? Not so much. After all, its primary focus is bargaining for state employees. These days, it has fewer of them in its fold. Between 2009-2010 and 2013-2014, the AFT affiliate’s membership declined by nine percent, resulting in an eight percent decline in revenue. Thanks to the economic malaise plaguing the nation as a whole (and weighing heavily on New York State’s budget), there are fewer public employees working on the state government payroll. Given that the long-term fiscal burdens the Empire State bears — including the subsidies it provides to New York City for its virtually-busted pensions — it is unlikely that NYSPEF will recover those lost members. There’s also the fact that the far-larger Civil Service Employees Association, the affiliate of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, may end up trying to raid NYSPEF of remaining members in order to stave off its own decline in rank-and-file numbers. [The Service Employees International Union, to which NYSPEF is also an affiliate, may not appreciate the union being more-devoted to AFT matters than to its concerns.]
In fact, by devoting so much of its dollars to education politicking, NYSPEF could easily be accused of not doing more to gin up more support among legislators for hiring more state workers who can join its rank-and-file, or working harder to increase the rather comfortable compensation packages given to existing rank-and-filers. This, along with the union’s decision to not back Cuomo for his second term (and thus, shutting NYSPEF out of opportunities to influence the governor), could lead rank-and-filers to toss Kent out for an insurgent promising to be more-aggressive on their behalf. As is, she is dogged by complaints about the union’s decision to award $250,000 in contracts to Inspired Marketing Solutions, a Cohoes, N.Y.-based firm whose owner worked on her successful campaign to become AFT affiliate boss two years ago.
This should also be worrisome to Weingarten. After all, the AFT’s rank-and-file membership no longer consist mostly of public school employees, but nurses, United Nations workers, and public employees too. Keeping NYSPEF and other units going (and keeping the dollars flowing into national coffers) may force the AFT to spend less time on defending the grand bargain it struck decades ago with teachers. That won’t be good, either.
What happens with NYSPEF in the coming years will be interesting for reformers — and everyone else — to watch.
Featured photo: Susan Kent, the boss of the AFT’s New York State Public Employees Federation, is a key player in the union’s effort to preserve influence over Empire State education policy.